Silence. My challenge ignored.
I check the small gold clock on my desk.
“We have to end now, Alexa,” I say. “I’d like you to reflect on today’s session. If anything comes up, remember to bring it next time. What’s your memory like?”
“I told you earlier, I’m forgetful.” She laughs. “How’s yours?”
I smile, her challenge and acute observation of me duly noted.
“So write it down,” I suggest.
“Sure.”
“It’s time,” I say.
We stand.
“Next Tuesday, same time?”
She agrees and dusts down her dress. Lifts her warm jade-green eyes to mine, then walks to the door.
“Thank you, Daniel,” she says, turning toward me while stroking a heart-shaped necklace tied at her throat. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
I’m aware of how close we are, that I can smell her perfume. Its scent wafting up to the fine hair in my nostrils, leaving a dizzying tang of citrus. Above her plump mouth, a perfect vertical groove touched by an angel, a fiend.
“Goodbye,” I say.
I close the door, sit back at my desk, and pick up the phone.
“Hello, this is Dr. Patel speaking.”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Daniel. How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Exhausted, but what’s new?”
“I have a new patient,” I say, “a young woman. My countertransference tells me bad things have been done.”
“Then listen to it,” he says. “Chances are you’re right.”
While transference deals with feelings that the patient transfers onto the psychiatrist and is often founded on earlier relationships, countertransference is the reverse. That is: similar irrational feelings that the psychiatrist has toward the patient. Occasionally, countertransference can make the work deeply uncomfortable, sometimes impossible. Imagine, for example, a psychiatrist who was sexually abused as a child treating a pedophile, or a victim of domestic violence treating a manic abuser. But in milder form, countertransference is a psychiatrist’s most reliable tool, and without doubt the most effective.
“Age?” Mohsin continues.
“Twenty-four.”
“Signs of trauma?”
“Childhood trauma, if I were to take a guess. Avoids eye contact, a tendency to dissociate. I don’t quite know who was here today; there was some switching. My head feels light, certainly lighter than before the session.”
“Is she attractive?”
“Very.”
“Mm. Family?”
“Her mother’s dead. Estranged from her father. No siblings. Apparently there’s a stepmother. One of her requests, however, was to address family. I suspect what she means is the loss of family.”
“Sounds likely. What about her memory?”
“Useless, she says.”
“A fractured self?”
“Possibly.”
“So most likely compartmentalized. Maybe a false self has been necessary for protection. Boundaries will be important. Medication?”
“Antipsychotics. Four milligrams, twice daily.”
“Heavy stuff. What else?”
“She filled in the standard forms, left out the part on medication, then decided, during session, to complete it. When she handed the form back it was written in a different hand. There was definitely a younger self here. But an older self left, potentially quite seductive.”
“Possibly multiple personalities? DID?”
“That was my thought.”
“You’ll need some help with this one.”
“Why else do you think I called?”
“I thought you might be missing me.”
“Ha!”
“Well, don’t be shy. Call if you need a second opinion.”
“You may live to regret that.”
“No doubt. Well good luck, and be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Deception, manipulation.”
“You sound concerned.”
“They’re not straightforward—patients with dissociative identity disorder—dangerous in the wrong conditions.”
“I’ll be careful. Are we still on for lunch tomorrow?”
“Sure. Usual place?”
“See you then.”
I hang up; stare down at the forms, my eyes lingering over an unfinished question that I hadn’t spotted earlier.
Full name: Ale—
Strange. I take out my fountain pen and finish her answer:
—xa Wú
Outside, morning has fully arrived. The sky now blue and soft, a murder of crows resting on top of the rose brick wall. Staring out at the imperial oak and thick rows of lavender, I wonder if Alexa’s seductress has a name. When and if she’ll return.
4
Alexa Wú
Hazy from the session, I walk along the tacky oatmeal corridor.
That wasn’t so bad, I say, haranguing everyone inside.
Dolly is the only one who responds by smiling. I want ice cream, she insists, scooting into my side.
Later, I say, chucking her under her chin. It’s only nine o’clock.
Dolly makes a face. The overbearing smell of cafeteria-cooked food hijacking any air that might be circulating from the open barred windows.
Stinky, she says, holding her nose.
All doors I detect open outward, making them impossible to barricade. This I learned while watching a documentary on young offenders with Anna, who has a strange fascination for anything involving the captivity of animals or human beings. Sometimes that includes me. I imagine it’s got something to do with keeping me safe. To put right what she couldn’t before my father left, his strong will ruling our home, Anna doing her best to protect me in her nonsword hand as the other defended us from my father’s heavy blows. But she was no match for his vile temper. Was rarely quick enough for his sneaky fists.
I’m suddenly aware of a woman—heavy with unruly blond hair—staring at me from behind a water cooler. As I draw closer she lasers me with a gimlet eye but then quickly turns away, supposedly shy. Ebbing back, she squats farther behind the barrel and taps it repeatedly. Spooked, I rush for the door. Her stare unsettling and eerie, her tapping a thorny and stark reminder of my own obsessive compulsions.
Outside, my attention stays pinned on the pretty gardens and their handsome gardener as he wrestles with a large bush of white lace-capped hydrangea. I head toward Glendown’s wrought-iron gates, while behind me miracle flowers and birdsong disguise what the world labels madness.
On the Tube, I’m rocked by the swaying train and lean my head back. An image of Daniel appears: red hair, broad shoulders, his blue eyes intense, his smile soft and kind.
He knows, Runner declares in my head, he caught the switch when some of the others stepped into the Light. He can read us. He knows.
Do you really think so? I worry it’s way too early for him to know about my other personalities.
I know so, Runner replies.
Ella and Grace are already there when I arrive. Have secured a table at the café beneath the department store where we’ve agreed to look but not buy. Waving as I approach, I note my borrowed mint sweater now draped over Ella’s shoulders. Grace has done the same, only hers is red.