Sergeant Matthew Payne was lying on his side in the hospital bed, his arm over his face, when the door opened.
He first looked annoyed, and then curious. His hand reached out and found the bed control. As the back of the bed rose, he rolled onto his back, then folded his arms over his chest and looked somewhat defensively at the two physicians who entered the room. One was his sister, the other a short, plump, somewhat jowly man in his fifties.
He was Aaron Stein, M.D., the Moses and Rebecca Wertheimer Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Stein had surprised many of his peers-and annoyed as many more-when he selected Amelia Payne, M.D., for a psychiatric residency under his mentorship. She had then just turned twenty-two years old.
She had worked under him-he always insisted on saying “with him”-ever since, and it was widely believed that Dr. Stein had been responsible for Dr. Payne’s current position as the Joseph L. Otterby Professor of Psychiatry.
“I must really be off my rocker if Amy called in the heavy-duty reinforcements,” Matt said.
“How do you feel, Matt?” Dr. Stein asked.
“I feel as if I was drugged,” Matt said. “I can’t imagine why.”
“All I gave you was a sleeping pill,” Amy said.
“Did it say ‘for elephants’ on the bottle?”
Dr. Stein chuckled.
“How long have I been here?” Matt asked.
“You slept through yesterday,” Amy said.
“Let me guess,” Matt said. “Light began to come through the windows a couple of hours ago. This is the morning of the second day?”
“Yes, it is,” Stein said, smiling.
“I normally tell time by looking at my watch,” Matt said. “But that seems to be missing. And both the telephone and the TV seem not to be working.”
“You needed rest, Matt,” Dr. Stein said.
“Is that a polite way of telling the lunatic that he was really bouncing off the walls?”
“It’s just what I said,” Stein said. “You needed rest, Matt. And not only don’t we heavy-duty psychiatrists use that word anymore-actually it means ‘affected by the moon’-but you’re not loony, bonkers, gaga, or whatever else you’re thinking.”
Matt had to smile. He remembered what his father said about Dr. Stein: “He looks, and acts, like a beardless Santa Claus.”
“Then what is wrong with me?” he asked.
“In layman’s terms,” Dr. Stein said, “do you know what thoroughbred racehorses and overachiever workaholics like yourself have in common?”
“We make a lot of money for other people?” Matt asked, innocently, after a moment.
Stein laughed.
“You don’t know when to stop. You don’t understand that you have limits like ordinary horses and other human beings,” he said.
He turned to Dr. Payne.
“He’s all right,” he said. “I’ll talk to him now. I’ll page you when we’re through. And on your way out, have them send two breakfasts in here.” He turned back to Matt. “I’ve never known you not to be hungry. What would you like? Take advantage of my presence. I get whatever I want.”
“I am a little hungry,” Matt said.
“Send in the ward nurse,” Dr. Stein said. “She’s getting a little too big for her britches, and it will do her good to take our breakfast order.”
“Okay,” Matt said. “Amy’s gone. That was a very nice breakfast, thank you very much. And now, I hope, you’re going to tell me what’s wrong with me?”
“I already told you what I know is wrong with you. Do you want to hear what your sister thinks is wrong with you?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“She’s been really worried for some time about you, and she’s been coming to me for some time to tell me why she’s worried.”
“Is that ethical?”
“Ethical, schmethical. She loves you. She’s a pretty good doctor. We’re friends. She came to me. It’s done- she can’t undo telling me. You want to hear what she thinks?”
“Okay.”
“She has developed quite a theory-basically that you don’t know who you really are.”
“Who does she think I really am?”
“Essentially, the psychological heir of your mother.”
“I don’t know what she can mean by that.”
“That your psychological makeup is gentle, kind, even intellectual, maybe. Anyway, the antithesis of warrior.”
Matt threw his hands up to indicate he had no idea what Amy was driving at.
“She thinks you have been conditioned all your life by your role models to believe you were destined to be a warrior, ” Stein said.
“What role models?”
“Commissioner Coughlin for one, the cop’s cop,” Stein said. “But primarily, the legend of your biological father, who died heroically in the line of duty. Your uncle, the cop captain, what was his name?”
“Dutch,” Matt said. “Captain Dutch Moffitt.”
“Who similarly died heroically in the line of duty, right?”
“He had just finished telling some kid to put the gun down, he didn’t want to have to kill him, and some goddamn junkie shot him with a. 22, of all goddamn weapons.”
“But heroically, right?”
“I suppose.”
“And he died heroically right at the time when the Marine Corps told you, ‘No, thanks, you don’t measure up to our standards,’ right?”
“They found something wrong with my ear,” Matt said.
“All of these things combining, in the Dr. Amy Payne theory of what’s wrong with Little Brother, to compel you to join the police force to prove your manhood, that you’re a warrior.”
“Jesus!”
“And then you met another man, who became your mentor, Inspector Peter Wohl. Another warrior role model.”
“Okay.”
“Now, being as intelligent as you are, you could not have been unaware, in Amy’s theory, that Role Model One, Commissioner Coughlin, had arranged for a job for you that was not really police work. You weren’t walking around dark streets in a uniform with a gun and a nightstick, in other words. And you subconsciously understood this to mean that Coughlin and Wohl, Role Model Two, didn’t think of you as a fellow warrior, but rather as sort of a wimp who had to be protected.”
“She told you all of this?” Matt asked.
“And then you shot the Northwest serial rapist, trying to prove that you were indeed a warrior and a man.”
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I shot that sonofabitch because he was trying to run me over with a van.”
“But still, even after this warrior act, neither Coughlin nor Wohl was convinced that you were a warrior. The proof of this, your subconscious believed, came on the memorable day when the real cops, the real warriors, were about to face down the bad people and they sent you a block away to safety, allegedly to protect a journalist.”
“I must be crazy, I’m starting to think she may be onto something.”
