Head Cases and Questionable Characters-{Open}

[Dr. Alexandra Sessions]

i f o u g h t t h e a n g e l s t o d a y

A look of contentment rested upon the face of Alexandra Sessions. Unlike most of the offices in the building, this office's doors and paneling were made of solid wood, instead of glass. She was leaning back in her chair, her features mixed with signs of a void in her mind and also of intense thoughtfulness. All seamed well if you could overlook the small twinge of pain hidden deep within her eyes. That is, until your ears picked up a distinct clink of metal and your eyes followed the doctor's gaze to her left hand, in which she held a semi- automatic pistol. thingying it. Flipping it back. Sliding the piece back and forth in her absent minded way that was really disturbing on some levels.

Alex’s eyes searched the room around her, subconsciously catching every detail of it without really seeing anything. Though her dark eyes passed over it with a but a glance right now, she would remember the way the room looked with amazing detail, able to recall exactly which book was on the fourth shelf up and three volumes over. Never underestimate the power of a well trained eye.

Alex’s mind began to swirl with images, flashing them before her like a waking dream until they moved so fast they blurred together into a moving film. She swallowed harshly and began to fade the pictures and dull the faces. A few minutes later and her breathing was even again. By this time, the images were hazy and the voices only a dim remembered whisper in her ears, but she knew what was coming, and she could feel everything hiding in the deepest recesses of her mind, biding their time until they could come out to reek havoc in her mental playground.

Just when she was growing steady and the pictures were folding themselves away, Alex’s eye caught upon a plant in the corner by the door. Pulled from her garden some days before, a deep crimson colored plant sat in silence, a sign of her quiet contempt. With a breath somewhat shakier than the one that had come before it, the name came to her and her eyes narrowed while her teeth clenched impulsively. Love-Lies-Bleeding. That was the name of the plant the color of blood and blood-like wine. Alex pieced a sentence together without meaning to, and most certainly without wanting to do so. Love lies bleeding on the floor, the symbol of the hearts you tore…A bit cheesy, yes, but bad all the same. Shaking the thought off, she starred blankly at the doorframe, subconsciously praying for someone to distract her, to save her from her own thoughts.

Alex’s thoughts wandered aimlessly, finally latching on to a particular memory. She tried hard to push it away. To let it go. But it forced its way through. There was her husband’s face in front of her, as plain as day. And then Langdon’s image. Without realizing it, Alex’s back arched slightly and her lip curled up at just the resonance of his name in her mind. And then Bobby. She could see his tall form, and he was telling her it would all turn out for the better. She saw herself, shaking her head. She reached for Bobby, and he accepted the embrace. She stood with him then, just crying and not caring what on Earth was happening around her. She was with her partner.

Alex had figured she had to move on sometime. First she had had to learn to let go of her husband. To let the worst memories fade until their pain was only a lost murmur of forgotten tears and screams. And then her train of thought changed completely. She was back in the interrogation room she had always been so familiar with. Bobby was there. Langdon was there. Langdon was beneath her gun. Beneath the barrel of the gun she held in her hand at that very second in her current office at the hospital. The pain was real again. She felt it seeping into her mind, pulling at her very soul. The one memory she could not fade always tortured her to no end. Continuing like the relentless clicking of her pistol beneath her restless, listless hand, and that night unfolded before her once again.

It was all Alex could do to pull herself back into reality as she heard a knock on the door, long before she got too involved in the memory, long before she was too far in. Just maybe God had decided to listen that one last time. It was all she could do to draw an unsteady breath and call out to the person on the other side of the barrier, her voice unmistakably strong despite her current insecurities. I, uh— Come in... She began to compose herself, putting on a slight smirk which she often wore and raising one eyebrow towards whoever was on the other side of the door. What she didn’t remember was the gun in her hand as the door began to open.

[Dr. Hayden Bishop (Pookie)]

<sub>Hayden’s usual sweet smile disappeared the moment she stepped into the psychiatric building. The building differed from the others, made out of mostly wood instead of glass and being the oldest building in the hospital complex it added a sense of nostalgia, but it also bored the marks of its previous tenants. She walked up to the nurses station, faint screams of paranoid terror came from the schizophrenia patient’s room, from a few metre’s down the tiled hall way. Hayden had to close her eyes for a moment but was reassured with the notion that he was safe in his room, which was pretty much a padded cell.

