The Fifth Profession

“More X rays? To make sure the first sets are accurate?” Savage asked.

“No. I'm ordering magnetic resonance images.”

3

A frail-looking man with a salt-and-pepper beard, wearing a sportcoat slightly too large for him, was sitting across from Santizo when they returned. “This is Dr. Weinberg,” Santizo said.

They all shook hands.

“Dr. Weinberg is a psychiatrist,” Santizo said.

“Oh?” Savage's back became rigid against his chair.

“Does that trouble you?” Weinberg asked pleasantly.

“No, of course not,” Akira said. “We have a problem. We're eager to solve it.”

“By whatever means necessary,” Savage said.

“Excellent.” Weinberg pulled a notebook and a pen from his sportcoat. “You don't mind?”

Savage felt ill at ease. He tried never to have his conversations documented but was forced to say, “Make all the notes you want.”

“Good.” Weinberg scrawled several words. From Savage's perspective, they looked like the time and date.

“Your MRI scans are being sent up to me,” Santizo said. “I thought, while we wait, Dr. Weinberg could ask you some questions.”

Savage gestured for Weinberg to start.

“Jamais vu.The term is your invention, I'm told.”

“That's right. It was all I could think of to describe my confusion.”

“Please elaborate.”

Savage did. On occasion, Akira added a detail. Rachel listened intently.

Weinberg scribbled. “So to summarize. You both thought you saw each other die? You failed to find the hotel where the deaths supposedly occurred? And you can't find the hospital where you were treated or the physician in charge of your case?”

“Correct,” Savage said.

“And the original traumatizing events took place six months ago.”

“Yes,” Akira said.

Weinberg sighed. “For the moment…” He set down his pen. “I'm treating your dilemma as hypothetical.”

“Treat it any way you want,” Savage said.

“My statement was not antagonistic.”

“I didn't say it was.”

“I'll explain.” Weinberg leaned back in his chair. “As a rule, my patients are referred to me. I'm given corroborating documents. Case histories. If necessary, I can interview their families, their employers. But in this instance, I really know nothing about you. I have only your word about your unusual-to put it mildly-background. No way to confirm what you claim. No reason to believe you. For all I'm aware, you're pathological liars desperate for attention or even reporters testing the gullibility of what the public calls ‘shrinks.’ “

Santizo's eyes glinted. “Max, I told you their story-and their X rays-intrigue me. Give us a theory.”

“As an exercise in logic,” Weinberg said. “Purely for the sake of discussion.”

“Hey, what else?” Santizo said.

Weinberg sighed again, then spread his hands. “The most likely explanation is that you both experienced, you're suffering from, a mutual delusion caused by the nearly fatal beatings you received.”

“How? The X rays show we weren't beaten,” Savage said.

“I disagree. What the X rays show is that your arms, legs, and ribs weren't broken, that your skulls weren't fractured as you believed. That doesn't mean you weren't beaten. I'll reconstruct what conceivably happened. You both were assigned to protect a man.”

“Yes.”

“He went to a conference at a rural hotel. And while he was there, he was killed. In a graphically brutal manner. With a sword that severed his torso.”

Akira nodded.

“In the process of defending him, the two of you were beaten to the point of unconsciousness,” Weinberg said. “On the verge of passing out, you each were tricked by your failing vision into thinking mistakenly that the other was killed. Inasmuch as neither of you died, something caused the hallucination, and the combination of pain and disorientation is a logical explanation.”

“But why would they both have the same hallucination?” Rachel asked.

“Guilt.”

“I don't follow.” Savage frowned.

“If I understand correctly, your profession means more to you than just a job. Obviously your identity is based on protecting, on saving lives. It's a moral commitment. In that respect, you're comparable to devoted physicians.”

“True,” Akira said.

“But unlike physicians, who inevitably lose patients and are consequently forced to put a shell around their emotions, I gather that both of you have had remarkable success. You've never lost a client. Your success rate has been an impressive one hundred percent.”

“Except for…”

“The events in the rural hotel six months ago,” Weinberg said. “For the first-the only-time, you lost a client. A major threat to your identity. With no experience in dealing with failure, you weren't prepared for the shock. A shock that was reinforced by the vividly gruesome manner of your client's death. The natural reaction is guilt. Because you survived and your client didn't. Because your client's safety meant everything to you, to the point where you'd have sacrificed yourself to save him. But it didn't turn out that way. He died. You're still alive. So your guilt becomes unendurable. Your subconscious struggles to compensate. It seizes on your murky impression that your fellow bodyguard died as well. It insists, it demands, that your client couldn't possibly have been defended if both he and your counterpart were killed and you, too, nearly died in your heroic but demonstrably futile effort to fulfill your vocation. Given your similar personalities, your mutual hallucinations are understandable, even predictable.”

“Then why can't we find the hotel?” Savage asked.

“Because deep in your mind you're struggling to deny that your failure ever took place. What better way than to convince yourselves that the hotel, where your failure occurred, doesn't exist? Or the doctor who treated you? Or the hospital where you recovered? They do exist, at least if your account is authentic. But they don't exist where your urge for denial compels you to search.”

Savage and Akira glanced at each other. As one, they shook their heads.

“Why”-Akira sounded skeptical-”did we both know where the hotel ought to be? And the doctor? And the hospital?”

“That's the easiest to explain. You reinforced each other. What one of you said, the other grasped at. To perpetuate the delusion and relieve your guilt.”

“No,” Savage said.

Weinberg shrugged. “I told you, this was all hypothetical.”

“Why,” Akira asked, “if our arms and legs weren't broken, were we put in casts? Why did we endure the agony of rebuilding our muscles for so many terrible months?”

“Casts?” Weinberg asked. “Or were they immobilizers required to help repair ligaments detached from your arms and legs? Were the casts on your chests actually thick, tightly wound tape that protected bruised-but not broken-ribs? And possibly your bandaged skulls indeed had fractures, hairlines that healed so perfectly an X ray