“He can’t hold a candle to you as a doctor.”
“But you were afraid?”
“Afraid? Oh yes, I’m afraid for Mr. Ives. Oh, Chief, do you think he’ll be sent to the Happy Isles?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do they really throw the Switch there?”
“Yes.”
“No!”
“You don’t think they ought to?”
“Oh no, Chief!”
“Why not?” I ask her curiously.
“It’s not right.”
“I see.”
“I think Mr. Ives is putting on.”
“But if he were not?”
“Oh, Chief, why do you have anything to do with those people?”
“What people?”
“Those foul-mouthed students and that nasty Dr. Brown.”
“It’s all in good fun. End-of-year thing.”
“You’re much too fine to associate with them.”
“Hm. Well, don’t worry. I have other fish to fry.”
“You mean you’re not going to The Pit?”
I shrug. “What difference does it make? By the way, what’s Brown’s diagnosis of Mr. Ives?”
She reads: “Senile psychopathy and mutism.”
“And his recommendation?”
“The Permanent Separation Center at Jekyll, Georgia. Doesn’t that mean the Happy Isles?”
I nod.
“And the Euphoric On-Switch?”
“Yes. But you think the diagnosis is wrong?”
“Because you did.”
“I did? Well, let’s see him.”
She wheels him in. Mr. Ives sits slumped in a folding chair, a little bald-headed monkey of a man, bright monkey eyes snapping at me. His scalp is a smooth cap of skin, heavily freckled, fitted over his low wrinkled brow. The backs of his hands are covered with liver spots and sun scabs. His eyes fairly hop with — what? rage or risibility? Is he angry or amused or just plain crazy? I leaf through his chart. He was born in Sherwood, Tennessee, worked for forty years as controller in a Hartford insurance company, lost his wife, retired to Louisiana, lived in the woods in a camper, dug up potsherds in a Choctaw burial mound, got sick, was transferred to a Tampa Senior Citizens’ compound, where he misbehaved and was referred to Gerry Rehab here. I remember him from the old days. He used to call me for one complaint and another and we’d sit in his camper and play checkers and through the open door watch the wild turkeys come up and feed. He was lonely and liked to talk. Now he’s mute.
I get up and open the back door. Ellen frowns.
“What’s the trouble, Mr. Ives?”
He doesn’t reply but he’s already looking past me at the martins scudding past and turning upwind for a landing. Gusts of warm air sour with rain blow in the open doorway.
“Ecccc,” says Mr. Ives.
The old man can’t or won’t speak but he lets me examine him. Physically he’s in good order, chest clear, abdomen soft, blood pressure normal, eyegrounds nominal. His prostate is as round and elastic as a handball. Neurological signs normal.
I look at his chart “… Did on August 5 last, expose himself and defecate on Flirtation Walk.” Hm. He could still suffer from senile dementia.
I look at him. The little monkey eyes snap.
“Do you remember playing checkers out at the mound?”
The eyes snap.
“You never beat me, Mr. Ives.” I never beat him.
No rise out of him. His eyes slide past me to the martins rolling and rattling around the hotel.
“He doesn’t look senile to me,” I tell Ellen. I take out my lapsometer and do a complete profile from cortex to coeliac plexus. Ellen jots down the readings as I call them out.
“No wonder he won’t talk,” I say, flipping back through his stack of wave patterns.
“Won’t or can’t?” Ellen asks me.
“Oh, he can. No organic lesion at all. Look at his cortical activity: humming away like a house afire. He’s as sharp as you or I.”
“Then why—?”
“And he’s reading me right now, aren’t you, Mr. Ives?”
“Ecccc,” says Mr. Ives.
“You asked me why he won’t talk,” I tell her loudly. “He’s too damn mad to talk. His red nucleus is red indeed. Look at that.”
“You mean—”
“I mean he doesn’t trust you or me or anybody.”
“Who’s he mad at?”
“Who are you mad at?” I ask Mr. Ives.
His eyes snap. I focus the lapsometer at his red nucleus.
“At me?” No change.
“At Communists?” No change.
“At Negroes?” No change.
“At Jews?” No change.
“At students?” No change.
“Hm. It’s not ordinary Knothead anger,” I tell Ellen.
“How do you know he understands you at all?” asks Ellen.
“Watch this.” I aim in at the medio-temporal region, near Brodmann 28, the locus of concrete memory. “Do you remember our playing checkers in your camper ten years ago on summer evenings like this?”
The needle swings. The eyes snap, but merrily now.
“Chief!” cries Ellen. “You’ve done it!”
“Done what?”
“You’ve proved your point!”
“I haven’t proved anything. He still won’t talk or can’t, won’t walk or can’t. All I’ve done is make a needle move.”
“But, Chief—! You’re a hundred years ahead of EEG.”
“I can’t prove it. I can’t treat him. This thing is purely diagnostic and I can’t even prove that.” Mr. Ives and I watch the last of the martins come home. “I feel like a one-eyed man in the valley of the blind.”
“You’ll prove it, Chief,” says Ellen confidently. She tells me a story about a famous Presbyterian (she said) named Robert the Bruce who sat discouraged in a cave and watched a spider try seven times to span the cave with its web before it succeeded. “Remember Robert the Bruce!”
“O.K. Who’s the next patient?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Ted Tennis.”
“Are you going to take Mr. Ives back to the hospital?”
“No. They’ll send for him.”
“Very well. Goodbye, Mr. Ives. Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right.”
He takes my hand with his old wiry grip. I can’t understand why he won’t talk. His prefrontal gyrus is as normal as mine.
Ted ’n Tanya are next. They must have come directly from Love. It is a bit of a surprise that they’ve come here, since his former complaint of impotence had been pretty well cleared up by my prescription of an occasional tramp through the swamp, so successfully in fact that only today I’ve learned that Ted ’n Tanya have become star performers in Love.
They come in together and sit opposite me across the desk. Ellen closes the door and turns on the lights and leaves discreetly. Hm. Have they come to gloat, to tell me of the superiority of Love Clinic to the swamp? But no. They look glum.
But Ted is more than ever the alert young crop-headed narrow-necked Oppenheimer. Tanya is an angular brunette who has smoldering violet eyes, one of which is cocked, and wears a ringlet of hair at each temple like a gypsy. They love each other, do Ted ’n Tanya, and, though heathen, are irrevocably monogamous and faithful.
That much I know. Ted brings me up to date. The swamp treatment of impotence did indeed work for a while but wore off after a few months, as I had told Ted it might. Whereupon they applied for treatment at Love, where they were put in a Skinner box and conditioned so successfully that they became one of the first volunteer couples in the new program of “multiple-subject interaction.” A breakthrough. Here too, encouraged by Stryker, Dr. Helga Heine, and Father Kev Kevin, they succeeded admirably.
“I understand that. The only thing that puzzles me is why you’re here at all.” Making sure Ellen is up front, I open the drawer of organs and recover my Early Times. Ted ’n Tanya don’t mind my drinking.