Rêveries

Chapter 96.

There's a clock on the wall making a regular tik tok noise as the seconds pass. It's an awfully loud clock, but I'm still scared to breathe too loud. I was slowly breathing in and out, feeling how unnatural it was to breathe like that. It nearly scared me when the woman across from me flipped the page of her gossip magazine she was reading. The one I knew I was in. When she's flipped the pages a few more times, there will be an article on how to eat like me, that is completely not correct because no one has asked me about my diet. No one has asked me about anything for a paper at all. They can't reach me, thanks to Emma.

Further down the hall I heard heels hitting the floor, getting closer. Is it my turn? Can I get out of here? Then they started fading again. The clock kept ticking, the woman turned another page. I rolled my shoulders back and adjusted in my seat. I had never been so uncomfortable.

Each step seemed to get worse. The first one was calling to make an appointment, and I felt both awkward and uncomfortable as I told the man on the other end of the phone what I wanted. Then I had to wake up in the morning, get ready, and get into a car with Arthur so that he could take me. I would've taken myself, but my car is still in Los Angeles and it's quite a hassle to move a car over the atlantic. But then I had to check in at the front desk. Then I sat there, waiting in the dry and heavy silence, with the loud clock and the woman turning pages until my face popped up. I'm not even sure she realized it was me, thankfully.

"Céline Bianchi?" broke the silence, and I looked up to see a man in a navy blue dress shirt with black pants. I noted how much I didn't like the color combination, then I nodded and I stood up, walking over to shake his hand before he took me down the hall to his office.

The room was decorated mostly with a pale blue. It had a smell I couldn't quite place, but something reminded me a bit of pepper. The whole room felt like a trap, and the thought of being trapped and then sent to a mental hospital passed me briefly. There was a couch that didn't look very comfortable, and an armchair that the man sat in as soon as he'd closed the door behind us. I kept looking around the room until he cleared his throat and motioned for me to sit on the couch, so I did.

"Qu'est-ce qui vous amène aujourd'hui?" What brings you here today? he asked.

"J'ai besoin d'aide," I need help, I told him.

"Avec quoi?" With what?

I looked at him as he looked back at me, waiting for my answer. I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I averted my gaze to the window and then I opened my mouth just to close it again. With what? I just know that I need help, I don't know what specifically.

"Je- J'ai des crises d'angoisse... et... je pleure beaucoup," I have anxiety attacks... and... I cry a lot, I replied after a while of thinking. The man started writing something on paper, and then he looked up at me.

"Pleures-tu beaucoup?" You cry a lot? He repeated my words as a question. His tone made it sound like he thought my answer had been a stupid answer, and that I shouldn't be there for just crying a lot. But he doesn't know how much and about what things.

I nodded my head and then I looked down at my knees. Now that my cast is off, and whenever I wear skirts, dresses or shorts, I can see the big ugly scar on my knee. Right where the bone broke through my skin and where they had to put stitches before. It would always be there.

"Vous souciez-vous d'élaborer?" Do you care to elaborate? the man asked. I wondered if he had said his name? Maybe I was too distracted to catch it, or maybe he just didn't say it. Maybe I had been told when I booked the appointment. Either way, I wanted to curse his name, because we were barely three minutes in and I wanted to get out of there. I thought it was going to be easy and I would get help and everything would be fine.