The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

their journey was etched into their faces, impossible to miss.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways.

‘Rage is a powerful communication. The other patients – the zombies who just sit there, vacant, empty – they’ve given up. Alicia hasn’t.

intimacy requires the repeated experience of being responded to – and that doesn’t happen overnight.’

We leak all kinds of information about ourselves unintentionally – by the colour of my socks, or how I sit or the way I talk – just by sitting here with you, I reveal a great deal about myself. Despite my best efforts at invisibility, I’m showing you who I am.’

But that’s what Alicia did for you. Her silence was like a mirror – reflecting yourself back at you.

The fabric underneath my fingertips was worn thin by the anxious rubbing of many patients, myself included.

‘About love. About how we often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm – and constant.

Alcestis returns from death, alive again. And she remains silent – unable or unwilling to speak of her experience. Admetus appeals to Heracles in desperation: ‘But why is my wife standing here, and does not speak?’

She held out her trembling hand towards me. She was clutching something – a small leather-bound notebook.

I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the look-out, and you continually stretch the truth.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance. William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale