"Do you think so?" "Oh, yes, definitely."
"That gives me the creeps. Now I know why Jennifer says that she's scared to be alone with him."
"Jennifer said that?"
"Yes. She told Brandy and Brandy told me."
"Well, then, this gets more and more serious by the minute."
Three hours later, the evaluation was over. Dr. Lester knew for sure that Noah suffered from severe depression, but he prolonged the session to see if Noah had any other mental illnesses. It turned out that he didn't, but Dr. Lester would start treating him immediately. He and Noah walked out of the room.
Noah was no longer hypnotized. He was normal and his mind went back to the actual time. Smiling, he said, "Hi, guys," giving them the creeps.
Hailey Marie stood back with a face of horror. "Hi," said Everett, smiling, but noticeably frightened.
"Don't worry. He's not hypnotized," said Dr. Lester. "I was afraid that his mind would stay in the year 2001, when Noah Bryan died, when he came back to normal and the effect of the serum wore out, but luckily, it didn't."
Amazed, Noah said, "Did my mind go back to the time that Noah Bryan died?"
"Yes," said Dr. Lester, "it
did."
"Oh, my God, Dr. Lester,
Hailey Marie was right! I'm going to lose my mind!" said Noah, horrified.
Dr. Lester put his hand on Noah's shoulder and said, "No, you're not. I'm going to do whatever that it takes to keep that from happening."
"Dr. Lester I have another confession to make, and don't hypnotize me again, please."
Smiling evilly, Dr. Lester said, "I won't," and Hailey Marie and Everett laughed at him.
"When I knew that your name was Dr. Lester, I wanted to run out of the hospital so fast..." he said, and without letting him finish his thought, Hailey Marie and Everett laughed hysterically.
"That other Dr. Lester, he doesn't exist. He's just a fictional character that an actor interpreted, luckily for us," he said and they laughed again. This time, Noah laughed with them. "As you can see, he and I have nothing in common. He's a cannibal, and I faint at the sight of human flesh separated from the person it belongs to..." Noah felt nauseated.
"Ill!" screamed Hailey and Everett in unison and then looked at one another and laughed again.
"And I'm young, good, and not just good at what I do, and I'm handsome," he said, finishing his thought and then smiled. "Well, you're very happy today."
"It's just that you have a great sense of humor, Dr. Lester," said Noah and cleared his throat in an attempt to keep from throwing up.
Smiling, he replied, "Thank you."
"Well, I guess that we can go home now," said Hailey Marie.
"No," said Noah, "not yet.
I hope that you guys don't mind swirling around here a little longer because I have to go to the bathroom."
"Ok," said Everett. "I don't mind. Actually, I have to visit my sister. She's here, getting treated for schizophrenia."
"I wish her the best of
luck."
"The same goes to you,"
replied Everett and he and Hailey Marie walked the hallways to visit his younger sister, Emma, who was treated for schizophrenia. She got the mental disorder when she was thirteen, after a brutal rape that almost cost her, her very life because her rapist wanted to kill her just so that no one found out what he'd done. Her and Everett's father, he had the disease, but all that she needed to trigger the disease was a devastating and mind-blowing event, like the rape. If she had never gone through something this horrible, she would never have gotten the disease.
Everett was in great danger of getting it, too. All that the disease needed to resurge was a similar event; like witnessing a murdered or for someone to attack him. Fortunately, Noah was noticing some of the symptoms and remembering strange episodes with Everett in such a short amount of time.
As he went to the bathroom and threw up, just because he heard Dr. Lester talking about skin torn apart from the body to be eaten, he thought that if Everett thought that he had schizophrenia, although he'd told him that no one on his family had the disease, it was because he had it or because he was about to get it, and this scared him. As he finished throwing up in the toilet, he wondered why the first thing that Everett thought that was wrong with his brain when he first told him that his brain wasn't normal, was that he had schizophrenia, and with every weird event and every weird word that he recalled, as he looked at the roof, he became more and more afraid of Everett. Now, Noah was starting to understand why Everett wasn't hired as a bodyguard until now. The people that would've hired him, they noticed weird aspects in his behavior, too weird for them to condone. Noah went to the bathroom sink and rinsed his mouth with plenty of water to keep his teeth from getting damaged because he'd never thrown up before, and now he knew what was happening with Everett and his job life. The people that would've hired him, they knew from the moment that they met him, that he had a mental illness and if he wasn't treated, they worried more about their safety with him than if they were alone. He walked out of the bathroom and suddenly, a very disoriented patient, she passed by. Rather than ignoring her, he went after her.
"Can I help you?" he said as they kept walking.
She didn't hear him. She was so deep into her own fictional little world that she didn't see or hear anything that was going on around her.
Still, he insisted in getting her attention. "Are you ok?"
They kept walking together. Since he was talking to her, the nurses that passed by, they thought that they were talking to each other and they just ignored them and walked away. That was a big mistake because they didn't have the slightest clue of what would happen next.
Seeing that he would never get her attention by talking to her, Noah put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Are you all right? Can I do something for you?"
She turned around. She was petrified to notice that she had to look up to the roof in order to see his face, and what she could hardly see, his face, it fascinated her. She smiled.
Smiling back at her and looking down, he said, "I see that I finally got your attention." He got down to his knees to be able to look her in the eyes. "You have the prettiest eyes that I've ever seen."
For the first time in three years since she had been admitted to the mental institution, the woman spoke. She said, "You have pretty eyes, too."
"I'd really like to---" he said, and all of a sudden, she French-kissed him. Only the patients were walking around, and since they only minded their own business, they just watched them, smiled and didn't say anything.
Twenty minutes later, he said, "To be honest, I expected anything but this from you." He hugged her so that she didn't feel that her kiss got him overcome, annoyed or even sick to the stomach.
She smiled and asked, "Do you like me?"
Smiling, he replied, "Yes.
You're very sweet."
"Do you want me?" "Well--"
"I want you. Let's go somewhere, where we're not watched."
Noah felt badly about rejecting a woman, even though she was a total stranger to him, now even more that she was mentally disabled and that he had just awoke her from her long dream. The situation that she was putting him in, it was hard. If they ran away together, even if it was for a couple of hours, all of the hell would break loose, and not only would the police break the ground to find her, but he would also get arrested for kidnapping and taking advantage of a mentally disabled patient and he'd lose the chance of having custody of his kids--forever. The image of being a sexual predator, although it would be erroneous if he risked it all for pleasing this woman, that would cause his children to distrust him and be more afraid of him than they already were. After thinking about it for several minutes, he said, "I don't know what to tell you."
"If you say no, it's ok. I'll understand. I've never forced or begged a man to have sex with me. Actually, having sex is the only thing that I'd never oblige a man to do."
"I have an idea. In just a few minutes, your mental condition has improved greatly. I don't know if you've completely recovered, although I studied to become a psychiatrist, but I do know that you're no longer trapped in your own world, you've awaken and you're speaking. Therefore, I dare to say that you'll get out of here very soon." He pulled his card out of his pocket. He had several cards with him that he used to promote Spears International when he wasn't at the enterprise. She saw his home and cell phone number on the card, but she didn't see his home address. He didn't type it on there when he was making his business cards to keep maniacs from running to his house to do bad things to him. "That's my card. Call me when you're released from this prison. If you get out of here before October, we can hook up. I can't get you out of here right now because I'll go to jail if I do."
"I understand. So, you're not rejecting me. You're just saying that we can't get together now."
"That's right," he said as he held her hands sweetly. "I'd never reject a woman, if I'm not committed, even if she was the ugliest woman in the world."
smiling.