Time Warp: So By Year Do They Mean an Actual Year? (Sean)

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

[April 2013]

It had been a long time since Nora Marie had sat in the waiting room outside of Dr. Neville's office. The psychiatrist checked up on her every few months, but she hadn't had a proper session since she was almost thirteen years old. Nory couldn't say she was especially eager for them to start again. She liked Dr. Neville, but she preferred when their interactions didn't take place with a desk and a lot of unpleasant questions in between them.

She looked down at the creased sheaf of paper in her hands. It was a copy of the official disciplinary documentation that the headmistress had given her, and had been mailed to her father and she was sure Dr. Neville as well. Two detentions a week for the next semester and a year-long ban from off-campus visiting privileges to be reevaluated at the end of her junior year. Welp. No more 7-11 runs, it seemed.

She flipped to the next page, which was where the incriminating evidence started. Copies of fake emails, the forged permissions slip, brief summaries from the other students who had been unwittingly involved (a tracker, technopath and hypnotist), an angry account from her off-campus escort, and a photograph of the smashed apartment window. There was a statement from her brother as well, which she had already read enough times to memorize.

She turned the document carefully back over. She should try to keep from crying until she at least got into Dr. Nevillie's office. Lying never got very far with him, and she wasn't sure how this meeting was going to go. Up until now, her case had been one of the school's successes. She had been carried into Hammel at age eleven, hysterical and gravely ill, and had required near constant supervision to keep her from escaping out a window. In her first month of sessions, Nora Marie didn't think there was anything in Dr. Neville's office that she hadn't tried to throw at him. But with training and talking and a lot of hard work from everyone, she began to climb back on her feet. Dr. Neville had played no small part in that. And she had let him down.

She both feared and defied his disappointment. The psychiatrist was one of the few people in the school who might understand what it meant to her to have her brother back and why she had been willing to go to such lengths to try. As a school official, she could hardly expect him to approve of what she'd done. But as a councilor, he had seen her shed puddles of tears because her mother was gone, her brother had left her, and her father was on the other side of the country. And now, one of them had come back.

Nory smiled at her discipline sheet. Disappointed or not, she would do it again in a heartbeat. They were going to have to get a lot more creative with their punishments if they ever wanted her to regret it.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean wore many hats in his staff capacity at Hammel. It was part and parcel of having worked there for over two decades –nearing two and a half – one acquired more responsibilities the longer that one was employed at any given place. Not only was Sean the staff psychiatrist and the brunt of the mental health services department, but he also served as a guidance counselor, he advised the Student Activities Council and the Peer Mediators Club, he delivered the Sexual Education lecture in the summer term, and he served as the first tier disciplinarian.

The psychiatrist did not enjoy all of his hats equally. He preferred to be constructive, and, in doing so, he could envision a world and a school where none of the students required disciplinary intervention.

However, this was not the present reality.

Sean had a preexisting relationship with Nora Marie. She had seen him quite regularly upon her first arrival at Hammel, and, as she had made progress, their visits had tapered off to his routine check-ins, but nothing more regular or intrusive.

While the psychiatrist rarely became angry, he was disappointed. The girl had made such progress, and she had enjoyed more freedom as a result. Then she had abused that freedom, and present circumstances were what they were.

Sean also had a copy of the disciplinary sheet, along with the official revocation of Nora Marie’s privileges. He couldn’t say that he disagreed with the ruling, particularly in light of the level of her infractions. Still, he would prefer that none of this had been necessary in the first place. Perhaps if the girl had chosen to speak to Sean about all of this before going off like a loose cannon, albeit one that had engaged in careful and meticulous preparation.

Sending her outside his office, the psychiatrist went to the door and opened it, rather than calling for her. Standing over her at his full height, he said, “You can come in now.”

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nora Marie looked up at him from the piece of paper, and her emotions could be read in a glance—hope, guilt, defiance, joy, all bundled together in the riot of feelings that meant her counseling sessions were rarely dull. She looked back down at her paper and her shoulders hunched a little closer together. As easy as she was to read herself, she had a sometimes unnerving knack for gauging the emotions of others. He was disappointed.

Well, might as well get it over with. “Thanks.” She stood up, slung her backpack over one shoulder, and bobbed past Dr. Neville's elbow and into the office. She gazed around for a moment before taking her seat. “I like your new plant,” she said as she scooted the chair forward. “Did someone give it to you? My dad sent me some crocus seeds a couple weeks ago, but I haven't found anywhere to plant them, and I'm a little worried I'd just kill them on accident.”

