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Steven had just raised his fist to the door—a fist that was only shaking a little bit mind you, it was fine, it was going to be okay, this wasn't some life ending thing he needed to be afraid of burdening someone with… you know, probably…—when it opened, his hand now mere inches from the face of the person on the other side.
"Duh-Deh-Dah—Dr. Maheswaran! I'm sorry! I!" Ugh. Come on! She's Connie's mom! It shouldn't be this awkward or scary!
"Hello, Steven. You seem stressed." She smiled warmly with only a hint of deadpan in her expression. "I trust that's not why you came here, though—I'm sure you know by now I'm a band-aid at best in that department."
He fidgeted with his hands, not looking her in the face. "No, I do. I actually wanted to ask for help with something that is stressing me out—I talked with my therapist about it—ah, maybe I shouldn't have come here—"
She pursed her lips. "Would you like to come in and sit down, Steven?"
"I… I don't want to bother you, you probably have a lot of appointments—maybe I should have made an appointment?"
"Steven, I promise you that if my clinic slots were right now and not in three hours, I would not be inviting you into my office. Connie wouldn't even have that privilege at a time like that unless it was an emergency—it's not an emergency, correct?" She cocked her brow as she backed up, opening the door wide for him to enter.
"No… not… not especially." He took a few meek steps into the carpeted room, hesitating a moment to take a look around, spying what appeared to be some wide file drawers, a few standard-issue hospital chairs, and two credenza desks shoved against each other in the most space-inefficient way possible.
"I share this office with Dr. West. But I'll be sure to tell him to scram if he tries to pop in. Oh, and Dr. Stromberg—" she pointed at a smaller desk shoved into the corner behind Steven, "but I don't anticipate an interruption from them—they make a point to spend as much time away from this place as they can. They'll probably only come in if a higher-up tells them they're behind on paperwork."
Steven paused and looked awkwardly at his feet.
"Well. There are chairs, Steven." She pointed at one near what Steven assumed to be her desk.
"Oh. Uh, right." He hastened toward it and took a seat, the doctor following suit at the desk.
"So, what brings you to my o—"
"I need you to experiment on me!" he blurted out, the ensuing silence cementing that he had worded that in just about the worst way possible. "I mean… that came out wrong, but I was talking about something in therapy and… she thinks maybe it would be a good idea to bring up to a, like, medical doctor, even if… if nothing comes of it?" No, she specifically advised that she was pretty sure nothing would come of it, but he wanted to hold out hope.
"…Is there a reason you came to me and not your GP?"
"Well… um… I mean, it's a gem problem, and you said you did research with Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, right? I… I think you should research me?" he flinched, though he wasn't quite sure what at.
"O… kay? What kind of gem problem, precisely?" Her brow furrowed, deep in thought as she turned to the file cabinet and lifted up the door covering the shelf—wait, those were shelves?! gah, focus, Steven—pulling out an apparently-specific file and looking over it. Steven could see a picture of Pearl's nose from his vantage point, so it must have been something about the gems.
"Um. Maybe… maybe this sounds weird… but I want to know what happens… when my gem is taken out… to my human half? Like, medically, I mean." He flinched, expecting the worst.
…Dr. Maheswaran was silent for a spell, and then rested her chin on her hand, speaking with the utmost seriousness.
"Can it be removed, without causing harm to you?" Her tone was grave. She would only take the truth on this. No dancing around it.
Steven's shoulders tensed, and he had to consciously avoid putting too much power behind his hand as it grasped around the chair's wooden armrest. The grimace on his face was clear as day. "—I… don't think so."
"Is that an assumption, or is it based on evidence?"
He found himself shivering, shuddering, as if the Earth and Heaven Beetles had fallen into his jacket and were proceeding to crawl up his spine. "…Um."
Dr. Maheswaran gave him space to answer.
He released a shaky breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He blinked slowly. "Do… do you remember a few years ago? Um… two… now?"
She gave a firm nod, trying and failing to fully game out where this was going other than what was obvious. "The 'diplomatic mission'? You came back during that concert, with the Diamonds on your side?"
"…Yeah. Um. I—" He inhaled sharply, as if he had been stabbed with a sword or a Breaking Point. "This is—I can't do this."
"Wh—"
He cut her off, gesturing more and more wildly as he spoke. "It took me six weeks to tell Dr. Brooks, how am I going to tell you in, what, six minutes? I haven't told my GP, I only told Dad the week after I spit it out in therapy, and I haven't even figured out how I'm going to tell the gems because I'm afraid of what they'd wanna do if they knew, and Connie only knows because she was there and—oh geez, she hasn't brought it up with you, has she? Do you already know or—" He trailed off, leaving the doctor an opening to respond.
"She told me that trip was harder than she thought it was going to be, but she never really gave me many specifics, no. You don't seem too keen on opening up, yourself—"
"She pulled it out. M-my gem." Almost before the words had completely left his mouth, his eyes had bugged out, as if his body, his mouth, his brain itself had betrayed him in that moment. He had to consciously keep control over his breath, his feet, his powers, lest they betray him at any moment themselves.
…Considering he was now bright pink, he sure was doing a bang-up job.
Dr. Maheswaran was wide-eyed and frowning—nngh, why did he have to worry people, why couldn't he be fine normal okay well-adjusted better—
"Steven, is there anything you've learned in therapy that might help you to," she paused to consider her wording, hoping to get across that she cared more about his well-being than the continued existence of her office, "address your emotions right now?"
His breath hitched, and he replied, "Ye-yeah… of course. Right." He heaved his bag up onto his lap. "At home, I try to see if anyone's around to hug, but I—I can't ask you to—th-this'll have to do. Unless you got a couple of shot puts I can slip into my jacket." He snickered humorlessly and hugged the heavy-looking bag as if his life depended on it, managing to only look a little distant.
