The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

Sitting there with the spotlight on him, he looked like a Greek statue. A hero of some kind.

I kept glancing at the lifeless eyes in Gabriel’s portrait. They were staring at me, burning into me. I had to turn away. But I could still feel them watching.

“You know that joke, about why you can’t be a therapist and smoke? Because it means you’re still fucked up.”

Bc Theo IS FUCKED UP

“The sword of Damocles is hanging over the Grove.”

The Trust is bound to shut us down sooner or later. So the question is, what are you doing here?” “What do you mean?” “Well, rats desert a sinking ship. They don’t clamber on board.”

I feel she needs someone to take care of her.” Indira smiled at me. “And now she has someone. She has you.”

Comparing theo to mom. Maternaal

You can’t help me, her eyes shouted. Look at you, you can barely help yourself. You pretend to know so much and be so wise, but you should be sitting here instead of me. Freak. Fraud. Liar. Liar—

Theo projecting?

something haunted, afraid, mad. And that’s what bothered me: despite the years of medication, despite everything she had done, and endured, Alicia’s blue eyes remained as clear and cloudless as a summer’s day. She wasn’t mad. So what was she? What was the expression in her eyes? What was the right word?

She didn’t seem human, more like a wild animal; something monstrous.

what were you doing alone with Alicia?”

Rage is a powerful communication.

Her attack tells us something she can’t articulate directly—about her pain, her desperation, her anguish. She was telling me not to give up on her. Not yet.”

Projecting?

“And in a way,” Indira said, “Alicia has begun to talk. She’s communicating through Theo—he is her advocate. It’s already happening.”

If we could make demonstrable progress with her, we’d have a much stronger hand in saving the Grove from closure.

Alicia is a tool, a pawn to be used

I called her name. Force of habit, again—or a guilty conscience, perhaps, wanting to make sure I was alone before I transgressed?

Aware he is doing something wrong

She seemed visibly tired, pale, thinner than usual, fighting a cold. “I’m so fucking sick all the time,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”

Theo poisoning her?

Before long I was smoking weed every day. It became my best friend, my inspiration, my solace. An endless ritual of rolling, licking, lighting. I would get stoned just from the rustling of rolling papers and the anticipation of the warm, intoxicating high.

it cradled me and held me safe like a well-loved child. In other words, it contained me.

containment to describe a mother’s ability to manage her baby’s pain.

Maternal theme again

We need our mother to soothe our distress and make sense of our experience. As she does so, we slowly learn how to manage our physical and emotional states on our own. But our ability to contain ourselves directly depends on our mother’s ability to contain us—if she had never experienced containment by her own mother, how could she teach us what she did not know?

Someone who has never learned to contain himself is plagued by anxious feelings for the rest of his life, feelings that Bion aptly titled nameless dread.

so I did what I had done as a student—and made my way to Camden Town market.

Same market that Gabriel and Aljcia went to

Christian had been right to point out that rats desert sinking ships. What the hell was I doing clambering upon this wreck, lashing myself to the mast, preparing to drown?

Alicia was a silent siren, luring me to my doom.

Alicia’s eyes moved. They darted up to my face. We stared at each other. “Love includes all kinds of feelings, doesn’t it? Good and bad. I love my wife—her name is Kathy—but sometimes I get angry with her. Sometimes … I hate her.”

I don’t mean all of me hates her. Just a part of me hates. It’s about holding on to both parts at the same time. Part of you loved Gabriel. Part of you hated him.”

It was horribly unprofessional, not to mention totally fucking inept. It revealed far more about my state of mind than hers.

Unprofessional

Her silence was like a mirror—reflecting yourself back at you. And it was often an ugly sight.

I held my hand above my head, watching blood stream down my arm in tiny diverging rivulets, mimicking the pattern of veins beneath my skin. I thought of Kathy.

Veins

I was blocked up inside, packed with mud and shit.

This whole mythology of us

her voice shaky; just how shaky depended on my father’s mood, and if she’d been drinking. She might listen sympathetically to me, but her mind would be elsewhere, one eye on my dad and his temper. How could she help me? How can one drowning rat save another?

stinking lilies.

Before he dicovered her emails he had loved these flowers, now hates them

I spoke quickly, breathlessly, wanting to get it off my chest. I felt as if I were at confession.

Religion

“Fireworks?” “As in there aren’t any. Between us.”

how we often mistake love for fireworks—for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still.

It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.”

This wasn’t just about Kathy: it was about my father, and my childhood feelings of abandonment; my grief for everything I never had and, in my heart, still believed I never would have.

love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

thinking of Kathy, of her white skin, and those beautiful green eyes.

Skin????

I shrugged, evading her eye, like a naughty child.

I wanted to hit her. I wanted to leap on her and beat her with my fists.

Just like alicia

The touch of her lips almost made me flinch.

I turned up the temperature until it was almost scalding. The hot water lashed against my face as I wept, burning away messy, babyish tears.

Self harm

I would not let Kathy go. Instead I would say nothing. I would pretend I had never read those emails. Somehow, I’d forget. I’d bury it. I had no choice but to go on. I refused to give in to this; I refused to break down and fall apart.

“What did you ask?” “I asked if he deserved it.”

“You asked Alicia if her husband deserved to be killed?” Elif nodded and played a shot. “And I asked what he looked like. When she shot him and his skull was broke, and his brains all spilled out.” Elif laughed.

Elif made you feel repulsion and hatred—that was her pathology, that was how her mother had made her feel as a small child. Hateful and repulsive.

I smiled diplomatically. I had no desire to get into a discussion of Gabriel’s merits as a photographer. Instead I steered the conversation back to Alicia.

Weird ab Gabriel

He was the kindest man you ever met. Too kind. And all his talent, his goodness, his passion for life—wiped out, because of that bitch. It wasn’t just his life she destroyed—it was mine too.