I will call him Q.
I cannot tell you his real name because of the oath I have sworn to protect my patients. He sits on the other end of the freshly lacquered table, fingers tapping absent-mindedly on his knee and feet simultaneously pummeling the soft verdurous rug in no particular rhythm. The black numbers of the LED Casio clock behind his head, counts down, and my mind wanders with each tick, to 6:00pm.
Maybe I am terrible at this job; maybe I lack the empathy needed of a psychologist. Soon, maybe, you will understand my impatience tinged with excitement at the thought of flipping Q off to his next session.
Or maybe you won’t.
“My pastor’s wife believes I am possessed by demons” he stammers, “That gossipy bitch wouldn’t say it to my face”
“Perhaps she is too afraid to confront the legion you may be hosting” I retort mechanically.
He blinks at me. His jaw, slack at first with surprise, clenches into a peal of nervous painful laughter.
“Good one Dr. U” he cackles, “I will tell the tramp next time. Pastor’s wife my ass! Do you know she actually blows the church elders, when her blabbering husband is away on one of his crusades?”
I bite my tongue and let curiosity slide down my throat.
“Remember what I have told you, to ignore these religious charlatans and their so-called divine revelations”, I admonish.
He sighs. “My wife wants me to look for healing there. Honestly Doc, I will take healing anywhere I can find it.”
“Are you taking your medications?” I ask, nudging him back into the realm of relevance.
He shrugs and starts kneading his temples, rocking in his seat. “They don’t always allow me”, He fidgets. “They threaten me. They say I’ll die if I cannot hear them. They say I need them to…”
He pauses.
I wait for him to continue, the clock behind him heralding the end of this session.
“What else do they tell you?” I offer. “What do they threaten to do?”
He gnaws on his right fingers, his left hand furiously tapping his knees, and stops abruptly.
I know where this is headed; his descent into the abyss of a cluttered, disheveled and clangorous mind. The melting of incoherent sanity into the uncertain definiteness of thoughts that are not his.
“Who says I am threatened?” a soft voice escapes lips widened in a vacant smile.
We have played in this scene before.
“But of course nobody can threaten you” I purr, “You’re in total control.”
“Yes I am,” he smugly affirms.
“You seem parched,” I say as I fill his glass with water from the jug he had barely touched all evening.
The clock on the wall starts to beep at the same time as his Adam’s apple bobbles with the gurgle of water flowing through his throat. As he reclines on the sofa, I reach for my suit on the rack and make for the door to the outer office.
Nkechi, my delectable ebony-skinned assistant, barely glances up from her computer screen.
“Today’s session go well?” she asks, “seems shorter than the rest”
“You know, I really can’t tell. There have been better days”
“Hmmm-hmmm” She says, handing me my car keys and still not looking at me.
“The usual?” she asks gesturing at the door to my office, in which Q now lay passed out on the couch from the Clozaril I crushed into his glass of sparkling water.
“The usual” I affirm, reaching for the door that opens to an evening of Technicolor, amoral liberations and sand. Lots of sand.
“Goodnight”.
pariahtales 