the writing block has hit me hard, but i actually managed to write sthg today!! some very tentative Jonelias, there you go:
***
“So what brings you here today?”
It took a few tries to get his voice to cooperate. He could feel how hoarse it was, more like spitting gravel than forming words.
“I have trouble sleeping.”
Should he have phrased it differently? Played coy, started with something trivial and meaningless, to build a rapport with this—what was his name again? He glanced down at the plaque: Bouchard. Dr Bouchard.
“What kind of trouble?”
Jon rubbed his forehead and tried to pull himself together. The armchair was nice, comfortable, and he couldn’t maintain proper posture no matter how hard he tried.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “At all. That is—I fall asleep, but then I wake up, maybe an hour or two later. Every time. Every night. And—” he coughed; Bouchard handed him a glass of water with a bland, sympathetic smile. “I know there is… medicine. To help with that.”
“Indeed,” Bouchard said. “Have you spoken to your GP about it?”
“Yes, but they refused to help me,” Jon said. “And, look. I know what it sounds like. And I’m not an addict, I swear, it’s just—”
“I never said you were,” Bouchard said. “But the truth is, Jonathan—”
“Jon.”
“—Jon, that these substances are extremely addictive. Before we reach for such drastic measures, I would first like to gain a better understanding of your situation.”
“My situation?” Jon spat back, sitting rigid in his chair. “I told you. I can’t sleep, I’m tired all the time, my head hurts, I can’t focus, my boss caught me asleep at my desk, and if this goes on I’ll lose my damn job.”
His breaths were coming in fast and shallow; his heart hammered wildly. But the rage soon faded and shame crept in instead. He was making a fool of himself, weren’t he? And Bouchard kept watching him, his gaze weighty and intense, completely at odds with his mild-mannered appearance.
“And how long has this been going on?”
“I—I don’t know,” Jon said. “I—a few weeks, maybe? Or—days? Sometimes it feels like a lifetime.” He shuddered, voice dropping to a whimper. “I can barely remember anything anymore…”
After a short pause, Bouchard said, “I see.” He jotted something down in his notebook, but his eyes hardly ever left Jon’s own. It was unsettling in some ways, and strangely comforting in others. “Have you discussed sleep apnoea with your GP?” Jon nodded. “Did they refer you for a polysomnogram?”
Bouchard went on to ask a series of banal questions: what sorts of tests Jon had done, about his lifestyle, his habits, drugs, alcohol, and so on – everything Jon had already talked through with the GP. Really, he could have at least made an effort to come up with something more interesting. Weren’t psychiatrists supposed to be clever and insightful?
Good lord, he hoped he hadn’t said that out loud. It was hard to tell, these days, what went on inside his head and what made it past his lips…
“Jon?”
Jon blinked; his vision swam. There was a picture above Bouchard’s desk, a stylized image of an owl. He must have been staring at it for—how long now?
“Sorry,” Jon said. “I may have dozed off for a second.” He stared down at his hands, and said: “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
The creak of Bouchard’s chair, as he adjusted his position, and the scrape of pen against a piece of paper; a proper fountain pen, in silver and emerald green, an expensive gift from an emotionally distant spouse…
Jon blinked; his vision swam. The owl was staring back.
“Please,” he said. “I just need to sleep…”
“What about your dreams, Jonathan?”
“My—dreams?”
“What do you see when you close your eyes?”
“I don’t really know,” Jon said after a while. “I mostly have nightmares. Almost every night, I think. And they feel so real. But I can’t remember them afterwards. Not in any meaningful detail.”
“Have you tried writing them down?”
Oh, splendid. Now they were going to analyse dreams. As if they held some deep and hidden meaning. Some key to Jon’s subconsciousness. The idea was patently absurd, and it drained whatever respect Jon had for Bouchard’s credibility. He meant to laugh it off, he really did, but for some reason his throat seized and his hands began to tremble. So he just shook his head, mutely.
Bouchard made another note. His eyes were pale grey; had Jon seen them before? He must have, he just couldn’t remember…
“Well,” Bouchard said. “We are presently running out of time, but I look forward to our next meeting.”
