Page 28 of Oh, Sacred Dark
“But I feel fine,” Roman insisted.
“And I believe you, but there’s probably something going under the surface. Better to prevent than to cure.”
Roman didn’t get what the big deal was. He had always Dropped, and it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. It was how hewas.
“Ok, the first thing I’m going to do is draw your blood, okay? We’ll get that analysed while we talk; we’ve got a Listener machine here. Sound good?”
Roman nodded and sat through the process, a docile animal.
“All right, perfect. I’m just going to ask you some questions now—answer as truthfully as you can. If you feel like you can’t answer honestly, it’s better if you tell me that, okay? Anything you share will stay between us unless you are an imminent danger to yourself or others.”
“Okay,” Roman said after an expectant pause. Dr Elise sat on a wheeled chair and rolled over. Roman wondered if she did it to be lower than Roman and give him the impression that he had any sort of power.
“So, Tyler told me a little about the situation. You Dropped, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you remember what time it started?”
Roman tried to trace the black hole of the Drop to its inception. “It was right after dinner, so…seven thirty, maybe.”
“Okay. It’s midnight now, so it must have lasted three and a half hours, more or less?”
Roman’s eyes widened. He hadn’t even thought to notice the time. “It’s—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you so late, and Tyler—”
“You haven’t, I’m on guard tonight,” she smiled placidly.
Roman took a deep breath, heart still racing, but he had nothing to say to that.
“Okay, so, the Drop tonight lasted three hours. Do you know if that’s a normal length for you?”
“Uhm…” Roman struggled to crawl out of the sudden bout of panic. “Longer, normally. But I manage to hold them off until the night, so it’s not like I couldn’t work or do things.”
“How do you normally hold them off?”
“I…I don’t know. I just do.”
“You don’t do anything specific like kneel for yourself, or relaxation techniques, or taking walks…anything at all?” The doctor pushed.
“I kneel sometimes. And I take walks lately, but it’s not really for that.”
“Okay. When was your first Drop, can you remember?”
Roman wrapped his arms around himself. Were they going to explore every ugly fault in him, right from the beginning? “I…when I was fifteen.” Of course he remembered. How could he forget the pain of it, the madness, the not knowing what the hell was happening to him?
For the first time, the doctor seemed a little surprised. “What’s the longest you’ve gone without a Drop?”
“Uhm…a month and a half. It used to not happen as often.” It couldn’t. He’d be dead if his dad or Jeremy had witnessed them enough to grow tired of him.
“Okay. And they’ve always been about three to four hours long?”
“No, they were like half an hour in the beginning. They got worse,” Roman admitted.
“Is there anything specific that triggers them? Or holds them off a little?”
Roman gave that some thought. His mind was numb, though, blind and deaf. “Not really.”
“Okay. And when was the last time you scened?”
