Page 1 of The Therapist

NOW – WEDNESDAY NIGHT

The scream can’t be coming from my mouth but it has to be. I recognise my own voice.

As I crouch on the ground, rocking while the blaring sirens get closer and closer, I feel some part of me step back.

Get a grip , I hear the better version of me say. Pull yourself together. You’re a therapist. Act like one .

But that part is not as strong as the part that is hearing the sirens, smelling the heavy smell of blood in the cold air, staring down at the body on the ground. That part cannot control what is going on here.

I was supposed to help. That’s what I do.

In my consulting room, patients come to me with their worries, their fears and their secrets and I do my best to guide them to a better place.

I hold their secrets close to me, keeping them even when they distress me because that’s my job. I try to make things better.

But I have made things worse, so much worse, and now there is a body and the screaming and the sirens. I have not managed to hold on to someone’s secret. Instead, I have lost control of the truth and now I am here.

And then there is shouting from someone else.

‘Put down the gun!’ a man yells. ‘Put it down, put it down now.’

I lift my gaze from the body to follow the sound of his voice, see his face screwed up in anger and something else…fear?

He is afraid of me. ‘Put it down!’ he yells again and I look down at my hand. I am holding a gun. That’s what he’s afraid of. He is holding a gun too.

But my gun is different to the gun he is holding because his comes with a uniform and authority.

I have no authority here. I shouldn’t be here.

I was trying to help; I want to explain but he doesn’t care about anything except the gun in my hand.

He takes a step closer to me and shines a torch in my face. ‘Put it down, put the gun down.’

I lift the hand holding the gun, finally managing to get the words out.

‘I didn’t mean for it to happen,’ I tell him. ‘I was only trying to help,’ I wail as I hope that he believes me. I really need him to believe my side of the story. I need him to believe me.