Are they better or worse?
I think it’s a syndrome, but I am not sure. I aim to find out.
First call Cousin Lucy. She’s an M.D., Vassar smart and Southern shrewd, a sane person, perhaps the only one around. And she knows me.
Maybe she can tell me who’s crazy and who’s not.
She calls me between Ella Murdoch Smith and Kev ’n’ Debbie.
She’s at the hospital, in the doctors’ lounge, taking a break. Can she see me?
Sure, I’ll be there around twelve, to see Mickey LaFaye.
Good. She’s got an impaction in the same room. An intern screwed up and she’s got to do it. Do I have a few minutes now? she asks.
Sure. Kev ’n’ Debbie haven’t arrived. They wouldn’t mind waiting anyhow. But what’s this all about?
Can’t tell me now. Later.
Well then, I have something to tell her. Okay? Okay. I can hear the crinkle of the plastic of the chair in the doctors’ lounge as she settles back. There’s a click and a long, hissing exhalation. She’s still smoking.
We’re in luck. She doesn’t get called for twenty minutes. There’s time to tell her about my “syndrome.” I don’t get into case histories but summarize the symptoms and signs, the odd language behavior and sexual behavior. There are some things you don’t forget, like riding a bicycle or teaching interns. I don’t mention Ellen.
It takes fifteen minutes.
When I finish, there’s a long silence.
“Well?” I say at last.
She clears her throat and makes a small spitting noise. I can see her touch the tip of her tongue for a grain of tobacco, spit it out.
“What I need to know,” I tell her, “is whether the two years away have warped my perspective, whether it is me, not they, who has become strange — in a word, whether I’m seeing things.”
“Yes,” she says in a changed voice.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, you’ve changed. Yes, the cases are real. You’re not seeing things.”
“What do you think?”
“About you or them?”
“Them.”
“I might have an idea. And about you too.”
“I’ll look for you at the hospital around noon,” I tell her. Kev and Debbie are at the door. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”
3. SECOND CONSULTATION WITH Mickey LaFaye.
There is a slight unpleasantness about doing a psychiatric consultation in a small general hospital. Here a psychiatrist is ranked somewhere between a clergyman and an undertaker. One is tolerated. One sees the patient only if the patient has nothing else to do.
In your office you are in control. You control where you sit, where the patient sits or lies, who speaks, what is said. You even control the silences. Here it is the patient who controls while you stand about on one foot, then the other; here it is Mickey lying at her ease among the pastel Kleenexes and Whitman Sampiers, chin at rest in her full, sumptuous throat, her tawny eyes watching me incuriously while I stand just clear of her bed as wary as a preacher.
It is hardly an ideal setting for an interview, but I know what I want and do not intend to waste time.
It is a double room in the medical wing. Mickey LaFaye is in the bed next to the window. I stand at her bed but not touching it, facing the window. Behind me, not six feet away, is the curtained-off bed of the second patient. Lucy is attending the patient. I recognized her legs under the curtain, the same strong calves and laced-up oxfords I remember from when she was interning in pathology and I used to see her standing on tiptoe, calves bunched, to get at the cadaver.
Lucy is doing some procedure, no doubt clearing an impaction. The old woman is making querulous sounds of protest. She is not cooperating. Lucy’s murmur is soothing, but there is in it a note of rising impatience.
Directly opposite me, not thirty feet away, through the window, across a completely enclosed quadrangle of grass, beyond another window, stands Bob Comeaux in the glass box of the nurses’ station. I caught his eye. He is dressed in his riding clothes, turtleneck sweater, suede jacket. His office is not here at the hospital or close by but at the federal complex on the river. Dressed as he is, he is probably dropping by after his morning ride and before going to work. It is clear that he is doing just that, dropping by an ordinary small general hospital in his riding clothes, as much as to say that his real work as neurologist is elsewhere.
Standing next to him is Sue Brown, the floor nurse, a pleasant woman and an excellent nurse, who was glad to see me and made me welcome. She cheerfully entered the test I ordered in Mickey’s chart, which is no doubt the chart Bob Comeaux is holding.
“How do you feel, Mickey?”
“Oh, fine! Fine!” Her legs move under the covers. Again she somehow gives the effect of straddling.
“What are your plans when you leave here?”
“Vermont!” she says in the same mild exclamatory voice.
“You’re going back to your grandmother’s farm?”
“Yes!”
“Why are you going?”
“Cool! Too hot here! Vandals and police and all!”
“Where are the vandals?”
“Out at the ranch!”
“There has been some trouble out there?”
“Oh yes! Terrible!”
“I see. Who’s going to look after the ranch while you’re gone?”
“Dr. Comeaux!”
“Does going back to Vermont remind you of your dream?”
“Dream?” It is not so much a question as the puzzled repetition of the word.
“You remember. The dream you used to have about the cellar, the smell of winter apples, the expectation of something important about to happen which would tell you the secret of your life.”
“Apples? Oh yes. In the hamper next to the chimney.”
“That’s right. What are you going to do after you get to Vermont?” I am curious to know how she will answer a question which requires making a plan and telling of the plan in sentences.
“So much better there! Not to worry. Dr. Comeaux—”
“Dr. Comeaux says you’ll feel much better there?” Almost despite myself, I find myself repeating and filling out her utterances as one would with a child.
She nods emphatically. “Right. Power of attorney!”
“I see. Now, Mickey, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I’m going to do two quick little tests right now. All you have to do is follow along with me. Then I’m going to take you down to the PETscan room and they’re going to do another test. All you have to do is sit in a chair and they’ll put a funny cap on your head and let you listen to music and words — like a radio headset, okay?”
She nods eagerly. Now you’re talking! This is what she’s good at. Taking directions, cooperating — not like that bad old woman in the next bed! — playing the game.
“I’m going to crank you up straight. Now.”
I sit on the bed, leaning almost athwart her, and, taking her face in both hands, turn her directly toward me. I cover her left eye.
What do you see?”
“You.”
“Am I moving?”
“No.”
“Now.” With a forefinger I depress the fundus, the eyeball, of the open eye through the eyelid. “Am I moving now?”
“Yes.”
I take my hand away. “Now, with both eyes open, look back and forth as fast as you can.”
She does it, then looks at me hopefully, to see if she has done well.
“That’s fine. What happened?”
“What—”
“Did I move?”
“Yes! You — everything — the room—”
“That’s fine, Mickey.”
She looks pleased.