“What color hair does she have?”
“Brown.”
“What color eyes?”
He shrugs.
“You said you hurt people in your dreams. Did this girl get hurt?”
The question is too direct and confrontational. He looks at me suspiciously.
“Why are you staring at me like that? Are you taping this? Are you stealing my words?” He peers from side to side.
“No.”
“Well, why are you staring at me?”
Then I realize that he’s talking about the Parkinson’s mask. Jock had warned me of the possibility. My face can become totally unresponsive and expressionless like an Easter Island statue.
I look away and try to start again, but Bobby’s mind has already moved on.
“Did you know the year 1961 can be written upside down and right-way up and appear the same?” he says.
“No I didn’t.”
“That’s not going to happen again until 6009.”
“I need to know about the dream, Bobby.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s Spanish. You don’t understand yet what you will understand in the end.” His forehead suddenly creases as though he’s forgotten something. Then his expression changes to one of complete bafflement. He hasn’t just lost his train of thought— he’s forgotten what he’s doing here. He looks at his watch.
“Why are you here, Bobby?”
“I keep having these thoughts.”
“What thoughts?”
“I hurt people in my dreams. That’s not a crime. It’s only a dream…”
We have been here before, thirty minutes ago. He has forgotten everything in between.
There is an interrogation method, sometimes used by the CIA, which is called the Alice in Wonderland technique. It relies upon turning the world upside down and distorting everything that is familiar and logical. The interrogators begin with what sound like very ordinary questions, but in fact are totally nonsensical. If the suspect tries to answer, the second interrogator interrupts with something unrelated and equally illogical.
They change their demeanor and patterns of speech in midsentence or from one moment to the next. They get angry when making pleasant comments and become charming when making threats. They laugh at the wrong places and speak in riddles.
If the suspect tries to cooperate he’s ignored and if he doesn’t cooperate he’s rewarded— never knowing why. At the same time, the interrogators manipulate the environment, turning clocks backward and forward, lights on and off, serving meals ten hours or only ten minutes apart.
Imagine this continuing day after day. Cut off from the world and everything he knows to be normal, the suspect tries to cling to what he remembers. He may keep track of time or try to picture a face or a place. Each of these threads to his sanity is gradually torn down or worn down until he no longer knows what is real and unreal.
Talking to Bobby is like this. The random connections, twisted rhymes and strange riddles make just enough sense for me to listen. At the same time I’m being drawn deeper into the intrigue and the lines between fact and fantasy have begun to blur.
He won’t talk about his dream again. Whenever I ask about the girl in the red dress, he ignores me. The silence has no effect. He is totally contained and unreachable.
Bobby is slipping away from me. When I first met him I saw a highly intelligent, articulate, compassionate young man, concerned about his life. Now I see a borderline schizophrenic, with violent dreams and a possible history of mental illness.
I thought I had a handle on him, but now he’s attacked a woman in broad daylight and confessed to “hurting” people in his dreams. What about the girl with the scars? Could he possibly have known Catherine? Is she the girl in the red dress?
Take a deep breath. Review the facts. The fact that Catherine and Bobby are both self-mutilators isn’t enough to link them. One in fifteen people harm themselves at some point in their lives: that’s two children in every classroom, four people on a crowded bus, twenty on a commuter train and two thousand at a Manchester United home game.
In my career as a psychologist I have learned unequivocally not to believe in conspiracies or listen for the same voices my patients are hearing. A doctor is no good to anyone if he dies of the disease.
I’m back in Jock’s office, listening to him rattle off my results, which I don’t understand. He wants to start me on medication as soon as possible.
Clicking a stopwatch, Jock makes me walk along a line of masking tape on the floor, turn and walk back again. Then I have to stand on one foot with my eyes closed.
When he brings out the colored blocks I groan. It feels so childish— stacking blocks one on top of the other. First I use my right hand and then my left. My left hand is trembling before I start, but once I pick up a block it’s OK.
Putting dots in a grid is more difficult. I aim for the center of the square, but the pen has a mind of its own.
Afterward Jock explains that patients like me who present initially with tremors have a significantly better prognosis. There are lots of new drugs becoming available to lessen the symptoms.
“You can expect to lead a full life,” he says, as though reading from a script. When he sees the look of disbelief on my face he attempts to qualify the statement. “Well, maybe you’ll lose a few years.”
He doesn’t say anything about my quality of life.
“Stem-cell research is going to provide a breakthrough,” he adds, sounding upbeat. “Within five or ten years they’ll have a cure.”
“What do I do until then?”
“Take the drugs. Make love to that gorgeous wife of yours. Watch Charlie grow up.”
He gives me a prescription for selegiline. “Eventually, you’ll need to take levodopa,” he explains, “but hopefully we can delay that for maybe a year or more.”
“Are there any side effects?”
“You might get a little nauseous and have trouble sleeping.”
“Great!”
Jock ignores me. “These drugs don’t stop the progression of the disease. All they do is mask the symptoms.”
“So I can keep it secret for longer.”
He smiles ruefully. “You’ll face up to this sooner or later.”
“If I keep coming here maybe I’ll die of passive smoke.”
“What a way to go.” He lights up a cigar and pulls the scotch from his bottom drawer.
“It’s only three o’clock.”
“I’m working on British summer time.”
He doesn’t ask, he simply pours me one.
“I had a visit from Julianne last week.”
I feel myself blinking rapidly. “What did she want?”
“She wanted to know about your condition. I couldn’t tell her. Doctor-patient privilege and all that bollocks.” After a pause, he says, “She also wanted to know if I thought you were having an affair.”
“Why would she ask that?”
“She said you lied to her.”
