Whenever I experience a difficult patient making a first appearance in Ward Four, I always pay a visit to Ward One to try to recapture my optimism, and I did so the morning after meeting Charlotte. I encountered Rudolph in the exercise room practicing what appeared to be very novel ballet stances and moves. It reminded me of the contortionists who used to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. I asked him how he was doing. To my surprise he confessed that he had a long way to go. I wasn’t sure whether he meant his treatment program or his perfection of ballet technique, but I could see that he wouldn’t be with us much longer.
I found Michael in the quiet room behind a book of poetry. I asked him what he was reading.
“Oh, just some Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth and those guys. An anthology. I’ve missed out on so much of my life. When I was in high school I wanted to be an English teacher.”
“Maybe. Right now I just want to balance the ledger.”
“Have you looked into any EMS training programs?”
“I’ve already signed up for one. Starts October third.” He glanced at me hopefully.
“I think you’ll make it. I’ll take a look at my schedule and see if we can work in a wrap-up session sometime soon.”
On the way back to my office I stopped briefly in Ward Two, where my balloon of optimism began to deflate with a pronounced hiss. Bert was crashing through the lounge lifting cushions, stomping on the carpet, peering behind drapes and chairs. How sad he seemed, focused on his impossible quest like some latter-day Don Quixote.
But was Bert’s case any more tragic than that of Jackie, who would always be a child? Or Russell, so focused on the Bible that he never learned how to live? Or Lou or Manuel or Dustin? Or, for that matter, some of our faculty and staff? Or millions of others who stumble about the world looking for what may not be there? Who set impossible goals for themselves and never attain them?
Milton, perhaps noticing my sudden melancholy, held forth with: “Man went to the doctor. Said he had chest pains and wanted an electrocardiogram. Doctor gave him one and told him there was nothing wrong with his heart. Came in every few months. Same result. Outlived three doctors. Finally, when he was ninety-two, there was a change in his EKG pattern. He looked the guy straight in the eye and said, ‘Ha! I told you so!’”
Now in his fifties, Milton fully understands the sadness of life and tries vainly to cheer up everyone he sees. Unfortunately, he has never been able to alleviate his own suffering. He lost his entire family—father, mother, brothers, a sister, grandmother, several aunts and uncles and cousins, in the Holocaust. Only he escaped, protected from harm by a total stranger, a gentile who took the baby at the pleadings of his mother and pretended it was her own.
But is his story any sadder than that of Frankie, a woman unable to form human relationships of any kind? Not a sociopath like Charlotte, nor an autist like Jerry and the others, but someone who is indifferent toward affection, a patient who is pathologically unable to love or be loved—what could be sadder than that?
Villers was leaving the dining room as I was coming in. I waved at him as he passed by but he didn’t see me. He seemed distracted, deep in thought, conjuring up some new money-making scheme, I assumed.
Menninger joined me instead, and I asked him about his new patient. “She’s as cold as they come,” he told me, “a female Hannibal Lecter. You should read her detailed history.”
“I think I’ll pass on that.”
But Ron was enjoying himself. He loves to play with fire. “When she was five, she killed a puppy. You know how she did it?”
“No.”
“She baked it in the oven.”
“Did she get any treatment?”
“Nope. Claimed she didn’t know the pup was in there.”
“And it went downhill from there.”
“Way down.”
I slowly chewed up the last of the crackers. “I’m not sure I want to hear the rest.”
“I’ll give you the low point. After several more practice runs with neighborhood pets, including a horse she stabbed to death, she killed the boy next door when she was sixteen.”
“How did she get by with it?”
“She didn’t. She spent some time in a reform school and then was transferred to a mental institution when she attacked one of the guards. You don’t want to know what she did to him. She managed to escape from that place and was never heard from again.”
“How old was she then?”
“Twenty. She was arrested a year later.”
“You mean she killed those seven or eight guys in one year?”
“And that’s not the worst of it. When she killed the neighbor kid?”
“Yes?”
