2020-02-06 - Give All My Secrets Away

It had been suggested some time ago by the higher ups that Stephanie go see a professional, to talk to about some of her experiences. When the recent reports of the strange death at Broadleaf Apartments came in, the suggestion had turned into an official recommendation by her superiors. And a fresh new doctor had come into town, someone that had her superiors certain would be helpful to her. Stephanie had no choice but to make the appointment. Her 7pm appointment with Dr. Ferrera is right around the corner and she is now sitting in the waiting room for him.

The hospital certainly had no qualms with putting their newest resident Psychiatrist to work, and in that regard, Armande had none about doing so. He sat in his office, three quarters of the way unpacked though neatly enough arranged. The light grey walls, a few corner windows with the blinds drawn closed and the office was more studio lounge than 'office' - a carpeted space to make patients 'feel relaxed' a minimalistic desk with a swingarm mounted monitor, an overstuffed leather armchair and the kind of couch that looked like it was probably more comfortable than some beds.

Armand glanced at his watch, it was nearly time for his first scheduled appointment. He shrugged off his topcoat and folded it over the back of his desk chair, unfastened the cuffs of his dress shirt and headed into the hallway toward the waiting area.

Three steps into the waiting section and only one person made it easy guesswork for Dr. Ferrera who was finishing folding his sleeves up on the third roll to mid-forearm, "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're Miss Stephanie Tremblay?" he asked, cracking a softly upturned smile that caused the crowsfeet at the edges of his hazel eyes to crease slightly.

The short haired brunette looked up from the phone she had been holding to the source of the voice. "Dr. Ferrera, yes, that would be me." She stood up to offer her hand for a handshake. "I appreciate you seeing me so quickly, I've been told you just came to town."

The offered hand was quickly reciprocated, and Armande provided a handshake that offered an assured level of firmness with a gentle touch behind it. "Of course. If I wasn't willing to jump right in, I'd have taken a vacation" he replied while maintaining the neutral sort of smile that seemed the sort to just hang on his features. "Please, this way" he beckoned, flourishing an open palm toward the direction of his office, "Also, my name is Armande, don't feel obligated to call me Doctor, or Mister, but if it's easier for you, just 'Doc' is fine too"

"Sorry," Stephanie says in an earnest tone, "I'm a paramedic and I'm often here at the hospital, delivering a patient or a body or something. I'm just used to the formality. It's been almost my entire adult life." She chuckles softly as she follows Armande into his office. "So may I ask about the circumstances around you moving to Gray Harbor? What brings you to our small town?"

"Ah, a second nature of sorts, I can understand that quite well" he remarked as they walked to the office, stepping inside a brief moment after Stephanie asked about the circumstances of his arrival. Armand half-turned toward her, slipping one hand casually into the pocket of his slacks and he chuckled softly, "Well, I could tell you that we go where the work is, but honestly this area hasn't had a lot of success, psychologically speaking, there seems to have been some sort of anomaly..." he paused just long enough to gesture to the room, "Feel free to sit wherever you want" he remarked, and continued on his explanation, "I've ben fairly successful in my field when it comes to understanding a lot of things some of my colleagues generally dismiss..." he paused for a moment, pursing a firm set of bowed lips, and then shrugged a single shoulder, "It was just a good fit. What about you? Local?"

"I was the sibling who was decent at school but didn't do remarkably well, couldn't get the scholarships to fund an expensive education to become a doctor and get out of this town, stuck around and decided to go the paramedic route." It was a simple way to explain her situation as Stephanie settled onto the couch, which admittedly was very comfortable. Listening to Armande speak about understanding what is generally dismissed makes Stephanie feel at ease. "I'm glad that if my superiors are insisting on taking care of my mental health, that I have someone as good at what they do as you are. They say that you might the right person to talk to about some recent events."

