Mystery Lights

Chapter 10

A/N: The image above does not belong to me. It belongs to the person who uploaded it on the internet.

Zee's POV

My intercom buzzed and my receptionist announced that my next patient was ready to see me. I looked at my calendar. I was scheduled to have a session with Saint Suppapong this evening.

I stood up from my desk and went outside to greet Saint.

He stood up immediately from his chair in the waiting room upon seeing me peek from my office door. 

There was someone with him but it wasn't the same driver that was with him the last time. This one was taller and slimmer.

"Is it okay for my driver to wait in the reception area for me?" Saint asked.

"Certainly," I replied. "I have no problem whatsoever with that."

Saint then turned to his driver and gave him the thumbs up sign before following me inside my office.

I motioned for him to make himself comfortable on the spacious couch on one side of my office. I sat down to face him on the other couch opposite where he was seated. The two couches were separated by a large coffee table in the middle.

"Would you like anything to drink, Saint?" I asked, walking over to my room refrigerator. "I got some apple juice in small cartons here."

"That would be great," Saint replied, so I took out one carton and handed it to him.

"So how have you been the past week?" I asked, to start the session going.

"I have been experiencing less episodes of the bright flashing lights," he replied. "But they still come from time to time, and at the most unexpected moments, that is why I still cannot leave the house without a driver/companion."

As the session progressed, I got more and more intrigued with Saint. He was telling me as much as he could about himself and his past but I could tell that he was holding something back, some important information that I was sure would help me to analyze more effectively why he was having these unexpected bright flashes of lights that interfered with his vision.

I stood up from my couch and walked over to where he was sitting on the other couch from across mine. I sat down beside him and took hold of his hands. They were so soft. I mean I guess mine also were because I didn't grow up doing hard manual labor, but his hands were as soft as cotton candy, and I am not even exaggerating. Suddenly I wanted to hold on to his hands longer than was necessary.

"Saint," I said, looking deeply into his eyes, "are you sure that you are not keeping any other information from me? Or maybe you're forgetting some events in your life that I might be able to tie up or connect with this present condition of yours?"

I could see him furrowing his eyebrows. I could sense the indecision, the internal conflict going on within him.

He took a deep breath before saying, "I can't tell you about it without feeling worried that you might judge me."

"I'm not here to judge you, Saint," I said in an assuring voice, "I am here to help you."

Saint took a long sip from his carton of apple juice. He sipped from it until the air sounds told him that there was nothing left to sip from the carton.

I knew he was trying to buy himself some time when he stood up from his couch to walk over to the corner of the room where my office trash bin was, to drop the empty carton of apple juice.

When he sat back on his space on the couch, I took his hands in mine once more.

"If you are not prepared to talk about it at this time, we can always wait until the next session," I said, in order to erase any feelings of unease on his part.

"No, no, no," said Saint, his face taking on a look of grim determination. "I'm tired of keeping this inside my head for far too long. Zee, the bright flashes started after my classmate Tanya and I kissed each other in a forest clearing during our school field trip. That incident evoked a past event that I have kept hidden even from my own parents, no, especially from my own parents, for a very long time."

I sat quietly beside Saint, not uttering a single word, but just waited for him to continue, my hands unconsciously gripping his hands tighter than usual.

"Zee, what kind of pervert would you judge me to be if I were to tell you that back when I was nineteen and my first cousin was eighteen, we kissed each other during a family outing. We ran off to a nearby forest and kissed each other in a clearing very much like the one I went to during our school field trip. And my cousin's name was also Tanya."

That explained it! That explained everything to me! Suddenly, everything fell into place.

But first I had to assure Saint that I was not judging his past action and that there was no way that I considered him a pervert.

His deep sense of guilt and the long period of time that he had kept it as a dark hidden secret had caused a big psychological harm on his mind and the similar event during his school field trip had brought the whole past to the present. It was too much for him to take and the result was those intermittent bright flashes that interfered with his vision.

I believed that it would be erroneous to call it a post traumatic stress disorder, but at the same time I would consider his case to be a very mild form of such disorder.

I could not predict how long or how many sessions with me he would need to get over it but I was confident that I would eventually be able to bring him out of it.