Wrong Tendencies {Linda}

[Erik Stewart]

Erik had been in a bad way the last few weeks. Maybe longer. He hadn’t been keeping track.

How does one muck up a relationship with their own therapist? Be a complete and utter asshole to their life partner, for one thing. Call their nephew a wuss and remind said life partner that he was disabled was another. Erik had succeeded in both effortlessly and had jeopardized the whole thing with an irreparable conflict of interests on Sean’s part, putting him between his patient and his family. Erik himself was left wondering if Sean hated him. It seemed likely, to Erik. Without the power of telepathy he could only assume, and he had never placed too much trust in authority in the first place. He grew suspicious and sullen. Three years and suddenly he couldn’t draw a single word out of him.

You couldn’t grow crops in a cold winter ground. You couldn’t teach a patient while they were closed off and unresponsive.

Leaving therapy altogether wasn’t an option. They wouldn’t let him, of course, especially with the snake-biting incident, so a change of management was all that the institute was willing to accommodate. It seemed like a lot of trouble to him; building up a rapport and sharing the myriad of issues festering about in his head was not exactly appealing to him at the moment. He was resigned. One could only look at him and realize that he thought it doomed for failure; that seemed a common theme when it came to any of his relationships. If there was anything he counted on it was his ability to sabotage them all. He didn’t even necessarily need to be trying to do it; Erik was as reckless and ill tempered as a jaded mustang, lashing out at everyone and everything without thought for the consequences.

He knew that most of his problems were his own. He had little to blame but himself, but that did not stop him from feeling sorry for himself from time to time. He had done nothing else for a while, had kept to himself inside his room, tucked away with DJ to keep him company. The rat snake didn’t seem to mind his complaining.

Even now he kept it with him. The familiar black coils wound around his neck and his shoulders, roiling slowly. Once in a while its tongue would flicker. It was the only movement coming from the both of them; Erik had his head against the edge of the desk as he sat hunched in front of it. He had yet to greet Linda.

[Dr. Linda Hu]

It was... unusual for students to need to change therapists after three years. Linda had only gleaned a little of what had happened, and left it at that; Erik would tell her if he wanted to, and if not she may be able to put it together herself once she met him. There wasn't a whole lot in his file that Linda considered worth remembering; she liked to put her own impressions together. The snake bite was, obviously, something that stood out.

Erik was not on board with this session. He'd walked in and sat down in silence, and she got her things in order to give him a chance to process this new person he would be expected to open up to. From what she'd been able to gather, most of his friends were male, and there weren't a lot of them.

The snake had been a bit of a surprise. It was obviously not something that was, well, encouraged but it was obviously there for a reason. Finally, after she'd finished, Linda got up, looked up and smiled. Her cheeks went round and shiny and she crossed around to pull her chair in front of her desk to sit opposite Erik without it between them.

"Well, to begin, hello," she said, "I'm Dr Hu. It's nice to meet you, Erik." Again, her eyes flickered to the snake but she made no mention of it. Everything about her was open; her smile, her body language; even the edge of ink that was visible from where her sleeves. "I'd like to get to know you in these first few sessions, and find out what you're hoping to get out of this."

She sat slightly forward, her elbows braced on her legs. "Obviously you've gone over a lot of that with Dr Neville. But starting from scratch can be ok, even if it's annoying at first." Shrugging her shoulders, Linda watched Erik and waited for a response. How the first session started important, and she had only the slightest idea what was going on in his head.

[Erik Stewart]

The rat snake’s behavior was odd, of course. Not many snakes would be wholly comfortable lying still on someone’s shoulders, much less sleep, without means of cover or becoming restless. But Erik and he were old friends, and he’d the extra advantage of communication, which went beyond that of normal snake handlers and their pets. DJ laid at perfect ease in Linda’s office. He barely moved, and wouldn’t, until something disturbed him.

The snake was something of a relaxer for Erik, too. Sometimes he could hear the hums of communication coming from him, and while DJ rarely had anything useful to impart, it was still comforting.

Erik was quiet at first (silent, actually) even after Linda made her introduction. The lapse fell just shy from being uncomfortable, though; a personality like his merely needed a few moments to take everything in before reacting. He’d been looking about her office for a while before then. He still wasn’t sure what he thought about it…or what he thought about Linda. It wasn’t often he saw Asian American ladies with tattoos down their arms.

He frowned. “Don’t ya just have files t’look at? I thought that was what you guys did.”

Reiterating what he had told Sean seemed tedious. Sharing was an effort to him, and the thought of revealing his secrets and talking about his feelings was exhausting just thinking about it. He supposed just picking up where he’d left off was too much to ask for.

“I mean, it’s three years ‘uh shit.”

[Dr. Linda Hu]

Glancing at her desk, and the files on it, Linda nodded. It was true, she had Erik's file, but there was only so much you could gather from that. He'd attacked a student and sent him to hospital, but there was contention about whether he had been at all provoked. His grades were poor, his attendance was poorer, and he had problems with authority.

It wasn't unusual, there were always a few at every school.

That was all well and good on paper, but it only told her so much. "I've got files," she agreed finally, "so I know the basics. And," she smiled, "I don't expect you to try and cram three years into our time today. Maybe the highlights reel instead?"

It was pretty obvious that it would take a lot of patience here; Erik didn't seem that keen on sharing anything about himself; he hadn't responded to her greeting. It didn't offend her; social niceties never seemed to be that high up on teenagers priority list, especially the students who were forced to attend therapy, rather than wanted guidance. It didn't bother Linda at all any more; well, it didn't bother her more than a short rant to her wife wouldn't fix.

"Or," she said after a moment's thoughtful pause, "I could ask you about what I have read on the files." Sometimes that was easier, to provide a starting point and some sort of basic structure. "Or I could ask you about who your friend is too," she added, finally, finally feeling it was ok to address the fact that her new patient had a snake around his neck like some kind of new jewellery fad.

[Erik Stewart]

Linda was expecting too much of him if she thought he could organize a ‘highlights reel’, much less articulate it. To him, everything existed as different points of memory floating around – like constellations in the sky - not on a clear timeline. He’d need a piece of paper and a pencil to figure that one out…and that sounded like a lot of work. It was hard enough going over them the first time. Now he had to organize them, too? Maybe he was better off with Sean, he thought.

But that ship had sailed. Erik could feel himself resigning to at least an hour of what felt like pulling teeth. He could still feel the resentment winding in knots about his chest: what good was going over the things he’d already been over? Erik thought briefly of those old parodies, the ones in movies or on the television, of the patient on the recliner saying: ”It all started when my parents took me to the circus…”
The thought didn’t make him laugh; his jaw flexed.

Linda popped the second option, which sounded a bit better. Before he could grunt in approval or even shrug his shoulders, she pointed out DJ as if she’d just noticed him – who was little more than a lump of coiled scales on his shoulders.

“He won’t shit anywhere. He already did,” Erik said, which was the same thing he’d told Sean when he brought DJ over.

The rat snake stirred, as though he knew he was being mentioned. His head emerged from behind Erik’s shoulder, tongue flickering, and rested near his chest; Erik stroked his head with a finger. If he’d thought of it, he might have assured her that DJ was no trouble, either. He was completely harmless, wouldn’t bite even if someone stepped on him, probably, even if he were nearly two feet long in length and a rather intimidating shade of black.

“His name’s DJ.” Or Dead John, but that was neither here nor there. “He comes from Louisiana, too.”

True to his dialect, he said it in the southern style of Loo-siana.