EXCERPTS

Novel-In-Progress: Diagnosis

Diagnosis is about Sierra Salamone, a gutsy psychiatrist for psychotics, who claims she is guided by disembodied voices that only she can hear. After a stalker kills one of her schizophrenic patients and soon comes for her, Sierra begins to wonder what is a delusion and what is reality, leading her into the addictive hands of opiates. She tries keeping the voices in her head a secret, but as the deaths continue, keeping her secret gets more and more difficult.

Managing a life filled with serial killer bikers, drug abusing patients who lie to her, and a head full of voices from beyond the veil, Sierra is pushed to her breaking point. And then there are all the ghosts in the attic . . . Both men in her life--Demetri, her fiancé, and Dr. Radcliff, her boss and former childhood psychiatrist--show their unwavering support, but will they be able to save her when she is teetering on the edge?

Diagnosis

2 Opening Scenes of . . .

Chapter 1

"Go away, you fuckin' drama whores! Let me die alone."

Oscar's voice rasped out of his dry throat down to the street seven stories below. The longer he hesitated, the longer he stared, the more people gathered to witness his messy demise, jabbering and pointing up. Local retail workers, street vendors, joggers, elderly couples, tourists, college kids, and even a couple sets of parents with children in strollers--they all stared, pointed, and waited for him to take the one-way trip.

The strollers. As he stared at them, they came alive. Wheels turned into hoves. Canopies turned into horned heads. Veiny wings sprouted and spread wide from behind the seats where the children sat. Those children morphed into demonic creatures, swirly-bulging eyes looking nowhere and everywhere all at once. Their elongated mouths stretched wide, displaying enumerable dripping fangs, like the fangs of the gaping black hole--the nothing--they all now stood around. They became one, the demons and the live strollers.

And they grew. They all grew and reached up, up toward Oscar. Closer and closer, until Oscar couldn't look anymore. He couldn't breathe. He looked up and away. That's when he saw the lit-up sign on the top of the Portland Time and Temperature Building. The white lights that spelled "Give" . . . "MPBN" turned blood red and began dripping.

Oscar sat down on the ledge and covered his face with shaky hands. Hyperventilating, he tried to catch his breath. He squeezed his moist eyes shut. Maybe if I don't look . . . maybe then I will have the courage, the courage to fall into the nothing.

* * *

Sierra kicked and tossed around in bed, experiencing another recurring nightmare. She was at a conference about schizophrenia, and thought she spotted her father across the crowded hall. Not so scary. But her father was dead. He had been for twenty-three years, since she was six. She bolted through the throng of conference attendees to be with her father one more time. Disjointed babble swirled around her in her flight. By the time she made it to the man who looked like her father, he had turned away from her. She tapped him on the shoulder.

"Dad?"

The man slowly turned around. She froze, mute.

Black, emotionless orbs peered from eye sockets that once held sky-blue compassion. Severe dehydration had pulled his dry lips back, revealing the brown receding gums and roots of rotting teeth. He leaned down towards Sierra. A putrid odor wafted out of his open mouth just before a blinding beam of light shot out from deep within his throat, dead into her stare.

Sierra's eyes shot open. The light on her nightstand glared into them, as, drenched in sweat, she sat up. Heart pounding like a speed metal double-bass drum, she noticed her patient's file on the floor beside the bed, papers scattered. Before she could get up, piercing pain errupted in her head. She leaned forward and reached for her temples. Applying pressure with her finger tips, she waited to hear a voice, a message. In a brief moment it broke through.

"Go to Oscar. Go to him now! He needs you."

Trying to ignore the voice, she rested her head back on her pillow.

No, I'm not crazy. People will trust me as a psychiatrist, voices and all.

She pulled the covers back up to her chin, but the aching head still lingered. Muscles tight, she couldn't relax.

The voice sounded again, accompanied by another shot of piercing pain to the temples. "Oscar--he needs you. Go. Now."

Letting out a heavy sigh, Sierra eased herself out of bed, trying not to wake Demetri, her fiance, who lay sprawled on his back nude with one long, lean leg flung over the covers. Once standing, she glanced down and, relieved she had not woken him, scurried to find something to wear. From the rocker beside her bureau she snatched a pair of yoga pants and her blouse from the day before, and rushed down the hall toward the guest bathroom, dressing as she went. With no time for her morning routine, she threw her long hair up in a ponytail and splashed her face with cold water.

