“With a diagnosis of PTSD.”
“Look,” I said, “I know all this, and we went through all this shit when I saw you the first time. Do we really need to do it again? I was really just hoping you could tell me if there’s some kind of sleeping pill or whatever I ought to be taking.”
Mark looked over my file, glanced up at me, and then back to the file again. He adjusted his ill-fitting sports jacket before settling back into his chair with one leg crossed over the other.
“I’m a psychologist,” Mark said, “not a psychiatrist. I can’t prescribe medication, though I can make a recommendation to your regular doctor. Honestly, I think you’d be better off if we just talked for a bit. It was recommended that you visit with me at least every other week after you moved here two years ago, but this is only the second time you’ve been here.”
“I don’t usually need it.”
“But you do now.”
I shrugged and leaned back against the chair. I glanced at the couch, and though lying down did sound good, I had never felt comfortable on a shrink’s couch. It was just too cliché. I was glad he had the high-backed chair as an option because Hartford never had.
“I just want to get some decent sleep without…”
“Without what?” he asked when I stopped talking.
I took a long breath. I was so off my game, I was going to fuck up at my job which was completely unacceptable. I needed sleep to focus, and I couldn’t seem to get any rest without Bridgett, the newbie hooker, in my bed. That was about as fucked up as some of the shit I went through in the Middle East.
Well, no, it wasn’t, but it was still fucked up.
“I just need some sleep,” I finally said. “I really think if I just got a couple nights of decent sleep, I’d be fine.”
“How about I make you a deal?” Mark said. “You tell me a little more about your time in the desert, and I’ll talk to your doctor about the possibility of getting a prescription for sleeping pills.”
“I don’t have a doctor,” I admitted.
He eyed me again, wrote something down on his notepad, and then looked back up.
“Taking care of yourself isn’t much of a priority for you, is it?” Mark leaned back a bit in his rolling desk chair. He put the end of his pen in the corner of his mouth and chewed on it a bit. I wondered if he was a smoker because it reminded me of Jonathan and how he would play around with anything even slightly cigarette shaped.
I checked out his fingers and noticed slight yellowing. Inhaling slowly, I detected the slight scent of tobacco smoke in the office. He didn’t smoke in here – it wasn’t strong enough for that – but the scent was on his clothes.
I looked up at him through narrowed eyes.
“It’s a little hectic at work,” I snapped. “The place doesn’t offer health care.”
Quite the opposite, really.
“There are still some basics you shou
ld be considering. When you were in the Marines, you had regular physicals. Don’t you think that’s important now?”
“I’m not sick,” I stated.
“Sickness is relative,” Mark replied. “You are here for a reason, just like you might go to an urgent care facility if you had a cold you just couldn’t shake.”
“I’m not sick,” I repeated, “and I don’t go to the ER for a fucking cold. I know what I was diagnosed with, and I know I didn’t go and get every single checkbox checked that I was supposed to after discharge, but I also didn’t see the point. I wasn’t getting severance since I didn’t have six years of active service. Hartford gave me the diagnosis just to make sure I could still see him after I left the hospital.”
“And did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I sighed.
“This is totally irrelevant,” I said. “I didn’t come here for this.”