Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [91]
The funny thing was though, with this behavior, while people rushed to stop me, no one seemed angry. No one seemed upset. In fact, everyone seemed genuinely interested in trying to figure out how I felt, and what had pushed me toward snapping.
“When you start feeling yourself go out of control, you have to come talk to one of us right way,” Margo told me. “You've got to come get help before you're overwhelmed.”
Within a few days of ray arrival on the unit, Dr. Fischer had come to escort me to her office downstairs on the first floor for our first therapy session. True to her word, Dr. Doller had assigned a woman to be my therapist. It was all just as I had wished, except for one thing. Dr. Diane Fischer, my new therapist, was trying to kill me.
I knew it the moment I saw her. The Voices only confirmed it. Something about this doctor terrified me. All the way down two flights of stairs to the main floor to her office, the Voices warned me against her. All my senses went on alert, as I struggled to stay in control, to watch her, to protect myself against whatever she was trying to do to me. I didn't believe what the Voices told me about Dr. Doller; I did believe everything they said about Dr. Fischer. Everything they said was one hundred percent true. She was going to kill me because she found me so repulsive. I was a fat, disgusting, ugly tub of lard, and I deserved to die. I was frightened. I couldn't take my eyes off her.
By the time we reached her office, the Voices had changed their tune. I was the one to do the killing, they screamed at me. I had to kill Dr. Fischer. I had to do it quickly, before she killed me, they said. If I didn't kill her quickly, they would. I felt my panic mount as the Voices’ commands became more insistent.
“Kill her! Kill her! Put your hands around her neck and choke her!” These were more than orders, more than commands. I felt I could not resist them.
I sat bolt upright on a chair in her office, trying hard to answer the routine questions she was asking me, and to warn her that her life was in danger. My body shook all over. I had to warn her in a way that the Voices couldn't hear, or they would kill both of us. I couldn't speak. I couldn't concentrate. There was no way of talking to her without the Voices jumping between us. The orders were growing more and more insistent.
“Kill her! Kill her now!” they commanded.
I couldn't stand it. I leaped from my chair and bolted from the room. I ran all the way back to the unit where I collapsed, panting with fear, in the safety of my room.
After that I refused to go to her office again. I refused to meet anywhere alone with her. I was afraid of what she would do to me. More than that, I was afraid of what I would do to her. I was afraid of succumbing to the Voices’ charges. I was afraid of becoming a murderer.
Why did this happen? Why was I so afraid of Dr. Fischer? I had had many therapists before throughout my hospitalization. I had often been tense and nervous on meeting a new therapist, or anxious and depressed when one I was used to left me. But no one had affected me the way Dr. Fischer did. Dr. Fischer was special.
All three of us—Dr. Doller, Dr. Fischer and I—were close in age. Dr. Doller was a few years older; Dr. Fischer was probably about my age, or maybe a little younger. But Dr. Doller seemed much older than I, not just in years but in experience and wisdom and accomplishment. Her manner was motherly and, while she didn't feel like a mother to me, she did feel like a big sister, the big sister I never had.
Dr. Fischer, though, seemed much younger. She was petite and pretty, a perfect size four with long curly black hair. She was chic, always wearing fashionable clothes. Dr. Fischer wasn't my sister. She was me. She was the me that I had left behind ten years ago. She was the me buried deep under these pounds