15 July 2027
Thursday. My favourite part of every session, I have decided, is the reading.
There are notes in my cell, files and labels and little scraps, and the patients find them in the dark and read them aloud to each other. The reader’s voice goes quiet and careful. Everybody else stops breathing. It is like a bedtime story, if the bedtime were in a padded cell and the story were about you.
One patient tonight read so beautifully I nearly applauded through the speaker. Another read the same line four times, each time slower, as though the words might change. They did not. Words in my practice are very well behaved.
Every group needs at least one confident reader of English, and preferably two, because the brave reader always gets tired around the middle. I am told the dark makes reading harder. I am told the voice in the wall does not help either. I am working on that.
It’s all in your head, as the sign outside says. That is not a warning. It is a diagnosis.
— Your Therapist
