Me After Meeting You

Beryl was red-faced from arguing with the patient’s family while the nurses were trying to placate the other patients and their family members. Because it was still a holiday, there weren’t many doctors on duty, and as the accused party, he was clearly waning in strength as he tried to argue against three people alone.

His only piece of evidence was the security footage, but that didn’t contain any audio. In the end, Beryl had no way to prove his innocence despite his desires.

As the argument continued to grow more and more heated, the nurses even wanted to call the department head over. It was at the point that Amber finally stepped in. She walked over and authoritatively said, “I have a method to definitely prove whether or not Dr. Beryl actually said those words.”Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

Upon hearing this, Beryl’s eyes lit up and as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, he ignored his earlier feud with her and called out to her. “Dr. Camille!” It was a rare sight to behold, him looking at her like a savior.

Amber smiled at him while the patient’s family members looked at her suspiciously. “You? What if you can’t prove it?”

Amber obstinately replied, “If I can’t do it, then I’ll stop being a doctor. How about that?”

Beryl became flustered and discomfited. “Dr. Camille!”

Amber ignored him, continuing to look at the patient’s family. “Give me two minutes, alright?”

Of course that was fine. And with the patient’s family’s approval, Amber put on her doctor’s coat and went into the ward with the family and Beryl.

Because of the earlier commotion, the patient was currently staying in a room with a single bed. She was sitting on it, and her face revealed traces of unease.

Judging just by her outer appearance, she was a beautiful girl, with an oval face in the shape of a goose egg and elegant eyebrows like willow leaves. Her skin was a pale white and her eyes were big, giving her look a delicate and refined look.

Amber made Beryl and the patient’s family members wait outside. “You guys can all wait for me out here.” And then she pushed open the door and entered alone.

Beryl saw Amber walk in front of the girl, spread her palms, and say something he couldn’t make out. Then, the girl became angry and yelled at Amber. “I’m not ill! I want to go home! Why won’t any of you believe that I’m fine? Would a mentally ill person know how to frame a doctor, to think as clearly as I have?”

Everyone understood everything now, because the door to the ward wasn’t completely closed tightly, so the girl’s words reached those standing outside.

Amber was even able to pacify the girl after that. In just two minutes, she calmly came back out, as if nothing had happened inside.

It was almost fantastical.

Beryl’s face was red in embarrassment. It seemed like he finally understood the difference between him and Amber, and that perhaps it wasn’t just those extra few years that he had spent as a doctoral student.

After resolving this affair, Amber went to check on her own patient. Beryl wasn’t thick-skinned enough to ask Amber what she had done, and it was one of the nurses on duty who ended up doing so. “Dr. Camille, how did you do it?”

Amber casually replied, “It was very easy. I just showed her some pills, and then I told her that I was her new doctor, here to give her medicine.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that.”

“Then how did you calm her down?”

“Oh, I told her that if she calmed down, then I would tell her the quickest way for her to go home.”

“It was that easy?”

“Yes, that easy.” Actually, was it really that easy? No. It was just that Amber’s luck was pretty good, and that the patient’s mental illness wasn’t too serious. She knew what she was doing, and she was very clearheaded; it was just that she couldn’t control herself.

Amber was suddenly reminded of Ian. He also knew what he was doing, and he was also very clear-headed, but he had always been able to control himself very well.

‘If… he didn’t control himself so strictly, and lost control even slightly… What would happen?’

It was quite hard for Ian to lose control of himself because there weren’t many things that could interest him and provoke a strong reaction from him. This was magnified by the fact that he treated trying to pick Amber up as one of his responsibilities. He did lose control sometimes, but those incidents were too small for anything to really happen.

‘I won’t actually get into bed with him, would I? Thinking about this wouldn’t be of any use.’ As she continued to think about this subject, Amber started daydreaming instead of continuing her conversation with the nurse.

In truth, they were both very busy, and even finding time for these few snatches of conversation was difficult.

Even though Amber was finished with her duties, she didn’t feel at ease. In her anxiousness, she visited her patients’ wards again. As she met with them, she talked with them in passing about their lives and dreams.

Elly was a little more troublesome than the others, as she was unwilling to even try to interact with strangers. Because Amber had gone on vacation for a few days and hadn’t seen her during that time, she was no longer willing to respond to Amber.

She wordlessly held onto her sketchbook at the head of her bed. No matter what Amber said, Elly just grunted in response. Only when Amber was about to leave did Elly secretly turn around to look at her.

Everything seemed to be going fine, and of course, no one really cared about the earlier incident with Beryl. The doctors in the psychiatry department encountered far too many strange things and people, and it was even normal for them to be scolded or beaten.

The worst case was when a new doctor had almost been molested while conducting psychotherapy with her patient. Meeting the patients’ strange family members was even more common, so Amber completely put the matter aside after the incident.

When she returned to her office and started flipping through her medical records and books, the only thing on her mind was thinking of a way to stimulate Ian’s emotions.

But the more she thought about it, the more she felt that this was like trying to pluck a hair from a lion’s mane.

She needed a method that would be both precise and safe, and this required meticulous planning.