Dr. Matthew Horner, psychologist, sat at his desk in his office in New York City, fingers laced, as he patiently awaited the arrival of his new patient.

To be honest, Matthew didn't want to take this new patient from one of his colleagues, Mariah Hart, but Dr. Hart had insisted, begged, that he take this new patient...

"She's an adolescent, Matty," she explained when he asked why it was that he was the one chosen to take the new patient. "You got your doctorate in Adolescent Psychology. I got mine in plain old Psychology. You can understand her more than I do."

"What's her problem?" was Matthew's reply. "I wanna know her problem first. Then I'll think about taking - a girl, you said?"

"Yeah."

"Uh - huh. So what's her problem?"

"Where do you want me to begin?" she sighed, running a hand through her hair. "She's a thief, she's from a broken family, she doesn't have any friends that she's told me about, and she just doesn't wanna talk to me. You can get through to her more, maybe."

He nodded. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen. She'll be eighteen later in the year."

"Hmm." He paused thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. "Well, if I take her, I won't have to put up with her for very long because of her age. I guess it might not be too bad after all."

"Good," she sighed with relief, a smile coming to her face. "Thank you so much for doing this for me, Matt. It really means a lot."

"All right," he replied, waving her away. "Go on, now, and make sure that you get her record transferred over here."

As she opened the office door and was about to walk out, she suddenly stopped short and turned back around to face him.

"Oh, Matt - a word of warning about this girl: she's trouble. She's trouble with a capitalized, italicized, boldened t."

"And you've given her to me," he sighed sarcastically. "Thanks a lot."

"I'm serious. You might feel the need to transfer her to someone else after a while. Just be careful about being with her. She's hard to handle. And I know I'm not supposed to speak negatively about patients, but she's a bitch. She's a bitch with a capitalized, italicized, -"

"All right, I get it," he replied, waving her away once again. "Thanks for the information."

Nodding, she turned and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.

Matthew's thoughts were interrupted when his office door opened and his assistant, Jessica, appeared.

"Your new patient is here to see you, Dr. Horner."

He nodded and sat up straight in his chair, motioning towards the door. "Very good. Bring her in, then."

"Right away, Dr. Horner."

Jessica then walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. He heard her speak to the girl waiting outside.

"Dr. Horner will see you now."

"La-di-freakin'-da," a sarcastic, rather harsh voice replied, and then, a moment later, the office door was opened as a figure stepped inside.

At first, there was no indication that this figure was female, as was stated in her record and as told by Dr. Hart, Matthew noted as he eyed this new person with disdain. They were wearing a pair of somewhat baggy jeans, a black hooded jacket, a dirty t - shirt, a beanie, and a pair of old, beaten - up black sneakers.

However, when the new person turned and faced him, it became obvious that this person was female. The facial features were much too soft to be male.

Piercing grey eyes stared into his green ones from the door for a moment, and then the girl began to move forward, casually making her way to the desk as Matthew continued to eye her with almost immediate dislike.

The girl sat herself down in one of the chairs in front of his desk and then continued to stare at him as he stared right back. Her eyebrows were raised, and it was rather obvious to him that she wasn't impressed by any stretch of the imagination.

Another moment of somewhat awkward silence passed before Matthew realized that he couldn't just have a staring contest with his new patient for the rest of the hour that she was supposed to be with him, and he finally spoke as he leaned back in his seat.

"Jamie Garrison?"

"Nope," the girl replied simply, casually slouching in her chair and inspecting her nails.

"Oh, you're not Jamie Garrison?"

"Nope." She leaned forward and tapped the manila envelope on his desk, which contained her personal information inside of it. "Whoever did this file screwed up my name. My name's not Jamie Garrison."

Oh, great, he thought to himself, and he couldn't help but roll his eyes. Another nut job who thinks that they're someone famous.

"Who are you, then?" he inquired.

"I'm Jay Garrison. But, I suppose that if you really want to call me Jamie, then you can," Jamie Garrison replied graciously, making a magnanimous gesture.

"Well, thank you," he said, pulling on his nearby glasses and picking up her file, opening it and scanning it for something to discuss with her. "Tell me, Jamie - do you know why you're here?"

"Because that prissy bitch I had before thought that I was too much to handle," she said simply, feeling inside her jacket pockets before producing a carton of cigarettes and a lighter. "Maybe I was. Or maybe she just can't handle anyone at all."

He watched her silently, with just a hint of interest, as she pulled a cigarette out of the carton, stuck it in her mouth, lit the lighter, held the lighter to the cigarette, and then lit the cigarette, putting the lighter back into one of her jacket pockets as she grabbed the cigarette and pulled it out of her mouth, exhaling a cloud of smoke and letting out a soft sigh.

Well, this was something Dr. Hart hadn't mentioned...

"You smoke?" he asked, scanning her file to see if it mentioned that she smoked.

