"But yet it terrified you?"
"It did," she recalled. "Looking back, it wasn't the house that frightened me, it was a feeling that something was amiss. Maybe it was a link I shared with my sister, the blood in her veins calling to mine. Maybe that's why the dreams began when they did."
A resigned sigh filtered into her thoughts, the doctor's voice finally pulling her attention back to him. "Your sister wasn't in the house."
"No. But she was taken when I was there. She had to be. Those calls..."
...drip...
The sound was beginning to irritate her. With cold, dead eyes she scanned the room, her head slowly twisting over her neck. A door was set off to the right that she'd not noticed before, closed so that she could only guess what lay beyond it. "Is that a bathroom?"
The doctor nodded. "Do you need to use it?"
...drip...
"No," she answered, “but you should fix the faucet."
Narrowed eyes studied her, questions obvious in his unspoken thoughts. "I'll take a look once your session is over."
Silence passed again, the reprieve from conversation a comforting thing. She knew it wouldn't last long.
"Before we discuss the dreams, I'd like to understand why you find them important. When did they start?"
"After." She waved her hand out in front of her, the movement jumpy and uncoordinated. It was as if she were trying to abbreviate everything that occurred between the phone calls and the dreams with the one vague answer.
"After what? Did you see your family after the phone calls? Did you go home?"
Agitation was rough against her skin. Anger built in her veins, an unsettling and inescapable pressure. "Does it matter?" She could only remember bits and pieces, fractured memories and images coming to her on the winds of a tempest storm.
"Do you really need to ask? What would you like to know about first? My mother screaming? My father drowning himself in a bottle of whiskey? Or about my younger brother rocking himself slowly on his bed? Will any of that help me find my sister?"
"No," was his curt, steadfast answer, "but it could help me find you. Isn't that the point of all of this? To help you?"
She glared at him, a feminine snort blowing from her before she declared, "You can't help me until I find her. It's that simple."
Without dignifying the statement, or acknowledging it so that it settled in her head as truth, he asked, "When did you see your family like that? So torn apart? When did you go home, Alice?"
"I don't know. Yesterday, today, back then. It could have been any of those times. If you want a specific date, I can't give it to you. It's all a jumble of chaos in my head, memories and thoughts scattered together with no order or reason."
She was crying, embarrassment rolling down her cheek on a single salty tear. Slapping at it, she knew the doctor saw the physical sign of her lack of control, but she hoped he wouldn't see it again.
"I'm not crazy, you know? I'm not. I just know things, dark things, sick things...really bad things. I know them, and I need your help to understand how to use them to save Delilah."
His eyes stared at her from behind thin, metal-framed glasses. His shoulders covered with the white jacket typical of doctors. In his lap was a clipboard and folder, the papers of which he flipped through after he released her from his inquisitive gaze.
"You told me you went to college. Was it for real estate?"
She laughed. "I thought you had a medical degree, Doc. You should know that you don't need traditional college for a real estate license."
"What did you study in college?"
Her head flinched to the left, a tic that she couldn't control when she was forced to remember information that was fleeting. "Neurology," she answered, the details springing back now that she'd forced herself to return to the past. "Cognitive neurology, specializing in sleep medicine."
Dropping the papers into his lap, the doctor sat back and studied Alice, more questions brewing behind his eyes. "And yet, you sold houses for a living?"
"Do you have a cigarette, Doc? I feel like I need one."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
A shallow nod of his head, some decision made that he hadn't voiced. "You're looking for a distraction. I won't give it to you. Tell me about your education, Alice."
Glancing around the room, Alice spotted a box of tissues on the table by the couch. She hadn't noticed them before, but still took the opportunity to pull one from the box, her fingers working quickly to shred it.
In silence, the doctor watched her hands move over her lap, the thin sheet of tissue becoming confetti where she sat.
"Shred as many tissues as you like if it helps you relieve what you're feeling, but talk while doing so. Why did you go into neurology?"
"I had problems sleeping as a child. Night terrors. Sleepwalking." Her voice fell to a whisper, nightmares creeping back to her when she remembered those horrible nights.
Logically, she knew they were in the past, so far away that she shouldn't worry they'd return. "I wanted to understand."