I’m still trying to parse Billie’s history—she’d mentioned that Dr. Bennett helped her through nursing school but not that she and Sky had grown up together—so the question about my history catches me off guard. Luckily, Laurel’s answer pops out of my mouth. “Edinburgh had the best archives program . . . and after my parents died I wanted to start over where no one knew me.” Just exactly how Laurel had said it. She always had two reasons for everything, and when she gave you the second one she also gave you the feeling that she was confiding in you.
“Eminently sensible,” Dr. Hancock said, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “One of my son’s friends did the program at Edinburgh. Maybe you knew him . . . Todd Walsh?”
I pretend to consider whether I know Todd Walsh before shaking my head. “I had my nose stuck in my books,” I say, and then, to ward off any more biographical questions: “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a workaholic. Right now, I’m totally engrossed in Dr. Bennett’s journals and his accounts of his patients. Sky said you might be able to help me with that?” I end with a little lilt in my voice and cross my legs. Which is what Laurel would do.
I see Dr. Hancock pretend to not look at my legs and then he smiles. “I can’t actually give you a patient’s file, but, for an old friend like Sky, I think I can bend the rules a little bit and . . . er . . . give you some information. Who was it you were interested in?”
“A patient with the initials E.S. Admitted 1971, suffering from postpartum mood disorder, possibly postpartum psychosis. She may have tried to kill herself. Dr. Bennett’s journals end in 1973.”
“Hm.” Dr. Bennett rubs his chin. “I came on in 1973. I think I do remember . . . hold on . . .” He goes to a file cabinet and opens a drawer. While I wait, I look at the books on his shelves: thick volumes of the DSM editions one through five bound journals of the American Psychiatric Association, and, looking out of place amid the scholarly tomes, The Collected Stories of Schuyler Bennett.
“Here she is. Edith Sharp. Nineteen years old when admitted. She had a breakdown her sophomore year at Vassar. She gave birth to a baby in her dorm.”
“Yes, that must be her. Dr. Bennett said she gave birth in her dorm room.”
“The dorm bathroom actually. Her roommate found her in the bathtub nearly bled out.”
I wince and close my eyes as if I could protect myself from the image, but instead my brain is flooded by a wash of red. I see a woman in a bathtub full of blood, the blood seeping over the white porcelain rim. Leave it, I tell myself.
I open my eyes to banish the image. “That’s awful,” I say, blinking to clear the red film that still clings to my eyes. “But I thought . . . from Dr. Bennett’s notes . . . that she abandoned her baby in a dumpster. He doesn’t mention anything about a roommate.”
“Yes, well, apparently the roommate went to get help and while she was gone Edith dragged herself out of the tub and—in the middle of a snowstorm, no less—carried the baby to a dumpster.”
“Why?” I ask. Dr. Hancock looks confused, so I try to clarify. “I mean . . . she knew her roommate had gone for help. She must have known she’d be found out.”
Dr. Bennett smiles. “You’re reasoning like a rational person, Ms. Hobbes, and Edith Sharp was anything but rational at that point. In fact, when she was discovered putting the baby in the dumpster she maintained that the baby was her roommate’s baby, a delusion she maintained for some time. I’m surprised that Dr. Bennett doesn’t write about that in his journal. It’s all here in her files, and it’s by far the most interesting element of the case—a true case of BPD mirroring, although it wasn’t called that at the time.”
“BPD?” I ask, remembering that this is what Stan had said Laurel had.
“Yes, she had what would be diagnosed today as a borderline personality disorder—a difficult disorder to diagnose precisely because the patient may present with wildly different affects at different times. Someone with BPD has no stable sense of self. He or she will latch onto others and mimic their personalities. And that can lead to dissociative episodes during which the ill person may believe himself or herself to be someone else—even having no memory of the episode afterwards. The shock of giving birth triggered a dissociative episode in Edith. She may have experienced a blackout. When she came to, she believed it was her roommate who had had the baby.”
The idea of being so far gone as to imagine yourself another person is so unsettling that for a moment I’m silenced. Then it reminds me of something Stan said about Laurel being a totally different person when she was sick.
“You . . . you mean she started impersonating her roommate?”
Dr. Hancock stares at me a moment before answering. “I wouldn’t have put it like that, but I suppose you could say it was a form of impersonation. Only it was entirely unconscious. Someone suffering from BPD may not be aware that they’ve adopted another person’s personality. They don’t recognize that they’ve changed, because they don’t recognize who they are.”
I’m thinking about what Stan told me about Laurel, but Dr. Hancock misinterprets my expression. “I know it’s hard to grasp. Picture it like this.” He holds his hands up, thumbs extended, making a frame in front of my face. “Imagine looking into a
