Dirk logs in
Dirk Zoloft, a divorced and childless 45-year old gasfitter, sat before his computer monitor and stroked his goatee. He idly switched between Zoom backgrounds while waiting for his therapist to log in. The book-lined office was probably convincing no one, he thought. Tropical setting, that was the way to go. Maui beachfront again.
“Good morning,” said Dr. Hedda Schrinke. She had her hair in pigtails again, which Dirk always found slightly irritating. Hedda was too old to effect a girlish look, he thought. A greying Pippi Longstocking with a medical degree. Still, he mostly liked his therapist and health insurance covered the sessions.
“How have you been this week, Dirk?”
“Uh, not terrible. Not great either,” her client muttered from between virtual palm trees. Hedda knew Dirk’s heart was in the right space and his sometimes erratic thinking was reflective of the stress he was under. Like most everyone else these days.
“What’s on your mind lately?”
Dirk sighed. “Well, I think I’m in a kinda abusive relationship.”
Hedda’s eyebrows arched upward in a parabola of surprise. “I didn’t know you were in a relationship again, Dirk. This must be very recent!”
“Yeah, since last year. She’s a doctor on TV.”
“Oh...really?” Hedda’s eyebrows collapsed into an expression of mild confusion. “Can you tell me her first name?”
“Bonnie.”
“Alright, tell me about your feelings toward this Bonnie who plays a doctor on TV.”
“No, she doesn’t play a doctor, she’s a real doctor. Anyway, she basically runs my life. Appears on the TV and tells me what’s allowed and what’s not. I don’t have much freedom with her.”
“So your doctor girlfriend appears on TV and tells you what to do…” Hedda aimed for therapeutic poker face but the eyebrows betrayed concern.
“She’s not my girlfriend. But I’m sort of in a long-term relationship with her and I’d like it to end soon. So anyway, Dr. Bonnie….”
“Dr. Bonnie!” Hedda exclaimed. “You mean Dr. Bonnie Henry??”
“Yeah,” Dirk laughed. “Sorry I stretched that out a bit. I’m exhausted following her health directions.”
Hedda struggled to gather her thoughts. “I see, Dirk. But surely you understand she’s not communicating directly to you alone through the TV. She’s communicating directly to all of us through the TV.”
“Oh yeah, I get that,” Dirk chuckled feebly. “I put it that way ‘cause you always want me to talk about things in terms of feelings. And I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship with her. I know everybody has their own take on her, obviously. This is just me.”
Hedda took a breath of relief. “Alright then. So it’s not just you…but it’s just you. Tell me about your problems with Dr. Bonnie. How does she make you feel?”
Shoes
“At first I didn’t feel or think anything one way or another. But when I see her now on TV, she just bugs me. That voice...gaaah, that voice! That whispery, sing-song, motherly tone. She talks to me like I’m five years old! ‘Don’t go here, don’t do that, don’t see these people this way!’”
Hedda reached for a notepad. “Motherly,” she wrote with her Mont Blanc. “Anything else?”
“Um...her shoes. They bug me a bit. Clunky fluevogs.”
Hedda made a few deft strokes on her notepad. “Shoes.”
Dirk sat back in his chair and fiddled with his lighter. “At first I saw Dr. Bonnie as some health official doing her job, and an important one. She said we needed to ‘flatten the curve.’ So the hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Made total sense. Said it would only be two weeks.”
Hedda nodded.
“I had a few quarantinis toasting the two-week staycation, myself. But then then we were told we needed six weeks. And after that we heard it would be six months, maybe. And then it was, it won’t be over until a vaccine is developed. Now I’m hearing vaccines aren’t a hundred percent effective, and that social distancing may go for another year and possibly for good, even after everyone’s vaccinated. That last part is from other officials, actually. Not Bonnie.”
“But you don’t trust Dr. Bonnie?” Hedda leaned forward, her head tilted in focus.
“Um, I think trust has to be earned. From anyone. Sure, she relaxed things a bit over last summer, and she’s doing it again now. But for damn sure she’ll be tightening things up again next fall. And get this: over the past year there were a few times that she increased the restrictions and said the same thing ahead of time: ‘we just need another two weeks.’ And each time, even before the two weeks were through, restrictions were raised even higher!”
Hedda had heard some troubling thoughts from her client about the pandemic before, but this was at a whole new level. “But aren’t you concerned about the pandemic?”
“Oh, for sure it concerns me. Look, I know COVID is dangerous! I know people who got sick. Have an uncle who died from it. It’s real, I get that. But there’s a way bigger risk of me getting into an accident in my car on the way to work than being hospitalized the same day for COVID. I checked the statistics. And according to the CDC, you have a 99 percent chance of surviving the disease if you’re under the age of 70. And 95 percent if you’re over 70!
