Page 52 of You Can't Hurt Me

The first page has several suggested areas for self-reflection from her supervisor.How do you feel about your current client? Have you picked up on any transference today? If so, what feelings came up?The spaces left for written notes are blank. I flip through all of them. Inside are a few receipts along with several pages filled with writing. I take them out. My stomach lurches.

Her entries.

I stand up too quickly, feel the ground give way and the room spin.

28 March 2019

It hasn’t gone away, this sense of being overwhelmed by emotion, drowning in it since I’ve met Patient X. I’m out of my depth. It’s something I’ve never experienced, not even in marriage. The power of it, the raw emotion. Their pain makes me feel alive. I can’t imagine a better feeling.

My hands shake as I turn to another page. I begin reading her entries about a patient she starts seeing regularly, Patient X. Their complex, emotional sessions, how they slowly open up to her, first about surface-level anxieties and then deeper histories. Family trauma. My stomach spikes with adrenaline, her words in that perfectly neat handwriting begin to blur.

Me: “I know this is difficult for you but I wonder if we could return to that night you mentioned early on. Can you unpack that a bit more?”

Patient X inhales sharply. Their tone shifts, features soften. It feels like a privilege to create this atmosphere of trust that I hope I’ve helped to nurture. To finally, finally share their pain.

Patient X: “I guess it’s the smell I remember first. The kitchen was filthy, flies at the bottom of the fridge, rotten food. We were all there together.”

Me: “But this evening was different from the rest?”

Patient X: “We’d started eating and the windows were open wide, it had been a hot day, kind of close and airless too. The weather affected his mood. He’d been furiously impatient all day. His outburst was vicious but right in the middle of it, the weather broke. Sheet lightning, thunder. Somehow it triggered the smoke alarm, there was this unbearable high-pitched sound and maybe it was the shock of it. He collapsed with chest pain, struggling to breathe. He usually keeps an inhaler close to him, or another couple in the bathroom but—” Patient X falters “—we couldn’t find them. We searched and searched...by the time the paramedics arrived it was all too late.”

Me: “I’m sure there was nothing you could do.”

Patient X looks down, chews their lip.

Me: “You know it’s universal, this feeling when you witness a loved one dying in a situation like yours. We would do anything to save them but it’s all beyond our control so we punish ourselves, continually ask what if?”

Patient X doesn’t reply.

Me: “So what happened next?”

Patient X: “I stayed with him, watched him struggle for his last breath until the paramedics arrived. By then, of course, it was too late. Only...there’s something else, too...”

Tears well up in my eyes, my throat burns. I try at first to conceal my response, to think of Janet. Stay focused, objective, use what you’re feeling, don’t get absorbed by it.

Patient X glances at me, puzzled, confused. “What’s the matter?”

Me: “Give me a moment, I’ll be fine.” I wipe my cheek with the heel of my hand.

Patient X moves forward in their seat, offers me the box of tissues. “You’re upset?” They lean forward and gently place their hand over mine.

I only have time to read a couple more pages, an intense, overwhelming dread overtaking me as I read about the night of my father’s death. It’s all in here, all my secrets spilled in these lines. To anyone reading this, the identity of Patient X would be unmistakable. Nate obviously doesn’t know it even exists, or he’d never have hired me.

I freeze. A shiver of movement outside the door. I quickly close the journal and shove it under my jumper, gripping it close to me with my arm across my waist. Quickly, I glance at the bureau to make sure everything’s in place, no sign of intrusion.

“Nico,” I call, in a singsong tone. “Ah, there you are.”

I pick her up from the bed where she’s still curled up, as if I’ve just found her. Just in time.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?” I turn to see Jade standing in the doorway, the cat draped over my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry. I was going to the washroom and saw her dart upstairs. I followed her up. I remembered what you said about the bedrooms, how much Nate hates her escaping upstairs?” My face snaps into a smile. She doesn’t return it. “What happened to the lunch?”

“Mom had to leave early so I thought I’d come back and catch Nate. Maybe it’s lucky I did,” she says, archly, walking over and sweeping Nico from me. She motions me to leave. “Go on, Nate’s just got back. I’ll tidy this up,” she says, sweeping nonexistent cat hair off the bed with her free hand.

As I leave, I catch sight of myself in Eva’s ornate full-length mirror by the door, my face flushed, my pupils dilated. I look exposed, different somehow. Is this the real me? Scurrilous and guileful, stealing from Eva and lying to Jade. I walk away, haunted by what I’ve read, haunted too by my own reflection, as if I’ve unexpectedly met a ghost, someone I used to know.

19

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