“She left him lying in the backyard and went to a movie. After that, she slept like a baby, according to her parents.”
“I’d keep an eye on her if I were you.”
His eyes lit up. “Don’t worry. But she’s an amazing case, don’t you think? I’ve never met anyone like her.” He seemed beside himself, eager for his first session with Charlotte.
“Just be careful. She’s no Sunday-school teacher.”
“Wouldn’t matter if she were.”
“Why not?”
“Some of the most violent people in the world are Sunday-school teachers.”
While waiting for Robert/prot to come in for his twenty-fourth session I jotted down on a yellow pad some of the missing pieces of the puzzle I hoped to obtain from Rob, paramount of which was the question of who had fathered Sarah’s child, and what, if anything, did this have to do with Rob’s mental problems? Why did he call his father his “protector”? What happened when he was five years old that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, remember? None of this was going to be easy for Rob to deal with, but I was pretty sure the seeds of his trauma had begun to germinate during that early period in his troubled life, as my perceptive wife had suggested.
There was another, quite unforeseen, difficulty as well. Based on the results of the Stanford test, it appeared that Robert was trying hard to resist being hypnotized. Was he beginning to have second thoughts about cooperating with me and getting to the bottom of the quagmire he had been treading most of his life? I decided to approach his childhood only indirectly for the time being.
From his history I knew approximately when Sarah must’ve become pregnant, so I had some idea of when she told him about it. I tried to imagine what he must have felt upon hearing this news, and I was still staring into empty space when someone tapped on the door.
“Hi, Dr. Brewer.”
“Hello, Rob. How are you feeling?”
He shrugged.
“Do you remember coming here from Ward Two?”
“No.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was being tested to see whether I could be hypnotized.”
“Well, you passed.”
His shoulders slumped.
“And you know that in this setting there’s no danger, nothing to worry about, right? Are you ready to try it?”
“I guess.”
“Okay, sit down and relax. Good. Now focus your attention on that little spot on the wall behind me.”
He pretended not to see it. After a moment, however, he complied.
“That’s it. Just relax. Good. Good. Now I’m going to count from one to five. You will begin to feel drowsy on one, your eyelids will become heavier and heavier as the numbers increase, and by the time I get to five you will be asleep, but you will be able to hear everything I say. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now—let your arms drop....” Rob’s arms fell heavily to his sides and his eyes closed tightly. He began to snore softly. Obviously he was faking it. “Okay, Rob, open your eyes.”
His eyes popped open. “Is it over already?”
“Rob, you’ll have to do better than that. Are you afraid of the procedure?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Good. Now let’s try again. Are you comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now let yourself relax completely. Let all your muscles go limp and just relax. That’s it. Good. Now find the spot on the wall. Good. Just relax. One...you’re beginning to feel drowsy. Two...your eyelids are getting heavy....” Robert stared at the white dot. He was still resisting, apparently caught between fear and suspicion. On three his eyelids began to flutter, and he fought to keep them open. By the count of five they were closed and his chin had dropped onto his chest. “Rob? Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now lift your head and open your eyes.”
He complied. I checked his pulse and coughed loudly. There was no reaction.
“How do you feel?”
“Okay.”
“Good. All right, Rob, we’re going to go back in time now. Imagine the pages of a calendar turning backward, backward, backward. You are slowly becoming younger. Younger and younger. You are thirty, twenty-five, twenty. Now you’re a senior in high school. It’s March 1975. Almost spring. You have a date with your girlfriend Sally. You’re picking her up now. Where are you going?”
“We’re going to a movie.”
“What movie are you going to?”
“Jaws.”
“Okay. What is Sally wearing?”
“She’s wearing her yellow coat and scarf.”
“It’s cold outside?”
“Not too cold. Her coat is open. She has on a white blouse and a blue skirt.”
“Are you driving or walking?”
“Walking. I don’t have a car.”
“All right. You’re at the theater. You’re going in. What happens next?”
