The Session

The Session

Dr. Cass coughed, and then coughed again, and again, at the start of the first session. She sipped from a glass of water on the table beside her between bouts, for what seemed a very long time. 

We’re into an eighth wave of the coronavirus, Miriam had heard on the news that morning. Today was the day she had decided to talk to someone about her difficulty leaving the house, though she had been receiving help online since the start of the pandemic. Surely face to face would work better.

When the doctor’s coughing episode eased, followed by a long diatribe about the wet weather, Dr. Cass glanced over at her umbrella lying in a puddle of water by the closed door and talked at length about her history of lost and broken umbrellas. 

Miriam’s foot across her knee shook with impatience. Would she ever get a word in? Her case notes and mood graphs lay silently unread on Dr. Cass’s lap.

‘So,’ Dr. Cass said, ‘I usually do family therapy, so I’ll do what I usually do, and spend the first two sessions asking about members of your family: names, ages, where they live, what they do. Okay?’

Miriam felt her body heat up and start to sweat. What about me?

‘Do you live alone?’ Dr. Cass asked, coughing into her elbow. 

Has she done a RAT test? Perhaps she should ask Dr. Cass that question. 

Miriam hated being enclosed. Trapped in a room with a shut door. 

‘Alone or with a partner?’ Dr. Cass prompted.

‘Alone.’ 

Miriam, the empty-nester. She missed their voices, their laughter, their secret visitors climbing in through the kitchen window.

Since a publicist had achieved a small amount of notoriety for Dr. Cass and her self-help book, Changing Inherited Predispositions, many people wanted to work with her. 

Dr. Cass (a PhD doctor), was the therapist who had the most impressive and extensive CV in the practice. Miriam had checked them all out online before ringing for an appointment. But now all Dr. Cass wanted to do was talk about herself. At each mention of a member of Miriam’s family, the doctor would use it as an opportunity to talk about her own life: her husband, her sister, her daughter, her nephew, her recent health scare. She hadn’t even added up the numbers in Miriam’s mood graphs. 

Miriam sat there, her foot vibrating across her knee with agitation. She’d had enough. Dr. Cass had begun to talk about how she and her specialist doctor husband were thinking of downsizing, after Miriam had mentioned she’d moved, downsized several times. How could she stop the doctor from recounting another long story?

‘I did it because I needed the money,’ Miriam said in a sharp, very loud voice. Was she shouting? 

Dr. Cass snapped back into doctor mode.

‘What I really wanted to talk about is my difficulty with getting out of the house,’ Miriam said, breathing rapidly. Am I hyperventilating? About to have a heart attack? I need to get out of here.

‘Every time I imagine going out into the world,’ she said, ‘I get a pain in my chest. Can’t breathe, can’t swallow.’

Dr. Cass looked up at her while glancing at the referral notes on her lap. She unclipped her pen from the clipboard. The pen was a fountain pen, perhaps the same one she used to write her book.

The cough was back and the glass of water empty.

Enough already. Miriam looked at the door where the umbrella lay. It would only take a moment to stand up, to walk to the door, and to let herself out.

She swallowed hard. Uncrossed her legs. Could she make it?