"Ah" Armande offered with a simple nod of his head at the explanation of Stephanie's situation and when she took a place on the couch, he took a half step to arrive at the front of the plush armchair, pivoted about and then collapsed himself into it with a nonchalant sort of carelessness like a child would oft collapse into a beanbag. "I nearly became a paramedic, to be honest. I was an orderly prior to studying psychology" he smiled and lazily draped his forearms along the arms of the chair. Listening while she mentioned her 'employer'

"I could be..." he shrugged both shoulders, the material of both his dress shirt and vest scrunched up a bit at that one, "You're employer referred you. If you say you're good, then I'll sign off saying as much" he smiled in that same smile that caused his eyes to squinch when he introduced himself, "But if you think you'd like to talk about some of the recent events, or sport stats, or a good movie you saw last week..." he shrugged, "It's on your bosses dime" he noted and then, finally, lifted one leg from its flat-footed position and crossed it over his other knee, "What would you like to talk about?"

The paramedic simply chuckles. "They want their top paramedic to continue working, I suppose. But seriously, we're well taken care of in this town." She pauses when asked what she wants to talk about. "They sent my Mother away because they thought something was wrong with her. My Dad let my Grandparents send them away when I was 12. But...no one else gets it. I don't think she was actually crazy. At least not at first. Now...well, it wasn't until a few years ago that the mental illness really kicked in. But now...things are happening, and it's making me wonder about my own mental health." It's the first time Stephanie has voiced this, and if her employer is paying for it, she might as well take advantage of it. "I've been afraid to tell most people what I've been going through, avoiding my few friends, I haven't even really talked to my partner and he saw some of the things I've seen."

"Damn them and wanting to keep you earning them money" Armand replied in a saracstically dry tone when Stephanie talked of her company wanting their top paramedic to continue working. When she spoke out finally about other aspects however, he listened. The natural crease to his brow furrowed ever so much more as he focused on listening to the details of her story, and he nodded his head a bit in understanding.

"You don't think your mother was ill, but you think she became that way eventually - and you're afraid you're going to do the same?" he asked her simply, moving his hands from the armrests to interlock his fingers and hook them at the knee of the leg folded atop the other. "What makes you question your mental health now, if you didn't question it before? What is it you're going through?"

"I don't think her mental illness had anything to do with why she was sent away at first." Stephanie states quietly, then she repeats her Mother's last words to her. "She told me before she left that there was something about this town, something about me. And she told me to be careful with who I trust. Be careful with what I do. The Glimmer would attract the Dark Men." There's a pause as she gathers her thoughts. "I hadn't done anything with it for a long time. It wasn't until the last five months or so that I really felt pushed to help others with my...abilities. Save lives, no matter what the cost. But then...I ended up fighting this weird dark shadow thing during a shift, which also involved a weird dead body with its fingernails pulled off and no signs of trauma on the body itself, no blood anywhere, just dead. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was pulled into this place, with doors everywhere and another different dark shadow that stabbed me with a needle, then I woke up on my couch like it was a dream that never happeaned. It all sounds pretty crazy."

If Armande thought any of the statements coming from Stephanie seemed crazy, he wasn't letting on to the fact. He listened, intently, "A dark being?" he queried simply, more for his own understanding than to disrupt her talking. He nodded once more, though as she talked of the dead body, and the dream of doors everywhere, his brow furrowed slightly.

"Saving people, no matter the cost. What's that mean, exactly?" he asked, his head tilted a bit toward one side in curiosity, "You talk about 'abilities' you possess, do you mean your medical abilities, or do you believe something else is at work?"

What happens next is that Stephanie's eyes turn solid blue and flicker for a brief moment, a blink if you miss it sort of moment. But it's also difficult to hide if someone is looking directly at you. "Dark beings. Two different ones. Two different situations. One at work. One while I was asleep, I think. I don't really understand it." She pauses when he asks whether something else is at work. "You can probably sense what it is. I know I sense it in this room with you."

Intense, hazel eyes studied Stephanie while waiting for a response, and he certainly wasn't blinking. The faintest flash of solid blue across her eyes and Armande's own shifted from the inquisitive, lighthearted crows-feet laden eyes of aged wisdom to a focused squint, a faint giration of the iris of his eyes, a somewhat unnerving thing in its own right - though the fact that near instantaneously the projection of a harshly delivered thought of Don't do that. BAD. likely flashed into the brain of Stephanie was probably more jarring.

