My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 24

Nina

I didn’t want to believe Enzo.

I couldn’t believe Enzo! Werewolves? Talking skeletons? None of that was real. Surely this was all a daydream or a hallucination. I just needed to get home, sleep, and destress. A good night of sleep and a hot shower would make me feel better and I would realize that all of this was just in my head.

After nothing but nightmares all night, I resolved to march straight over to see Edward and see if he could help me. I was resistant to his therapy before, when I had the incident with the cadaver, but now I was completely open to it. There was no way any of this was real. I needed serious help.

I crawled out of bed and put on a university sweater, jeans, and my glasses; lately, my contacts were burning my eyes from lack of sleep, so I had given up on them altogether. Besides, people looked at me less with my glasses on. They helped me blend into the nerd crowd, so the popular girls who wanted my head on a pike for being caught with Enzo would leave me alone.

Once I was dressed, I went into the kitchen. Lori and Jessica were still asleep, so I slipped out without having to interact with anyone and made my way across the quad toward Edward’s office.

Edward let me into his office and had me lay down on the sofa.

“More nightmares?” he said. I nodded and explained to him what I saw last night.

Edward sighed after hearing about my encounter with the talking skeleton and Enzo and sat in his chair across from me. “Close your eyes… Good. Now I want you to repeat after me. There is no such thing as werewolves.”

“There is no such thing as werewolves,” I repeated.

“There is no such thing as talking skeletons,” Edward said.

“There is no such thing as talking skeletons,” I repeated.

Edward had me continue repeating the mantra while he turned on a metronome. The slow ticking of the metronome lulled me into a somewhat dazed state. Next, he described images to me; peaceful scenery, like the ocean at sunset, or a field of flowers, to help me relax. I started to breathe deeply and felt my heart rate slow down, and soon I was completely susceptible to Edward’s hypnosis…

By the end of the session, the hypnosis seemed to be helping. Everything that I saw in the anatomy lab was becoming a blur, like it was all a dream. Edward seemed pleased with my progress and told me to come back if I needed more help. Feeling much better, I sat up, rubbing my eyes after being in an almost dreamlike state for the past half hour, and then left for my internship.

Tiffany was waiting for me outside her office when I arrived.

“Are you alright?” Tiffany said, looking concerned. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

I shrugged, pushing my glasses up on my nose. “Just stressed,” I replied. “Lots of projects.”

“Yeah, medical school will do that to you,” Tiffany said. We walked together to the arena.