“I’m buying some popcorn. Sally loves popcorn.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I’ll have a little of hers. I don’t have any more money.”
“Okay. There’s Robert Shaw being eaten by the shark. Now the movie is over and you’re leaving the theater. Where are you going now?”
“We’re going back to Sally’s house. She wants to talk.”
“Do you know what she wants to talk about?”
“No. She won’t tell me till we get to the house.”
“All right, you’re back at Sally’s house. What do you see?”
Robert seemed to become edgy. “It—it’s a big white house with dormers in the roof. We’re going to sit on the porch and talk for a while. In one of the swings.”
“What is Sally saying to you?”
“Her head is on my shoulder. Her hair is soft. I can smell her shampoo. She tells me she is pregnant.”
“How does she know that?”
“She has missed two periods.”
“Are you the father?”
“No. We’ve never done anything.”
“You’ve never had a sexual relationship with Sally?”
His fists clenched. “No.”
“Do you know who the father is?”
“No.”
“Sally won’t tell you?”
“I never asked her.”
“Why not?”
“If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me.”
“All right. What are you going to do about it?”
“That’s what she wants to talk about.”
“What does she think you ought to do?”
“She wants to get married. Only—”
“Only what?”
“Only she knows I want to go to college.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“I want to get married, too.”
“And give up your career?”
“I don’t have much choice.”
“But you’re not the father.”
“It doesn’t matter. I love her.”
“So you told her you would marry her?”
“Yes.”
“What’s happening now?”
“Do you like it when she kisses you?”
“Yes.” His reply sounded strangely matter-of-fact.
“Has she ever kissed you before?”
“Yes.”
“But it never led to anything further?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right. What’s happening now?”
“We’re going inside.”
“It’s too cold to stay on the porch?”
“No. She wants to go up to her room.”
“Is she ill?”
“No. She wants me to go, too.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“We’re going up the stairs. Trying to be real quiet because they squeak. It’s dark except for a hall light. Everyone else has gone to bed.”
“Go on.”
“We’re tiptoeing down the hallway. It’s still squeaking. We’re going into Sally’s room. She’s closing the door. I hear it lock. We’re taking off our coats.”
“Go on.”
“We’re hugging and kissing some more. She is pressing herself against me. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I put my hands under her skirt and lift it up.”
“Go on, Rob. What’s happening now?”
“We move toward the bed. Sally falls down on it. I’m on top of her. No! Please! I don’t want to do this!”
“Why not? Why don’t you want to have sex with Sally?”
“It’s a terrible thing to do! I have to go to sleep now.”
“It’s all right, Rob. It’s over. It’s all over. What’s happening now?”
“I’m getting dressed.”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. Better, I guess.”
“What is Sally doing?”
“She is just lying there watching me button my shirt. It’s dark but I can see her smiling.”
“Go on.”
“I put my coat on. I have to go.”
“Why do you have to go?”
“I told my mother I would be home by eleven-thirty.”
“What time is it now?”
He checked his wrist. “Twenty after eleven.”
“What’s happening?”
“Sally’s getting up and putting her arms around me. She doesn’t want me to go. She isn’t wearing anything. I try not to look but I can’t help it.”
“What do you see?”
“She’s naked. I can’t look. I’m unlocking the door. ‘Bye, Sally. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I’m tiptoeing along the corridor. Down the stairs. Out the door. I’m running. I run all the way home.”
“Is your mother waiting up for you?”
“No. But she hears me come in. She asks if it’s me. ‘Yes, Mom, it’s me.’ She wants to know if we had a nice time. ‘Yes, Mom, we had a very nice time.’ She says good night. I go to my room.”
“You’re going to bed now?”
“Yes. But I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I keep thinking about Sally.”
“What do you think about her?”
“How she smells and how she feels and how she tastes.”
“Do you like those things?”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t go all the way?”
“No.”
“Rob, can you tell me about anything that happened when you were younger that would make you dislike sex? Something that hurt you, or frightened you?”
No response.
