Remaking a Man

Tuesday, June 16th, 1953

“They’re...they’re dead.” June rocked back, reacting to his words as if he had slapped her.

The next few days were a blur. Dean soon realized that if he asked after Maggie, Teddy or Sarah - he was sedated. June just wept and Howard Jenkins became a regular fixture in his hospital room.

Another visitor came by at least once a day. Dr. Lagenfeld, a visiting psychiatrist who said he specialized in traumatic brain injuries. His raven black hair and piercing green eyes were vaguely familiar. What was it about the man? It was as if there were a distant memory echoing about in the back of Dean’s skull, a sense of deja vu he could not seem to shake.

“Good morning, Mr. Edmonds,” Dr. Lagenfeld said, nodding to the other occupants of the room. June, whose beautiful brown eyes held deep shadows under them nodded in return. Her voice wavered, “Good morning, Doctor Lagenfeld.”

Howard stood up, and introduced himself. Dr. Lagenfeld shook his hand and then stepped back.

“Mrs. Edmonds, Mr. Jenkins, if you both would take a few minutes to get some coffee in the cafeteria and stretch your legs, I would like to speak with Mr. Edmonds alone.” He softened the request with a smile which sported a set of perfect white, straight teeth.

“Of course,” Howard said, offering an elbow to June, who took it, moving slowly, her eyes never leaving Dean. Her expression held such hopelessness that Dean felt guilt in addition to the confusion he felt over the situation.

He knew that Maggie wasn’t a dream or hallucination. He remembered her scent, the way her body had felt against his.

And Teddy, who had grown to such a fine young man. Just a couple of months away from turning twelve.

His heart ached too for Sarah. His and Maggie’s beautiful daughter. They had just celebrated her seventh birthday a few months ago. She had been surrounded by her friends from school, beautiful in a pink chiffon dress and a lovely pink cake to match.

They wanted him to say she wasn’t real, that she had never existed. That was the hardest thing to take.

Every time he tried to reconcile it all, he couldn’t. It felt like a betrayal to lie and tell them what they wanted to hear. He knew it, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he had lived it.

The night before, when June had thought him sleeping, she had stepped out into the hall and spoken with Dr. Waterston.

“You asked to speak with me, Doctor?”

“Yes, Mrs. Edmonds, I wanted to discuss your options with you.”

“My options?”

Dr. Waterston had coughed then, a raspy thick cough, “Well, Mrs. Edmonds, your husband is a few weeks out from being physically recovered enough to no longer need us here. However, mentally, well, Dr. Lagenfeld has suggested there may be a need for Mr. Edmonds to recover fully at an institute that specializes in mental illnesses and injuries such as your husband suffered.”

June’s voice had quivered, “You are suggesting I commit him to an asylum?” She sniffled then.

“I am sorry Mrs. Edmonds, here, oh dear, I am sorry to see I’ve distressed you.”

Dean could hear June begin to cry.

“Please Mrs. Edmonds, come with me to my office. Where you can have a moment to collect yourself.” Their voices had faded as they moved down the hallway and out of earshot.

An asylum.

What exactly did you expect they would do when you keep claiming your wife and children are dead when they are clearly not?

Dr. Lagenfeld closed the door to the hospital hallway and pulled up a chair. “Mr. Edmonds, how are you today?”

“The same as I was yesterday, and the day before that.”

“And that is?”

“Confused.”

Castor Lagenfeld nodded. “I see.”

“I have lived in this world, lost June and the kids, and managed to move on. I fell in love, adopted Teddy.” Dean spread his hands, “Don’t tell me that Sarah doesn’t exist. I had a seven year old daughter and everyone wants to tell me that it’s a dream. Do you know how that feels? To know such love and happiness...” his voice caught, “to lose a woman and children you loved more than life itself and then be told it isn’t real?”

Dr. Lagenfeld was young. So young that June had asked if he were still in school. Dr. Lagenfeld had laughed and said, “I’m told I look quite young for my age. I suppose I should take that as a compliment.”

Despite his youthful appearance, and the strange feeling of deja vu that Dean felt in his presence, Dr. Lagenfeld’s eyes held a maturity that seemed to exceed his years on earth. He leaned closer, “Mr. Edmonds. We have spoken daily for a week now. And each day I have told you that your wife June, along with your son Danny and daughter Betty, are all still alive. Have I not?”

Dean began to feel a thick coil of fear growing within him. “Yes.”

“And every day you have mentioned this Maggie, Teddy and Sarah, insisting that they are not some dream, that this is not 1953, but instead 1962.”

“Yes.”

“You saw a man that night in the rain. Right before the crash.” Dr. Lagenfeld said it as if stating a fact, instead of a question.”

“Yes.”

“What if both of these obviously conflicting realities were true?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What if June, Danny and Betty had perished, just as you said, and that you were now married to Maggie and father to Teddy and Sarah. And at the same time, your first wife and children had not perished in the crash and you did not meet Maggie?”

“That isn’t possible. This isn’t a science fiction novel. It has to be one or the other.” Dean insisted.

Dr. Lagenfeld smiled, “Indeed. And if you look around, who or what do you see?”

Dean felt like screaming. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. If he agreed with everyone, with this doctor, then it was as if he was turning his back on Maggie and the children. He knew what he knew. He could still feel her hand in his.

“Mr. Edmonds?”

“I see June.”

Dr. Lagenfeld nodded, “And?”

“Everyone I see in here tells me it is 1953.” Dean ground out.

The doctor nodded, his eyes intent on Dean.

“Sometimes, no matter how sure we are of the truth, no matter what our hearts tell us, reality is something entirely different.”

