Time Warp: I Got A Bulletproof Heart (Sean)

[Deleted]

Early May 2014

With graduation just a little over a month away Brooke was...well, she was doing everything she could to make sure that she wasn't going to find out it wasn't going to happen at exactly the last minute. She's slacked for a little bit, of course, for her own amusement. The only reason she did was because she was perfectly confident(at the time) that she would be able to crank her grade right back up to something pleasantly acceptable by the time the semester ended. Clearly she had overestimated her abilities. Perfection wasn't obtainable, so she had no choice but to settle for something less.

Oh, well. No point in worrying about that, best to just take it easy and let whatever happened happen. She had more important things to worry about.

Like if she should give Sean the white chocolate bar or the dark chocolate bar?

You see, she'd gotten both prior to her next regularly scheduled meeting with Dr. Sean with the intention of giving one to him and keeping the other to herself, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out which one Dr. Sean would want. That's what she was contemplating on her walk over to his office and by the time she got there, Brooke was no closer to an answer.

Oh well, she was almost there, so reason would state that it would be best to simply ask the big man himself, after all, nobody knew better of what Dr. Sean Neville like better than Dr. Sean Neville.

Brooke gave the door to his office a quick knock, just a minute prior to her appointment time and, pending she was granted permission to enter, she would proceed to bounce her way in with a bright and cheerful, "Howdy doody, doctor!" Brooke would also wave with just as much cheer.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Graduation, and thus summer break, were on the horizon. In some ways, this year had passed quickly; in others, particularly during the winter, it had been slow. He attributed that perception primarily to the loss of his foster daughter, but as it had been over four months, he was doing his best not to dwell on that. Bailey was doing well, and she was happily with her family of origin. That was enough; it was more than enough, because her happiness and safety were paramount.

Still, it would be nice to have some time to himself (and with Josh) over the rapidly approaching summer break.

Before that could happen, he had business as usual with the end of the semester. That included sessions with his regulars. Brooke’s arrival signaled that.

“Hello, Brooke.” The psychiatrist smiled at her. He didn’t gesture at the assorted seating, as Brooke had spent enough time in this office over the years to be familiar with both the layout and the seating rules. Instead, he would wait for her to make herself comfortable before they addressed anything serious.

Small talk, however, could begin before she was settled. He had overheard her internal back and forth, as well as her decision to ask. Given the fact that he and Brooke had worked together for so long, he felt comfortable responding aloud. “I’d be happy with either.”

While his sweet tooth could be discriminating (he prided himself on eating food of some quality), he enjoyed baked goods and sweets of all shapes, sizes, and types. This involved a love of all manner of chocolate.

[Deleted]

As much as he’s like to deny it, the past year had probably been one of her hardest. Not just with the prank she played on herself that was causing her to rush to get her grades back up, but also with her breakdown she experienced last fall, which had been drawn out for a majority of the school year before she started feeling sufficiently stable again. Normal. Like she wasn’t trying to swim through molasses day in and day out just to get the easiest and most mundane of things done. Sean had been an integral part of her therapy while at Hammel, and were it not for his support, Brooke didn’t know if she’d have made it through those long dark months.

With adulthood on the horizon, Brooke knew she wasn’t going to have the same support structure she’d always had while at Hammel. It scared her to death, but what scared her more was what might happen if she didn’t have her shit together enough to be able to survive on her own. Besides, there was also the assumption that university was going to be an actual challenge, so it’d only benefit her more if she started taking her education more seriously.

Which was honestly hard to do considering standard teaching methods bored her to death. To death, I say!

Brooke smiled at his greeting, giggling as she slipped inside the room and claimed one of the seats sat before his desk. Brooke was never one to sit traditionally in chairs, which meant that rather than sitting with her rump planted flat upon it, Brooke hopped over the arms of the chair and gave it a good squat. “Properly” seated in her chair, Brooke pulled out the dark chocolate bar from her small purse and reached forward to slide it onto the edge of his desk. “Der ewe go!”

Now onto the pleasantries. “How ya doing, doc??” she beamed. “Looking forward to seeing a good chunk of us outta here finally?” Brooke had a clue that there were quite a few headaches in her graduating class, with herself usually considered one of them.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Senior year often proved difficult. Even for Sean, for whom his senior year had been the most pleasant at Hammel, the obligations of finishing classes and preparing for the future had taken their collective toll. Senior year was simply a rite of passage in U.S. society, and for everyone but Vincent Verax or those who had to be held back for a year or two, it occurred once and only once, and proved worthwhile. Still, he empathized with the students as they made their way through the last year, then months, then weeks, then days before graduation.