“All right. Now listen carefully. Imagine the calendar again. The pages are turning rapidly, but this time we’re coming forward. You’re getting older. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, and still you are getting older. You are thirty-eight years old. It’s September 6, 1995, the present time. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now I’m going to count backward from five to one. As I count, you will begin to wake up. When I get to one, you will be fully awake, alert, and feeling fine. Five...four...three...two...one—”
“Hello, Dr. Brewer.”
“Hello, Rob. How do you feel?”
“You asked me that a minute ago.”
“You’ve been under hypnosis. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“All right. May I ask you a few more questions now?”
“Sure.” He seemed relieved it was over.
“Good. Rob, you were only five when your father was injured at work, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you visit him in the hospital?”
“They said I was too young. But my mother went to see him every day.”
“Who took care of you while your mother was at the hospital?”
“Uncle Dave and Aunt Catherine.”
“They came to stay with you?”
He began to fidget. “No. I stayed with them for a while.”
“How long?”
He answered slowly, almost in a whisper, “A long time.”
“During that time, did anything happen that you want to tell me about?”
“I don’t know, gino. I wasn’t there.”
“Doggone it, prot. Couldn’t you have given us a few more minutes? Where’s Robert? Is he okay?”
“Bearing up remarkably well, I’d say, under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Your relentless—how you say eet?—
browbeating.”
“Is he coming back?”
“Not for a while.”
“Prot, what can you tell me about Robert’s Uncle Dave and Aunt Catherine?”
“I just told you—I wasn’t there.”
“He’s never told you anything about them?”
“Never heard of any Uncle Dave or Aunt Catherine.”
“All right. Have some fruit.”
“Thought you’d never ask.” He grabbed a cantaloupe and bit into it.
I watched him devour rind, seeds, everything. I was still annoyed with him, but there was no time to waste. “As long as you’ve barged in—Dr. Villers asked me to sound you out on your TV appearance.”
“Well, are you willing to do it?”
“Who gets the money?”
I thought: Spoken like a true Homo sapiens! “Why, the hospital, I suppose. You don’t need money, do you?”
“No being needs money.”
“What do you suggest we do with it?”
“I suggest we let the network keep it.”
“Otherwise you don’t show up?”
“You got it.”
“I don’t think Klaus is going to like that idea. The main reason you were going on was to raise money for the new wing.”
“He’ll get used to it.”
“Do you want to be on TV?”
“Depends. Why do they want to know what a crazy person has to say?”
“You’d be surprised who goes on talk shows. Actually, they might try to make a fool of you.”
“Sounds like fun. I’ll be there!”
“All right. I’ll tell Villers about your decision.”
“Anything else, doc?”
“The trip to the zoo has been scheduled for the fourteenth. That okay with you?”
“Yep. What a place!” He took another huge bite of melon.
I declined to pursue this comment, which could have meant anything. Instead, I seized the opportunity, while I could, to discuss the patients with him. “I saw you talking with Bert this morning.”
“How very observant.”
“Do you know what he’s looking for, by any chance?”
“Sure.”
“You do?? What, for God’s sake?”
“Ah, gene. Do I have to do all your thinking for you?”
“Please, prot. All I’m asking for is a tiny little hint.”
“Oh, all right. He’s looking for his daughter.”
“But he doesn’t have a daughter!”
“That’s why he can’t find her!” He went for the door.
“Wait a minute—where are you going?”
“I don’t get paid for overtime.”
I called out: “Anything you can do for Frankie?” But he was already gone.
First thing next morning I called Chakraborty and then went looking for prot. On the way to the lounge I ran into Betty and told her what he had said about Bert. Her response was typical: “Prot is really something, isn’t he? Maybe you should give him an office and bring all the patients in to see him.”
“We’ve already considered that,” I told her resignedly. “But he doesn’t want the job.”
I found him in the lounge surrounded by his usual entourage, including Russell, who was now insisting that the end of the world was imminent. I asked them to let me speak to our alien friend for a moment. There was a lot of grumbling, but they finally backed away.
