False Memory

Taking of the temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate, careful ophthalmoscopic examination of the left eye, then the right, a peek with auriscope at the secrets of the ears, much solemn listening with stethoscope at the chest and the back—Breathe deep and hold, breathe out, breath deep and hold— palpation of the abdomen, a quick test of the auditooculogyric reflex, one gentle rap of a small hammer on a pretty kneecap to gauge patellar reflex: All the easy stuff led Dr. Closterman to conclude that Martie was an exceptionally healthy young woman, physiologically even younger than her twenty-eight years.

From the spare chair in the corner of the examination room, Dusty said, “She seems to get younger week by week.”

To Martie, Closterman said, “Does he spread it on this heavy all the time?”

“I have to shovel out the house every morning.” She smiled at Dusty. “I love it.”

Closterman was in his late forties but, unlike Martie, looked — and no doubt tested — older than his age, and not solely because of his prematurely white hair. Double chins and dewlaps, generous jowls and a proud knob of a nose, eyes pink in the corners with a perpetual bloodshot sheen from too much time in salt air and wind and sun, and a tan that would leave any dermatologist hoarse from lecturing — all marked him as a dedicated gourmet, deep-sea fisherman, windsurfer, and probably connoisseur of beer. From his broad brow to his broader belly, he was a living example of the consequences of ignoring the sound advice that he unabashedly doled out to his patients.

Doc — his surfer handle — had a mind as sharp as a scalpel, the bedside manner of a favorite grandfather with a storybook in hand, and a dedication to his practice that would have shamed Hippocrates, yet Dusty preferred him over all other possible internists less for those fine qualities than for his very human, if medically unsound, indulgences. Doc was that rare expert without arrogance, free of dogma, able to view a problem from a fresh perspective rather than through the lenses of preconception that often blinded others who claimed high expertise, humbled by an awareness of his weaknesses and his limitations.

“Gloriously healthy,” Closterman proclaimed as he entered notes in Martie’s file. “Tough constitution. Like your dad.”

Sitting on the edge of the examination table, in a paper gown and rolled red kneesocks, Martie did indeed appear to be as healthy as any aerobics instructor on one of those cable-television shows devoted to obsessive exercise with a host who believed that death was a personal choice rather than an inevitability.

Dusty could see the changes in Martie that Closterman, in spite of his sensitivity to his patients, couldn’t perceive. A bleak shadow in her eyes that dimmed her usually bright gaze. A persistent grim set to her mouth and a defeatist slump to her shoulders.

Although Closterman agreed to refer Martie to the hospital next door for a series of diagnostic procedures, he clearly was thinking of it as just an elaborate annual checkup, not as an essential step in diagnosing the cause of a life-threatening condition. Doc had listened to a highly abbreviated account of her bizarre behavior during the past twenty-four hours, and though she’d not described her violent visions in detail, she’d recounted enough to make Dusty wish he had not eaten that greasy doughnut. Nevertheless, as the physician finished making notes in his patient’s file, he launched into an explanation of the many sources of stress, the mental and physiological problems arising from stress, and the best techniques that one might use to deal with stress — as though Martie’s problem resulted from overwork, too little leisure, a tendency to sweat the small stuff, and a lumpy mattress.

She interrupted Closterman to ask if he would please put away the reflex hammer.

Blinking, derailed from the tracks of his stress homily, which had been chugging along so nicely, he said, “Put it away?”

“It makes me nervous. I keep looking at it. I’m afraid of what I might do with it.”

The polished-steel instrument was as small as a toy hammer and appeared to be of no use as a weapon.

“If I snatched it up and threw it at your face,” Martie said, her words more disturbing for the fact that her voice was soft and reasonable, “it would stun you, maybe worse, and then I’d have time to grab something more lethal. Like the pen. Would you put the pen away, please?”

Dusty moved to the edge of his chair.

Here we go.

Dr. Closterman looked at the ballpoint that lay atop the closed patient file. “It’s just a Paper Mate pen.”

“I’ll tell you what I could do with it, Doctor. A little sample of what goes through my mind, and I don’t know where it comes from, this evil stuff, or how to stop it from coming.” The blue paper gown made a crisp and ominous crinkling sound like a dry chrysalis within which something deadly was struggling to be born. Her voice remained soft, though now there was an edge to it. “I don’t really care if it’s a Montblanc or a Bic, because it’s also a stiletto, a skewer, and I could snatch it off that folder and be at you before you knew what was happening, ram it into your eye, shove it halfway back into your skull, twist it around, twist it, twist, really screw with your brain, and either you’d fall down dead on the spot or spend the rest of your life with the mental capacity of a fucking potato.” She was shaking. Her teeth chattered. She clasped both hands to her head, as she had done in the car, as though striving to repress the hideous images that bloomed unwanted in the midnight garden of her mind. “And whether you were dead or alive on the floor, there are all kinds of things I could do to you after the pen. You’ve got syringes in one of those drawers, needles — and there on that counter, a glass beaker full of tongue depressors. Break the glass, the shards are knives. I could carve your face — or slice it off in pieces and pin the pieces to the wall with hypodermic needles, make a collage from your face. I could do this. I can see…see it in my head right now.” She buried her face in her hands.

Closterman came to his feet on the word potato, rising like a dancer in spite of his size, and now Dusty rose, too.

“First thing,” said the rattled physician, “is a prescription for Valium. How many of these episodes have there been?”

“A few,” Dusty said. “I don’t know. But this one wasn’t bad.”

Closterman’s round face was better suited to a smile; his frown was unable to achieve sufficient gravity, buoyed as it was by his ball of a nose, rosy cheeks, and merry eyes. “Not bad? The others were worse? Then I wouldn’t recommend these tests without Valium. Some of these procedures, like an MRI, they disturb patients.”

“I’m disturbed going in,” Martie said.

“We’ll mellow you out, so it’s not such an ordeal.” Closterman stepped to the door, then hesitated with his hand on the knob. He glanced at Dusty. “Are you okay here?”

Dusty nodded. “These are only things she’s afraid of doing — not anything she could do. Not her, not Martie.”

“Like hell I couldn’t,” she said from behind a veil of fingers.

When Closterman had gone, Dusty moved the reflex hammer and the ballpoint beyond Martie’s reach. “Feel better?”

Between her fingers, she had seen his act of consideration. “This is mortifying.”

“Can I hold your hand?”

A hesitation. Then: “Okay.”

When Closterman returned, having phoned in a prescription for Valium to their usual pharmacy, he had two individually packaged samples of the drug. He opened one sample and gave it to Martie with a paper cup full of water.

“Martie,” said Closterman, “I truly believe the tests are going to rule out any intracranial mass — neoplastic, cystic, inflammatory, and gummatous. A lot of us, we get an unusual headache that takes a while to go away — we right away think, at least in the back of our mind, it must be a tumor. But brain tumors aren’t that common.”

“This isn’t a headache,” she reminded him.

“Exactly. And headaches are a prime symptom of brain tumors. As is a retinal condition called choked disk, which I didn’t find when I examined your eyes. You mentioned vomiting and nausea. If you were vomiting without nausea, then we’d have a classic symptom. From what you told me, you don’t actually have hallucinations—”

“No.”

“Just these unpalatable thoughts, grotesque images in your head, but you don’t mistake them for things