Powehi: Observer Effect

Heart to Heart

If a psychiatrist ever says they've never wanted to kill one of their patients, they're lying.

"What's your heart sound like, doc?"

I smiled at him. At the time, I didn't know where he was going. If I did, I'd have shot him with the gun from my desk drawer, the just-in-case-of-crazy one. Emptied the whole clip.

"Toss aside romantic notions. The voice of your heart is not what you think." He was on the couch, the one all shrinks have.

We're supposed to let the patient steer the course of the discussions, so I asked: "What do you think it is?"

He smiled. It always seemed disjointed, with a kind of detached whimsy. "Oh, I know what it is. I want to know what you think it sounds like."

"I suppose it sounds like love." I put on the neutral smile. Therapists have smiles we put on like slippers. Each one for a different situation.

He laughed. I was used to patients doing that. They usually did when you don't see the obvious nature of things through their distorted lens. Something about that time really grated at me though.

"No, doc. Not like when you put your hand over your chest. Not when it's late and you listen to the stillness, or when your heart is hammering away in excitement or fear. I mean when you really listen." He shook his head in that condescending way. "If you don't know how then you can't."

He had been a condescending shit from day one. "I don't understand. I'd like to. Can you help me understand?"

"Sensory deprivation." He said it like a magician yanking off the sheet to reveal the unassuming box was now a fish bowl.

The notes on my pad were riddled with small doodles in the margins. He was one of the few patients who got my mind wandering. It wasn't the first time he'd preached the benefits of sensory deprivation. "You do seem to attribute much of the positives of your life to it." Experience was the only reason that didn't sound more judgmental.

"I wouldn't say I'm addicted to it."

"That's good." I offered neutrally.

"Going once a month does not an addiction define." He pointed at the ceiling with his finger, a professor coming to a point of importance in his lecture." It's great for unwinding. Letting go of stress. Learning about yourself. After the first dozen times, that's when I learned to listen to it."

He settled into his monologue, comfortable with it. No matter how many times he tells hits part of the story. He liked the sound of his own voice, I'm sure. I know.

"When there are no other sensations, you can hear it. It always starts with that first. Keep your eyes open and just relax. Next, you'll start to realize how minutely and unconsciously you move. Little twitches. Tremors. Easy to call them myoclonic jerks, but it's not that. I believe subconsciously we are determined to be at rest only when unconscious."

"If you can be still, then you'll start to feel it. Close your eyes and see the red pulse of it behind your eyelids. There is a slight delay between the beat of your heart and the flash."

I tried to interject. "As you've said before, it was part of your routine. The day to day was work, exercise, reading, and sleeping. Out on weekends with your friends. Stress was the only way to earmark the difference. Then you'd reward yourself with a break."

My hope was that by saying it first, he wouldn't feel the need to repeat. Hell, maybe he'd even be annoyed with me. Sometimes, a therapist will try and annoy you subtly with things you hate until you decide to go to with someone else. If they say otherwise, they're lying.