“Prot, Dr. Chakraborty is ready to take a little blood from you.”
“I shall returrrn,” he promised his followers. “Count Drrracula awaits in the crrrypt.” Without another word he headed for the door. I started to call out, but I realized he knew exactly where he was going. Suddenly I had the uncomfortable sensation of being surrounded. Someone said, “You’re trying to get rid of him, aren’t you?”
“Prot? Of course not.”
“You’re trying to drive him away. Everybody knows that.”
“No—I’m trying to get him to stay! For a while, at least....”
“Only as long as it takes to make Robert better. Then you want him to die.”
“I don’t want anyone to die.”
Russell shouted, “If you do not wake up I will come upon you like a thief, and you will not know the moment of my coming!” While everyone was pondering that pronouncement I made a hasty exit.
Giselle came in late that afternoon to report on prot’s meeting with the anthropologist and the rainforest chemist.
“First,” I said, “any sign of Robert?”
“Haven’t seen him since Labor Day.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“They turned out to be brother and sister. Hadn’t spoken in years. I don’t think they like each other much.”
“What did he tell them?”
“The chemist seemed suspicious of prot’s knowledge and abilities. He demanded to know the names of all the plants that produce natural products that could be used in the fight against AIDS.”
“And?”
“Prot just shook his head and said, ‘Why must you humans label everything a “fight”? The viruses mean you no malice. They’re programmed to survive, like everyone else.’”
“That sounds like him. What happened then?”
“He rephrased the question.”
“And did prot give him the information he wanted?”
“No, but he told him where to look for one.”
“Somewhere in southwestern Brazil. He even described the plant. It’s got big leaves and little yellow flowers. He said the natives call it ’otolo,’ which means ‘bitter.’ The chemist took this all down, but he still seemed skeptical until prot told him there was a substance good for certain kinds of heart arrhythmias in another plant found in the same region of Brazil. The guy knew all about that drug. In fact, he was one of its co-discoverers. He actually kissed prot’s hand. By then his time was up. He took off like a bat.”
“What about the anthropologist?”
“Prot told her there were probably several ‘missing links’ on Earth. She wanted to know where to find them.”
“Don’t they already know that?”
“Nope. They’re not in Africa.”
“Where, then?”
“He suggested she go to Mongolia.”
“Mongolia? How did they get from there to Africa?”
She gave me a look of protlike exasperation. “They didn’t have cars, Dr. B. They probably walked.”
“So I suppose she’s off to Mongolia?”
“She leaves next week.”
“You realize, of course, that it will be a long time before we know whether prot was right about any of these things.”
“No, it won’t. We know now.”
“How do we know that?”
“What does he have to do to prove to you that he knows what he’s talking about? Everything he’s told Dr. Flynn so far was right, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe. But savants like him only know what is already known. He can’t deduce something that nobody knows yet.”
“He’s not a savant. He’s from K-PAX.”
We had been through this before. I thanked her for the report and told her I had another favor to ask of her.
“Whatever you say, Dr. B.”
“We need to find out whether Bert had a daughter some time in the past. There’s no record of it, but maybe it got lost somehow, like Robert’s disappearance in ‘85 went into the books as a suicide.”
“I’ll get right on it. But first you’ll have to give me some information about him.”
I handed her a sheet from my yellow pad with all the pertinent data on it. Leaving a piney ghost behind, she was literally off and running. I only hoped she would be half as successful at this task as she had been in tracking down prot’s true identity five years earlier.
Right after she left, Klaus Villers came in. I thought he wanted to discuss one of his patients, or perhaps offer some pointed suggestions about one of mine, something he truly loves to do. Instead, he spent fifteen minutes stroking his goatee and telling me the story of Robin Hood. He wanted to know what I thought about the moral implications of that myth for present-day society. I told him I thought that people shouldn’t take the law into their own hands, but if they did they should be prepared to pay the consequences. Judging by the inflection of his grunts, I don’t think he liked that answer.