A PAT on the Head

The patient sat with her arms crossed. The removal of her mask had been the only concession so far to the doctor's attempts to help her.
It had been some time, and the lack of response conventional treatment was getting had allowed Dr. Hart to get approval for trying P.A.T treatment.
“I'm Doctor Hart. I'm here to help you.” She sat down across from the girl, who looked at her with mild curiosity. “Do you have a name?” After some time, under the doctor's insistent glare, she shook her head slowly and deliberately.
“Then what would you like me to call you?” After another period of silence, the girl shrugged and then avoided the doctor's gaze. “So I'll call you what you like, shall I, sweetie?” She flinched at the word. “Perhaps not that, then. Your papers just say 'Ms.', so how about I just call you Miss for now?” The girl shrugged. “When you get a proper name, you should pick it yourself.”
“Do you know why you're an ultravir, Miss?” She shook her head slowly again. “You have a condition called psycholacera. You were born with high psychic potential and some kind of stimuli, likely trauma, caused the psychic potential, in layman's terms, to shatter, causing manifestation of the energies in the form of superpowers. Now, I'm here to tell you that there is nothing wrong with that. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and I'm not going to try to take your powers away. What this treatment is about is accepting your powers and channelling them into something positive. Okay?” At her urging, the girl gave a shallow nod.
“Okay. What is it that you can do?” After hesitation, the girl slowly reached behind her and pulled a lollipop the size of a sledgehammer out from behind her.
Doctor Hart took a note on her clipboard, “I see.”

Doctor Hart sat down for the second session across from the patient, sat with her arms folded. “You know, there isn't anything wrong with you.”
The patient shook her head.
“It's true. We're not here to cure you, just to give you the help you need.” The doctor set aside her clipboard and leaned forward, “There is nothing wrong with who you are.” The girl stared back at her, her eyes wide and hopeless. She looked down and whispered with a hoarse voice below hearing.
“What was that?”
The tiny voice that eventually returned was long dry of tears, “I was his.”
Doctor Hart moved forward in her seat and placed a hand on the girl's chin lifting her head up to face her, “You aren't any more. And you never will be again. From now on your belong to nobody but yourself.”
Slowly the girl withdrew into herself, hugging her knees. A half-hearted nod was her only answer.

“You don't like talking to me, do you?”
The patient shrugged in her chair.
“Why is that?”
“Just not used to it.” She managed. “I wasn't allowed.”
“Do you want to talk?” The doctor prompted. The girl shrugged and then nodded slightly in response. “What do you want to talk about?”
The girl looked up at Doctor Hart without moving her head, “Why am I here?”
“So we can help you, and you can accept that it's okay to be who you are.”
The girl looked back down and closed her eyes, “People got hurt because of who I am.”
“Your powers aren't why anyone got hurt. If you didn't have them, he could have found a way for you to hurt people anyway. He's at fault- what's the matter?” Hart noticed the girl wincing. “I suppose you aren't ready to talk about him yet.”
“No. I can.” She swallowed and pulled her chin up, “He was a bad man.”
“He was. And he tried to make you a bad girl. But he didn't succeed, did he?”
The patient shook her head. Doctor Hart noted with pride that she had gotten the ghost of a smile from her.

“I have good news for you.” The patient looked up to her as Doctor Hart sat down, “On account of your youth and Mr. Kane's manipulation of you, it looks like your sentence is going to be some light community service, if that.”
The girl nodded with some conviction. “I should help people. It's fair.”
“You're a good person, you know. A bad one wouldn't think they'd done anything wrong.”
There was a long silence before the patient looked up to meet the doctor's gaze, “Do you really think so?”
“I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it.” The doctor smiled her encouragement, and the girl's fragile smile became a little more solid in return.

“Doctor Hart?” The girl looked up from the Rubik's cube she'd been fiddling with as the doctor came in.
“Yes?” She sat down in her usual place.
“You keep telling me that I shouldn't be afraid of being me. But I was me before, when I was hurting people. And I don't want to be that.” She let the Rubik's cube roll from her palm onto the couch beside her.
“Well, what do you want to be?”
“Good.” She answered after a moment's thought.
The doctor scribbled on her clipboard, “Interesting.”
“What?”
“Most patients say they want to be normal.”
“Should I have said that?”
“No, of course not.” She laid the clipboard down on her lap, “There's no known cure for psycholacera, for a start. Wanting to lose your powers is an unrealistic goal right now. But more importantly, what this treatment is about is getting you to use your powers positively. Wanting to be good is very good.”
“Oh.” The girl contemplated for a moment, hunched over with her knees tucked towards her chest, “So it's okay not to be normal?”
“Yes. It's okay not to be normal.”

“I've thought about my name.” The girl said as Doctor Hart sorted through her papers at the conclusion of a session.
“Oh yes?”
“I want to be called Candice.” She beamed at her work, “Candi for short.”
“I'm not sure if that's-”
“You said I should embrace what I am. You said I wasn't what he made me. Well I make giant lollipops. I'm not ashamed of myself.” Her determined expression started falling downwards, “I thought it was clever.”
“If that's really what you want to call yourself, I won't stop you. I'm just worried it'll never stop reminding you of him.” The doctor reached out to put a hand on the girl's shoulder.
“It will, someday.” She perked up and smiled at the doctor, “Besides, I like sweets. I'm not letting him ruin candy for me.”

Doctor Hart laid down her clipboard, “I must say, Candice, you've made astounding progress these last few weeks. You've shown nothing but enthusiasm for channelling your condition into something positive. It takes some patients months upon months to come around to the idea.”
“It's all because of you, Doc.”
The doctor gave a small chuckle of gratitude, “And why's that?”
“You're the first person I remember telling me I could do good.” As their smiles faded, Candice's voice faltered, “Doctor Hart?”
“Yes?”
“When this is done, will I see you again?”
“Well...” It suddenly occurred to Doctor Hart how little she'd told the girl about what was going to happen, “You'll be placed into a foster family, and I'll check in every month for the first few months to see how you're doing.”
“Oh. That's not very much.” Disappointment was heavy on her voice. “It's just, you're the first person that's really cared about me in a long time. Couldn't you be my new family?”
“Well that would be highly unorthodox and might represent a conflict of-”
“Don't you want to take care of me?” Candice looked up at her with pleading eyes.
The doctor sighed and looked back into them. “I'll see what I can do, Candi.”
“Thank you.” The girl hugged her.

“How do you feel?” Doctor Hart asked, holding the girl's hand as they approached the door of the facility.
“Strange. And free.” Candice hesitated as the door to the street outside grew nearer, “I don't remember the last time I felt free. What if I'm not ready?”
“Don't you think you're ready? I think you are.”
The girl nodded. “Okay.” Candice breathed in sharply and marched through the automatic doors, taking her first step into the world as the daughter of Doctor Hart. They paused while she smelled the thick city air and looked over the sunlit street.
“How does it feel to be free, then?”
Candice hugged the doctor tight. “Sweet.”