Hayden looked at everyone in the reception closely; trying to discern the crazy from hte crazy’s family. Of course being a doctor the term ‘crazy’ wasn’t politically correct, they were suppose to use the word ‘mentally challenged’ or some other form of that. There was about 25 odd people in the room, some were doctors coming from the main building trying to escape confronting patient’s with bad news or trying to escape their supervisor. But of the mass of doctor’s and nurses she only saw two families. . .but then something caught her eye.

Hayden sighed when she saw one teenage girl waiting with what she presumed was her brother. Around 21 maybe; he had the sleep eyes and the 5 o’clock shadow of a college student. The girl fidgeted nervously, probably trying to get her mind off whatever was wrong with that family member. Hayden’s presumed suicide attempt of a parental figure, due to her sullen red eyes and her repetitive questions to her brother asking “Why?”

Hayden’s job was to deal with grief and death on a daily basis but when she saw a family like this heart always went out to them, since she was in that same position a few months before her 16th birthday. She remembered it clearly now; the first thing was watching her perfectly healthy father go into a hospital one day after complaining of headaches, and coming out discovering he had a cancerous growth in his brain. She shuddered at the remembrance of him dying on the eve of his and her mother’s 25th wedding anniversary.

The second time she went into hospital because of a family member was more emotional and more terrible to watch, her older brother Timothy discovered he had brain cysts. She had watched him suffer as he died, with sweat beads down his face and shouts of terror and pain. She had to close her eyes once more, hoping the memory would fade.

She looked at her watch and with a slightly slip of profanity she remembered what she came here for. She needed to get the department head’s opinion on dealing with the emotional problems she was facing with a rape victim who had just came into the clinic this morning.

But that was the events that led her standing in front of the door, when she heard. ‘I uh…-come in” she assumed the words and the slightly paused meant she was organizing herself so she waited a few more seconds before opening the door. She immediately sprang back when she saw the gun. “OK. . . Don’t shoot” she said. The department head bore a smirk on the face. . .similar to the one Scarface had.</sub>

[Dr. Alexandra Sessions]

a n d a l l t h e l i g h t s w e n t o u t i n e m p t y r o o m s

Pain; it comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday. Then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt. How we manage our pain is up to us. We anaesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.

Alex’s eyes flashed over the door as it opened, and her smirk moved into a half-smile as she saw who it was that had come for a visit. She liked Hayden. She raised her eyebrows in mild surprise when Hayden spoke, and her shoulder blades moved down into a defensive position on instinct. But then she realized it was her holding the gun. Her half-smile returned as she removed her feet from her desk where they had been, her boot heels hitting the floor with a small thud.

Alex glanced from Hayden to the gun sitting up and leaning over her desk. The safety was on hun, don’t worry. She pumped the gun twice and her hand came up to catch the magazine before it clattered to her desk. She reckoned an unloaded gun would probably seem less threatening. Alex reflected as she did all this, thinking about 'don't shoot' being probably the stupidest thing you could say to someone with a gun. She removed the ammunition from her gun and put it into a drawer before sliding the magazine back into the handgun and putting it back in the holster on her hip.

Alex straightened up and scooted her chair forward, her arms crossed on the desk in front of her, her eyes turned upwards to find Hayden’s face. She thingyed her head to the side, studying the younger doctor’s face for a moment. She straightened her neck again after a moment, her eyes glancing over her one more time. You don’t like it here do you? All the crazies make you nervous? She lifted one eyebrow questioningly.

Many people hated this building. Sometimes even Alex hated this building. Sometimes there was just too much pain for her, and that had too be a hell of a lot if Alex was saying it. She knew it too well, sometimes making her want to disappear and be alone somewhere quiet.

Giving a bit of time for an answer, Alex’s eyebrow fell after a moment and she glanced to the file in Hayden’s hands. She reached out and took the file form her, not aggressively, but simply in a curious manner, wandering what had brought a doctor so far from sanity. And what’s this here? Her eyes cut up to Hayden as she opened the manila folder, and then back down, starting to read.

Alex’s eyebrows knitted together a bit as she read, making a noise in her throat as she checked her watch. It’s only 11:45 and some bastard’s already at it. She rose from her chair, her eyes still on the file as she moved to the door. She folded with a slight snap, which is fairly impressive considering it was a manila folder. I guess we’re going then?