This was normal for the girl—even in awkward situations Nory was warm, inquisitive and talkative to a fault. While endearing, this was part of what had made the early part of her counseling so challenging (after they got over the throwing phase, that is). Nora Marie's flighty chattiness and genuine good intentions made it difficult to detect when she was being manipulative. She could spend an entire session, weeks of them, waxing eloquent on her feelings and life story, and by the end of it you realized that she had never answered exactly the question you asked. When confronted about it she grew defensive, and if pressed, would shut off completely. As their sessions continued and she grew to trust Dr. Neville, she did this less and less, though the manipulative streak, it seemed, was still alive and well.

Nory smoothed out the disciplinary documentation on her lap and glanced up at Dr. Neville again. She hoped he had his box of tissues out, because she had a lurking suspicion she was going to need them before they finished. “So...um...yeah.”

Well, she'd let him start.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“It was a gift, yes,” Sean confirmed with a nod. Aside from what was in his yard, he did not buy plants for himself. He bought flowers as gifts for other people, and he might buy a small houseplant as a housewarming gift for a neighbor or a friend, but otherwise, they were not décor that he purchased for himself. “And I’m sure that we can have those planted somewhere. Miss Adaire would be happy to help.” Of that, Sean was fairly certain. If not, he would call in a favor.

All of this, however, was small talk that distracted them from the far more serious matter at hand.

Since ignoring the elephant in the room was hardly an option, the psychiatrist waited for Nora Marie to sit and get comfortable, before he delved straight into the topic of her escapade and the resulting disciplinary actions.

As soon as she had, he fixed his full attention on her. “What were you thinking?”

That technically qualified as him starting, although he would not allow her to deflect in this situation. This was not about the psychiatrist or about his actions; it was about hers.

She had placed herself in a bad light, and she was now on a list on which, Sean was sure, she did not want to find herself.

He had his leading theories for why she had done this. However, he wanted to hear it from her in her own words, rather than him speaking for both of them.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory considered her options. She could burst into tears. She was very good at this even while unprovoked, and she could feel the natural emotion laying under only a thin skin of self-control. Crying was a generally sound tactic, especially against older gentlemen. For one, they couldn't expect her to speak when she was toppled over on a desk sobbing. For another, few of them were willing to smack her on the back of the head and yell at her to snap out of it. If she could build up enough steam, she could get out of an entire session this way.

But Nory didn't especially want to get out of this session. She didn't want Dr. Neville to think that she had just thrown years of his, Mr. Batista, and countless other staff members' work out the window. She didn't want the afternoon to end with the faint lines around his nose and slight flattening of his voice that signified his disappointment. She didn't want him to think she was one of those students. But she didn't know if she could make him understand, and even if she could, she didn't know that he'd agree with her.

Ultimately, she told herself, it didn't matter. She had gone into this knowing the consequences full well, and she would do it again in a heartbeat even if Dr. Neville started beating her around the ears with his shoe and shouting that she had defaced his name and that of the entire institution. She could do this for Adam. So she took a deep breath and squared up at the psychiatrist. "I wanted my brother back," she said defiantly. She felt the tears catching in her throat already, but she forced them down. "But he wouldn't listen, I don't think he could anymore, so I just...I just had to get creative about it."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean would be disappointed if she chose to cry rather than to talk to him. The choice to cry was key there, since he faulted nobody for having an emotional reaction to an overwhelming situation. However, he could tell when people cried, in whole or in part, for the purposes of manipulation, and the dishonesty in that tactic disappointed him. Particularly when he expected better of a person. As he did with Nora Marie.

As was true in essentially all of his psychiatric sessions, he was privy to more than his patients or the students were typically aware. He was judicious in this knowledge, and he did not remark on most of what he heard, saw, and sensed from the minds of others. Four decades of coping with telepathy had taught him how to school his expressions; this was what prevented him from reacting to the image that popped into his mind. Of him beating her with a shoe and berating her for her behavior.

As a pacifist, he would never.

Besides, if he hadn’t beaten Vincent Verax for every escapade the boy had ever pulled in this office and elsewhere, he would not begin with Nora Marie. Not even over this situation.

The psychiatrist’s full attention remained on her as she offered her explanation. It fit with so much else that they had discussed during her early tenure at Hammel.

He didn’t interrupt. Only when she had finished speaking did he reply. His voice held no anger, as he said, “Getting creative isn’t the solution, and you know that.”

