Suicide Hotline Butterfly

Candice meets her psychologist in the ward - a therapist who seems to empathize with her entirely.

Chapter 2

The rain was pouring down outside of the thick glass door of Candice's preferred living area in the Behavioral Unit. Through the window she saw a yard of grass with some metal chairs and tables enclosed with a all brick wall. Trapped on trapped.

“Candice!” called a nurse from in the hallway, hiding behind glass to hand out medication to the crazies. She got up and walked carefully to retrieve her pills, hands clasped in front of her and head low, her long blonde hair braided to one side. She pulled on the sleeves of her blue sweatshirt that she wore over her paper gown as the nurse administrated two pills to Candice. She opened her mouth to show she'd swallowed them, and went back to her uncomfortable seat in the living area.

She was doing her best to ignore the other patients in the room with her. There were less that morning than there more the night before; someone got to go home. She poked at the eggs on her plastic plate with her plastic fork. Maybe the eggs were plastic, too. Sure tasted so. She ate some anyway.

“Candice!” she was called again and she looked up at the door. A red headed staff member was standing and beckoned her. She rose from her seat and followed the nurse sleepily. Candice didn't understand why they patients were woken up at six in the morning...

“Where am I going?” asked Candice quietly.

“Dr. Tibideaux has you set for an appointment here at nine,” she said, opening the door marked “3” in this new area of the hospital. Candice had floated by...

“Yes ma'am.” Candice stepped inside of the heavily red-themed room, furnished with pretty dark wood and many books. She wondered if she could borrow some while she was stuck here so her brain wouldn't melt. Her gaze shifted to the stranger she had just been left alone with. He was tall and somewhat thin, but muscular; he had reddish brown hair that was cut neatly and swept to the right side. His face was lightly freckled and he wore a white button-up beneath a gray vest and black pants.

“Candice Kraus?” he asked, smiling broadly. His voice was deep but had a somewhat nasal quality to it, and lacked the twang of a native Louisianian. It was perhaps a little familiar.

“Yes.” She kept her eyes fixed on the black cross hanging on the wall behind him. He motioned for her to sit in the seat across from his desk and she did, pulling at her paper gown. He sat down behind his desk and put a letter away into a filing cabinet.

“How are you doing this morning?”

“It's my first morning in the psych ward,” she said dryly.

“I understand,” he smiled again. She glanced up at him and caught that he had light green eyes " lighter than hers. She looked back down. “Dr. Rao told me a little about you, but I prefer to make my own analysis.” Candice listened closely to his words, hearing his voice more than the language itself. She pushed her hair back a bit and responded,

“What do you need to know?”

“Well, you filled out the basic depression and anxiety tests when you got here, so there's no use going into that. I have those in your file,” he pointed to the folder in front of him. “You're not depressed. You're not very anxious. No hallucinations. And yet here you are,” he bit the inside of his cheek and looked at Candice, “on suicide watch.” Candice crossed one leg over the other, the bandages on her upper thigh now clearly visible to Dr. Tibideaux. He took notice and looked back at her.

“I had an fight with a friend. My brother is in... I thought you said Rao told you,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and grimacing slightly.

“She did. I just needed to see how much you would tell me. And you clearly don't want to talk about it, Candice.” She stared at the edge of the desk right in front of her. Few things were on his desk for her to look at, and for the moment, it was a glass figurine of a possum. So detailed, she thought.

“Nope.”

“Well, what would you like to talk about?” Candice could not stop focusing on his voice. Where have I heard your voice before, Doctor...

“I would like to talk about getting out of here.”

“You'll be on suicide watch until tomorrow, and you'll be here at least three more days after that. It's standard. So let's talk about how we can help you while you're here.” Candice sunk in her chair and ran her hand along her braid. Dr. Tibideaux watched her carefully as she processed this information.

“I was just stressed out,” Candice said. “I don't need to be in here. This place is for people who are chemically imbalanced, not people who have life problems that cause a breakdown.”

“This place isn't for you, you're right, Candice,” he said. “Not long-term. Where will you go when you're released?”

“I don't know...” she said. “I've been thinking about it. A shelter may be my only option.” The reality that a shelter would probably be as bad as a psych ward made Candice want to bang her head into the desk in front of her. Dr. Tibideaux stood up and walked along the bookcases lining the wall, studying them.

“And you would need to find a job.” He stopped walking and turned his head to look at Candice, her eyes fixed at the floor in front of him.

“I don't have experience.”

“I have been told you study psychology, no?” Candice nodded and picked at her fingernails.

“I go to St. Christina Community.”

“Financial aid?”

“For now,” she said. “They didn't cover it this semester...which is why I took the semester off.”

“And since you weren't studying, what were you doing in your free time?” Candice looked up at the man standing by the bookshelves.

“Studying,” she said hesitantly. “I still research all the time, and write about my studies and about philosophy.” She tugged on her braid with some force. “If not that, I paint.”

“Smart young woman,” Dr. Tibideaux recognized. “You should be taking classes.”

“I want to. I will.” Candice watched carefully as he returned to his seat and opened a drawer. A moment later he pulled a chocolate bar from inside the desk and reached toward Candice.

“Here. The hospital food doesn't taste good, does it?” She slowly took the silver-wrapped chocolate bar from the doctors hand and placed it in her lap.

“Thank you...”