"Y'know, it's been scientifically proven that stupid questions with obvious answers are asked by stupid people," she said matter - of - factly, propping her feet up on his desk and crossing them at the ankles. "I thought you might be interested to know that, since you asked a stupid question with an obvious answer."

As she inhaled her cigarette, he raised his eyebrows, somewhat surprised by her rudeness, and replied, "Well, then forget that I asked. But may I just say one thing?"

"You've already passed your limit, pal," she replied as she blew out another cloud of smoke. "But go ahead and say what you want to, anyway."

"By smoking, you're not just harming yourself - and I hope you at least know that. You're hurting everyone that you smoke around, which means that you're hurting me right now. Secondhand smoke kills."

"I'm counting on it," she said rather coldly, blowing out another cloud of smoke, this time right in his direction.

He coughed and sputtered, rather frantically trying to wave away the smoke so that the air around him would be clear again. Oh, how he hated this girl, and he hadn't even been in the same room with her for ten minutes!

"That was incredibly rude," he gasped, covering his nose and mouth with his hands to try and prevent the bad air from coming into his lungs. "You know, you're lucky I don't have asthma. If I did, I could have died!"

"Well, you don't have asthma, so no worries there," she replied, shrugging and looking halfway amused by his reaction. "And I thought that this was supposed to be about the problems I have, not the problems that you could have if you had asthma."

"All right, then," he said, removing his hands from his mouth and nose and taking a deep breath as he relaxed in his chair. "Let's talk about you."

"Nah, I don't feel like it," she said with a shrug, waving it away. "Thanks for the offer, though. Maybe some other time."

He let out an irritated sigh. "If you didn't want to talk about yourself, then why did you make a scene when I was talking about how you might have killed me if I had asthma?"

"I didn't make a scene. I was just talking to try and make conversation. You were the one making the scene and talking about how, if you had asthma, my cigarette smoke might have killed you." She nodded, more to herself than to him. "Maybe we should switch. Maybe you should be the one getting analyzed. You just might have more issues than I do."

"No, I'm sure your issues far surpass mine," he said rather rudely.

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh! Now who's being incredibly rude? Hell, I'm being nicer than you right now, and I'm smoking without permission with my feet propped up on your desk!"

"Don't say Hell," he replied nervously, all of a sudden looking anxious for some reason unknown to her. "It's a bad word. I don't like bad words."

"Oh, you don't like bad words... like Hell... shit... damn..."

"No!" he cried out, putting his hands over his ears. "No, please - don't say anything else! I can't stand it!"

"Jesus H. Christ... God - damn..."

"I'm not listening!" he exclaimed, starting to rock himself back and forth in his chair. "La la la... I can't hear you!"

"Bitch... bastard... whore..."

Without warning, he suddenly let out a high - pitched scream as he continued to rock back and forth, his hands still covering his ears. She was so surprised by the scream that she quit cursing and simply watched him as he continued screaming.

After about thirty seconds, he quit screaming, removed his hands from his ears, quit rocking, and then let out a sigh, placing two fingers on his neck and then checking his watch in order to check his pulse.

When he'd felt that his heart rate was normal, he looked up to see that she was sitting in her chair, eyebrows raised, still - lit cigarette simply sitting in her hand, resting in between her pointer and middle finger.

"Wow," she finally said, nodding a little. "Now that just proves to me that you're in need of help more than I am. I can tell that you've got a lot of problems - maybe even more problems than I have. But don't worry, because there's hope for you yet."

He didn't know what to say to this. He simply looked at her rather expectantly, as though waiting for her to say more.

And say more she did - "Well, I've got to be going now, since I have some important business to attend to, but be back here tomorrow at the same time, and we'll continue this lovely little chat that we just had. Although it wasn't much of a chat, was it? No. It was just a lot of screaming. Hmm. Well, we'll be able to work on that. That's why you and I are meeting - so that I can help you with your problems."

After looking at him for a moment, she half - smiled and rose, nodding to him as she started to walk backwards towards the office door.

"I'll see you tomorrow, and it was nice to meet you, Dr. Horner," she said, then, without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked out the door, closing the door behind her as she left.

He stared at the closed door for a moment, then reached inside one of his desk drawers to pull out a tape recorder, which he used to recording his thoughts and feelings on patients and the meetings he had with them. He then hit the Record button and spoke into the tape recorder, not even caring whether a tape was actually in the recorder or not.

"June seventeenth, 2007. Just had a meeting with a new patient - Jamie Garrison, seventeen - year - old female. Patient is rude and annoying; very much so, in fact. I already halfway don't want to have another session with her, but she seems at least halfway interesting, so I'll keep her for now. Meeting with her again tomorrow at the same time. And she knows about the scream."

Letting out a sigh, he hit the Stop button on the recorder, then leaned back in his chair, placing the recorder back in the drawer he'd gotten it from and then lacing his fingers together thoughtfully.

This is going to be a very long and interesting road, he thought to himself. Let's hope I come to the end of it halfway sane.

Please review... I'll give you a cookie, along with the next chapter, if you do!