On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Chosen)

Diagnosis

"Well, come in, come in, take a seat. What would you like to start complaining today, so to speak?" and face of the doctor in a black dressing blurred in a smile, having bared a dozen of golden teeth for a short instant of time. "As it always goes here – if you don't complain and lighten up your earthly burden, so to say – then you won't recover. And if you do complain – you will start feeling yourself better for some time, even though you disrespecting yourself afterward. Am I right?" and the doctor sat down in a chair, inviting the patient to do the same. "Tell me where it hurts, Josh."

"I... doctor, you see, something is really wrong with me," the patient started his confession while continuing to fidget slightly on a chair from nervousness. "I... I started feeling joy, doctor!"

"Is that so?" and the doctor looked over his new client with a squint, having put his pen aside. "You must already know how pernicious for the health of your organism this forbidden feeling is, right? And for how long has all this been already going?"

"For several months, doctor. I am feeling very uneasy! It started seeming to me that all my current so-called life is absolutely inappropriate in the sense that right now I am not in the right place where I belong. That I am capable of doing something other, much more significant, something that really matters..."

"How is that you are not in your place, huh?" the doctor replied him with a smile while continuing to slide through his patient with steel-colored eyes. "You have a very prestigious position of the head of the board of directors of one of the largest banks in our country, and that means that you shouldn't experience any sort of material discomfort and all. Am I correct?"

"That's not what matters, doc. To the hell with this comfort! I am terrified. With each and every passing day I am becoming more and more afraid to not live the life I was meant to, you see?"

"To the hell, really?" and the doctor once again bared a dozen golden teeth, having stood up from a chair and started slowly walking inside the office. "Tell me in details, how all of this has started?"

"You see, six months ago I... I saw a dream. Very unusual dream. I dreamed like that only in my... c... ch... during the period when I was significantly physically smaller and weaker. And in this dream I... I was flying, doctor! At first, I was a huge butterfly with gracious colorful wings, which was flitting from one flower to another, and then I suddenly turned into the mighty blue-winged bird, who was soaring up to the high skies and diving down to the earth like a stone, and then..."

"That's enough!" the doctor suddenly sharply interrupted him, having highly raised a hand. "You perfectly know that the ministry of health-preservation has strictly forbidden to experience feelings of joy and delight because they both lead to irreversible consequences in organisms of our patients – and it was prohibited especially to try infecting other individuals with these feelings, which is what you have precisely tried to achieve right here and now!"

"I... for... forgive me, doctor," and Josh confusedly hung his head. "I had no idea that it's really infectious."

"Oh, it's extremely contagious. We have already fought against the most real epidemic about two thousands of years before! Fortunately, we prevailed over it that last time. And we as world doctors have no desire to see how these incidents repeat themselves, you understand me?"

"I... un... understand."

"Tell me in more details of what you think about and how you feel as of recently."

"I began feeling myself from time to time like a c... ch... what is this word?" the patient frowned as if endeavoring to overcome invisible barrier inside his own memory. "Ch... ch... child! It's as if I became a child once again, doctor. After that ill-fated dream, I ceased to feel for short periods so casual, normal and habitual to me and all of my acquaintance's feelings of grief, boredom, and inner melancholy.