Teresa: All right guys, whoever has the worst bad story has to buy the next round.
Elise: Deal. Kate you go first.
Kate: Okay, so I have this patient named Stu.
Teresa: Cheater! You used him last week.
Kate: But then he only had two personalities. I met a new one today. Samantha.
Teresa: No!
Kate: Yes. So for the longest 45 minutes of my life I had to listen to St-- I mean Samantha talk about sex life. In detail.
Elise: Okay well you think that's bad? I've got this 9-year-old named Ethan. Huge anger management issues. Now his parents are divorcing so they're getting even worse.
Teresa: Yawn. Nothing we haven't seen before.
Elise: He bit me. Look!
Kate: Holy crap!
Teresa: Are those stitches?
Elise: Yes they are, five. Little brat. So Teresa, you have anyone to bring to the table?
Teresa: Ah, not really. I mean, nothing like you guys have.
Kate: Well you better think of something or you have to buy the drinks.
Teresa; Well there is this one girl. Her name's Alaina. She's been my patient for almost 10 years.
Elise: I don't think you've ever mentioned her before.
Teresa: It's because I haven't.
Kate: Well why haven't you?
Teresa: I guess it was because, she was so normal. Just your run of the mill depression. Nothing exciting. But I really got to know her. I watched her grow up, or not really grow up. I thought I was helping her. But she never seemed that bad. I mean I have patients who are so worse off. Elise has patients biting her for god sakes!
Kate: Granted, she's a child psychiatrist.
Teresa: It just makes me wonder how we're making a difference, if all we spend our time on are the patients who are so badly off, how can we not ignore or more 'normal' patients?
Elise: It's about balance I guess.
Kate: Oh the way we balance our personal lives? We only ever go out with each other and we're all shrinks!
Elise: It's so we can let off steam.
Teresa: Balance.
Kate: What?
Teresa: Elise said it was about balance. But how do we achieve it? It's not like that taught us this in school.
Kate: But we do the best we can, or else we'd be out of our jobs.
Elise: Exactly. Did you read that medical journal article about multiple personalities that came out last week?
Kate: Yeah, I didn't really get the hype. I probably could have written a better one.
Elise: Ha! If you had that kind of time.
Kate: Well maybe I'll find that kind of time, after I balance out my personal life, of course.
Teresa: Of course.
Elise: So Teresa, why did you bring up that girl Alaina anyway? You never said.
Teresa: Oh, well she committed suicide this morning.
Kate: I think I'll get the next round.
I think this was a really good story. I plan on becoming a psychiatrist myself. I think that's a problem with some shrinks. They don't do all that they can to help their patients. It's a shame, most of them are only in it for the money, not to actually help people.The same goes for most people who become doctors; they only become doctors so that they can make tons of money. This world is so corrupt with people like that, it's despicable. I understand why Teresa brought up that patient; so she wouldn't have to buy the drinks. That's a pretty cynical and bad humored joke. I don't know if you were trying to make it funny; but I thought it was really depressing, I still liked the story though.
ReplyDeleteFor me, this was a really believable story. You didn't even need to establish details about the setting for me to imagine the bar and the three women. They had distinct personalities through their interactions and speech and it felt like a real scene, especially with the scene-within-a-scene structure and shocker ending, nice job.
ReplyDeleteWow, this dialogue really touched me. It seemed so believable, like I could vividly picture this whole scene going down. I like how the mood starts out kind of lighthearted almost comedic, and then quickly turns serious. Great job!
ReplyDelete-Lindsay