His eyes softened again and he leaned back into the plush stuffing of the armchair, uncrossing his legs and placing both feet flat again, he leaned forward. "You..." he said slowly, inhaling a deep breath through his nostrils, "Bad. Things. Come." he stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "But you're right...you're not crazy..."

"I made a choice five months ago to save a life, responding to a car accident. I haven't looked back since. Whatever comes for me, it'll be worth the lives I've saved. " The confession hangs in the air and Stephanie wonders how harshly she is currently being judged. "It can't be a coincidence that Devlin and I were at a scene where some dark being came out of nowhere. I...just...I just needed to know that I'm not crazy, and that my Mom wasn't crazy either."

A deep, chest-rising inhale, followed by an equally hefty exhale, and Armande looked at Stephanie with a renewed set of softened hazel eyes, and that familiar crows-feet inducing smile, "You're not crazy. It's..." he paused, looking for the words, he raised a hand and drug it against the thick whiskers of his jawline, emitting a low grind of skin against whisker.

"They're like moths to a candle... you burn both ends, you get more moths, you burn a bonfire, you get all /kinds/ of bugs..." he explained, clicking his tongue once and leaning forward, propping his elbows atop his knees. "Moths are annoying, they're just moths. These things..." he blew out a breath, gesture a hand toward her, "Well, you know. You've seen it. It only gets worse. Much worse." he stared at her, silent for a moment...

"That place, from your dream. The rooms, and the needle... I think it's real. It's... not..." he squinted, "Not.../real/ real, but..." he rolled his hands as if to dismiss it, "I think you get what I'm saying"

"I know exactly what you're saying. The needle didn't know anything to me, but I felt the stabbing and my arm went cold for a few days, like I couldn't warm it up." She just nods at the warning. "I wish I could just fight those things off. Something escaped into Gray Harbor and I have no idea where it went or who it could harm. I don't regret trying to stop it, I just regret not being able to fight it off."

"I've spent years trying to study them, documenting the nightmares. Reading. Learning..." Armande explained, "I'm still just as unsure as I was when I was a child who thought I just had night terrors" he admitted, shaking his head. He leaned back, relaxing into the comfort of the arm chair, and raised a hand in gesture toward you, "That dream. The needle. That's why I'm here. A story, of a story, down the grapevine, trolling enough occult forums and reading enough 'dark' journals..." he fixed her with a stern gaze, "I want to go there. For real. I want to learn of it all" he told her, though laughed a bit afterward, "But no. You're not crazy. Though I suspect that while your Mother may not have been unstable before... enough time locked away with the dark... well, it can drive a person mad"

All she could do was just nod at first but then finally, Stephanie spoke up. "If you want company while you learn, let me know." The offer is serious. "The more I can learn about what's coming my way, the better off I'll be." She sighs. "I wish I had my Mother, she would know exactly what to teach me."

"People across the world wish they still had their mothers..." Armande said as he rose to his feet, "Unfortunately, we are all left alone sooner or later, by one means or another" he smiled somberly and made a few long-legged strides toward his desk, where he gathered a pen from atop his desk, signed a sheet of paperwork that had been resting there, and grabbed a business card with it.

"It's a darkness, this thing, but like I said..." he folded the paperwork over and creased it once, sticking his business card atop the paperwork and extending it toward her, "But you don't need me. Not in the capacity your work thinks you do. You just need friends who you can call when it happens again..." he smiled, "My cell's on the card. Feel free. My bat symbol is down for repairs." he remarked and his lips broke into a growing grin. "Have a nice night, Miss Tremblay"

"Thank you for seeing me, Doc." The tone is light and casual for the first time as Stephanie picks up the paperwork and the card. She stops at the doorway and adds, "I'll see you again soon, but not for the reason work thinks I should see you. Goodnight."