Zachary's P.O.V.
The private room was spacious, smelling of dried lavender and clean linen, with a large desk separating the seating area from a wall of medical certificates. Leo and I stood side by side directly behind Pollen's chair like a pair of silent bodyguards.
I kept my arms crossed tight over my chest, my eyes locked on the back of Pollen's head, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs as we waited.
Before starting the formal questioning, Doctor Valerie leaned forward across the desk, rolling a sleek, high-tech diagnostic device closer to Pollen's chair. She picked up a thin, lightweight metallic band embedded with soft, glowing blue sensors.
"Pollen, sit completely still for a second," Doctor Valerie murmured gently.
"I need to hook you up to the neural monitor so we can get an accurate look at what's happening inside."
I watched with a lump in my throat as she carefully placed the metallic band around Pollen's forehead, positioning the nodes right against her temples. The moment the band secured itself with a soft, magnetic click, the blue sensors pulsed gently against her skin.
Across the room, a large desktop monitor flared to life, displaying a series of frantic, jagged lines that tracked her live brain wave spikes in real-time.
Beside me, Leo didn't say a word. He was just staring and listening intently, his eyes fixed on the glowing blue screen, tracking the frantic metrics with a rigid, completely unreadable expression.
Pollen didn't look up at the doctor. She just kept her eyes directed entirely at the monitor screen, her fingers nervously tracing the fabric of her tote bag. I could tell it was an effort for her just to keep her posture straight.
Doctor Valerie adjusted her glasses, her brows knitting together as she began her questioning.
"Pollen, let's look at your baseline metrics," Doctor Valerie began, tapping her stylus against her digital tablet.
"I need you to be completely honest with me. First, when you experienced that severe, crushing headache that Leo mentioned during registration, did the pain begin as a sharp, localized pressure at the base of your skull, or was it a radiating ache across your frontal lobe?"
"It started as a sharp, piercing heat right at the back of my skull," Pollen answered honestly, keeping her voice low.
"It felt like a physical wire snapping, and then it spread forward until my entire head went numb."
Hearing those words sent a sudden, icy shock wave through my chest. She had never described the pain like that to me before. I shifted my weight slightly, my knuckles turning white as my arms tightened against my ribs. Beside me, Leo remained perfectly still, but I could hear the slight, heavy drag of his breathing as he took in the data.
"Second question," Doctor Valerie pressed, her eyes flicking directly back to the jagged, erratic brain waves scanning across her screen.
"Based on these live monitor tracking spikes, your current baseline defense levels are dangerously low. Have you skipped any of your neuro-stabilizer doses recently? And have you noticed a progressive decay in your cognitive shielding—meaning, are the stray thought bubbles of strangers appearing with higher visibility and faster text tracks?"
"Yes," Pollen confessed, her fingers tightening on her tote bag as she looked down.
"I skipped them yesterday and this morning because I was scared they were causing the pain. Now, the shield is completely gone. When I walked through the public lobby downstairs, I could read three distinct strangers' minds simultaneously without even looking at them. The text isn't blurry anymore; it's perfectly clear."
A tight knot formed in my chest. I hadn't realized she had walked through that crowded public floor downstairs completely unshielded. I kept my eyes fixed on the monitor screen, watching the jagged lines move as the machine emitted a quiet, steady beep that tracked her elevated pulse.
"Third," Doctor Valerie leaned forward, her expression growing serious.
"During these unshielded spikes, are you experiencing phantom auditory tones, like a low-frequency hum or static ringing, alongside the visual thought bubbles?"
"There is a heavy, erratic hum," Pollen murmured.
"It feels like physical background noise pressing against my temples, making it hard to focus on my own thoughts."
"Fourth question regarding your physical symptoms," the doctor said, checking the intake metrics Leo had submitted during registration.
"When your chest tightened and you began to hyperventilate, did you lose motor control in your limbs, or was the paralysis strictly a psychological response to the pain?"
"My fingers and knees actually went completely numb," Pollen explained, remembering the terrifying sensation.
"I couldn't force my legs to stand. My muscles wouldn't respond to my brain at all."
A wave of profound guilt washed over me. At the cemetery, I had thought she was just having a severe panic attack.
I had no idea her entire neural system was physically shutting down from the pressure.
"Final question, Pollen," Doctor Valerie concluded, her eyes locking onto the data lines on her tablet.
"Given your current state of neural exhaustion, how does your brain typically respond when you are completely away from urban crowd noise? Does the quiet help your head recover, or does the sudden silence make the internal dizziness worse?"
"I think... I think I desperately need the quiet," Pollen whispered, her eyes still fixed on the monitor display.
"But I'm terrified that without working medicine, the unfamiliarity will make the dizziness worse."
She kept her gaze locked on the still leaves, strictly refusing to look back at Doctor Valerie or the two of us behind her, doing everything she could to keep from getting dizzy again as the metallic sensors on her temples hummed softly.
The room fell into a dense, heavy silence as the neural monitor continued its soft, rhythmic ticking. Pollen kept her eyes fixed entirely on the electronic screen, tracking the jagged spikes of her own thoughts just to keep her mind grounded.
"Doctor Valerie," Leo's quiet voice broke the silence from directly behind her chair. He stepped forward a half-step, breaking the quiet density of the room.
"If Pollen has a chance to go to an isolated island for two weeks, will it be okay for her brain?"
Doctor Valerie paused, her stylus hovering over her digital tablet as she looked up from her notes. Her gaze shifted from Leo's serious expression back to the frantic tracking spikes on the live monitor screen.
"An isolated island?" she repeated slowly, her clinical tone carrying a note of genuine curiosity.
"With low population density and zero urban noise?"
