I, Robot To Protect

John put down the remaining piece of carrot. “Susan, it’s not a matter of ‘getting over it.’ I’ve come to grips with losing your mother; but the damage the accident did to my neurological system is not reparable. My sense of taste is permanently haywire, and I’m not that great at smelling, either.”

Susan could only stare. “The . . . accident? You mean, you were there?”

Now it was John’s turn to stare. “Of course I was there. I was driving. Don’t you remember, Susan?”

Susan dropped her fork to sit in contemplative silence. She had just spent five minutes excoriating her father for refusing to accept the past when she had just as intently attempted to make it disappear. She tried to force her mind back to her preschool years, but she had created so many walls, diversions, and U-turns, she found it difficult to find her way.

“For a brief period, you were an orphan. You lived with Nana for months. If not for several miracles of modern science, I wouldn’t be here.”

That brought back a glimmer of memory. Susan recalled spending time alone with Nana in her cramped apartment in the Bronx. Sunlight streamed through her bedroom window every morning, waking her, and Nana had seemed as happy and welcome as the bright sun most of the time. Sometimes, though, Susan could hear her grandmother sobbing in the deepest part of the night. The mere thought made Susan shudder. She wanted to close it away, to never think of it again. My God, I’m as bad as Dad and Monterey.

“Susan, my life choices, silly as they might seem, don’t harm anyone. They don’t cripple me from doing any of the things in life I wish or need to do.”

Susan had to agree. What differentiated a conversion reaction that required hospitalization from a mild neurosis was exactly what John had described. Unlike Susan’s deliberate forgetting or John’s secluded eating, Monterey’s refusal to communicate made her activities of daily living impossible. “But what about dating?”

“What about dating?”

“Why don’t you?”

“How do you know I don’t?”

That stopped Susan cold. “You’re seeing someone?”

John smiled crookedly. “No. I didn’t date while I raised you. I made the choice to dedicate myself fully to that task, putting it above all others. How do you know what I did or didn’t do while you were at school?”

I don’t, Susan realized. “I guess I believed you would have mentioned it. I told you about my boyfriends.” They had already talked about her first date with Remington.

“When are you seeing Remy again?”

“Dinner tomorrow night.” Susan refused to be distracted. “But we’re talking about you.”

John tried again. “Surely, you don’t expect your father to discuss his sex life with you?”

Susan did not flinch. “You can tell me about nights out and girlfriends without going into those kinds of details.”

John sighed and rose from the table. He started to pace farther into the kitchen, his back to Susan. “Fine, I don’t date. And don’t get any ideas, Susan. I don’t have any desire to do so. If that ever changes, I promise I’ll let you know. For now, I like to believe that Amanda was my soul mate.” He turned back to face her.

So long as it did not make him unhappy, Susan could not condemn the mind-set. He clearly had no more interest in a second wife than she did in a second mother. “I guess that would make me the child of true love. The perfect kid.”

John grinned. “You always have been, in my eyes.”

Susan believed him. Whenever she made a mistake, he had always corrected her in a way that made it seem she had figured it out herself. She could not remember his ever raising his voice to her. As much as he had believed in her, she had believed in him. He was a treasure, a gem of a father.

Susan realized she had allowed this saint of a father to distract her from the point once again. “Thanks, Dad.”

“For what?” A hitch had entered John Calvin’s voice.

“For talking about the accident. I know how much it hurts. . . .”

John turned away again. He was clearly struggling to be gallant. “Had I realized . . . that avoiding the subject . . . had left you with . . .”

Susan helped him, “Some misconceptions? That’s not your fault; it’s mine. I guess I just didn’t want to think about how close I came to losing both of you.” She contemplated what a child’s mind could make of such a tragedy. “My preschool thoughts made you invincible. As I matured, I guess I just whisked you completely out of the memory. Safe and sound.” That realization forced Susan to look at the comparisons in a new light. “You know, Dad, I was comparing you with my patient and thought understanding you might help me to help her. Now, I realize I’m more like her. Except she got a front-row seat to her catastrophe.”

John seemed to have gotten hold of his emotions. From the back, Susan could tell he was wiping his eyes, but his voice became steady. “You never stopped speaking.”

“No.” Susan kept her own voice steady, trying to match her father’s courage. “But I did use at least one unhealthy defense mechanism, a bit of repression. Nothing too terrible. My patient, on the other hand, is somatosizing her anxiety.”

John turned around to stare at his daughter. “Are you speaking English?”

Susan chuckled. “Freudian English, such as it is. She’s channeling her anxiety into physical symptoms.”

“How do you fix that?”

“Other doctors have tried all the usual stuff: Certain medications can help, as can properly pointing out the psychological nature of the symptoms.”

As the subject got farther from Amanda Calvin, John drifted back to the table. “You mean, letting the patient know that you know she’s faking?”

“Faking?” Susan frowned. “There’s a huge difference between a malingerer and a hysteric. In fact, you have to specifically rule out faking before you can make the diagnosis of a hysterical conversion reaction.”

“Really?” John sat, truly interested.

“Really. You also have to rule out an actual medical condition.”

John put it all together, his brow crinkled in uncertainty. “So, there’s no physical cause, but your patient actually can’t talk. It’s not something she’s doing on purpose.”

“Correct. And that’s how it’s explained to a person with a conversion reaction. With support, that’s usually enough for a gradual full recovery.”

John made a noise of interested understanding. “But it’s not working in this case?”

“Apparently not. She’s six years mute.”

“Hmm.” John studied his daughter. “So what brilliant ideas do you have to fix her?”

Susan appreciated she had no obligation to disabuse her father of the genius notion. Fathers were supposed to believe wholeheartedly in their daughters’ intelligence. “I think it’s time for her to confront the details of the accident. Not as a six-year-old in the preoperational stage of thought but as a twelve-year-old in the operational stage.”

John guessed, “Freud again?”

Susan smiled. “Jean Piaget, this time. In the preoperational stage, a child acts in the realm of magical thinking. Everything revolves around her. My patient truly believes she directly caused the accident that killed her father, apparently because of something she said.”

“Hence the silence?”

Susan nodded. “But if we can advance her to the operational stage and allow her to relive the situation as the twelve-year-old, near adult she currently is . . .” She let her father finish.

“She might come to realize she did not cause the accident, thus lessening her anxiety.”

“Right.” Susan frowned. “Except for one problem.”

“Which is?”

“I think something she said did cause the accident.”

John reeled backward a bit. “That does complicate the matter.”

“I’m still hoping, if we can get her to look at the situation in a more mature way, she may at least realize she is not entirely to blame. Multiple decisions and events came together to cause that accident. That might be enough to snap her out of the conversion reaction so we can start some effective psychotherapy for the guilt.” Susan ran through some considerations that had come to her in the charting room. “If we can at least get her to realize her