I Don't Know This Asshole

My feet shuffled beside my superior, walking to the ward where my patient was at.

“So about your patient. He was involved in a car accident, had to have his foot amputated. He’s trying to learn how to move about properly on crutches. He has been trying for about six months without much success. He fell into depression a while back and…”

As the associate psychologist went on talking about all the details of my new case, my mind slowly drifted from the contents of his speech to the tone in which he was saying it. Mundane, boring, and factual. As if the patient’s life hasn’t just been drastically altered because of this. As if this “case” was merely just another normal day at work.

Does it always have to be like this? Do we, as mental health professionals, always end up numb to the intense emotions our patients experience?

As a freshly minted psychologist, I was yearning to plunge myself into the hospital and help people get out of the trap which is their minds. I was enthusiastic, full of hope that I would make a difference. But looking at the weary faces of all of the senior psychologists, I began to wonder if I had been too optimistic. 

“Hey, are you listening?”

“Oh. Sorry I lost you for a moment. Could you repeat that?”

A tinge of annoyance flashed across my superior’s face.

“As I was saying, you’ll be working very closely with the occupational therapist for this case. She’s been trying to help him since day one, but has only achieved limited success. She’s saying that it’s more of a mental block for him, because his muscles do have strength, but..”

He was interrupted by the voice of a woman behind him.

“Hey! James! Is this the guy who’s taking over you?”

Something struck me about that voice. That airy, high-pitched, sweet sounding voice.

“Ah yes! Hey Rachel, I was just about to get you here. Would be helpful for you to meet the new psychologist in charge of your patient’s case.”

My superior nudged me, motioning for me to turn around and meet the occupational therapist.

I turned.

She had short hair, dyed slightly reddish-brown. Dressed smartly in a navy blue dress with her therapist coat around her. Shorter than me by about ten centimetres, she looked a lot like my… my ex girlfriend?!?!

I stood there wide-eyed for a moment. The memories came flooding back to me. I looked at her intently for any hint of recognition, but I could see none. Did I mistake her for my ex? Well, she certainly changed a lot. Her hair used to be black, and she never used to put that much make-up on in the past. She looks pretty different from how I remember her, but still… isn’t it too much of a coincidence that her name is Rachel, her voice sounds the same, and her physique is almost exactly like my ex too?

If she recognised me, she certainly didn’t show it at all. She extended her arm for a handshake and gave me a warm smile.

“Hey there, I’m Rachel!” She chirped.

“Yeah, yeah hello. I’m Vincent,” I mumbled as I clumsily put my hand out to return the handshake.

Only upon hearing my name did she furrow her brows a little. She looked at my hand and saw the scar which was my birthmark. Right below the thumb, it was a crooked line extending all the way down to my wrist. It’s subtle, but if you know about it there’s no way you can miss it. Suddenly her eyes widened, and I could see the recognition flooding her face.

We stared at each other for a moment, both of us in stunned silence. Our hands fitted together in an awkward manner.

“Wait, you two know each other?” My superior asked, clearly sensing something amiss.

It was her who broke out of the trance-like state first. Turning to my superior, she stammered,

“No. No… we don’t. Yeah, we don’t”

She withdrew her hand quickly, refusing to make eye contact with me. I stared at her for one more moment, before turning away myself.

“Nope, we don’t,” I answered my superior. I sighed silently. I guess that statement isn’t really a lie. We did know each other in the past. But after five years of no contact, I guess it’s fair to say we are strangers.

“Okay then. So anyway you two will be working closely together to try to help this patient walk again. His physical condition is rather stable but there is a sense of relentlessness setting in because of the lack of…”

As my superior continued rambling on, my thoughts drifted further and further. I was observing Rachel from the corner of my eye, who was staring at the floor and walking in silence.

“Hah, how familiar,” I thought. She was a person who always liked to brood over things before making a decision. On the day we broke up, this was exactly the sight that I saw. A girl who was confused, trying to figure things out. A girl who feels conflicted about what to do next, because her heart was arguing with her mind. A girl who always stays silent at the most important moments.

We approached the patient’s bed. The patient lay there motionless, eyes glued to the television. I sighed. It always pained me that hospital patients had no better avenue for spending their time. I strided over to his side.

“Hey there! I’m Vincent, your new psychologist. I’ve heard a lot about you! I am proud of how much you’ve done, and would love to talk to you formally soon. I heard that you will be able to move around without aid when you complete your treatment?”

The patient tried to force a smile out for me. But I recognised the look of despair in his eyes. He didn’t believe he could do it.

Rachel walked up to him next.

“How’s your leg today? Better? Do you still feel pain there?”

She pulled away the blanket covering his leg, showing the amputation stump at his ankle. 

“Could you lift up your leg and bend your knee for me?”