He also did what he could to help them reach that stage, emotionally and practically. For Brooke, it had been quite a journey, and the psychiatrist was proud of her for getting to the point of graduation, as that was just on the horizon.

“I’m doing fine. I’m winding down for the school year.” Just as the students would have their summer recess soon enough, so too would he. He and Josh had plans.

He then chuckled lightly, which was his way of acknowledging the joke while sidestepping it. “I’m happy to see everyone graduate and move on.” Which was true, technically, even if he looked forward to some students leaving more than others, and even if he only truly wanted to see some of them return to visit. “It should be an interesting graduation, don’t you think?”

[Deleted]

There he goes, the Doc being all polite for the sake of….well, being polite. Brooke had no clue how he managed that sort of patience. She knew that had she been in his position, Brooke would have long since lost patience and slashed the tires of her troublesome wards, one like herself included.

Instead of poking at that thought, however, she just smiled. “I’m glad too.” Brooke lowered her head, snickering. “I’m ready for bigger ’n better things now!” she declared, pumping her fist courageously into the air. Not that she disliked Hammel, but it was time to move on, no matter how much the change scared her. It wasn’t like she could do much about it now anyway, the ball was already rolling and wouldn’t stop until it reached the bottom of the hill…or until it hit a concrete wall, at which point it might still plow straight on through, because physics and all, but that was congruent with Brooke’s personality anyway.

“You think?” she asked with a tilt of the head. Brooke hadn’t gone to last year’s graduation, but she had the impression that it was probably more exciting to the people graduating(or maybe just their parents) than to anyone else. And she had no idea how it could be deemed interesting. “If you say so, but don’t be surprised when I take a nap in the middle of it.” She probably wouldn't fall asleep. Maybe. Though she might play a few games on her cell phone.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean’s patience had been cultivated over the close to six decades of his life, and it had been further reinforced by telepathy. Being privy to other people’s thoughts, and thus hearing them at their best and their worst, did wonders for helping one to develop patience for human failings. He didn’t fault others for having less patience than he had; for some people, he would not even recommend that they try to develop it, even if he thought patience was a valuable trait overall.

“Good.” That was the way it should be. Anxiety was to be expected, and nobody should be declared wrong for having understandable transition anxiety, or for having other concerns. But he liked to hear and see that the students were prepared for the world outside of Hammel. “Are you caught up on work so you can graduate without a hitch?” The last thing anyone needed was to be pulled aside due to an unfinished book report.

“I hope it won’t be so long as to let you get a full nap in.” The Hammel administration tried to keep pomp to a minimum, so that the students could celebrate with each other or with their families. However, that was wholly out of his hands. The psychiatrist attended so that he could support the graduating students and share in the memory, but he had no role in the ceremony. He simply sat in the faculty section.

[Deleted]

“Mmhmm,” she hummed with a nod or her chin, tucking one leg up closer to her chest while letting the other fall to hang off the edge of her chair. It wasn’t uncommon for the girl to fidget and shift positions every couple minutes. “Not as good as I hoped, but meh. Gets me a diploma.” And the tradeoff was worth it, that being her amusement and personal enjoyment in exchange for perfect grades. She figured it wasn’t something worth killing herself over, especially when she had better things to do than lock herself in a room and read about trig identities.

Ugh.

And it said nothing about her ability to learn, nor her interest in doing so since she was well known for delving into subjects well outside the scope of your standard high school curriculum. “No promises,” she countered to the doctor. Brooke had learned the art of cat-napping…or so she liked to believe. She’d heard she’d need such abilities to make it through university classes.

“Sooooo…” she drawled out, thinking about how to form her question. “I been thinking….” Another pause. “Or wondering…how’d a cool guy like you end up with a job like this?” To clarify, she meant his job as a psychiatrist. “Cuz I been thinking that I might want to give it a shot.” Brooke twiddled her fingers between themselves as she spoke with her usual clipped pronunciations.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean’s voice and expression were encouraging. “A diploma is what you need. Once you’re in college, nobody will ask about your high school grades.” College supplanted high school, just as graduate programs supplanted college, and work experience eventually supplanted all grades on one’s resume.

He was hardly surprised by her other remark. They had long reached a point where she would not make empty promises, and he accepted that for what it was. “Make sure not to let Mrs. Morgenstern see you; she might stop her speech to wake you up.” That was only a mild exaggeration. However, beyond giving her the warning, that situation was out of the psychiatrist’s hands.

