Although New York magazine does not include this particular specialization in their annual round-up of the “10 Best Doctors in New York,” Dr. Tilden is tops in the field of electroconvulsive therapy which, granted, is not a crowded field, but what matters here is that as far as the psychiatric community is concerned, he is the gold standard.
Then again, the Nobel Prize was awarded to the quack who thought up the lobotomy as a quick fix.
No matter the forewarnings about Dr. Tilden, Bunny is not prepared for the man’s plaid pants. Gray, navy blue, yellow plaid with a thread of lime green running through like the plaid upholstery of a couch at the Salvation Army selling for $18.99. Bunny worries that the plaid pants are bell-bottoms. Dr. Tilden’s lab coat is buttoned all the way to the top button, as if it were a white shirt to be worn with a tie. A lock of chest hair peeps out like a pin curl. Bunny goes rigid at the thought that beneath his lab coat he is not wearing a shirt, and she thinks, “This quack is about to mess with my brain.”
Dr. Tilden fusses with the equipment, checking that plugs are plugged in and cables are connected. He is attentive to details. That Dr. Tilden acknowledges Bunny no more than he would greet the plastic Visible Woman from Anatomy 101 is not something she should take personally. He appears equally oblivious to Sondra and Dr. Kim, who is the anesthesiologist. He’s definitely got some kind of Asperger-y thing going on.
“We are now going to perform bilateral electroconvulsive therapy,” he announces, as if he were addressing an imaginary group of medical students gathered around the gurney to observe the master. “Stimulating electrodes will be pasted, bilaterally, on the scalp.”
For the second time in twenty minutes, Sondra slaps a blood pressure cuff around Bunny’s upper arm.
Dr. Kim seems like a normal person.
Dr. Tilden says that electrode paste prevents burning. If his horizontal voice were calibrated and recorded like a heart on a monitor, he’d be pronounced dead.
Sondra rolls up the bottom of Bunny’s pajama leg, and she wraps another blood pressure cuff midway between her knee and her ankle, followed by two self-adhesive electrodes she tapes to Bunny’s foot, all to monitor her gorgeous blood pressure while she is under sedation.
Dr. Kim inserts a catheter, an IV line to administer the muscle relaxant and the sedative, into a prominent vein on Bunny’s right hand, and she dots Bunny’s breastbone with a few electrodes of her own. “And this,” she says, “will monitor your blood-oxygen tension.” She clips the oximeter like a clothespin to Bunny’s index finger.
After planting two more electrodes, one square in the middle of her forehead and another one on her collarbone, Dr. Tilden turns to the machine and again fiddles with the dials.
Dr. Kim puts an oxygen mask over Bunny’s mouth and nose.
“I want you to start at one hundred,” Dr. Kim instructs, “and count backwards.”
If Albie were here, Bunny would ask him, “What the fuck is blood-oxygen tension?” If Albie were here, she wouldn’t be alone. But Albie isn’t here, and for that she has only herself to blame.
She can’t remember what comes after ninety-seven.
Bunny is sorry.
Bunny tells herself that this is not real, this can’t be real.
Ninety-four, ninety-three.