“We coulda done what Sweden did, protecting the most vulnerable with minimal social distancing measures. The Swedes did better overall than the Brits with COVID!”
“So you’ve been doing...what…your own research...on the Internet?” Hedda scribbled with more vigour into her notepad. “Do you ever feel…persecuted by Dr. Bonnie?”
“Kinda,” Dirk said glumly. “It’s like she’s gaslighting me.”
“Feels persecuted,” Hedda wrote in her notepad.
“I just don’t get how she can tell me ‘nonessential travel’ is verboten around the province, but airlines have been landing people into Vancouver from all over Canada and the world. Air Canada posts the flights known to have COVID cases on their website. Hundreds of flights, but they weren’t telling the passengers, they had to go check themselves! That’s how the variant from India got here - by air. They shut down flights from India only after the horse was out of the barn. It makes no sense.”
“Dirk, can we focus on your feelings toward Dr Bo-”
“And masking! I know the government has to protect us all, but I checked. I couldn’t find anything showing any serious risk from catching COVID outdoors. Not enough to mask up. Yet I see people walking around outdoors with two or three of them on sometimes. Yesterday I saw a guy on a motorcycle wearing a face mask but no helmet!”
Dirk was sounding awfully energetic in this therapy session, thought Hedda. Normally that would be a good sign. Not now.
Hostages
Dirk stroked his beard. “Know what happened in the Middle Ages, Dr. Hedda? People thought the Black Death was in the air, they called it “miasma.” Hundreds of years before..uh...what do they call it... germ theory. And now people in the 21st century are walking around outside masked up like it’s the plague and there’s miasma poisoning the air! It’s medieval!”
“Is Dr. Bonnie responsible for that?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not for masking outdoors.” Dirk’s eyes brightened again. “Actually, at the beginning she said masks were totally unnecessary! Not even needed indoors. Then she changed her tune, just like Dr. Fauci. There’s a Youtube video showing her public statements changing over time. And then denying it! I’m not imagining this… look, I’ll show you, I’ll do the share screen thing…have it right here…
“No Dirk, please...you -”
There was a long pause after the video played. Hedda scribbled furiously. She didn’t want to lose another client down the alt-right rabbit hole. ‘AntiPandemicism’ had just been added to the DSM-VI, and for good reason. She looked up from her notepad. “Dirk, do you consider yourself an antimasker?”
Dirk laughed, with a trace of bitterness. “No, not at all. And I’m not pro-Trump either. I don’t think of face masks as muzzles…they do make sense in some places indoors, where people are in close quarters...but I - ”
“Alright, let’s move on from face masks. Tell me more about your feelings about Dr. Bonnie.”
“We’re a year into this pandemic and were still being ruled by an unelected official. I’ve got problems with that.”
“So you’re saying she’s created problems for you. Does that make you feel angry?”
“She’s not just making me angry, Dr. Hedda! Just a day before New Year’s Eve, Dr. Bonnie told restaurant owners they had to shut down by eight PM the next day. When they had preparations fully made. Restaurants lost lost tens of thousands of dollars. She could have given advance word a lot earlier. Sometimes I wonder if she’s actually out to kill small businesses.”
“Dr. Bonnie is killing them?”
“I dunno…I don’t mean literally, and I know restaurants are open again…okay, listen this!” Dirk reached for another sheet of paper on his desk. I printed this out earlier. This is from a BC government health release in February.”
He cleared his throat. “This is how the B.C. government defines a democratic society:
“‘....freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association. These freedoms, and the other rights protected by the Charter, are not, however, absolute and are subject to reasonable limits, prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.'
“So all these freedoms are protected by the Charter. But they’re not absolute, and their limits can set in a ‘free and democratic society.’ But a ‘free and democratic society’is defined by the previous sentences about freedom! It’s totally contradictory.
“So now all our freedoms are, uh, what’s the word...provisional. This was written when the emergency orders were extended from two week periods to indefinitely!”
“Dirk, can you tell me more ab-”
“Were surrendering our freedoms to fight a pandemic that’s not a plague! It’s not like people are dropping dead in the streets. And if people can’t freely gather in person, privately or publicly, to share information and their concerns, there’s no real free speech. And anyone who says anything iffy online about the pandemic gets deplatformed or censored.”
Dr. Hedda resisted the urge to do a facepalm. It was hard sometimes being a therapist. “I want to hear about your feelings, not so much your ideas about the pandemic. What else about Dr. Bonnie besides her public health directives and shoes disturbs you?”
