Faerie by Eisha Marjara Page B

rare since my steady weight gain; besides, he was busy treating a new crop of patients who had been admitted. I was invited to begin therapy with Dr Bélanger, who had been assigned to take on my case for an interim period. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped inside the office of another grumpy expert and fed his psychoanalytical mumbo-jumbo. I politely declined the doctor’s invitation. But that did not stop the doctor from inviting himself over.
    I heard a knock on my door, then a woman’s voice. “Can I come in?”
    The doctor was not at all what I had expected. She strode in and stood next to my bed and gave me a warm smile.
    â€œHi, Lila. I’m Dr Bélanger. You can call me Eileen.”
    I stared at her, speechless.
    â€œHow are you feeling today?”
    I sat up. “Not great,” I grumbled, still taking her in. She looked to be in her early thirties and had wheat-gold hair that tumbled onto her shoulders.
    â€œWhy didn’t you want to come see me?” she asked.
    â€œBecause.” I lowered my eyes and mumbled, “I don’t trust shrinks.”
    She nodded, chuckling.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?”
    â€œThat’s hardly surprising. Maybe I can do something to change your opinion of them. That’s partly why I became one.”
    She sat down beside me and said, “It’s a long boring story, but when I was about your age,” her eyes darted around the room, “I was exactly where you are now. And when I got better, I decided to become a ‘shrink,’ to help young people. Like you.”
    I was shocked by her candour. I wanted to know more about her, but she turned the focus of the conversation back to me.
    â€œI heard you have a creative streak,” she said.
    â€œI do?”
    She handed me the canvas bag she’d brought with her. “I asked Dr Messer to let you have art supplies to draw and paint with.”
    I poked my head in the bag and took out a sketchpad with pearly smooth pages, a batch of pencils, and a watercolour paint set.
    â€œI asked for your camera,” she added. “But that will have to wait till Phase Three.”
    â€œYou asked for my camera?”
    She nodded. “Lila, I want you to know that my door is open. You can come and talk to me anytime you want. I’m only here on Tuesdays, though. You miss me then, you’ll have to wait a week.”
    And she turned and left.
    It took no time for me to “eat up” my new privilege of painting and drawing. I sat on the bed and sketched a massive portrait of my new camera as I remembered it, now locked away in my closet. I filled it in with paint, dabbed on a generous dose of glitter, ripped it out of the sketchpad, and stuck it on the wall at the foot of my bed. It was magic. I felt high.
    I thought about Dr Bélanger for the rest of the day. I discovered from Nurse Jean that she was well-respected and apparently had even received some research grants. But what fascinated me most was that she was a grown woman who had emerged from the rabbit hole in one piece. Maybe she’d once been a faerie who’d metamorphosed and transformed into a butterflying woman, with a bigger, stronger set of wings. I pondered that and let it sink into the back of my fairy tale brain.

    Alyssa, meanwhile, had graduated to Phase Two. On the main floor, that meant she could wear her own clothes, as all patients could at that phase, except for me. That was when I was in for a shock.
    One afternoon, someone stepped into my room. At first glance I thought, “Who is this boy? He must be lost,” but it wasnone other than my freckle-faced faerie sister. She wore straight-legged Levis and a plain sweatshirt and her hair was tucked into a beat-up baseball cap. She emanated no sex appeal, no style. And yet her expressions and gestures had the refinement of a dancer, a lightness and frailty that was incongruent with her rustic, androgynous appearance. Like