Jon nodded. His head was hurting again; he just wanted to go home.
It occurred to him, on his way back, that Bouchard never actually gave him what he asked for. He really ought to seek out a more competent psychiatrist, but the idea of talking to someone new and answering the same damn questions for the third time annoyed him to no end. Next meeting, then.
The following day, he called in sick. And they agreed so quickly, so easily; was it obvious, then, that Jon was a wreck? That he couldn’t be trusted to do his job properly? Were they glad to be rid of him?
In an attempt to relax, he took a long bath. The water was lovely, warm and soothing, and it was easy to give in… to feel it around him, and within him, to feel it lap against his skin, further and further, till it touched his lower lip, gentle as a kiss; to draw it in, and feel it, really feel it, as it filled him up, smothered his breath, and pulled him under… and it burned, flaming hot in his lungs, he opened his mouth and gasped for breath but there was just more of it, everywhere, tight like a vice around his chest, and he kicked and flailed around but there was no air, no air at all, just this growing pressure, endless pressure, and he didn’t know which way to swim, there was no escape, his muscles spasmed uselessly, his vision blackened…
Jon woke up coughing water and bile onto the bathroom floor. Then he stared down, blearily. Was he actually drowning, or did he just dream about drowning? There had to be a way to tell nightmare from reality. There had to be some way to fix whatever was wrong with him.
A short follow-up to the Jonelias thing from earlier:
***
It was their third session - or was it fourth? They bled into one another after a while, even though they remained the one focal point in the hazy, dreamlike reality Jon pretended to inhabit most of the time.
“Tell me about your dreams,” Bouchard had asked, and Jon did. The words poured out of him in a seemingly endless torrent of visions: places he hadn’t been, people he hadn’t met, feelings that were not his own. And fear, ever-present, debilitating, paralyzing fear.
“How does dwelling on them help me?” Jon asked irritably some time later. “They’re just dreams.”
Bouchard’s mouth twitched, settling into a smile.
“So they are,” he said. “Would you like to talk about something else?”
“No,” Jon said, sinking in the back of his chair. “I would like you to tell me what’s wrong with me. And I would like you to help me, instead of wasting my time. And my money.”
Despite Jon’s rudeness, Bouchard would not stop smiling.
“If this is a waste of time,” he said, “Why do you keep coming back here?”
Why.
“I don’t know,” Jon said, haltingly. A few moments ago he had so many words at his disposal, spilling freely from his lips; now there was nothing to choose from. He was empty. He felt hollowed out, now that—whatever it was—was out in the open, pinned to paper through Bouchard’s quick, elegant handwriting.
He didn’t know. But he came back the next week, and then two weeks after that.
“You’re quiet today,” Bouchard observed.
Jon rubbed his temples. The headaches were getting worse.
“I still don’t know why I’m here,” Jon mumbled. “I just—I feel there is something you’re not telling me.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said slowly, quietly. “Something about yourself, or something about me.” Bouchard’s gaze, heavy and piercing; Jon shuddered. “It’s just a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
“Stop asking me useless questions,” Jon snapped. “Why—what do you want from me?”
“Why would I want anything from you?” Bouchard said. “You came to me, Jon. Not the other way around.”
Jon groaned. “This is exceedingly frustrating.”
Mercifully, Bouchard remained silent for once. He just sat there, watching Jon with an enigmatic smile, saying very little for the remainder of their time.
They shook hands as they parted ways. It was part of the ritual: Bouchard’s firm grip, the warmth of his fingers as they lingered—not too long, never too long, but just long enough for Jon to wonder if he was imagining it, if there was something, anything there, behind the doctor’s pale eyes and the curve of his smile.
(He dreamt of those eyes, sometimes. Watching him from afar, without judgement, without emotion, but with some terrible hidden purpose. He never brought it up during their sessions.)
The fingers lingered, their warmth seeping into Jon’s skin. And with them, something sharp. Bouchard remained professional, distant, polite; but right there in Jon’s hand lay a piece of paper.
A date. A time. An address.
Solid, written down, real. It had to be real. He held it in his hand until it became crumpled beyond recognition.
He couldn’t remember the last time he got to hold onto something real.
