"Restrain me?" Her arms shook, panic coursing through her veins with such violence she feared her skin would rupture from the onslaught. "How did you restrain me?"
His voice was whisper soft. "It doesn't matter, and it wasn't for long." Another pause, his words measured to ensure they didn't frighten her more. "But that's not the point, Alice. The point is these dreams are destroying you."
She was already destroyed. The dreams couldn't possibly tear her apart any more. But she chose not to say that to the doctor. She didn't want him to know how truly far she'd fallen.
"I'm going to increase the dosage of your medications -"
"Don't," she answered abruptly, all but cutting off the words he'd intended to say.
"Alice -"
"I said don't!" Anger forced her body to straighten out, for her to snap her shoulder away from the small contact she had with Dr. Chance. Her head wrenched at a painful angle, she glared at him, fighting to control the volume of her voice.
Acting crazy wouldn't help her. It would only prove the doctor right.
"I don't want to forget the dreams and that's all you're trying to do with the meds you're giving me. I want to know them. I have to know them. I don't take the pills, Doc. I won't take them."
His eyes flew open in surprise, but his voice didn't match his expression. Calm, cool, moderated in a way that could only be perfected by a trained professional, his voice disguised whatever truth existed to his personal feelings. "Can you state that for a fact, Alice? That you don't take the medication?"
Staring at him with eyes that were tired and hazy, she nodded her head at the question. "Yes," she answered feebly before the confusion found its way back to mingle with whatever lucid thoughts she'd clung to. "No. I don't know."
Clarity had been a fleeting thing, breaking apart the fog to allow one shining beam of light to invade what was always a cryptic, impossible puzzle. Her body relaxed against the cushions of the soft couch, her finger playing idly with a frayed string of her oversized green sweater.
Green. It was the first time she noticed anything about herself in how long?
"Why," she asked over words that were crushed glass inside her blistered throat, "why did you have to restrain me?"
A pen tapped over the doctor's notepad, once, twice, before the tip was scrawled across the page. His strong handwriting was a wash of blue over white, creating words that carried little meaning to Alice if they couldn't take the pieces of her fractured life and put them back together.
"I thought, for a moment, you remembered something outside this office."
There was a particular position she normally took when surrounded by the serenity of the doctor's office. Her legs pulled up to cross into a tangled position that reminded her of a bow and her days spent in Kindergarten. She had thin arms that had lost so much muscle mass the skin was sagging and waving just below her shoulders. Like two, raw chicken cutlets, the skin flapped as she moved her arms to curl around her frame, caging her in a false sense of protection.
Once she'd assumed the posture that shielded her from the world outside herself, she cast a soft glance at the man who had always been so patient.
"I remember the dreams," she insisted, ripping the conversation away from the present and slamming it right back down beneath the chains of the nightmares she'd endured for too long.
She was drawing a line between them, a long straight mark between two points, unlike the one that had been drawn for her when her body was sleeping. That line had been a different beast, an infinite mess because it had a clear beginning, but no definable end.
The doctor crossed the line she drew, a far braver act than anything she could hope to accomplish.
"I want to talk about before, Alice. To the memories you have that occurred before your life was bisected."
When she didn't openly complain, he specified, "I want to talk about your father."
Her eyes clenched shut again. "My father was a drunk. When he was sober, he cared for his family, and when he wasn't, he wished us all dead. He scared me all the time talking about the monsters in our world. Meanwhile, he was one of them. There's not much more I can say about him."
"But there is more, isn't there?" Leaning forward to close the distance Alice wished would remain between them, his face was a mask of sympathy beneath the soft light, his hair a tawny brown that framed his angled face and soft lips.
It was the first time she'd paid attention to his features in a light that allowed her to see them. She was struck by the way his brows knitted over his eyes, the way his glasses clung to the tip of his nose because another inch forward and they'd tumble away. "You seem so familiar."
His voice wouldn't give away his private thoughts, but the expression on his face certainly did. Confusion becomes obvious when painted across questioning eyes and a mouth that pulls into a taut and narrow line. "We've been meeting for a while now, Alice. I hope I seem familiar."