Sean was always happy to discuss professional training; he wanted to encourage the students to pursue paths that gave them passion and purposes, and he liked his work. “To be a psychiatrist, you’ll need to do pre-medical in a four-year college program, and then go through medical school. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, not PhDs in psychology. You’ll have internship periods, and you’ll have to be assigned to a psychiatry residency, but you have choice in that. Residency is a few years, followed by any sub-specialty certification.” He clasped his hands in front of him atop his desk. “I took psychology classes in college, but technically that isn’t required. Not like pursuing a PhD program is.”

The differences between psychologists and psychiatrists were many, but they remained confused at the basic population level. He had explained time and again the difference to those who mixed them up when speaking to him, as opposed to merely making the mistake in their thoughts.

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Brooke nodded vigorously, in complete agreement. Really, what college, employer or whatever decades from now was going to care whether she got a C or a B in high school physics? Because that was ridiculous!

“Okie dokie!” she affirmed, giving the doctor a left-handed salute. Now that was a promise she could keep. Brooke was very good at zoning out and sleeping without drawing the attention of those in charge. Though she had gotten in trouble for it once or twice or more in classes.

When Sean started divulging the secret to his success, Brooke was all ears and it was obvious. This was something she was taking seriously, at least. Pre-med, med school, internships, residency…it sounded like a long process. “So…what’s the dif between the two aside from one being a product of med school and the other a PhD program? Like, in their work ’n stuff?” She needed to know this, of course, to make a decision. “‘Cause I’m thinking I wanna major in psych, but dunno if that’s the right route to get kinda where you are.”

[Dr. Sean Neville]

This was an easy discussion, albeit one that the psychiatrist rarely had the opportunity to pursue. Few people cared about the ins and outs of his job, just as few people cared about the educational path required to achieve it. Although he served as a guidance counselor, under the catch-all clause of his job description, the advent of the Internet and the rise of the college preparation cottage industry resulted in more students and families looking into this on their own, rather than asking those who had come before them.

“You can major in psychology and still have my job.” Sean had taken a number of psychology classes during college, precisely because he had been fascinated by the workings of the mind. He had taken all of the pre-medical courses as well: chemistry, biology, organic chemistry, physics, calculus...but even with those, he had had plenty of opportunity to pursue other areas of interest. “You have to take certain courses in order to apply to medical school, but you can major in anything and still take those.”

But that was not entirely what she wanted to know, and the psychiatrist understood that.

“The major difference is where you want to work, because that will dictate how your degree is used. Often, but not always, in private practice, psychiatrists are used more for medication management than for talk therapy, since they tend to charge more per hour and only they can prescribe medication. That isn’t always the case; your private practice is what you make of it, but institutions like schools or hospitals will see more patients for talk therapy with psychiatrists, more often than not.”

[Deleted]

If Brooke wanted to use the internet to figure this out, she would’ve done that already. The internet was a fickle place and while the information was probably there, she found that there was a higher chance of getting misinformation from it than she would just asking someone who’d gone through it already. While things and times had definitely changed since Dr. Neville had been in school, the process probably hadn’t changed too much. The smaller details she could figure out later, once she figured out which direction to take first.

As it was, Brooke was taking notes…in her head. She was very good at this. When she wanted to be.

“Soooooooouuuuu,” she started. “If I wanna steal that desk from ya, I gotta go the whole nine yards and school up for a decade and a half.” Brooke wasn’t sure if it would take that long, but it probably could depending on how fast or slow she took her bachelors and how long it took for her to be accepted in a medical school, and then that dummy MCAT test thingy….there was a lot to think about there. “Ooor, I can just talk t’people and hope that works without doping ‘em up..? And if it doesn’t, then I’d send ‘em to someone who can do that special something for ‘em…” Brooke was mostly just talking out loud by this point, weighing her options in some organized manner.

“…I dunno which is best. What do you think?” she asked. Brooke was going to make the decision on her own, of course, but she did like some input from one of her favorite persons.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean took note of how she phrased the question, although he did not tease her about it. If Brooke truly wanted to come back to Hammel as a mental health professional in a decade or so, they could reconvene then, and he would certainly do nothing to sabotage her employment if the Headmistress wished to hire her. However, he did smile.

“What’s best for me isn’t necessarily what’s best for you,” he pointed out, which was a standard mantra in his life. As one of his values, Sean prescribed to a live and let live philosophy, as long as the person in question was not harming another with their behavior. Then he cracked a smile. “Besides, since I went to medical school, I think you can guess which one I prefer.”

