Jia pressed her lips inwardly and clenched her fist. She breathed in and out slightly choppily. "...I am fine."
Mingshen’s gaze never failed to catch even the minute fluctuations in her expressions. He slightly withdrew, giving her so breathing space. But he was still close enough to not let her escape.
He placed his hands inside his pockets and said, "This was always going to be a difficult conversation for you. It was due for a long ti. I had to co out with today before you would actually self-destruct."
She glared at him. "You are wrong!"
"You give a reality check to the criminals. I give a reality check to my patients. We are both doing our jobs."
"No, I am doing my job. You are plain harassing ! Is this a way to lower my guard and make your illegal organ donor for your comatose patient again? Because I don’t agree!"
Mingshen remained quiet for a few monts.
"The cases that affected you the most were Dai Yun’s and Yu Ehuang’s cases because in both, the children lost the support of their parents. Parents who were supposed to protect them. You saw yourself in them."
Jia said nothing.
"Yun’s case was the first case we worked on together. After we t Yun, I gave you a piece of paper. What did you do with it?"
Her heart raced faster. "I threw away that prescription. Why did you write the dicines I didn’t need?"
He tilted his head. "Hm. Very strange. Because I am sure I found my written prescription inside the first drawer of your living room’s table near the TV. It was crumpled, which ans you did throw it away at one point. But then you judged against it and folded and tucked away the crumpled prescription very neatly."
Jia trembled in anger. "I will seriously punch you! You ch-checked my drawers!?"
"Because I wanted to know at which stage of denial you were in. If you had thrown it away, then I would have confronted you then and there because you don’t have the liberty anymore to take your depression lightly. But you kept it which told that you did have so self-awareness."
"I want to leave," she declared, the conversation going beyond the limits of her patience.
"To where?" Mingshen stared at her acutely. "To your ho where you keep your family pictures upside down?"
She stiffened.
"To a ho where you think that out of sight is out of mind is the solution to deal with your feelings? You have been doing that for two years. What did it change for you?"
His every question rcilessly broke the walls around her heart that was only forcing her to co to terms with reality. She hated to have this conversation. It was difficult. It was painful. It was stinging her eyes with tears that she didn’t want Mingshen to see.
Jia didn’t want anybody to see her tears.
The pain of the bruises that she had buried deep sowhere as intentional avoidance was beginning to see the light.
"I..." she breathed hard, "I am not depressed..."
Mingshen asked slowly, "Then what were you exactly looking for on my desk?"
She blinked in confusion.
"When you were talking to Shilin just now, I noticed you throwing glances towards my desk now and then. What were you looking at?"
"I wasn’t looking at anything!" She couldn’t help but exclaim in a slightly agitated voice.
Mingshen didn’t respond. Instead, he walked back to his desk and picked up a small notepad. He stood back in front of her and flipped it in between his fingers.
"You were looking at my prescription notepad."
"I wasn’t," she quickly denied.
"Because the last prescription has expired. I know that because I wrote it. And you know that because you visited multiple pharmacies and every single one of them told you that you need a fresh prescription."
"You are just micro-analyzing every action and reaction from ! If you will start doing that, then you will find things that aren’t even wrong with !" She gasped.
"As opposed to what you think about , I am not doing this to bully you. I am not getting so innate pleasure by seeing your face so close to crying," Mingshen said with a no-nonsense expression. "But it’s high ti you at least accept that you are not doing well. Denying your own emotions is going to land you in a pitfall from where it’s going to only get harder to climb back. Do you really want little chili to see you like this?"
Jia froze. Her expression twisted with a deadly warning. "I am telling you, if you utter even a single word of this to Lihua, then I will never forgive you. You will just unnecessarily feed her with worry and stress and I won’t let you torture my sister!"
"How about we worry about the torture you are putting yourself through for now?"
He took out his pen and wrote sothing on his prescription pad. He tore that page and handed it out.
"You need a psych consult. But you won’t do it unless you admit you have a problem. Until then, keep these ds with you. The depression is not affecting your work as of now, but your lack of sleep and undealt emotions will only take you so far."
Jia stared at the prescription paper. It felt extrely tempting to grab it the mont she saw it. She was tired. She was fatigued. She needed sothing - anything to help her get even a little bit of rest.
But if she accepted it, then it would an that she was admitting that sothing was wrong with her. It would defeat everything she had built up till now. It would shake her very foundation of confidence.
Jia bit her lip hard and quietly said, "I am not depressed no matter how many tis you ask . I will prove you wrong. I am not weak as you think I am...!"
Mingshen blinked twice. He took a step forward, making her breath slightly hitch. "Depression isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a condition like any other illness. We don’t evaluate a patient’s sense of strength and weakness based on an illness. You wouldn’t call soone weak for having cancer, would you?"
"Physical illnesses are out of your control," she gritted her teeth.
"So are tough situations in your life," he sharply said. "So situations are a result of your own actions and decisions. You could control that. But so situations are a result of others’ actions and decisions. You cannot control that and that situation can hit anybody like a storm no matter how strong they are.
If proving you are strong is what you want to do, then the answer is asking for help because acknowledging it is what takes real strength."
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