Dean forced himself to nod.

“Occam’s Razor, Mr. Edmonds.”

“I’m sorry?”

The doctor smiled, “William of Ockham, he was a friar, scholastic philosopher and theologian. He proposed that, among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. It involves fewer assumptions for us to accept the hypothesis that June, Betty, and Danny are your family and that the year is 1953.”

He leaned back in the chair and regarded Dean. The seconds ticked by.

“I want to sign off on this, Mr. Edmonds. I want to look your wife in the eye and tell her that you understand that all of this was merely a temporary, dissociative state due to your head injuries. An intense, incredibly real-seeming one, but also temporary.”

He cocked his head staring at Dean intensely, “I want to tell them that you aren’t a threat to yourself, or others. I want to tell them that you now remember that it was a truck, not a man that was in the road in front of you. That the year is 1953, and that you are in love with your wife and ready to return home to your children.”

He paused for a moment, “Do you think that you can do that, Mr. Edmonds?”

There was something in Castor Lagenfeld’s eyes, in the inflection of his speech that Dean couldn’t quite read. A warning, perhaps? An unspoken threat?

Dean remembered the conversation between June and Dr. Waterston the evening before. If he persisted, if he continued to talk about Maggie, Teddy and Sarah, what would happen to him? What would this doctor do? Would he really be committed?

He realized in that moment that he stood at a crossroads. If he continued, if he argued, they could commit him, write him off as mentally unstable, insane even. He pictured Fulton State Hospital, remembering his mother, so despondent after losing the last baby. She had spent two months there. He remembered his mother pleading with his father to let her come home. His father had been a cold man, busy with business and his mistress, even he had eventually relented. Would June? After all of their fights, after all of the bitterness, would she sign the papers and leave him there?

The past nine years, it all seemed so real. But how could it be? How could he be right and everyone else be wrong? And did he really want to take the chance that his wife wouldn’t agree to lock him away forever? When was the last time he had a kind word for her? Perhaps they were right, perhaps it had all been a hallucination caused by the injury to his brain.

I’ve wanted a different life for so long, perhaps it really is all in my head. I wanted something real, something different and my mind made up the rest.

“Yes. You are right, Doctor” he said finally.

His eyes slid away from Dr. Lagenfeld’s and found a spot on the bed sheet, a bit of pilling on a field of otherwise pristine white. He picked at it, his fingernails were long and overgrown.

“Of course it is 1953. And my wife June, and my children, they survived the crash, and thank God for that.”

“And the accident?” Dr. Lagenfeld pressed, “What do you remember of that?”

“The lights of a truck in our lane. There was no time for me to turn away. I’m lucky that June and the children weren’t hurt.”

He looked out the window, waiting for Dr. Lagenfeld to speak. His stomach twisted in fear as he waited, a long moment spiraling out between them. He could feel the doctor’s steady gaze.

Finally, Dr. Lagenfeld smiled. “I’m so glad to hear it, Mr. Edmonds.” He wrote in his notebook. “I think we are done here. I’ll leave it up to Dr. Waterston to clear you for your medical release. I am sure you are looking forward to returning to your home and seeing your children again.”

“Yes.” Dean said. He didn’t look up until the psychiatrist had left, the door clicking closed behind him. He was alone.

His chest was tight, breathing ragged and difficult. I have betrayed them. “Maggie,” Dean whispered, his voice broken, raw, “Maggie...Teddy...Sarah.”

When June returned, coffee cup in hand, Howard Jenkins wasn’t with her. She came into the hospital room and eyed Dean with trepidation.

“Is your session with Dr. Lagenfeld already over?”

“Yes,” he paused for a moment, “June?”

“Yes, Dean?” She stepped closer.

“I’m sorry. This was all so confusing. Dr. Lagenfeld, he...” He searched for the right words, the right lies to tell himself and his wife. “He explained that with brain injuries, dreams can seem like reality. He said, he said it was a dissociative state caused by my head injury.”

He forced a small laugh. It sounded like an aborted cough. “Obviously it is 1953, not 1962. I know that now. It just felt so real...so...” He steeled himself. He had to pull this off, had to make himself believe it. “I am so happy you and the children were not hurt in the crash. And I am sorry for anything I may have said which might have hurt or frightened you.”

June’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh Dean, my darling, I had been so scared! I didn’t know what to think, and you, I mean we...” She took his hand. “I know that things hadn’t been good between us, right before the crash, and I...”

“I am sorry about that June. I feel as if I haven’t been a good husband to you.” Dean beat her to it, “I promise, we will have a new start.” June hugged him then, her hair spilling against his stubble cheek. He could smell her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, and thought of Maggie’s Yardley English Lavender. His chest ached. He closed his eyes and pulled June against him. “I’m better now, I promise.”

He felt her melt into him. It reminded him of their first dates. That blush of love that had sucked them in hard and fast. He had loved her then, and would have done anything for her. It was why he had bowed to convention and finished his degree in business administration, took leadership of the company as his father had expected, and bought that fine house on Grand Street.

That was what a man did. He grew up, he took the reins of responsibility and cared for his wife and children.

But as Dean held June, his hand traveling over her back, feeling the tiny nubs of her spine and realizing how much weight she had lost as she sat at his bedside day in and day out, he knew that he was different now. The dream, for what else could it be, had changed him. He was no longer the man that June had married.

He had the chance to be the husband he should have been, to be a father that Danny and Betty needed. But he had to find a compromise somehow, between the man he had been before the crash and the man who had woken up in this hospital bed with these memories.

Dean realized he needed to remake himself into a man who was the best of both.