The Last Second (A Brit in the FBI #6)(37)
“The operative words there are ‘in space.’ They’ve tried a hundred different explanations for what happened. I was trying to commit suicide because I had separation anxiety and desperately wanted to get back to Earth. I was deprived of oxygen when my tether snapped and it caused a hypoxic event. I forgot to eat my rations, my period started unexpectedly, I had a love affair, then a breakup with a fellow astronaut and wanted to end my mission early.
“None of this is true. I heard what I heard, I felt what I felt. And I want to feel it again. I want to be with the Numen again, to feel their love, their acceptance, their desire to bring peace to the Earth.”
“Ah. So you want to escape reality, get away from our noisy world.”
Why was she dragging this out? Nevaeh said, “If I wanted to escape reality, I’d load up on heroin and float away. No. I want you to verify there is nothing organic wrong with my brain, which is why I’m here—for testing. I’ve filled out all your forms, I’ve provided all my medical files. If you want to do blood work today I am more than happy to comply. I welcome the tests and your results.” She paused a moment, then said simply, “I need you to tell NASA I can go back to space. Tell them I’m not schizophrenic, I have my full faculties.”
“Why must you go back to space?”
“I have to talk to the Numen again. Now, given the distance and all the noise, as I already said, it’s not enough for them or for me. I need to hear them clearly. To find out what they want me to do next. Please, Dr. Fontaine. You’re my last hope.”
“Ah.”
“What do you mean, ah?”
“Dr. Patel—Nevaeh—a diagnosis, or lack of, from me won’t sway your bosses at NASA. I know you hope my recommendation as to your sanity would do the trick. But do you know what? I think you also recognize it is possible you are having some sort of extended dissociative episode. It can ingrain in your mind as a real event, and when you revisit it, over and over, you make it part of your value system. It’s something Freud called abreaction. It’s a method of bringing traumatic events back to the surface, reliving them, and becoming conscious of them as a repressed event. It’s how your mind deals with a horror. In your case, you were faced with the most frightening aspect of space travel—disappearing into a void. Literally. And so your mind has created a reality in which you spoke to an alien species who wants to bring peace to Earth, who saved your life. You believe without them, you might be dead. It’s a powerful delusion.”
Nevaeh wanted to leap over the table and strangle the woman. But she kept her temper, smiled, said calmly, “You’re missing the point, Dr. Fontaine. NASA prepared me for the idea that I might die during the mission. You spend months planning to strap yourself inside a tin can that will be tied to a rocket and shot into space, and see if they don’t cover the very real possibility you might die. I wasn’t afraid of dying.”
“No? What did you feel the moment you realized all the failsafes had collapsed and you were truly untethered?”
“I started the sequence of steps to get myself back to the ship, stat. I did what I trained for, exactly as I trained. It didn’t work.”
“But what did you feel, Nevaeh, when you realized you weren’t going to be able to reattach, that you were going to die?”
“I felt—numb. Disbelief, I suppose, that it could end like this because I made a stupid mistake.”
“Perhaps, if you’re willing to be honest with yourself, you might recognize your magnificent brain wanted to protect you from the knowledge that you would die, and so created a savior in the form of an alien species who quite literally handed you back to the space station. I’d like you to consider the possibility you saved yourself.”
“That’s not what happened. I know what happened, I was there.”
Nevaeh’s voice was rising, she couldn’t help it. Fontaine wasn’t any different from Holloway.
Dr. Fontaine sat forward, clasped her hands on the desk. “Listen, Nevaeh, you wanted the truth, I’m giving it to you.”
It was over, all over. She had failed to convince this woman. She said, “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you believe you, which is what matters here.”
“So what do we do next? If you won’t talk to NASA for me, are you going to tell me to take this or that drug and all this will go away? I’ll never hear from the Numen again?”
“Well, if you were schizophrenic, or suffering from a schizoaffective disorder, I would. I don’t believe you are. I do believe you’re suffering from a severely traumatic experience that your mind has built a wall around, and you’re going to need some serious work to unlock it.”
“Work, like therapy? With you?”
“With me, or a psychologist near where you live. There’s nothing inherently special about this kind of therapy, Nevaeh. We use it all the time for PTSD, from which I believe you are definitely suffering. We can desensitize you to the event, making the trauma less traumatic, and eventually, you’ll be able to think about it without creating a barrier of fiction around your thoughts. You will be able to remember what really happened, and you will heal. I can make recommendations of colleagues who specialize in this treatment back in Texas, if you want to start therapy at home. It might be easier to see someone close.”