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory's hands curled a little more tightly around the papers in her lap. "No, it wasn't...ideal," she admitted. "I know that I broke a lot of rules, and I know I made people really worried. And I am sorry for that part, and if anything else had worked I wouldn't have done it. But dad and I tried for years! He wouldn't talk to us, he sent letters back, he..." She stopped and looked down at the desk. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't cry. After a pause, she continued again, her voice shaky but determined. "I had to try."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean was largely sympathetic to the plights of those who had become estranged from family members. While he didn’t share his personal history with the students, because he considered those details to be a breach of boundaries, he did know what it was like to be estranged from family. The psychiatrist only had one sister, and the two of them had not been on good terms for a decade. It could be difficult.

Even if the Neville siblings had put on appearances for their parents. When their parents had passed, they had dropped all pretenses. Sean was happier not having to deal with his sister’s prejudices, but it had been a difficult adjustment.

At the same time, there were procedures for dealing with family issues. Going rogue, manipulating other students into unwittingly proffering aid, and then sneaking off campus for a fool’s errand was not the way to do it. Particularly when there were adults who supposedly had a connection with her to help her with these types of personal problems.

The psychiatrist suppressed a sigh. Instead, he asked, “And what happened with him after all of this?”

They could approach results and then work backward for the duration of this conversation.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

"With Adam?" Nory swallowed. "He...he..."

The memories surged up, the moments she had been reliving for the past 48 hours. Pacing back and forth in his living room, nearly sick with anxiety and anticipation, wondering what had possessed her to try this, how she possibly thought it could work. Would he throw her out personally or just call the cops? Or would he pause for long enough to repeat his last words to her, five years ago, when he screamed that she had killed their mother, and if he saw her again he'd kill her too.

"He..." Nory felt her throat sticking. There was no stopping it now, it was just a race to see how many words she could get out first. "He huh--he h-hugged me..."

And she was gone. With a keening howl, Nory keeled forward and, for lack of any better tissues, pressed her face into her discipline sheet. Tears of joy, of pain, of how much she loved her brother and how much she had missed him. He had stared at her, dropped his mail, and started to cry, as hard as she was crying now. She had hugged him, and he hugged her back. That's where they had been when the extremely angry recruiter showed up forty minutes later, sitting against a wall in Adam's empty, miserable apartment. He told her, in his own way, how sorry he was, how much hated it here, that he had just lost his job. When the recruiter showed up, he pulled himself together and made the man call the police to prove he had the authority to take her, then he wrote up a statement absolving her of as much blame as had the power to legally provide. Nory couldn't even remember the trip back to Hammel. Her brother was back. That was all that mattered.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The papers in her lap, and the identical copies that Sean had in her file, were evidence of the fact that Nora Marie had already had her administrative disciplinary meeting. Given the nature of the offenses, Yvette’s punishment was reasonable. Particularly given the other situations that had occurred during Yvette’s short tenure as Headmistress.

Sean, by contrast, was in his role as Nora Marie’s psychiatrist and not the lower-tier school disciplinarian. He had the luxury of inquiring into the end results, rather than merely focusing on the scope of the infractions.

Her reaction, even more than her words, told the psychiatrist everything that he needed to know. Adam had been a frequent topic during sessions, and he knew how momentous that had been. The memories that flooded her mind popped into his, and Sean could see the two embracing in the apartment room that looked even more depressing than Sean’s after Josh had moved out. He could hear the words they exchanged.

The psychiatrist picked up the box of tissues and nudged them close to Nora Marie, so she could dry her eyes if she wanted to.

The cause was more than sufficient.

Although no current student would believe it, the first escapee that Sean had dealt with, shortly after accepting his position at Hammel, was James Campbell. James’s escape attempts had not been quite as intricate, but they had been as frantic and motivated by similar yearnings. Nora Marie wanted to see her brother. James had wanted to see his daughter, and to a lesser extent, his wife.

Sean understood how powerful a motivator family could be.

“So you would do it again.” That was not a question.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

For several minutes, Nora Marie could do nothing but cry. She lay slumped on Dr. Neville's desk, one cheek pressed against the wood and creating a steadily growing puddle on the discipline sheet. It was all still so fresh, every time she thought about it it was like reliving it again. She had cried when she saw Mr. Batista, she had cried when her dad called, she had cried when she turned in her overdue math homework. She could still hardly believe it had happened. The meeting with Yvette had been a blast of...well, discipline, and the headmistress had been more concerned with forging documentation and throwing a brick through a window than the emotional intricacies of her history. Dr. Neville, she hoped, would be more willing to listen to her weep about her feelings.

After a bit, still leaking tears, Nory groped for the box of tissues. She pulled out seven or eight of them, made some attempt to mop up her face, then sat up and began taking care of the small pool on the desk. She gave a weak laugh that squeezed a few more tears out of her. "Yeah, I would," she said. Her smile was wet but clear as she reached for more tissues.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean let her cry.