"Yes," I added, my voice low but still vibrating with that lingering, protective anxiety. I stepped up beside Leo, my shadow casting a long silhouette across the side of the desk.
"She was handed an unexpected executive invitation to Starry Nightsky Island yesterday. We agreed that we wouldn't let her accept it unless you officially cleared it first. Given how her neural shield completely decayed today... is it actually safe for her condition?"
Pollen's P.O.V.
Doctor Valerie leaned back in her leather executive chair, tapping the edge of her tablet against her chin as she processed the parameters.
Knowing there were no strangers in this locked room to trigger my dizziness, I finally gathered enough courage to look up directly at Doctor Valerie. The moment my eyes met hers, a soft gray thought bubble materialized above her head, calm and deeply analytical.
'Starry Nightsky Island... It has one of the strictest restricted guest caps in the entire district line. It only ever gets crowded when it's New Year because tourists flood the area not just for the pristine view of the stars, but also for the legendary midnight firework display welcoming the new year.'
As I kept my eyes locked on her, the text inside the grey mist shifted slightly, the initial concept morphing seamlessly into a continuation of her thought track.
'Other than that singular holiday, the resort is virtually empty. If she stays in a low-density zone like that right now, her brain won't have to constantly fight off a thousand overlapping thought waves a day.'
She looked back at the live wave spikes on the monitor screen, her expression darkening slightly as she watched the frantic, erratic lines continue to vibrate across the grid.
"Logically speaking, Zachary, an environment like that might actually be exactly what her brain needs right now," Doctor Valerie delivered her official medical verdict, turning her chair back to face the boys.
"Pollen's current neuro-stabilizers are completely failing because her cognitive receptors are exhausted from the constant, daily friction of the city crowd."
" Look at these monitor readings—even in this quiet office, her brain is still struggling to recover from the public lobby downstairs. She doesn't just need a standard break; she needs an immediate, zero-stimulus environment to naturally reset her baseline defense levels."
I turned my head slightly to look back at Zachy.
The moment my eyes shifted toward him, a dense, dark blue thought bubble flared intensely over his head, heavy and thick with an absolute dread for my safety.
'What if something happens to her while she's entirely alone out there? I won't be there to catch her if she falls again. Two weeks is entirely too long to let her out of my sight after what happened at the cemetery.'
Seeing the sheer depth of his panic made my heart ache.
Zachy frowned slightly, his fingers tightening against the fabric on the back of my chair as he spoke up.
"But what about her medicine, Doctor?" Zachy pressed, his voice tight as he forced himself to voice our shared fears.
"She's terrified that the unfamiliarity of a private island will make the dizziness worse without a working stabilizer."
I truly appreciated Zachary, knowing that he understood exactly what I was feeling right now.
He was the only one who truly recognized how much the fear of the unknown was paralyzing me from the inside, stepping up to speak the words I couldn't say aloud.
"I am going to reconstruct her prescription today," Doctor Valerie replied, turning to her desktop terminal to authorize a fresh medical printout.
"I will provide a higher-grade, slow-release stabilizer stash specifically designed to manage high-anxiety spikes during transit. But the medicine is just a temporary shield, Zach. The true treatment here is the absolute silence of the island itself. Consider those two weeks as a mandatory period of neural therapy."
She turned away from her terminal, looking directly at me with an encouraging, gentle expression.
"Let's try. We don't know if we don't give it a try," she said, her voice softening as she leaned slightly across the desk.
"If it's okay with Pollen, why don't you give it a try? Relax a little. Let's try this therapy for your brain."
My eyes locked directly on the gray thought bubble hovering above her head. As she spoke, the text inside her mind shifted, vibrating with a deep sense of professional necessity.
'We need to know if it will be good for her condition or not.'
"Two weeks is short, but enough to know the result," Doctor Valerie spoke aloud, nodding firmly to emphasize her point.
"It's the perfect testing window to see how your cognitive shielding handles a low-stimulus zone. If it works, we might finally find a way to rebuild your permanent baseline."
I looked from the screen to Doctor Valerie, then glanced back at the silent, protective shadows of Zachy and Leo behind me. The crushing weight of the unknown was still there, but for the first time since yesterday's collapse, a small ember of hope sparked behind my ribs
"Okay," I whispered softly, my voice steadying as I gave them a small, decisive nod.
"Let's try it."
"Good," Doctor Valerie smiled warmly, reaching forward to slide the metallic diagnostic band off my forehead with a clean magnetic click. She looked back up at me with genuine, maternal kindness. Above her hair, her gray thought bubble flared with a sweet, comforting warmth.
'I hope you enjoy your vacation, sweety.'
"I hope you enjoy your vacation, sweety," Doctor Valerie spoke aloud, perfectly repeating the exact same words from her thoughts as she smiled gently.
Behind my chair, a long, heavy breath cut through the quiet room. Zachy let out a massive sigh of relief, his entire posture visibly sagging as the intense, suffocating panic finally melted from his shoulders.
"Thank goodness," Zachy murmured, looking down at me with a soft expression of approval. He gave a small, decisive nod.
"Alright, Pol. If Doctor Valerie says it's the right choice for your head, then you have my full approval. I won't stop you from going."
Leo let out a quiet sigh of his own, his chest expanding as he gave a calm, reassuring nod of agreement.
"I agree with the doctor. It's a rare opportunity to find true quiet. Go and get some proper rest, Pollen."
"Thank you, Zachy. Thank you, Leo," I said softly, my voice steadying as a genuine wave of gratitude washed over me.
"I promise I'll take care of myself and focus entirely on the therapy."
We waved our goodbyes, the tense atmosphere completely lifting from the room, and left the office. As the heavy door clicked shut behind us, the countdown to Monday morning officially felt less like a dangerous trap and more like a necessary cure.