I switched off the tape recorder and slumped down in my chair, as drained of emotion as Robert must have been. I felt very bad about this particular session. I had rushed things, taken a big chance and failed, perhaps irreversibly. One thing you learn in psychiatry: Treating a psychotic patient is like singing opera-it seems easy enough to the spectator, but it takes a tremendous amount of work and there are no shortcuts.
On the other hand, perhaps I had not been bold enough. Perhaps I should have forced him to tell me, exactly what he saw that August afternoon when he got home from work. I knew now that he had stumbled onto something terrible, and I suspected what it might have been. But this hadn't helped my patient one iota and, indeed, may have made things worse. Moreover, I had missed a golden opportunity to ask him his last name! The position of director, free of patient responsibility, suddenly seemed a very attractive idea.
JusT before she left for the weekend Betty told me she had given up on the idea of motherhood. I said I was sorry it hadn't worked out for her. She replied that I needn't be, and pointed out that there were already more than five billion human beings on Earth, and maybe that was enough. She had obviously been talking with prot.
As we were walking down the corridor she suggested that I stop in and see Maria. She wouldn't tell me why. I glanced at my watch. I had about five minutes before I had to leave for a fund-raising dinner at the Plaza. Sensing my impatience, she patted my arm. 'It'll be worth it.'
I found Maria in the quiet room talking with Ernie and Russell. She seemed uncharacteristically happy, so I thought it was a new alter I had encountered. But it was Maria herself! Although the answer was obvious, I asked her how she was feeling.
'Oh, Doctor Brewer, I have never felt so good. All the others are with me on this. I know it.'
'With you on what? What happened?'
'I've decided to become a nun! Isn't it wonderful?' I found myself smiling broadly. The idea was so simple I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself. Perhaps because it was too simple. Perhaps we psychiatrists have a tendency to make things more complicated than they really are. In any case, there she was, nearly beside herself with joy.
I was beginning to feel better myself. 'What made you decide to do that?'
'Ernie showed me how important it was to forgive my father and my brothers for what they did. After that, everything was different.'
I congratulated Ernie on his help. 'It wasn't my idea,' he said. 'It was prot's.'
Russell seemed unsure about what to make of all this. 'It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this man casteth out demons,' he mumbled uncertainly, and shuffled away.
Maria watched him leave. 'Of course it's only for a little while.'
'Why only for a while?' I asked her.
'When prot comes back he's going to take me with him!'
Session Fifteen
KAREN and Shasta left for the Adirondacks late Sunday morning. Shaz was as joyous as Maria had been two days earlier-she knew exactly where she was going. I promised to join them in a week or so.
Chip, busy with his lifeguard duties, had decided not to spend his time with his fuddy-duddy parents after all, but moved in with a friend whose father and mother were also on vacation. With no one in the house but me, I decided to check into the guest room at the hospital for the duration.
I made it to my office that afternoon just in time for my session with prot. I was already sweating profusely. It was a very hot day and the air conditioning system wasn't working. It didn't seem to bother prot, who had stripped down to his polka-dot boxer shorts. 'Just like home,' he chirped. I turned on the little electric fan I keep for such emergencies, and we got on with it.
Unfortunately, I cannot relate the contents of that interview verbatim because of a malfunction in my tape recorder, which I did not discover until the session was over.
What follows is a summary based on the sweaty notes I took at the time.
While he devoured a prodigious number of cherries and nectarines, I handed him the list of questions Charlie Flynn had faxed to me for prot's attention. I had perused the fifty undoubtedly well-chosen queries myself, but they were quite technical, and I wasn't much interested at that point what his responses, if any, would be. (I could have answered the one about light travel-it's done with mirrors.) Prot merely smiled and stuffed them under the elastic band of his shorts alongside the ever-present notebook.
At the merest suggestion he found the spot on the wall behind me and immediately fell into his usual deep trance. I wasted no time in dismissing prot and asked to speak with Robert. His countenance dropped at once, he slouched down to the point where it almost seemed he would fall out of his chair, and that's where he stayed for the remainder of the hour. Nothing I brought up-his father's death, his relationship with his friends (the bully and his victim), his employment at the slaughterhouse, the whereabouts of his wife and daughter-elicited the slightest hint of a reaction. I carefully introduced the subject of the lawn sprinkler, but even that evoked no response whatsoever. It was as if Robert had prepared himself for this confrontation, and nothing I could say was going to shock him out of his virtually catatonic state. I tried every professional maneuver and amateurish trick I could think of, including lying to him about what prot had told me about his life, and ending up by calling him a shameless coward. All to no avail.
But something had occurred to me when I brought up the subject of his family and friends. I recalled prot, and was greatly relieved- when he finally showed up. I asked him whether there was anyone, if not me, Robert would be willing to speak to. After a minute or two he said, 'He might be willing to talk to his mother.'
I implored him to help me find her. To give me a name or an address. He said, again after a few moments of silence, 'Her name is beatrice. That's all I can tell you.'
Before I woke him up I tried one more blind shot. 'What is the connection between a lawn sprinkler and what happened to Robert on August seventeenth, 1985?' But he seemed genuinely befuddled by this reference (as had the unhypnotized prot), and there was no sign of the panic elicited by my wife's turning on ours at the Fourth of July picnic in our backyard. Utterly frustrated, I brought him back to reality, called in our trusty orderlies, and reluctantly sent him back to Ward Two.
THE next day Giselle reported that she had spent most of the previous week, along with her friend, at the Research Library tracking down and reading articles from small-town (those with slaughterhouses) newspapers for the summer of 1985, so far without success, though there were still two large trays of microfilm to go. I passed on the meager information I had managed to obtain. She doubted that Robert's mother's name would be of much help, but it led her to another idea. 'What if we also search the files for 1963, when his father died? If there's an obituary for a man whose wife's name was Beatrice and who had a six-yearold son named Robert ... Damn! why didn't I think of that before?'
'At this point,' I agreed, 'anything's worth a try.'.
CHUCK had collected all the 'Why I Want to Go to KPAX' essays over the weekend. Most of the patients had submitted one, and a fair number of the support staff as well, including Jensen and Kowalski. As it happened, this was the time for Bess's semiannual interview. During that encounter I asked her why she hadn't entered the contest.
'You know why, Doctor,' she replied.
'I would rather you tell me.'
'They wouldn't want somebody like me.'
'Why not?'
'I don't deserve to go.'
'What makes you think that?'
'I eat too much.'
'Now, Bess, everyone here eats more than you do.'
'I don't deserve to eat.'
'Everyone has to eat.'
'I don't like to eat when there are so many that don't have anything. Every time I try to eat I see a lot of hungry faces pressed up against the window, just watching me eat, waiting for something to fall on the floor, and
