34
“What...truth?” I asked. I could smell a stale kind of perspiration start leaking out of my pores.
“I’ve found when a case is truly frustrating,” Dr. Rios said, “sometimes it’s best to start with the patient. So tell me, Halli, what do you think happened? Why are you here?”
“Um...because I had a headache?”
“Let’s define our terms, shall we?” she said. “On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you’ve ever experienced in your life, how severe would you say that headache was?”
“Um...a ten? No, maybe an eight.” Ten was the true answer—in fact, on a scale from 1 to 10, I would have called it a 50—but since my goal was to get her to stop drugging me and let me out of there, I figured I’d better downplay it.
“Worse than the pain of a broken bone?” Dr. Rios asked.
“Um...
