Eventually Bek a seemed to calm down somewhat and looked up again. Her breathing had slowed, Trance noted, and she was quiet again. She was no longer grabbing or clawing at her head and Trance allowed herself to relax for a moment.
“What do you remember, Beka?” She got a confused glance in return and explained; “do you remember what happened to your arms?” Beka nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything. “Do you think you could tell me?”
“I thought it was a dream first,” Beka started, sounding a lot more coherent than she had before, “but then I woke up, and I had these.” She indicated to her arms. “It still feels like it was a dream but…I do remember. Someone was there and he was…I don’t know…” She sobbed and for a moment Trance was worried she’d go funny again but she didn’t.
“He was hurting you?” Beka nodded quickly. “And you don’t know who it was?” She shook her head. Trance took a deep breath and smiled. “Ok Beka, that’s ok. We’re going to try to keep him from hurting you again, all right?” She nodded slowly. Trance moved to walk away, but was stopped by Beka speaking again.
“I can’t…I can’t see him, but I hear him.” This alerted Harper, who had until now been silently watching Trance dealing with Beka.
“What do you mean? You can’t see who? When do you hear him?” Beka swallowed and looked down.
“He’s…always there, but I can’t find him. He talks…he keeps talking, he stops sometimes, but he always comes back. I don’t know who he is, and I can’t ever, ever find him. Sometimes he tells me to do things, and I have to do them.”
“Was that what happened with the mirror, Beka?” Trance asked calmly, trying not to show how upset she was.
“I…don’t know. I think so, he told me to do it but…” She suddenly went back into the position Trance had seen earlier, and was already dreading. “No!” she cried, “no, go away! Leave me alone…” She continued to sob and cry out as Trance, and now also Harper, gently tried to hold her still.
“Do you want to go to sleep Beka?” Trance asked, somehow wanting this to be her own decision, not a forced one. Beka viciously shook her head.
“No. Dreams. Bad.”
“No, sleep with no dreams. Do you want to do that?” Beka nodded quickly, desperately.
“Please. Take it away.” Trance nodded as she, again, brought the injector to Beka’s neck.
“I’ll try to,” she said. “I’m going to put you to sleep now, ok?” Beka nodded and closed her eyes as Trance injected her again. She fell back silently, the shaking stopping and Harper took his hands off her and stood back, staring at her.
“I can’t…I can’t believe this. What’s going on?” he said, his voice shaky. Trance looked up and swallowed.
“She’s having hallucinations, she’s harming herself but thinks someone else is doing it…she’s obviously hearing voices. This is schizophrenia. I’m really sorry.”
“So…” Harper asked tentatively, “is she really…mad?” Trance hesitated, trying to think of a good way to answer this.
“Harper, you can’t ask that,” she finally whined, “you can’t just put it like that. It’s schizophrenia brought on by posttraumatic stress. She’s not mad. Or well, she…please, Harper, just…we can treat this, all right?” She was looking at him so pleadingly she almost forgot she was the medic, she was the one supposed to know. Right then, she wished she wasn’t. She knew she could take care of whatever was happening, well she probably could anyway, but she didn’t want it to be her responsibility. She just hoped they’d help her. Oh, of course they would…she knew Harper’d be there all the time if he could, but he wouldn’t exactly be much help. Company, yes, probably for Beka too, which would be a good thing, but she wondered whether he’d just get in the way. She took a deep breath.
“There’s medication I could try,” she said, “and therapy of course. I’m not sure I’m happy having her unsupervised right now…I don’t want her getting hurt again.”
“I don’t understand,” Harper said silently, in a sad voice. “How did this happen? Mad people are, well, mad. Beka’s not mad.”
“As I said Harper,” Trance explained, “posttraumatic stress. It just means that, well; when people go through too much for the mind to handle, it reacts in…strange ways. I expected depression, I expected bad depression. I didn’t expect her to start hearing voices; I admit that was a surprise. I’m not a psychiatrist, and I don’t really know why it happened, but I expect her fear and sadness got too much for her, and she kept pushing them back, maybe now her feelings are manifesting themselves as a voice of their own, because she can’t deal with them otherwise.”
“It sounds…reasonable,” Dylan said, who had previously been very quiet. “So…would the right way to go be for her to deal with these feelings? Would that make the voices go away?”
“You make it sound very easy,” Trance said, “but yes, my guess is basically that. I’d also like to find out why she feels the need to hurt herself…”
“Wait,” Harper said, sticking a hand up to stop her, “I thought that she thought she was being controlled into that. That it wasn’t actually her.”
“Yes,” Trance confirmed, “she thinks that. But as I said, these voices aren’t other people, they’re her, they’re her feelings, just strangely manifested. So somehow, somewhere she feels she needs to do everything they make her do. I guess so, anyway,” she looked nervously around her. Dylan and Harper stood quietly for a moment before looking at each other and almost seeming to sink together somewhat. “I’ll see what I can do about medication,” she whispered, taking off into the background. She needed a break. She needed to think about this, and what consequenses it would have.
