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Apollonia was a citizen of the SU now, but that didn’t mean she had to follow Brooks orders like a soldier.
Right?
He’d ordered her to come see the shrink, and Logus had sent her the appointment time for the next day. She’d wondered if there would be a guard to make her come, but the only thing outside her door when the time came was a drone.
It had guided her here in an annoyingly helpful way, even suggesting various breakfast options that could be waiting for her when she got to Logus’s office.
She’d turned them all down. She didn’t want to do this on a full stomach.
Now she sat in a waiting room, and was hating it. She hated all waiting rooms, but this one was different. Most were just horribly unpleasant, but this one was so pleasant it seemed to almost mock her.
Everything was soft, comfortable, none of it seemed strictly utilitarian in the way she was used to. Wherever she’d lived, whenever it had been, she’d been lucky to have empty boxes and duffels, and she’d longed for some of the comforts that she saw others have in their homes – mostly on serials, she realized. She’d rarely seen the inside of anyone else’s home, she’d never been a person people had invited in.
But this stuff? It was not just pleasant, it was superb. Higher-quality than even the ‘luxury’ items she’d seen back home. And here it was, in the shitty waiting room of a shitty head doctor. No one even cared or thought twice about it when they came in. Every single place on the ship, that she had seen so far, was like that.
What did it say about you when you went decades hoping for the kinds of things these people would have considered unfit for even a waiting room?
Even the calming pictures of skies on worlds she would never see seemed only to taunt her.
Look at what you never had, because your parents were idiots who got on a colony ship, they imparted to her. She’d never even seen a terrestrial planet in person, let alone a bird. She had seen a dog once, and it had smelled. That weird, unpleasant odor hung in her memory, and she found herself wondering what other animals smelled like.
Fuck, she thought. What a pathetic dream to have.
The wall across from her made a dull thud. Or something on the other side had.
She heard a voice; it was so muffled as to nearly be inaudible, but she could tell it was a man screaming as loud as he could.
“They took my son!”
There was another voice, Logus’s, but she could hear just the very slightest hum.
Apollonia shifted uncomfortably in the too-nice chair. Damn it, she knew who it was on the other side of that door. She only knew his first name, Dav, and he’d been another outcast on New Vitriol. Always wanting to leave, always blaming Nec Tede for killing his son. It had been the cancer that did that, same with most other kids who actually managed to be born there.
Only reason he’d never been spaced was that he was so powerless. People saw him, heard him, but no one ever stood with him. All just wanted to pretend the thing that was slowly killing them all didn’t exist.
It was easier than facing reality sometimes.
Time passed, and she at least knew there was a good reason she was being kept waiting. Dav had been a time bomb waiting to explode for years. She’d always just hoped it wouldn’t be literal and take her with it.
The door finally opened. Dav was standing there, a tall, gaunt man, hollowed out by bad health and loss. He still looked angry, but also drained of all strength.
“We’ll talk again in a couple days, okay?” Dr. Logus said gently to the man.
The man nodded sharply, like someone having to give their all just to maintain a semblance of normality. “Okay.”
Dav’s eyes were unfocused, but then he noticed her, and turned hostile.
“What’s she doing here?” he spat.
Apollonia resisted the urge to give him her mocking smile. Seemed too low, even if the man had been like all the rest and hated her.
“Dav, Apollonia has been through a lot as well. She is another person who needs help, not our judgment,” Logus said. It sounded sincere, which surprised her.
The man spit at her. It hit the floor somewhere between them, and she felt like she’d been stabbed in the heart. But it was an old wound.
“She’s a witch and you should have given her to the Dark,” the man said. He stomped out of the room.
An awkward silence took over for his presence. At least for her; Logus seemed somehow serene.
“I apologize for that, on his behalf. He will come around,” the man told her. “Now please – come in.”
She sat there for a long moment before slowly getting up. “I’m only here because the Captain made me come,” she said.
“He was concerned about you, Ms. Nor. We all were, after your incident on Station 29.”
She hadn’t moved forward, and he looked slightly confused. “Are you coming in?”
“No,” she said flatly. “I came here, but I’m not going in.”
“Why is that?” the psychiatrist asked her. It sounded like he was dissecting her already.
She didn’t reply, but crossed her arms. It was more to reassure herself than to be standoffish. She didn’t like how all of this was making her feel or seem.
The man met her eye, but didn’t seem hostile. “Would you like to at least come sit down?” he asked. “We can sit and stare for half an hour, if you like, and then you can go on your way and tell the Captain you did what he asked.”
She considered. It seemed reasonable.
In all honesty, despite her mistrust of doctors like him, she didn’t have a good reason she didn’t want to talk to him. Not one she could tell him, even if he – to be fair – deserved to know.
She just knew she couldn’t risk it.
They entered his office and she took a seat. It was actually even more comfortable than the chair out in the waiting room. Logus sat in his chair and looked to her, waiting for her to start.
“I can’t talk to you,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
Logus watched her in silence for several heartbeats.
“Would you talk to someone else?” he asked.
She said nothing, feeling horribly afraid that her behaviour was just like a petulant child. But she couldn’t talk to him. She shouldn’t say anything to him.
“Would you talk to Dr. Y?” Logus suggested.
Her surprise must have shown, and the man had a smile that was at once patient and caring.
She actually hated being this way to him. But she nodded.
If anything, the man looked relieved. “Very well, then. I am sorry I cannot help you, Apollonia. But I will make sure you get the help you need.”
Rising, the man left his office. Apollonia wasn’t sure if she should even stay; surely he couldn’t actually go get Y right now. He probably had things to do, right?
A door opened in the corner. Until now, she hadn’t realized it was really a door out of the room – it seemed like it was just a closet.
Dr. Y entered, and as he did so she realized that it was simply a closet. One just the size for him.
“Were you . . . standing in there this whole time?” she asked, shocked.
Other Terrestrial 