Eryn was short for her age. At twenty, she still dressed as she had at fifteen, in loose t-shirts and tight jeans, with studded belts and converse trainers. Lately, she had been questioning her sanity.
The appointment card said 10.15am. Terrified for the state of her mental health, Eryn arrived a full half hour early, and sat, in the waiting room, leafing through those magazines on the table. It occurred to Eryn that it couldn't possibly be a good idea for a psychiatrist's office to have such literature. She knew how harmful it could be to a woman's self esteem, and as she flicked through the pages, fighting a subconscious desire to envy those emaciated, airbrushed corpses of womanhood within the covers, she had the distinct sense that someone, somewhere was mocking her.
Even here, she was haunted by it. Even here, in Dr. Harley's waiting room. Eryn sighed, brushed her long, dark hair out of her eyes, and returned to feigning interest in the gossip column of Hi There! Magazine. It seemed a prince and an actress were to wed. It seemed a singer and a football player were to divorce. It seemed the writers of this trashy magazine wanted people to care and be shocked. Eryn would never understand why.
She sighed and disdainfully placed the rag down on the table, took to staring at the wall, trying to block it out of her head. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, her name was called out on the loudspeaker in the wall. She rose, and walked to the room it had told her to. Dr. Harley's room.
Dr Harley was tall, slender, and her white coat suited her. Eryn regarded her nervously, from the middle aged woman's well-kept hair, to her manicured fingernails, before taking the proffered seat.
"So, I understand you've been hearing voices," Dr Harley prompted, in her calm and soothing voice. Erin shook her head, "not voices. A Voice. It seems to describe everything I see or do. I call it Narrator. Even while I was sat in the waiting room, it was commenting, describing the things that I did, and saying what I was thinking. It... it frightens me."
Harley nodded sympathetically, “how long have you been hearing it, and how often?” Eryn blinked, looked thoughtful, “that is the strange thing. I have heard it all my life, but only occasionally. If I am doing something routine, boring, I hear nothing, but if I meet someone new, or do something significant, or that later becomes important, I hear the voice, describe my every movement, everything that happens around me. Sometimes the actions and thoughts of others….”
Harley calmly took down notes as Eryn spoke, listening carefully, allowing her patient to speak as much as she wished. This was worrying, very worrying. Was Eryn schizophrenic? The patient wondered that herself as she gently explained to Dr. Harley about every time she had heard Narrator’s voice. About the time she had fallen off her motorbike, the time she had caught food poisoning, the time she had met her lover.
Eventually, somewhere near the end of the session, and feeling a lot calmer, Eryn fell silent. There wasn’t much left to say, she was haunted by the Voice. The Voice was frightening. She wanted rid of it. And there was not much more Dr. Harley could do than prescribe her some anti psychotics, and make an appointment to see her in a week. Disappointed, Eryn left the clinic, went home, took her first dose of the medication, and tried to lose herself in a carton of ice cream, and a corny film. To allow self-pity to control her, just for the rest of the day, hope that one day she would be able to take her life back, and not hear the Voice. She hoped she only need wait until the medication started to take eff…