“I must say, I don't agree with a lot of what Dr. Rao has written here about you, with all due respect to my colleague.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, realizing that Dr. Tibideaux had yet to write any notes. She tilted her head slightly to the side, avoiding the doctors very steady gaze.

“I don't believe you suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder,” he said. Candice looked up at him. “I believe you simply suffer the tragedy of never having felt safe.” Candice looked on, waiting for him to continue. He took his cue. “Your your father couldn't protect you, your mother couldn't protect you, and your brother couldn't be a parent. And if he was,” he said, eying Candice's still-visible old scars, “he was an abusive one.” He waited for a response. Candice sighed.

“I can protect myself.” She shifted in her seat, leaning to her left side with her head propped on her fist. “Can you?” The doctor willed Candice to make eye-contact for a split second as hardened her demeanor.

“I can't protect myself from myself " is that it?” she asked flatly. “I had a breakdown; I'm entitled to one.”

“You would have worked before your brother went to prison if socializing with others came to you easily as you connect the mental dots necessary to make you a great psychologist one day, Candice,” he said. “You specialize in criminals, no?”

“Yes, I study psychopathy... I've read all of Bob Hare... I don't remember telling Dr. Rao about my specialization.” Candice gazed in front of her at the letter opener on Dr. Tibideaux's desk.

“We will think of something together, after we get to the heart of the matter " your self injury.”

“Well,” Candice said pushing the paranoid thoughts out of her mind, “I started when I was eleven, right before our mom died... stopped for a long time, and now I did it again during that breakdown.”

“You didn't only cut, though, Candice,” said the doctor. Candice looked at him from the corner of her eye. She wondered how old he was. The achievements hanging on the wall indicated to Candice that he had his doctorate for ten years. He must be in his late thirties, she thought, although he didn't quite look that old.

“I know.”

“Was it an attempt?” he asked. His demeanor was that of someone who was very concerned but aloof, completely lacking in judgment.

“I can't tell you,” Candice said, running her fingernails along the tops of her knees like a blade. What had she been trying to do? Was Daniel so annoying she'd decided to off herself? No, but she'd really wanted to, and she could have, and knowing that was like having the sub-conscience step out and wielding a knife at you.

“Not a pure attempt, not really,” she replied. “It was self-destructive, severe, and uninhibited. I did not plan this.” She was poised and felt comfortable in the room with the doctor. He was cutting the bullshit, knowing she already knew the basic psychological tests inside and out, and was showing respect for her intelligence. This meant, in turn, that he was intelligent.

“I felt empty,” she said. This is what she had told Daniel on the phone. It was true.

“Do you still?”

“Yeah.” Candice was hesitant giving her honest answer. She knew what feeling nothing was a symptom of and she didn't want or need to be kept in the hospital longer. The drive to lie was weakened by her medication, her delirium, her life. She did feel empty, and she had nothing else to say on the matter.

“Emptiness is a symptom of many things,” Dr. Tibideaux responded casually. Candice studied a leather bound book titled “Suicidology” to avoid looking directly at him.

“Yes,” she said. “It is often a defense mechanism in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, it is often the numbness of depression, Schizoid personalities, Avoidant personalities, and of Psychopaths and Sociopaths...Now what you are going to attempt to do is uncover my reason for emptiness.” Dr. Tibideaux studied Candice as she had a small information-spillover, a time when Candice tended to briefly leave her own demeanor, voice, and reality behind to become little other than a soft blonde textbook.

“When something is empty,” the doctor said as he adjusted his collar, taking note of how carefully he was being watched by the girl in front of him, “it has the capacity to be filled with whatever the one in control wants. If your baseline of emotion were to already be full, Candice, what is it you think it would be full of?” She looked up for a speeding moment and they caught each others eyes. She quickly averted to the right side of the room, shifting her body.

“Nothing sticks,” replied Candice. “It's like my empty pours out.” She paused for a moment and a brief wave of nausea came over her and then vanished. Dr. Tibideaux watched this happen but didn't comment on it, as Candice was clearly trying to hide it. “There's nothing to fix.”

“I am not here to fix you,” he said. “I'm here to help you find your way, with better coping skills. And I am here to listen to you. It doesn't seem like many people do.”

The session ended ten minutes late and Candice was escorted to the exercise room, where she shot a basketball at the hoop over and over. She thought about her session with Dr. Tibideaux for much of the day as she read a book he had given her from his office titled “Logic.” He had said it would be important for her to keep her mind active while she was in the ward. She wondered if he knew it was already too active and that leaving it alone with no track would be like letting a car alarm go off for over three days.

On her way to her room after her second round of medication that night, she heard her name and turned to see Dr. Tibideaux near the back exit. She gave a small wave, holding a large pillow under one arm and a cookie in the other.

“Have a good night,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Night night,” she said, inching closer to her room. Dr. Tibideaux nodded and left the building into the cold night as Candice crawled into her bed in the dark. She didn't like sleeping alone in the dark and the way it amplified sounds around her. She was so sensitive to auditory stimuli as it was, she didn't need it being worse while trying to sleep. Sounds are important, she thought as she buried her face into her pillow. She could even remember voices before names and faces. Have a good night, she heard inside her mind. His voice. I'm accustomed to hearing it. Candice fell asleep at the moment of realization with some reluctance. It could wait a few hours.  

Author's Note

Ignore typos and stuff.