Dirk reached for another paper on his desk. “Dr. Hedda, here’s the main reason I think I’m in an abusive relationship with Dr. Bonnie. I found this on a psychology website.” Kirk cleared his throat to recite:
“‘These are some of the feelings to look for when someone’s gaslighting you:
1. being more anxious and less confident than you used to be.
2. making excuses for your partner’s behaviour.
3. avoiding giving information to friends or family members to avoid confrontation about your partner.
4. feeling isolated from friends and family.’”
Dirk paused for effect, hoping it would sink in with Hedda. “Last year Bonnie Henry crawled through the TV into my home and she’s been gaslighting me ever since! And there’s hardly anyone for me to talk with about it. Look, I’ve been practicing guitar at home alone now for a year and I haven’t even mastered the intro to Stairway to Heaven. My dog died this winter. I see my family out east in little windows on my computer. I’m single and haven’t felt human touch for ages. All I get are changing directions on limiting myself from a woman I don’t even like. I tell you Dr. Hedda, if I don’t get some loving soon, I’m going to start taking hostages!” Dirk laughed with a trace of bitterness.
Hedda’s scribbled in her notepad. “Hostages.”
Kill the cable
The gasfitter emitted a long sigh. “I want a two-way relationship built on caring and trust. Not like the one-way, socially distanced, gaslighting one I have with Dr. Bonnie. Is this woman EVER going to be out of my life?”
“I’m not so sure ‘gaslighting’ is the right term here, Dirk,” said Hedda with a trace of irritation. “You’re ascribing intent. Do you think there a better way to describe your feelings?”
Dirk frowned. He felt Hedda wasn’t hearing him. “The last straw for me was ‘B.C. Hugs Day.’ After telling me for over a year that I should treat family and friends as potential bioterrorists, Dr. Bonnie now pitches a July day for hugging? How does she know where COVID will even be at by then? And how come I need permission from a government official to hug anyone? How is this not gaslighting me?”
“I respect this is how you feel, Dirk. Is there anything else bothering you lately, other than Dr. Bonnie?”
“Well, yeah...everyone’s been asking me if I got vaccinated. Even total strangers in lineups. It’s weird. I just tell them the same thing: would you ask me if had HIV, would you ask me if I had a colonoscopy? Why should I tell you my medical history?
“I mean, Pfizer, Moderna, Astra-Zeneca, whoever. I get to choose whose prick goes into me, if and when!” Dirk added with a sly smile.
Hedda didn’t smile back at Dirk’s off-colour remark. As his therapist, she felt if anyone had the right to ask about his vaccination status, it was her. But she felt she had the answer already. The clock was ticking, and Hedda had a tennis game booked for four o’clock. “Vaccine hesitant,” she wrote in her notepad.
“One other thing, Dr. Hedda. These pills I’m taking, they’re make me pretty groggy. Hard to think sometimes. Can you recommend something else?”
Hedda knitted her fingers together in her most practiced, professional way.
“I’m sorry about the side effects, but I think we need to stay the course, Dirk. We’ve been making progress with your anxiety on the current prescription.” She was going to broach the possibility of upping his meds in this session, but bit her tongue on that piece of advice.
“Okay. How about this for me supporting my mental health? I’m going on a media diet, starting tomorrow. Cold turkey! No more seeing Dr. Bonnie unless I want to. I’m gonna kill the cable.”
“Oh, I see,” Hedda replied flatly. “Kill the cable,” she whispered to herself as she scribbled into her notepad.
Hedda logs out
This was more troubling than Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Vaccine hesitancy and persecution by authority were two warning signs of antiPandemicism. Dirk’s cablephobia made it a third.
‘Three strikes and you’re out’ - even without a clear sign of a public safety threat, Dr. Shrinke had a duty to report. Dirk was out of her hands now; the health officials at the newly-formed Royal Canadian Centre for Ideological Hygiene would be handling his file from this point on.
She closed her notepad. “Well, our time is up for today,” she said with an icy voice. ”I hope you have a good week, Dirk.”
“You too,” Dirk replied in a monotone. This was the least satisfactory session yet, he thought.
Dr. Shrinke shut off the connection and sighed. If it wasn’t for professional confidentiality, she would have had a mildly disturbing anecdote to share over tennis with her cousin, Dr. Bonnie Henry.
Great story! Funny as well as dark; my favourite kind. And the ending is brilliant...keep it going!
Great story Geoff, meant to read about what we were talking about today at Tanglewood but found this one instead.