The doctor studied the recommendation letter from her GP with a slight frown. He raised his eyes to her a couple of times before going back to the paper. When he was done, he folded it back into the shape it had come out of the envelope and laid it on his desk, the long side parallel to the edge. His desk was surprisingly bare. She had expected it to be covered in stuff, though she couldn't have said what in particular.

"Could you be more specific about 'Father unknown'?"

Those were the first words that she heard Doctor Astikainen utter. That guy was direct. She used her usual answer. The one she gave to nosy school principals: "My mother never told anyone."

His eyes flickered for a second, like if he was already drawing conclusions.

"You asked for hypnotherapy yourself."

She stared at him blankly for a while. Was that a question? He had probably read it in the letter. Since he stayed silent, she decided that it was a question and that she was supposed to answer something.

"I thought it'd help." He didn't move. "With the dreams, I mean." she added quickly.

The doctor remained motionless. What was she supposed to do? All she knew about hypnosis she had learned on TV. He'd probably guess if she went into details.

"It could," the doctor finally said. "It will depend on you," he added. "On how receptive you are. And how cooperative."

"There is nothing I want more than the dreams to stop."

"That certainly is what you think you want. The dreams about your mother, about your memories of her, you might not let go of them so easily."

"I do! I feel so bad when I wake up! I cry for hours! For God's sake!" Who was this guy, to try and second guess what she really wanted?

"Yes. Receptive and cooperative, you see. We might have a problem on both levels."

"Fuck!"

She stood and walked out.

That was the full extent of her first visit at Doctor Astikainen's office.

The following one was a little more fruitful.

"The reason why you cry so much when you wake up is possibly because you are so happy in your dreams. You cry not because of the dream, but because you come back to reality, where your mother is absent."

She hated when people used euphemisms like that. She hated it also when they talked bluntly and said she was dead. She hated when people talked about her mother at all. The doctor was right about one thing, this was not going to be easy, receptive-and-coorperativewise.

She tried to tell him some of the dreams, but even that, she couldn't. She hadn't even told Grandma. She stuttered for a full minute on the first sentence before bursting out in tears. That was the dream where she and her mother were running out of the kitchen, with the killer after them, into the bedroom and into the bathroom and into the kitchen (even though there wasn't a door from the bathroom to the kitchen) and back in the bedroom, and the killer kept getting closer and she heard a gun shot, and she felt a spray of blood on her back, and the body of her mother collapsed on her, and she could feel the hot blood pouring on her, and she couldn't get herself out from under the body of her mother, and she looked back at where the killer was and there was nobody. Just her and her dead mother.

She practiced dream-telling a bit in front of the mirror before going in for the third time.