He knew Nora Marie, had worked with her for years, and he could tell when she was genuine. He wouldn’t rush her through this emotional release; he wouldn’t judge her or admonish her for it. Instead, he waited it out.

When she finally answered his question, Sean nodded a single time, not to condone her actions but to demonstrate that he understood both her underlying motivations and the value of the results. Honest with himself and with her, he didn’t expect her to claim otherwise. Given her reasons for pulling this stunt, the psychiatrist would have been surprised to hear her say that she had learned her lesson, understood what she had done wrong, and, if given the opportunity, would choose to avoid this behavior from the start.

This had been a mission with a specific goal in mind. While Sean didn’t subscribe to a Machiavellian worldview, he understood that – having achieved that goal – Nora Marie would consider everything else worthwhile.

“I hope you didn’t say that to Mrs. Morgenstern,” he remarked. Yvette was the Headmistress, tasked with keeping the school running through all areas of administration. Yvette had to make sure that the school didn’t burn down, literally or figuratively. She wasn’t a mental health professional, and, at the end of the day, her position didn’t allow her to care about underlying motivations, only about the resulting effect on Hammel and the student body.

To clarify, he added, “Even if I understand what you mean, it only gets the book thrown at you.”

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory looked up mid-mop as if Sean had just suggested that she try out the new fad of live scorpion neckties. Her eyes widened and she shook her head rapidly. "Oh no. No no." She had been experiencing about seventeen different emotions up to their maximum capacity when she was brought back to Hammel, but she'd at least had the sense stitch together a tale of shame and confusion when brought before the furious headmistress.

"I mean, she still threw the book at me," she said with a sniff and another weak chuckle as she tossed the wad of damp tissues into the garbage. "She could probably tell I didn't really mean it." She wasn't great at lying when she was agitated, she tended to lose the thread of her story and hesitate at critical points. "But if I'd just told her that I didn't care what she did, she wouldn't have thrown the book at me so much as, like, locked me in a prison cell made out of them."

She must have smelled the lack of approval in Sean's nod, because her eyes flicked down to the desk and she pulled out a few more reserve tissues. "But, there is stuff that I'm sorry about," she said with another snuff. "I wish that I'd...Emmet and Megan nearly got into a lot of trouble, and I didn't really think about that. And I wish that I'd been able to tell people so they hadn't gotten worried. But Mr. Batista, and Ms. Rivera, and you, I don't think...I mean," She raked her fingers through her hair. "Adam would have never agreed for me to come, and if he said no, it's not like you guys would have let me go anyway. And you would have stopped me if any of you found out about it." And the staff certainly had a way of finding out things.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“Good.” Sean advocated honesty as a value, but he didn’t want the students to expose themselves to further harm when confronted with situations in which nuance was either unappreciated or otherwise rendered invalid. This situation had multiple facets, and the Headmistress had already played her role.

The psychiatrist nodded, because that was what Yvette had needed to do. Nora Marie’s infractions went beyond simply sneaking out to a midnight movie or skipping class or smoking on campus. Everything done was serious and could not be undone. However, as Yvette had handled that, he wouldn’t retread that same territory. “I saw the disciplinary sheet,” he informed her. The psychiatrist had received a copy for the file that he kept for Nora Marie. In which it currently sat. “As bad as it looks, it could have been worse, but as stern as Mrs. Morgenstern can be, she tries to be fair.”

Sean had been with Hammel long enough to know how severe punishments could be, under the right circumstances. Although this was severe for Nora Marie, it was hardly the worst that Yvette had doled out. It was not the worst that her predecessors had doled out either.

For the rest of her explanations, Sean nodded, not interrupting. But, when she finished, he was quick to say, “I’m sure of that. I’m sure that you didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but at the end of the day, you’d do it again because you felt you needed to do that. Is that right?”

He would address the point about being stopped by authority in a moment.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Considering the urban myths that floated around a school like Hammel, Nory agreed completely with Dr. Neville that yes, it could have been much, much worse. But even then she didn't think she would have cared. "Well, maybe I'll be able to make some new friends in detention," she said brightly. "Some of the more, uh, the other kids I don't hang out with much." Might as well get comfortable, she was going to be there for a while.

She wasn't sure exactly what Dr. Neville was getting at. She had done it because she felt like she had to? "I guess so? I mean, I wouldn't have tried if we hadn't already done everything else we could think of." Nory couldn't work out exactly where he was going with this, but it felt a bit like a trap. However, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and bit back further justification for her actions.