Chapter 24: 24. Describe her

Derek looked at Dr. Suarez, clear confusion lingering on his face. How was that not a bad thing?

"It means you care about this girl."

Care? What was that?

"That is a positive sign of your recovery, Derek. It's a huge progress."

Derek got more confused. How was this associated with his recovery? He was confused about all those feelings and now it was a huge progress in his healing?

Great!

"And how is that progress? I don't understand anything I feel and you are saying it's a good sign?"

Dr. Suarez sighed. "I never heard you talk about someone. I don't even hear you talk about yourself. Our meetings have always been how you're progressing, and all have been the same till today. You can testify to that. So you can agree with me on the huge progress part." Dr Suarez explained.

The frown on Derek's face seemed to tighten. He was trying hard to understand all of this. He closed his eyes and shook his head briefly.

"Wait... I think you don't understand the situation well..." He mumbled audibly. "She can't be on my mind all the time and that should be something to be called a good progress." He kept shaking his head. Nothing Dr. Suarez was saying made sense to him.

"If you don't calm down and accept the situation, you will have a hard time understanding it." Dr. Suarez chipped in. "I understand you've never felt that way towards anyone before. So we both know that this is something new, and again, we both know it's not a bad thing to think about someone."

Derek's head spun.

"Tell me, Derek. How did you meet this girl?"

Derek wasn't ready to talk about this.

"She was supposed to be dead." He simply said and Dr Suarez frowned.

"Dead? How? Did you save her?" He asked, thinking he saved her in an accident or something.

"Yes."

"How?"

"I was supposed to kill her. Her father betrayed me and I..." Yes. The confusion began from there. Why didn't he kill them?

"You what?" Dr Suarez urged and Derek frustratedly shook his head.

Just why? He ransacked his brain for a tangible reason.

"I don't know." He thought out loud. He honestly didn't know why he didn't kill them.

Flashes of that day came flooding his memory. When he went to their home with the aim to kill.

When he got to their home, the first thing that caught his attention was a beautiful young girl, probably in her early twenties, with blonde hair and the most mesmerising eyes he had ever seen, laughing her heart out while holding a paint brush and wearing an apron stained with different colours of paint.

He saw a woman in her early thirties, or maybe mid thirties, she should be older than that with the age of the girl if she was her daughter, but she looked quite young. She had a complete opposite reaction from the young girl. She had a frown on her face and was looking down on a canvas with some painting. Clearly, the girl was teasing her mother.

Derek's face had hardened on that sight, and he had wondered if they were not the ones that just lost a family member. When he budged in on them they had scampered back in fear and begged for their lives, and he had actually spared them. Strange.

"That's an honest answer, Derek." Dr Suarez said, pulling him from his thoughts.

Derek sighed. And this man had to keep talking in parables. Tsk...

"So what should I do? I can't possibly have her evading my thoughts all the time." He moved straight to the main issue. Getting her out of his mind. She had had enough and that was it. She should just leave his head!

"You want to stop thinking about her?"

"I want her to stop getting into my head!" Derek said through gritted teeth. He was clearly frustrated. Dr Suarez couldn't hold his laughter anymore and Derek was tempted to glare at him, but he respected him a lot and didn't want to disrespect him so he remained calm.

"Should I be honest with you?"

Oh no! This didn't sound good. Derek didn't reply, but Dr Suarez continued anyway.

"People get into your head only when you let them."

And he was at the parables again. He almost face-palmed.

"What are you trying to say?" He didn't understand any of this. Was it a bad idea coming to see him? He was more confused now than before.

"I am saying, she isn't in your head by herself. You rather have her in your head." He gauged Derek's reaction after his words and saw confusion written all over, but he didn't know how else to best explain this issue to him. "You are thinking about her, that's what it means." Okay, maybe this would do.

"I don't think about her!" Derek almost snapped. "She's just... always there when I want to think."

Oh my... this was going to be tough, Dr Suarez almost gave up.

"Listen, Derek. Like I told you earlier, this is a new thing and remember it's a huge progress to your recovery. So try to calm down and let's get to the depths of it."

Right! He needed to calm down. Derek took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Releasing it slowly, he opened his eyes and met Dr Suarez's gaze, who had a bright smile on his face.

"Good. Now tell me how often you see this girl." Dr Suarez pressed further, showing pure interest in the topic now as he adjusted himself well in his seat and clasped his hands together on the table between them.

Derek tried hard not to scoff. How often? He saw her literally everyday! And he felt drawn to her each time, the pull getting stronger as the days went by.

"She's at my place now. I took her hostage for some investigations after his father's death."

"And how is her living condition there? Do you torture her...?" Dr Suarez drawled. Well, that was what he was good at. Torturing people had become his second nature since he didn't feel any emotions. And this girl in question was the daughter of a betrayer so...

"No. She... I gave her a room at my side of the mansion. The last room." Dr Suarez's eyes slightly widened and he tried to suppressed the gasp that rose up his throat. "She seemed uncomfortable in the underground room so I..." Wait, why was he asking him all that? He frowned. "Look, where are we getting at with all these questions?"

Dr Suarez wanted to jump up and down in excitement. Derek had really progressed! He had started showing emotions! He had actually started feeling! Oh, good Lord!

Derek was one of his very few clients with Alexithymia, a condition where one loses all emotions or where their emotions are numbed. And Derek was the only one that has delayed in recovering. It had been years. He almost gave up on his recovery, and now this? He was more than happy.

He had almost accepted the fact that Derek's condition would take a long while after about five years of no improvement. He understood that what he went through was something that would probably haunt him for the rest of his life. He then realised how serious it was becoming when there was close to no changes even when he turned eighteen. Even when he was asked to kill someone he would do it without batting an eye.

He was like a walking corpse, the only thing that made him look alive was his beating heart and the rise and fall of his chest when he breathed. He never smiled, nor frowned, as far as Dr Suarez could remember.

His face was always expressionless. Passive. His eyes cold and empty. Void of anything that could be traced to a particular emotion. So hearing him say all those things was like seeing an oasis after a long walk in the desert. He could finally breathe knowing that his hard work was yielding positive results, not bothered by how little the result looked like now. To him, this was a huge one, and he was thankful for this girl who brought the change.

Speaking of which girl, an idea popped up in his mind and he smirked.

"Can you describe this girl to me?" He asked. This may trigger more emotions if what he was thinking was true. "How does she look like? I want to be able to recognise her without you pointing her out to me. Can you do that, Derek?"

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Hello there! Thanks for stopping by, lovely readers.

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