“No. I’ve never needed antidepressants and I hardly ever take pills,” Robert answered. “For a migraine, I don’t even know what to say. I don’t remember the last time I had one.”
“What about your sleep? Maybe you suffer from insomnia?” The doctor was clearly confused and did not try to conceal it. “You look a bit fatigued."
“Doctor, I sleep like a baby. I can sleep anywhere and in any position.” Robert smiled. “I just got back from a business trip. Haven’t slept for nearly 24 hours – different city, the flight."
“Exhaustion? Sleep deprivation? You work a lot?”
“No, doctor. I'm fine. The question is totally different. I want to know if you’ve seen anything like this before?”
“Did you use to take drugs? Smoke pot?” the doctor continued his interrogation, ignoring Robert’s question.
“Doc, nothing like that. I even have alcohol intolerance. So, I almost don’t drink and I’ve never smoked.”
Robert tried to speak in a steady, calm voice to convince the psychiatrist as his eyes bore into Robert during this interrogation.
“Right…right…right… Oh, got it! Have you been to a doctor with this issue before?
“I’ve already told you that I’ve never been here. Amanda recommended that I see you. She was the one who suggested it."
“Right…right…right… Amanda," the doctor drew out, ignoring Robert’s last words. He got up and began to examine his head again. “You say that you've not had any head trauma. What about when you were a child? Maybe intense stress, mental disorders, phobias, some juvenile anxiety?”
“No, doctor, nothing like that. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been seriously ill.”
The psychiatrist looked at Robert in the eyes and resumed feeling around his head. His fingers, like a massage device, slid pleasantly through his hair, leaving no inch of the patient’s skull unexamined.
“If this helps, doc… I don’t know whether it’s a phobia, but I feel really uneasy on a train.”
The doctor continued to ignore Robert and probe his head.
“Why is that, do you think? As far as I know, trains are the safest mode of transport.”
He suddenly stopped, still leaving his hands partially buried in Robert’s skull, leaned in close and quickly asked: “Why are you so scared of the trains?”
“It’s because of the rail crash at Ladbroke Grove in London."
“Ok, tell me about it,” the psychiatrist said.
“This was a long time ago, in October 1999, I think. In the morning, right before getting on the train in Reading, I suddenly felt very sick, right on the platform. I experienced severe dizziness and I thought I was about to lose consciousness. And then I had a vision. I saw myself lying among the dead in the wreckage of a train carriage filled with mangled corpses. I could even feel the heat of the fire on my face that engulfed the carriage. Then suddenly I heard a clear voice in my head instructing me not to get on that train. In the evening, I was watching the news and saw the horrifying rail crash that happened at the fourth kilometer from Paddington Station. Two trains had collided, killing over thirty people and leaving more than five hundred injured. And the first car, which I was supposed to board, suffered the worst."
“Paddington rail crash,” Dr. Friedman said. “I remember reading about it.”
“Right. So, I’ve avoided trains ever since. I think that was a warning from above, a sign. Even now I can see that railway carriage before my eyes – a pile of crumpled metal and charred bodies. It was unspeakably awful.”
