3 Jan 2001
A conversation with Relena...
DISCLAIMER: All Gundam Wing characters are property of Sunrise, Bandai Visuals, Sotsu Agency, and Asahi TV. This work is not written for profit, but for entertainment purposes only.
PAIRINGS: 6x5/5x6, 13x6/6x13, some very mild 4x9
WARNING: AU/modern day San Francisco; implied yaoi will turn to yaoi and eventual lemon in later chapters
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: To Alfred Hitchock who directed the incredible film, "Vertigo."
"Dreams are the Royal Road to the unconscious."- Sigmund Freud
Two of his clients had been in crisis that week, and so Treize didn't get back to reading Wufei's diary. He barely managed to squeeze in Zechs's appointment on Thursday because one young woman he worked with had been hospitalized for attempting suicide. She had swallowed a bottle of aspirin and it had been an ugly and painful rescue.
When he got back to his office he was exhausted and Zechs could sense it. Their session had been tense, Zechs not talking much, and the blond man had left ten minutes early, claiming he had something else to do. When Treize had gotten some sleep and thought about Zechs's demeanor, he couldn't help wondering it Zechs had taken his exhaustion for rejection.
He was about to write some notes for their next session when the phone rang.
"Hilde here," came the perky voice. "I have a call for you on line three - a Relena Peacecraft? She says you treat her brother and that she'd like to speak with you if you're available. Do you want to be available or unavailable?"
Puzzled, Treize thought for a moment and then said, "I'll take the call. Thanks, Hilde." He pushed the button for line three. "Hello, Relena. This is a pleasant surprise."
"Hi, Dr. Khushrenada. I hope I'm not interrupting a session or something like that."
"No, I'm in between things. What can I do for you?"
"I was wondering if I could talk to you, privately. It's... it's about Zechs."
"Is there any reason you want to talk privately about it?" he asked, feeling more puzzled than ever.
"There are some things you should know, about our parents, and the treatment he had when he was younger. He... he hates to talk about it. He gets upset whenever it's mentioned and I don't want to make him feel worse, just when he seems to be responding to things."
"Well, I can certainly understand that," Treize began, but then was interrupted.
"But I also feel you should know what went on back then. It might be useful to you, don't you think?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it -"
"Great! When can you come over? I'll need to arrange it with Cathrine."
Instantly Treize heard Anne's words in his mind. /'You haven't been meeting him outside your office have you?... Treize, that *has* to stop. You can make both him and yourself *very* confused that way. Only office visits from now on, all right?'/
/But surely... this would be visiting his *sister*, not him... it wouldn't *really* be the same... would it? Oh, hell.../
"Relena... I don't think I can meet with you after all..." /Make up a reason, Khushrenada... think of something.../ "Zechs would have to agree to it and I really shouldn't be coming to the house. I was just there that one time and... can't really spare the time again. Perhaps you could write something for me?"
"*Write* something? But Doctor -"
"That would really be the best way, Relena. I'll transfer you to Hilde. She can give you the address of the clinic. Thanks for calling."
With trembling fingers he dialed Hilde's extension and transferred the call, then sat back and buried his face in his hands. /I'm betraying him... I probably should know about that time, and if he refuses to talk to me about it, it makes sense that I hear it from a family member, and yet... I can't even trust myself to do that! What should I do.../
He looked at the clock - five minutes until his next client. he should be getting out the chart, reviewing the notes, getting ready... but he couldn't make himself do it. His mind was whirring like mad with thoughts of what Relena could have meant, about the "treatment," about why Zechs got so upset that he couldn't talk about it.
/Could that be contributing to the nightmares? Maybe this is more complicated than simple grief... maybe there's an element of something from his past./
He frowned and moved a stack of papers on his desk. The small blue diary that Zechs had given him lay underneath. A quick peek at his clock and he decided he had time for at least one entry. He turned to January 20th.
[Went shopping for Z's present today. I wanted it to be special so I went to Chinatown and looked in Mrs. Dan's silk shop. She had the perfect thing. It's a deep blue silk robe with a white tiger embroidered on the back. I told her that Zechs was born in the Year of the Tiger, and she gave me a wink. "Tiger men are good in bed," she told me. Oh, if she only knew... The again, maybe she does.
January 21 [Talked to S today. She was wondering what we were doing for our anniversary, so we talked about it. I thought she might be upset, talking about him and me like that, but she was okay. We're going to meet in the park by her place next time if the good weather holds.]
There was a knock at his door and Treize nearly jumped out of his chair. He walked out into the hall to see his next client's file in his door pocket and gestured the man in. Wufei would have to wait.
It was hell getting through the weekend. Zechs hadn't asked him to drop by or visit with him and that had made him inexplicably sad. He had forced himself to do catch-up reading in his professional journals all Saturday, and on Sunday he went out to Fort Point to look at the bay and brood.
When he got to work that Monday, he had back-to-back clients to see up until 11 o'clock. He has just ushered his ten o'clock client out and shut the door hoping to get a stretch on the sofa when a knock came on the door.
"Damn," he muttered pushing himself up. Opening the door he saw Hilde, looking put upon.
"I'm *sorry* Dr. K, but there's a young woman out in the waiting room who is *insisting* on seeing you. She doesn't have an appointment but says she's prepared to wait until you're free. Should I tell her to shove off? 'Cause I *will*, gladly."
Treize stifled a laugh at her belligerent expression and followed her to the waiting room. He was stunned to see Relena there, in a wheelchair pushed by Cathrine.
Hi, Dr. Khushrenada," she said cheerfully.
