My brother wasn't in his room. I waited around for a half hour, and when he didn't show up I went looking for him. I was on my way to the nurses' station to ask if he'd been taken for more tests when I passed the Day Room and saw Garth inside sitting at a card table and talking with three other patients. There was a deck of cards in the center of the table, but the men seemed more interested in their conversation than their game. Garth was dressed in new clothes; jeans, a wool plaid shirt, and moccasins. He had his Walkman clipped to his belt, but the earphones were hanging around his neck. I watched them for a little while, and saw that it was Garth who was doing most of the talking; the others were leaning forward over the table, apparently listening intently to whatever it was he was saying. All four men looked over at me as I came into the Day Room and walked up to them, and I had the distinct feeling that I had interrupted some personal, intense, private conversation.
'Hi, Garth,' I said brightly, feeling very much like an intruder.
'Hello, Mongo,' Garth replied easily. 'How's your head?'
'It's okay,' I said, resisting the impulse to tell him that it was his head I was worried about. 'How are you feeling?'
My brother put the earphones back on his head, turned on the Walkman, and adjusted it to low volume. 'Garth is feeling fine. Thank you.'
There was a long, uncomfortable silence, during which Garth and the other men simply stared at me. 'I'm Bob Frederickson,' I said at last to Garth's audience, smiling and extending my hand.
One by one the men introduced themselves, shook my hand-and then turned their heads toward Garth, as if looking for direction. I expected Garth to excuse himself from the group and come back with me to his room to talk. Instead, he simply sat and stared at me, a curious half smile on his face. I tried a few conversational gambits, none of which produced anything more than perfunctory responses. I was growing increasingly uncomfortable.
'I've interrupted your card game,' I said as I rose to my feet. 'You guys go ahead and play.'
And they did; whatever it was they had been discussing before I'd come in, they weren't going to resume the conversation while I was there. Garth turned up the volume on his Walkman slightly, then shuffled the deck of cards and started dealing. I turned and left.
After kicking Dane Potter's teeth out of his head, I thought the children's hospital wouldn't be too anxious to use me again. I was wrong. I got a call early the next morning asking me to come in and substitute for the English teacher. Dane Potter, his teeth surgically reimplanted and wired in place, was in one of my classes; he was properly subdued and respectful, and even joked with me a couple of times. Word of the incident had gotten around, and I got a lot of attention from all the kids in the hospital. I responded as best I could, but I was still feeling distinctly out of sorts.
I felt as if a crucial decision I had never expected to have to make was being forced on me, and my dilemma was generating a good deal of internal pressure.
After school I traipsed across the field at the back of the children's hospital toward the main complex-and was startled to see Garth, earphones on his head, walking down the hillside toward me, holding the hands of an old man and old woman who were determinedly, eagerly, shuffling alongside him. Garth was smiling; the old man and woman were smiling. Tommy Carling, a bemused expression on his face and looking like nothing so much as a chaperone or mother hen, was walking down the hillside about twenty yards behind the trio.
Garth merely nodded to me as we came abreast, and then continued on with his two elderly charges, speaking to one and then the other. Both the old man and the old woman had rapt expressions on their faces.
I waited for Tommy Carling, then fell into step beside the pony tailed male nurse. 'I'm surprised to see Garth outside,' I said.
Carling shrugged his broad shoulders. 'Why shouldn't he be? He's not violent, and he's given no indication that he's a threat to himself or others; if gentleness was radioactive, Garth would glow in the dark. Patients who aren't violent or too unpredictable are given outside privileges to walk around the grounds as long as they have a nurse, aide, or male relative with them.'
'If Garth is functioning so well,' I said carefully, 'maybe it's time I took him home.'
Carling looked at me, raised his eyebrows. 'Just because he's functioning doesn't mean he's healthy-or that he might not suffer a relapse and go catatonic on us again.'
'Granted.'
'With Garth, you can never be quite sure where he's going to be from one day to the next.'
'Granted; but maybe he can heal just as well-or better-at home. If he has a relapse, I can always bring him back here.'
'Where would you take him?'
'Back to his own apartment; I'd stay with him. I moved in with him after I got burned out of my own apartment. I've been looking for a new apartment, but I'll just put that off until everyone agrees that Garth is well- or as well as he's likely to get.'
'Mongo,' Tommy Carling said in a low voice, 'Garth's only been
I looked down at the grass, debating how much of the basis for my concern I could-should-share with Tommy Carling. Despite his disarming, often foppish, manner, and despite his healing skills and his obvious concern for Garth, Tommy Carling was, above all else, a Defense Intelligence Agency employee with a high security clearance, and the D.I.A., was not the Little Sisters of Mercy; in a crunch, there was no doubt-or little doubt-in my mind where Carling's loyalties would lie. The first horn of my dilemma, made even sharper by the fact that the K.G.B. wasn't the Little Sisters of Mercy, either. The second horn was the fact that, despite the first horn, the D.I.A. clinic, with its decidedly mixed bag of what could be conflicting interests, not to mention the possibility of Russian infiltration, might still be the best place for Garth. I didn't even want to think about how I would feel if Garth suffered any more damage because of a wrong move I might make, or a right move I might not make, so I decided to dance around the subject a little while longer, and see where the conversation might lead.
'I'm just not sure he wouldn't be more comfortable in his own place, in familiar surroundings,' I said.
Carling was silent for some time. Finally, he said quietly: 'I think it's you who's not comfortable here, Mongo. And it's Garth who's making you uncomfortable. Am I right?'
'There's some truth in what you say.'
'But you're not the patient, Mongo. Garth has given no indication that he wants to leave. I'm sorry if I sound rude, but I have to ask if you're certain that you have Garth's best interests in mind when you talk about taking him out of here.'
'He's up and about, and it occurs to me that he might begin to act more normal if he were placed back in normal surroundings.'
Garth had sat the old couple down on swings outside one of the children's cottages and was gently pushing them. All three mental patients looked perfectly content, and no staff from the children's hospital had come out to complain of their presence. Carling sat down on the grass, and I sat beside him. I declined his offer of a cigarette, and he lit one for himself.
'Garth has a great gift,' the male nurse said, picking a speck of tobacco off his lower lip as he exhaled.
'For what?' I asked in a tone that was more curt than I'd meant it to be. 'As a companion for old people, or as a budding music critic specializing in Wagner?'
Carling, resting on his elbow, turned his head and looked at me. 'You're upset because I suggested that you might be more worried, even if unconsciously, about your own feelings than you are about your brother's welfare.'
'No, Tommy, I'm not upset,' I said evenly. 'It shows me that you're thinking about Garth, and I like that. You continue to worry about Garth, and I'll worry about my feelings.'
Carling dragged deeply on his cigarette, pointed down the hillside at the trio on the swings. 'Look at him down there. Those two old people listening so intently to whatever it is your brother is saying to them are considered hopelessly senile, with virtually no attention span for anything. I was told when I signed them out from the geriatric section that they didn't respond to anybody. Obviously, the staff who told me that were wrong.'
'Are they from the clinic?'
'No; they're just regular patients at the hospital. But you see how they respond to Garth; a lot of very sick people respond remarkably well to Garth. He seems able to relate to them in a way no one else can.'
'He just doesn't relate to normal people.'
'That seems to be true, unfortunately, at this point. That doesn't diminish his gift, or the power of that gift.