I watched Rachel as she expertly went about her daily job. She tested his muscle strength, flexed his knee joint, encouraged him to exert force to regain the strength that he lost. She then brought out the crutches and helped the patient up, telling him to put his body weight on the crutch and teaching him how to balance.

I couldn’t help but smile. Rachel had always dreamt of being an occupational therapist, and seeing her fulfil her dream like that was very heart-warming. We had broken up while she was still studying occupational therapy in university. I had no idea that she had become so proficient at her job.

After a five-minute walk, Rachel rested the patient on the bed once again.

“Great job today!” She encouraged the patient. “I’m sure you can learn to do this well enough with sufficient practice. Soon enough, you will no longer need to exert that much energy to walk and can move about easily!”

The patient sneered. “Like hell that’s ever going to happen. You’ve been saying that for the past six months. Yet every step I take still has me sweating buckets.”

I could sense the exasperation in not just the patient’s voice, but also from Rachel’s reaction. She was at her wits end too.

I interjected. “Maybe you would like to talk about it with me privately? I think I can understand what you’re going through.”

Rachel shot me an irritated look, as if to say, “This is my patient! Like hell you will know him better than me?”

But the patient looked at me. He stared at me unflinchingly for a long moment, as if daring me to look back into the abyss which was his mind. I didn’t break eye contact, telling him that I was not afraid of intensity. Something inside him softened after a while.

“Sure, why not. Not like anything’s going to change anyway.”

Rachel and my superior took the cue and left the ward. Rachel glanced back at me with daggers in her eyes. I shrugged it off. We’re strangers, remember?

“Stupid therapist. I thought I was lucky to get such a pretty therapist at first, but all she has are false encouragements. Nothing she does helps me. I don’t even know if I can trust her words.”

I chuckled inside. It was just like my relationship with her. Even as things were going downhill, she tried to hide it all. When I probed, she just tried to pacify me rather than address the issue. When it finally came out of her, it was already too late to salvage our relationship.

“Tell me more about your situation.” I probed.

“Well. you know. Stupid truck driver was texting on his bloody phone, didn’t see my car. My car flipped, the door crushed my foot”

I saw him wince in pain as he said that. I gave an empathetic nod.

“So my foot’s gone. But I dealt with that pretty okay. It wasn’t that bad at first actually. Rachel told me that I could function normally in a matter of weeks, so I had my hopes up. Got to feed the family, you know?”

I smiled and egged him to continue.

“But she lied. Kept lying to me. Been six bloody months and every single step I take has me panting for breath. I hate this life. I feel so... so”

I already knew what word was coming. I had heard it so many times from patients with depression.

“Useless?” I offered.

He turned his head sharply towards me after he heard those words. It was as if he had never expected me to be so forthcoming about the negative emotions he was facing. After a long moment, he broke down in tears.

“I never dared to say those words out loud. I.. I… didn’t want to…” He stammered.

I put my hand around his. I was used to people crying in front of me. It was as though only when I put together their thoughts clearly could they finally face up to it. People are surprisingly unwilling to look at negative emotions squarely in the eye. Suppress those emotions long enough and they come back to bite you.

“Bloody therapist only knows how to share false positivity. Never told me what’s truly going on. When I ask, all I get is that stupid silence of hers. She just keeps looking down and not saying anything. I’m hopeless, am I not?”

I didn’t know what to feel. My heart went out to this patient. But another part of me was disturbed by Rachel’s silence, even when it came to her professional life.

Back when we were together, it was precisely her silence that caused the end of our relationship. Rachel didn’t like the fact that I smoked. As I started the habit, I realised that she always looked at me with a stern look. But when I asked about it, all she did was look down and say, “It’s fine”.

I didn’t know that she disliked it so much that she was reconsidering the entire relationship. By the time she told me, she already had no feelings for me. By that time, it was already too late.

“I’ll talk to her about it,” I told the patient. I walked out of the room in search of Rachel, wondering how I was going to broach the subject. I had the exact same conversation with her on the day we broke up, about how she should have told me earlier and not kept silent all the way. Let’s just say It didn’t end very well.

She was right outside the ward, chatting amicably with my superior. I went straight to the point.

“You need to stop pacifying him. You need to address the issue that he’s having. He’s losing trust in you because you keep telling him things good when they are not.”

She locked eyes with me, shocked by the sudden interruption. Then, she looked down again, saying nothing.

“Yes. That’s what I’m talking about. You need to stop doing that. Your silence is killing him and he’s blaming himself for it. He thinks he’s a goner because you aren’t addressing the negatives.”

I could see the exact same reactions I saw on the day we broke up. The stone-face, then anger, then a sassy “You can’t fire me I quit” attitude. At that point, I knew my words weren’t going through.

My superior squinted at us. “You sure you don’t know each other? You two look like you have known each other for quite a while.”

We both answered in unison, “I don’t know this asshole!”