At no point did the psychiatrist regret his decision to attend medical school and pursue psychiatry as a profession. He preferred being a one-stop for patients, so that he need not work in tandem with another professional and so that patients need not develop trust – or skepticism – of whatever doctor to whom he otherwise had to refer. He preferred to be able to go at his own pace, and only having to worry about his rapport with the patient, which was one relationship bond, as opposed to the three inherent in working with a third person: that of himself and the patient, that of the prescribing doctor and the patient, and that of himself and the prescribing doctor. That complicated matters.

However, this was not for everyone. He had met so many psychologists and social workers who found it amazing that he even did talk therapy as a psychiatrist. He knew the financial concerns, since psychiatrists tended to be more expensive than psychologists, and thus fewer people wanted to see a psychiatrist for talk therapy if there was no chance of medication. That, too, failed to deter him.

[Deleted]

“Hm,” she pondered, looking up to the ceiling. Of course he was biased to his own profession. The ‘harder’ route, which…well, Brooke wasn’t exactly intimidated by it, although she certainly was that. It was more that she was concerned over the length of time it’d take to complete. And money issues. Her parents weren’t exactly rich, even if they liked to spoil her more than they should. And she didn’t want to rack up the student loans for a path that she may flake out on halfway through. Because while she had the interest for it now, Brooke knew herself well enough to know that by the time she got there, she might have a completely different interest invading her mind.

However, right now, the idea of coming back to Hammel and having(stealing) Sean’s job was incredibly attractive right now.

Brooke smiled, imagining herself in 20 years sitting behind a desk like that, helping out a “troubled” student like her….oh, man, the disaster that could be, it made her shiver in delight! Then again, maybe she’d surprise herself and actually be good at the whole empathy, ‘let’s talk about our feelings’ thingy. “Does that kinda thing, like…get easier as you go? Or’s it something you gotta be born with and do naturally?” She knew that a lot of people got into the healthcare profession because they had some natural instinct to empathize with and care for others. Then there were those who wanted to sincerely help people. Brooke might be of the latter sort, but it was more of an opportunistic feeling. She could do it(she had that much confidence in her ability to succeed), so she may as well help people like herself while she was at it, using her own personal experiences as some segue to understanding.

Brooke, lost in her own thoughts, completely forgot to voice what she was talking about. She wasn’t worried about being misunderstood, though.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Fortunately, telepathy aided Sean in gleaning context from otherwise unvoiced or removed situations. The image of Brooke, decades older and seated behind his desk, popped into his head because the girl was so deeply involved in the thought, and that gave him the background information necessary to answer her question without asking for further clarification. “It’s about 50/50. Mental health work is a series of skills, and skills are honed through life. Nobody is born perfect.” Not even him. Especially not him.

“Listening, patience, giving advice, observation...all of those are skills that you’ll develop through experience. There might be aptitude that makes some easier than others, but they can all be learned.” All of that was true. The biggest barrier to people’s listening skills or communication skills was a lack of notice or interest in further development, rather than an inability to do so.

With that said, he went on to describe the other fifty percent. “Empathy – the quality, not the power – is innate. Compassion, a desire to ease suffering and to help other people get healthy or to have a better quality of life, that comes from in here.” The psychiatrist tapped the side of his head, rather than his heart, because he was familiar enough with neuroscience to know what area of the brain controlled those personality traits. And to think that Josh considered him more romantic than the attorney himself.

He offered her a gentle smile. “That you’re asking about this at all shows that you have that part already, and so I wouldn’t worry there.”

[Deleted]

Brooke listened with some intensity as Sean iterated the skills necessary to become a healthcare professional, specifically one in mental health.  It was, overall, an subject she was interested in, but again, she wasn’t sure how “empathetic” she could be considering the person she’d been known to be.  Brooke always thought that all psychiatrists and counselors had to be the strict and sincere, no-nonsense type, like Sean was here(though we all know the truth, Sean was the most devious delinquent here, he just hid it 24/7, Brooke knew, wink wink).  

The encouragement he gave her - because she was asking at all - helped lift her confidence a bit.

“Sooouuu….if I can get thaaaat part down, then I won’t have a problem?” she asked, just for confirmation. “I mean, bleeeeh….how do I say this?” Brooke peered up into her brain and trilled her lips. “Like…I’m not eggs-act-lee the picture perfect part for it, y’know? Preeseuming I make it through all the books and hours of torture or whatevs, they probly not gonna like a chick prancing in all dolled up in zombie stilettos and a Hello Kitty cardigan. Right?” Brooke liked her interests, and she liked expressing them and showing them off to people, especially in her accessorizing. But surely her peers and elders in the psychology/psychiatry field would frown upon her being anything but conservative…wouldn’t they?