"When it happens in therapy, Dr. Brooks throws—well, no, hands, throwing makes it sound like she's just—" he mimed a firm toss in the doctor's direction, "anyway, she gives me a heavy blanket or something else with some weight to it and we talk it out? I… I guess I do the same thing at home, actually? Talk with someone, if they're free? It's… I think she said it's supposed to help me get better at asking for help. If I at least try. Even if it doesn't go anywhere." Talking about the process, even if he wasn't actually doing most of it, seemed to at least sort of help him come back down to earth.
He looked up at the ceiling. (When had those fluorescent lights gotten so bright?) He stared at Dr. West's empty desk. Scarcely a second later and his eyes darted to look through the blinds behind Dr. Maheswaran—not that there was much of a view from the third floor office whose window overlooked an enclosed section of roof.
Dr. Maheswaran's mom sense considered giving Steven the hug he seemed to want need. Her doctor sense told her that might be a violation of some sort of doctor-patient relationship and kept her rooted in her seat.
When the pink faded, she cautioned a comment that she hoped wouldn't break his newly rebuilt cortisol levee immediately.
She placed her hand flat on the papers in front of her and looked him in the eye. Steven looked to the side uncomfortably for a few moments before looking her in the face in turn. "To clarify… and… don't feel obligated to answer if it… triggers any sort of negative memories again so soon… er… Connie removed—?"
"Wha—" His eyebrows practically shot all the way to the back of his neck, they rose so high, and by some miracle, he didn't turn pink. "Oh, geez, no! Of course not, I'm sorry for—I mean—Connie didn't do anything—she's fine. She's… amazing! Perfect!" He let the image of Connie, so solid, so supportive, try to carry him to the end of his thought, like she'd carried him to his other half those years ago, like she'd helped carry him from the depths of the psychological hole he'd dug himself into what seemed like yesterday. "It's… It was… um…" his volume dropped so low as to almost be inaudible, "White."
And all at once, it was as if the floodgates had opened and everything about that day had to come out.
"Um… u-uh… I… you know that feeling you get when you come across a jumpscare on TubeTube, where it feels like your heart goes… missing for a few seconds? After we came apart, it… was kind of like that, except it didn't go away? And I felt like I was gonna throw up, and it was like I was too hot and too cold all at once, and my head and my arms—my whole body—hurt, and everything sounded all fuzzy, I guess." His eyes focused on thin air in the middle of the room as he related the experience with more clarity than he ever related anything. "E-except my gem half somehow, which was really weird? I couldn't think about anything other than getting to my gem again, but I couldn't stand up… Connie… Connie carried me… she—she's amazing… and… and strong, I—" he hugged himself.
"I… I-I guess what I remember the most is that I just… it felt like I was going to die." Unconsciously, his hand rested protectively over his gem. "—Mm—maybe—Maybe I would've… if… if Connie hadn't been there to help me."
He looked up at Dr. Maheswaran. "Ugh, I'm talking about Connie too much, aren't I?"
She smirked. "More than I was prepared for, but not too much, no. You aren't coming off like a stalker, if that's your concern." Her whole face narrowed as she looked down at her notes on the gems. "But you did give enough context as to what… that… entails that I can't sign off on your request in good conscience."
"…You can't?" He had half expected this but still was disappointed.
"I know you want answers, and I wish I had some for you, really, Steven, but from what you've described… even if some of it could be chalked up to stress…" she gestured aimlessly as she listed things off, "possible heart issues—tachycardia? arrhythmia? if I had to guess?—the nausea, whatever weakened you to the point of needing help moving, I can only imagine what your homeostasis was doing, plus anything we don't have any obvious evidence of… those aren't things to play around with. It's unethical to knowingly subject you to those for the sake of 'experimenting', even if you consent." She looked him in the eye, searching for understanding.
Steven reeled at the emotional overwhelm from the sudden eye contact and reflexively squeezed his messenger bag's strap. "Yeah… yeah… right, of course."
"Now, if you ever came in here in that state, I'd jot things down because I'd have to…" she continued, "but that's not a call to do it yourself, I hope you understand. That's involuntary psychological observation territory, and you're the last person I'm not related to that I'd want to suggest a psychologist issue a 72-hour hold for."
Steven looked down. "I… yeah, I wouldn't do that. Um."
"I know, just covering all my bases and hoping I haven't done a 'don't put beans up your nose' is all."
He cocked a brow. "…'Don't put beans up your nose?'"
Dr. Maheswaran chuckled, her expression softening just a bit. "It means when you don't want somebody to do something you don't provide an example that they haven't thought about doing, because then they'll be tempted to do it."
"Don't worry. I'm not… um—tempted."
He went silent, looking at the faded dark pattern in the carpet, the perfect shade for hiding day after day of footfalls along the same paths.
The doctor sighed. "Steven, I'm sorry I can't help—you—er—have, um, closure about this. Like I said before, I do wish my answer could be different." She wanted to avoid taking on the emotion he was exuding and just lose herself in the papers on her desk, but she steeled herself and looked at him squarely with the composure of the professional she was.
"I know. It's… okay. Thanks. I think just talking things out with you helped. Really." He stood, only a little distant, not bothering to find a more natural way of ending the conversation and leaving. "I might, um, talk about this? At my next therapy session? If that's, um… if it's okay with you?"
"It's fine, Steven. Go ahead. And my door is always open for less… intense medical inquiries."
He smiled thinly. "Yeah. Uh, thanks, Dr. Maheswaran," he replied as he headed toward and out the door, giving her a single look back.
He waited until he was down the hall before he let his hand half-consciously curl around the outer facets of his gem.