"Doctor, his parents are here again," I heard my nurse say. His voice was gentle, but frantic as spoke, but my doctor's expression didn't change. My parents came every day to see me, but each day they were turned away. I didn't mind, and there constant appearance was the only thing that told me how much time has passed.
"Send them away," my doctor answered, and my nurse was taken back.
"Dr. Deimos, they're his parents," the nurse argued. "Don't you think he wants to see them?"
Oh, there was again. They talked about me as if I wasn't there. I didn't mind that either, because I really wasn't. My focused swayed when people tried to talk to me, and I haven't spoken a word or reacted in days. Dr. Deimos tells me that I'm in shock. It's been six days.
"He has seen them once, correct?" the Doctor countered, and he was correct. The police had taken me home once on another doctor's orders. They thought it would help, but they were wrong. "That didn't go very well, did it? Plus," he said, gliding his chair closer to my face so he could examine me, "I doubt that he wants them here."
"They're his parents," the nurse said, "of course he wants to see them."
The Doctor carefully brushed back my hair and squirmed at his touched. When I had calmed down again, he shined a light in my eyes. "Because they are his parents is the very reason he doesn't want to see them," the Doctor explained, and then put the light down. "I'm sure he misses them, but would you want to see your parents if you were like this?"
"I can't imagine what you must be feeling," the doctor then said to me, and I suddenly had the urge to cry, but held it in.
"But they'll understand," the nurse argued again.
The Doctor sighed. "They'll understand for a while, but not forever. This is not something you can heal from. You can move on, but there is no healing. For a long time they'll understand, maybe even years, but one day that will stop. They'll stop trying to see that you're in ruins, and instead ask why you haven't healed already. There'll be a day when you'll have to realize that you're the only one you can count on to understand."
And with that last statement, he walked out of my room, and I realized for the first time that he was talking directly to me.