"Relena - what are you doing here?" he said, nodding to the older woman and then walking over to the wheelchair, sitting in a chair opposite it. "I thought I said -"
"To write it all down, I know," Relena finished for him, rolling her eyes. "But I'm not that patient about things and I really do think you need to know about a few things, so I'm willing to wait until you have a spot of time free." She smiled again, the optimism that he would see her evident in her eyes.
He sighed. "All right, all right - I have a half hour right now. Why don't you come on in."
"Thank you!" she said gratefully and then glanced up at Cathrine.
"Would you mind waiting out here?" she asked her aunt.
"Not at all," the woman murmured and sat down, expression unchanging.
Treize pushed the wheelchair into his office and shut the door. He gave Relena the sternest look he could and said, "I shouldn't do this, you know."
"Oh, I know," Relena answered, looking charmingly sheepish, "but it's important and it *is* for a good cause." She looked up at him hopefully. "You *do* think my brother is a good cause, *don't* you."
Treize had to laugh. "Yes," he drawled, "he *is* a good cause. I'll admit that. So - what is it that was so important you had to come all the way here to tell me?"
She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, for a moment and then spoke. "You probably know that my brother had seizures as a child. My parent's first thought he was just disobedient, because he seemed to not be listening to them so much. Now, of course, we know that's when the seizures were happening, but they didn't know it then and... well, they were a bit... *firm* in their punishment."
Treize noticed that she was having difficult meeting his eye, a sign that she might be keeping in more than she was telling. "What do you mean by 'firm,' Relena?"
"They believed in, well, *physical* punishment. They thought it was the only way he'd change. My father had a leather strap..."
Treize winced. "But they eventually got help for him, right?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes, but it wasn't until he was in the third grade. His teachers began complaining that he wasn't performing at the level they knew he was capable of. At first my parents just increased the punishments, but then the school nurse was with him one day when he had one of his 'spells' and she suggested my parents take him to a doctor."
Relena sat back in her chair, frowning down at the floor. "I have to admit, I don't remember our parents feeling badly about the punishment when they found out it was seizures. I think they were just grateful that the cause of his disobedience had been found and could probably be treated..."
She looked up at Treize, her expression uneasy. "They were devastated when they found out he was one of the ones who didn't respond to drugs. I remember my mother crying about it - saying that my brother was an embarrassment to the family and that maybe they should ship him off to a special school."
Treize made a noise of disbelief. "Relena - why were your parents so unsympathetic to what he was going through? I don't understand a parent acting that way when a child has a disorder."
She rolled her eyes. "You didn't know our parents, Dr. Khushrenada. Appearances were *everything* to them. These were people who fired six maids because they couldn't put the knickknacks back in place the right way. Then they fired another one because she was a single mother, and what *would* people think?" Her expression took on a faint bitter cast. "These were people who locked Zechs and I up in our rooms whenever company came so we wouldn't embarrass them or detract from the 'mood.' That's just the kind of people they were and we were stuck with them."
Treize's brow furrowed as he leaned forward, chin in his hands. "So, I take it your parents thought that finding another kind of therapy - other than drugs, I mean - was a possible way to end the embarrassment?"
She nodded. "They were pretty desperate at that point. They'd been trying all sorts of drugs for years and nothing had worked. Zechs's seizures had gotten so frequent that he had to be taken out of school for a while. I think it was a friend of theirs who suggested they take him to Dr. Dermail."
"And what was Dr. Dermail like, do you know?"
"Well," Relena said slowly, "I only know what Zechs told me about him, and a little of what I overheard my parents say. He sounded... oh, I don't know - old-fashioned I guess. Very interested in - oh, what's that called when you train someone to respond to a certain thing and then you reward them?"
"Conditioning?" Treize offered. "Behavior modification?"
"Behavior modification, that was it!" Relena said, nodding vigorously. He gave Zechs this chart and he would get check marks for getting through so many minutes without a seizure. My mother and Cathrine were supposed to watch him all the time." She made a face and looked up at Treize. "He *hated* it. Said it felt creepy to be watched liked that."
"So, what would happen if he got enough check marks?" Treize asked.
"There were these rewards - like being able to see a movie or getting new clothes. He tried really hard, and some days he made it, but there were a lot of days he didn't make it, too."
"And what would happen then?" Treize asked, almost afraid to find out.
"I'm not sure," Relena said, "because whatever it was happened at Dr. Dermail's office. If he went in for a session and didn't have enough check marks he was punished somehow." She looked at him earnestly. "Zechs never told me how the doctor did it, but whenever he came back I could tell he'd been crying."
She looked down at her hands again, and he could see she was starting to tire. "That lasted a couple of months. By the end of it - I hate to say this - he *was* better. I mean, he didn't have nearly as many seizures. That next fall he was able to go back to school and things were relatively peaceful for awhile. He didn't upset Mother or Father nearly as much as he had... but he would never talk about what went on at Dr. Dermail's. Ever."
A knock at the door brought Hilde into the room. "Your 11:30 is here, Dr. K."
"Thanks, Hilde," he said, looking over at Relena.
She smiled back at him. "That was most of it. There are some other things, but they can wait until another time. Thanks *so* much for seeing me on such short notice."
Thank you for coming all this way," he said, wheeling her out to where Cathrine was sitting, as if she hadn't moved a muscle. "I appreciate the information. " He waved as they headed down the corridor, his mind working furiously to come up with some explanation of what Dermail might have done with Zechs that would have any effect on his epilepsy.
He waved his next client into his office, making a mental note to himself to look up Dr. Dermail in the phone book.
/It was might be time to make a phone call.../
End of Chapter 11
(:./kumiko/rr11)
