Temperature Rising (A Novella) - 10. Chapter 10

Dr. Linda Lopez hated this part. But she had to do it. She felt like being God and she hated that. But she had to do it.

How many patients had she put away? How many patient records had she tampered with just so she could protect other people, including herself, from the pressures of the community and the media?

The thought of setting free a serial murderer was too much to bear and yet she felt like she'd been only protecting her personal interest.

She's famous-or maybe infamous. She was just a loophole for this country's so-called justice so that the real criminals hide behind hospital walls.

But she is famous. She only wants to be famous. What are a few lives to sacrifice? She's not the one who's crazy. After all, she is not the murderer. Sometimes empathy could really be, well, like a bitch.

Don't get her wrong though. She gets scared too. Everyone seems to rely on her too much that it was hard to make a move--good or bad. She could very well have plunged the knife in--or in this case, the cock up Marcus' ass.

The judge relies on her too much. Can't the fucker decide by himself? Why'd he bring her to hell with him? Oh, that's right. He can't bring her with him because she brought herself with him. She can't remember why that was exactly. Perhaps, it was the time she gave him a blowjob and let him fuck her doggie style. Yup, that was definitely it.

"Don't blame me," she thought, "I only wanted to get a leg up. I mean, work is work. No one's honest anymore, that alone sane enough to admit having done a crime."

A leg up--she laughed at the idiom. She didn't only had her leg up, both her feet were inches from the floor when Honorable Robins here rammed his aging cock up to the hilt, or atleast as far as it went up her gut.

"If you don't like putting people away, why did you become a psychiatrist in the first place?" she said to herself, letting her conservative take over once again.

Indeed, why did she become a psychiatrist?

She scratched an itch on her left leg. These extra thick stockings were suffocating her. She didn't like other people brushing up against her. She had to wear them just in case.

"So Dr. Linda Lopez, what are your recommendations?" an attorney said.

"The patient is deeply disturbed. He is mentally unstable. Suffering from a rare mental disorder called multiple-identity syndrome, he falls under the category of being a malign to society as well as himself. My say is to keep him here. He is unstable and needs constant medical attention," she said. Along the way, she had trouble swallowing. This was because she was pretending. She was protecting her own integrity after all. She wanted to erase every little mistake she'd done in the past by using the Mark Dellasandro Case as a patch.

"You're saying that Mark Dellasandro is incapable of minding himself?

"He might be dangerous to society as a whole. Remember, he'd almost killed an officer during his arrest," Dr. Lopez said, knowing that it was a lie but a good lie, nonetheless.

"But I thought you said everything was only in his head?"

"Attorney Dawson, multiple personality is a rare disease. No one has fully grasped its nature or even its potential. God knows what Mr. Dellasandro is capable of doing."

"Potential? You regard this disorder as a potential?" Atty. Dawson said.

"Mark had lived a life of extraordinary circumstances. His brain falsified his social links. All these time, he had made himself believe that his dead sister still lives with him. In fact, his sister still lives-inside his brain. Or the fact that he had created a certain character in the name of Detective Harold Garson and made others believe in his existence as well, proves to be a non-human feat. It's like the power of suggestion folded many times over. There was no Harold Garson. There is no one that even closely resembles that individual in LA."

"So you're saying that Dellasandro could be gifted?"

"These things are heavily laden with hypothetic questions only to be answered with hypothetical answers."

"Have you determined the number of personality the subject has manifested?" another doctor asked her.

"Yes, Dr. Reuben. In the months I have spent time with the patient, I have generated a list of possible personalities within him. But I'm sure there are still many yet to be unlocked. Heck, we could even be one of them now." Dr. Lopez said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dr. Reuben asked. His lips turn to a flat line.

"All I'm saying Dr. Reuben is that these personalities have minds of their own. They do not have a clue about their own origins or that they exist in the same plane of consciousness, in this case, in the same person as their creator himself. They have their own historical memories and they believe that they have existed long before. Just like how we are sure and positively certain of our own existence. That is how these personalities work. A certain personality can even terminate another personality."

"Terminate? You mean kill?"

"Exactly, Dr. Reuben. The bottom line is, only Mark knows what's going inside his head. Think of it a safe haven, a place where he can function like any other person when the real world, which we know of, cannot provide him anymore with the coping mechanism to survive emotionally."

"Why emotionally?"

"I believe that these personalities are somehow connected emotionally to the host. Grief and loss, for example, are generated by Chloe-his sister, who died at the age of 22 and as for security and wellbeing-Detective Harold Garson as his source of strength and wit."

Dr. Reuben scanned the list of names: Chloe Dellasandro, Rodney Lee, Harold Garson, Samuel Ross and so on and so forth.

"So many names," Dr. Reuben said.

"Each personality is created by a sense of urgency. When conflict arises and reason goes against commonality, the host feels a need to create a character to negate the effects of confusion. Then it builds up, creating one character and then another until complexity turns the tide. Our Mark, here, has the capability of maintaining several even hundreds of personalities. Termination calls for any personality that crosses the line of logic and common sense. But the host does not readily forget the character. It isn't natural after all. He has to device a string of events that would spell death to the character."

"If all of these things are happening inside his head, what makes him so dangerous to the community?" Dr. Reuben asked.

"We must remember, gentlemen," Dr. Lopez said, addressing the whole assessing body, "that Mark Dellasandro once held a gun during his capture. When asked why he had the gun, he said it was to protect himself and to make his point clear. I asked him if he had shot anyone, he said he shot the Detective. The police officer said there was no one else in the room. The officer said the subject was very capable of harming others and that is why she had to shoot him.

"Our Mark does not have the ability to distinguish which character is real and what is not. Until we can determine the mode of recognition, I think its best if we should keep him here in this hospital rather than releasing him to an asylum. That way we could make further studies and help other future Marks," she said, adjusting her thin-reamed glasses. The itch on her left leg was becoming unbearable.

Everyone was silent. Dr. Linda Lopez felt assured. After all these long months of hard work, finally he had Mark all to herself. Mark has become more like a best friend to her. She'd spent almost all of her time talking to him, delving into that genius mind. The more she looked into those eyes, the more she understood him...more than she ever thought she would.

Before she left the building, she went to the ladies' room. She went into a stall and began rubbing her cunt, making her fingers all wet. The itch on her leg was gone and she felt relieved. She couldn't stand all those men watching her...men who just want to fuck her. While she slid those fingers inside her folds, Mark was on her mind. She also envisioned Dr. Reuben humping her from behind while all the others watched and jacked-off.

She got out of the stall and pulled her pencil-cut skirt down. She walked over to the mirror and smiled. "It's time to go to work," she said, puckering her lips. "We'll let them see, Marcus...we'll make sure they all see," she added and left.