Patient Two: Tito Mendez

My second patient came rather weirdly to me. He would not enter my office, so he sent a rather distressed messenger. Elena Mendez was the herald’s name, and she came on behalf of her husband, Tito Mendez, who was waiting for me in his car down below. I must admit was taken rather aback by the whole situation. And then I remembered.

I had received a call from a lawyer a couple of days earlier, saying that Dr. Álvaro Pormantó, acting judge of the Family Justice Precinct N° 3, was in need of a psychological professional of my calibre (his words, I believe he meant well) to treat a particular case of a quasi delusional (again, his words, not mine) taxicab driver. Being short of patients, I was in no position to refuse. Only to feign a slight haughtiness. The lawyer clearly saw through me and set the date for the interview. So here we were.

My first course of action with Mrs. Mendez was to try and explain to her that her husband had to come and lay on the couch. I could not resist the immediate distortion of her face before the coming of the tears. She was over her limit, she said. She needed me to understand. She had managed to get her husband to come to the court-mandated therapy, but he would not be seen going into the building where the therapist lived. I retorted that he was being ridiculous, nobody would know he was going to the therapist’s. “It’s a widely known fact that you live and work here”, was all she said.

How could anybody know who I was, was starting to be a bit of a head-scratcher. First, the unsolicited yet welcome recommendation by the priest. Now, the observation that my domicile was apparently a well-known fact. By whom? Everyone, apparently. Was I famous? Infamous? Why? Her ongoing begging to meet her husband down by the car got me out of the lull I had slid into. I agreed, closed my office, and down we went.

The aforementioned Tito Mendez was sitting in the car. Mrs. Mendez beckoned me to get in, on the back seat. She slumped into the front seat, beside her husband. Tito turned round, shook my hand vigorously, and turned to look to the road like a good driver. “Where to?”, he asked. His wife turned round towards me and suggested going to the Museum of Fine Arts, twenty minutes from our current location. I protested. With a sigh, she demanded I follow suit, that I’d be taken back. The idea was to talk. I complied. Tito turned the meter on, slammed into first gear, and off we went.

Mrs. Mendez began to elaborate on Tito’s court-mandated therapy obligation. He remained silent, focused on traffic. The man had, a few years ago and out of the blue, developed a quirky habit. He had begun to read. Fiction, but realist fiction. The problem was he could not understand that those stories were fabrications. To him, they were like the pages of a newspaper. I felt this was a bit over the top. My face must have betrayed my mind for Mrs. Mendez launched into a tirade of swearing by the Holy Cross, Mary, the Apostles, and the opposition party leader that every word was true. I was bound by the courts, so I took it as it was.

As promised I was returned to my place. I ended up paying for the two journeys, and I was booked for the following week.