“Have a seat. Take a load off. This heat, am I right? I’m ready for a cooldown like you wouldn’t believe. Sweat through both my shirts before the day is usually done.”
“Yeah, sure. That’d be nice.”
“I hear things are going well for you and Sean,” he says, folding his hands and leaning a chin or two on them. “Just happened to be in the park on Saturday. You two looked happy.”
“Just happened to be there?”
Doc shrugs, grinning. “You know how it is.”
“I suppose.” The town is full of busybodies. “And he’s fine.”
“Migraines?”
“Every now and then. The meds seem to help.”
“Good, good. That’s what I like to hear. You tell him to see me if that changes.”
“Will do.”
“I’m going to try and get to a poker game here in the next few weeks. Show you how a real man plays, am I right?”
“Right,” Mike echoes.
“You’re looking a little tired there.”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Why you’re here?”
He hesitates, and Doc’s eyes narrow slightly. He never misses a thing. It’s why he’s good at what he does. “Mostly,” Mike says.
“Hmm,” Doc says. He takes a pad of paper out from a desk drawer. He grabs the fountain pen sitting next to an open text with a drawing of a layer of brain matter. “You know that whatever is said in here stays between us, right?”
And yeah, Mike knows this, knows Doc is good for it. He wonders how many secrets Doc carries about the people of Amorea. But it’s not his business to ask.
He’s thought about what he wants to say, the words he’s carefully chosen. He needs to get his point across without sounding like a crazy person. He’s not. He’s not crazy. He thinks something is happening. He just doesn’t know if it’s real or not.
“I know,” he says.
Doc nods, satisfied. “Okay, then. Tell me what’s going on.”
Mike says, “I’ve been having… hallucinations.”
Doc hums a little and begins to scribble on his notepad. His writing is illegible. “Auditory?
“Yes.”
“Visual?”
“Yes.”
“Olfactory.”
“Um. Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t—” And he’s thinking about the woman, the woman, and he can barely remember it. It’s lost in smartphone and Björn and texting, but can’t he remember the way she smelled when she collided with him? He doesn’t really remember the how or why of it, but there was a woman, and there was glass broken around them, and she was on top of him, and he could smell her. Her sweat, underlying notes of something sweet and floral.
He says, “Yes. I think so.”
“Tactile?” Doc asks.