Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [58]
“They like to keep people off balance here. They call it ‘challenged.’” Another statement. She decided not to react to it.
“If you’re a mage, why are you a therapist?” she demanded.
“Most people who become headshrinkers do so because they think there is something wrong with themselves and want to figure out how to fix it. I was no exception, though what was ‘wrong’ with me was magic, not neurosis.” He grinned as he managed to coax a wary smile out of her. “I’ve gone over your file, Spirit, and I want to start out by telling you that your previous shrinks are a prime example of the truism that half the people practicing psychotherapy graduated in the bottom half of their class.”
“Uh—what?” she asked, completely taken aback. It looked as if Doctor MacKenzie also liked to keep people off balance.
“What’s in this file, and what they told you, was complete bullshit,” he said bluntly, tapping the manila folder. “I don’t know what they’re turning out of college these days, but they all sound like the latest bestseller self-help book. They seemed to think you were supposed to somehow magically get over having your entire world ripped out from under you in less than a year. That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Of course you’re still not over any of it. You shouldn’t be. If you were, I’d be looking for some pretty intractable problems with you and flinging around fancy terms like severe attachment disorder. You don’t just get over that sort of loss in a few months, or even a few years.” He snorted. “Sometimes I think the Victorians had the right idea. When you lost a family member back then you were supposed to be in full mourning, dress in nothing but black, for a whole year. Then you went into something they called ‘half mourning’ for another full year, and during those two years, you were pretty much expected to have emotional breakdowns, you could do it whenever you felt you needed to, and everybody would support you. Now? A month after a tragedy, maybe two, and you’re expected to be all better—or down pills so you can pretend you are.” He just shook his head. “Unfair doesn’t even come close.”
Spirit was torn between shock and wanting to hug and kiss him. Not only was this the first time anyone had acted halfway normal around her, it was the first time any shrink had more or less given her permission to keep feeling bad. And the relief she felt was impossible to describe.
The thought fleetingly occurred to her that Doc Mac could be saying all this to try and trick her into trusting him.…
Well, if so, it was working, and right now, she didn’t care. She wanted to trust him; all of her instincts were reacting as positively to him as they reacted negatively to people like Ms. Smith. She liked him. She had the feeling that if he had been her shrink in the hospital, she wouldn’t be nearly so messed up now.
And for the first time, she felt like talking about it to someone, because she just knew he wasn’t going to cut her off because “her hour was up.” She was going to be able to vent about how bad she felt, how much she missed everyone, everything, and would give up everything to have them back again. How much she envied Muirin and Loch, because they hadn’t had parents they’d miss, and Burke, because he still had his foster folks. How sometimes she wanted to punch the next person who told her it was time for her to get over it. He was going to listen for as long as it took.
So she did. She went through a lot of tissues. Doc Mac was just solid, right through it all. He didn’t get all creepy and ooze sympathy and pretend empathy like Ms. Smith did; he was just there, listening, not saying much, but what he did say made her feel, not better exactly, but as if he understood.
He was a hundred times better than any of the shrinks she’d seen in the hospital.
When she finally wound down, he gave her the rest of the box of tissues and made a couple of brief notes. He talked to her a little about New Year’s Eve. She told him what she’d really seen and felt. He made some more notes, then looked up. “All right, Spirit, you