Hurrying back out and past Demetri's music room, she dropped a quick note in his guitar case to keep him from worrying.

No time for breakfast. No time for coffee. She slipped on her clogs and flew out the front door, hoping she wasn't already too late.

* * *

Diagnosis

A Scene from . . .

Chapter 14

"Bethany"

(All you need to know for this scene is that Sierra is a psychiatrist, and Bethany . . . well, you'll figure out her role once you read.)

Upon her entrance, Bethany did not sit in her usual spot, the brown velvet Victorian chaise lounge that she admired so much. She did not sit at all--she flounced, paced and fidgeted on her feet. She also did not wait for Sierra to greet her before speaking--rather, ranting.

"I came down Forest Avenue and saw a homeless vet and I gave him five dollars and then I walked through the park and a lady was selling baby bunnies and she let me hold one and he was really soft and he really, really liked me, the lady said, and I wanted to take him home so bad and then when I walked down Congress Street I saw two street performers and they were so very talented and I danced and I tipped them five dollars and they thanked me over and over and over and then . . ."

This frantic behavior disturbed Sierra. "Slow down and take a breath, Bethany. Have a seat and tell me how you're doing." Sierra motioned to the chaise lounge across from her.

Throwing herself down on the chaise, elbows on her knees and head in her hands, Bethany did not stop ranting, nor did she slow down. "It happened again, Doc--one of my episodes, except this time I was awake." She lifted her head just enough to look Sierra in the eyes. "I was fucking awake, Doc! What the hell is happening to me!?"

Bethany suffered from PTSD, and had reported dealing with recurrent nightmares, violent, true-to-life nightmares, sometimes accompanied by sleepwalking. She lived alone, but she knew when she'd been sleepwalking because she'd wake the next morning to find her apartment in disarray--furniture moved into awkward positioning, chairs upside down, the couch facing the wall, the TV unplugged and on the floor face down, her laptop in the trash can; garments hanging from the ceiling fan, socks stuffed into the coffee pot, shoes on top of lamp shades, panties dangling from house plants; dishes in the dryer, books in the dishwasher; hand towels in the microwave; throw pillows stuffed into bureau drawers where her clothes should have been; pictures on the walls turned around backwards. Once, she found her front door ajar.

And waking on those mornings, she had no recollection of moving everything around, no recollection of even waking to use the bathroom.

One of the many medications Sierra had prescribed for her was a potent sleeping pill. But, in Bethany's case, Sierra avoided such medications as Ambien, since one of the potential side effects included parasomnia. Bethany feared her sleeping state of mind, but she barely slept at all without medication. Now Sierra worried Bethany would fear her wakeful state of mind as well.

Happening while she's awake? Could mean--hallucinations. But she's never reported ever having experienced hallucinations before. What could have changed? What's different? Could this have been a flashback?

"It's all right, Bethany. We'll figure this out together. Tell me exactly what happened, so we can work through this."

Raising herself up, Bethany flew into a rage. "Work through this? We've been working the fuck through this! All you need to do is prescribe me more meds. All I need are more of my fuckin' Benzos."

"Bethany, I wrote you out a prescription two weeks ago; don't you have any . . ."

Bethany jumped up off the chaise. "I'm out," she cried, tears welling in her black-lined eyes. "I'm all out. I need more, like--yesterday."

"I can't ethically prescribe you any more, Bethany, not for a couple more . . ."

"Fuck your ethics!" Bethany screamed. She turned and stomped around the office, tears pouring down her cheeks in blackened rivers.

Sierra stood. But she did not go to Bethany; she allowed Bethany to choose, or not to choose, to go to her.

"Can't you see I'm a fucking mess!?" Pulling at her hair, Bethany came back and stood face to face with Sierra. "All you have to do is take out your magic little pen and write me a fucking prescription! Please."

"I told you, I can't do that. Have you been writing in your dream journal and doing your breathing exercises?"

Bethany stepped back, turned away, and with ominous laughter said, "Dreams? What the fuck are dreams? And breathing exercises? You think your fucking breathing exercises are going to save me?!"

"Remember that writing down your nightmares may help us dig to the root of what's causing them. And I think the breathing exercises may . . ."

Stepping in closer, staring Sierra dead in the face, Bethany yelled, "Fuck your dream analysis, fuck your breathing exercises, and fuck you!" Bethany ended her rant with a poke of her finger into Sierra's chest and stormed out the door, slamming it as she went.