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and he still looked half-asleep.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t come back later?”
Diomedes shook his head. He poured himself a glass of water from a jug. “I’m awake now. Go
on. What it is?”
“I’ve been with Alicia, talking.... I need some supervision.”
Diomedes nodded. He was looking more awake by the second, and more interested. “Go on.”
I started reading from my notes. I took him through the entire session. I repeated her words as
accurately as I could and relayed the story she had told me: how the man who’d been spying on her broke into the house, took her prisoner, and shot and killed Gabriel.
When I finished, there was a long pause. Diomedes’s expression gave little away. He pulled a box of cigars out of his desk drawer. He took out a little silver guillotine. He popped the end of a cigar into it and sliced it off.
“Let’s start with the countertransference. Tell me about your emotional experience. Start at the beginning. As she was telling you her story, what kind of feelings were coming up?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I felt excited, I suppose.... And anxious. Afraid.” “Afraid? Was it your fear, or hers?”
“Both, I imagine.”
“And what were you afraid of?”
“I’m not sure. Fear of failure, perhaps. I have a lot riding on this, as you know.” Diomedes nodded. “What else?”
“Frustration too. I feel frustrated quite frequently during our sessions.”
“And angry?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You feel like a frustrated father, dealing with a difficult child?”
“Yes. I want to help her—but I don’t know if she wants to be helped.”
He nodded. “Stay with the feeling of anger. Talk more about it. How does it manifest itself?”
I hesitated. “Well, I often leave the sessions with a splitting headache.”
Diomedes nodded. “Yes, exactly. It has to come out one way or another. ‘A trainee who is not
anxious will be sick.’ Who was it who said that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m sick and anxious.”
Diomedes smiled. “You’re also no longer a trainee—although those feelings never go away
entirely.” He picked up his cigar. “Let’s go outside for a smoke.”
***
We went onto the fire escape. Diomedes puffed on his cigar for a moment, mulling things over. Eventually he reached a conclusion.
“She’s lying, you know.”
“You mean about the man killing Gabriel? I thought so too.”
“Not just that.”
“Then what?”
“All of it. The whole cock-and-bull story. I don’t believe a single word of it.”
I must have looked rather taken aback. I had suspected he’d disbelieve some elements of Alicia’s