My mute.

Today, I was ready. Bounding over to work on a summer's day in November, a critical state of affairs, I decided to summon all my powers of empathy and osmosis. I had not seen client G. last week, requesting her doctor wean her off the high dose of diazepam and so it was, this morning, with the atmosphere in the room allergic and viral, my mute and I reunited. I sat at an angle to her, suggesting alliance against a terrible, demonic third party. I summoned, again, the imago of myself as a boy. A sickly thing, stricken with shame. I happily exaggerated, seeing myself as frozen with pain, tearless, and borderline catatonic. I stayed with this boy for twenty minutes, hoping my mute would feel a subterranean empathy. In short, I created a silent, hypnotic attachment between us and yet, while she didn't speak, I felt layers of psychic shifting, as if tectonic plates were easing off. Of course, this technique is entirely unproven and unregulated but, like some forms of magic, it can be highly effective. And now, in the dark of my study, I still feel a precious, if precarious attachment to the experience and, for the first time, wonder at the risk of writing this, and tampering with the trance. Instead, to counter it all and tantamount to a good bollocking, I rang my father where, once again, I will spend the weekend.