Робин Кук - Mutation

“How’s VJ doing?” Marsha asked.

“Couldn’t be better,” Jean reported.

“He’s being cooperative?” Marsha asked.

“Like a lamb,” Jean said. “In fact, he seems to be enjoying himself.”

Marsha shook her head in amazement. “Must be you. He was in an awful mood with me.”

Jean took it as a compliment. “He’s had a WAIS-R and he’s in the middle of an MMPI. What other tests do you want? A Rorschach and a Thematic Apperception Test or what?”

Marsha chewed on her thumbnail for a moment, thinking. “Why don’t we do that TAT and let the Rorschach go for now. We can always do it later.”

“I’ll be happy to do both,” Jean said.

“Let’s just do the TAT,” Marsha said as she picked up the next chart. “VJ’s in a good mood but why push it? Besides, it might be interesting to cross check the TAT and the Rorschach if they are taken on different days.” She called the patient whose chart she was holding and disappeared for another session.

After Jean finished as much paperwork as she could, she returned to the testing room. VJ was absorbed in the personality test.

“Any problems?” Jean asked.

“Some of these questions are too much,” VJ said with a laugh. “A couple of them have no appropriate answers.”

“The idea is to select the best one possible,” Jean said.

“I know,” VJ said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

At noon, they broke for lunch and walked to the hospital. They ate in the coffee shop. Marsha and Jean had tuna salad sandwiches while VJ had a hamburger and a shake. Marsha noted with contentment that VJ’s attitude had indeed changed. She began to think she had worried for nothing; the tests he was taking would probably result in a healthy psychological portrait. She was dying to ask Jean about the results so far, but she knew she couldn’t in front of VJ. Within thirty minutes they were all back at their respective tasks.

An hour later, Jean put the phone back on service and returned to the testing room. Just as she closed the door behind her, VJ spoke up: “There,” he said, clicking the last question. “All done.”

“Very good,” Jean said, impressed. VJ had gone through the five hundred and fifty questions in half the usual time. “Would you like to rest before the next test?” she asked.

“Let’s get it over with,” VJ said.

For ninety minutes, Jean showed the TAT cards to VJ. Each contained a black and white picture of people in circumstances that elicited responses having psychological overtones. VJ was asked to describe what he thought was going on in each picture and how the people felt. The idea was for VJ to project his fantasies, feelings, patterns of relationships, needs, and conflicts.

With some patients the TAT was no easy test to administer. But with VJ, Jean found herself enjoying the process. The boy had no trouble coming up with interesting explanations and his responses were both logical and normal. By the end of the test Jean felt that VJ was emotionally stable, well adjusted, and mature for his age.

When Marsha was finished with her last patient, Jean went into the office and gave her the computer print-outs. The MMPI would be sent off to be evaluated by a program with a larger data base, but their PC gave them an initial report.

Marsha glanced through the papers, as Jean gave her own positive clinical impression. “I think he is a model child. I truly can’t see how you can be concerned about him.”

“That’s reassuring,” Marsha said, studying the IQ test results. The overall score was 128. That was only a two-point variation from the last time that Marsha had had VJ tested several years previously. So VJ’s IQ had not changed, and it was a good, solid, healthy score, certainly well above average. But there was one discrepancy that bothered Marsha: a fifteen-point difference between the verbal and the performance IQ, with the verbal lower than the performance, which suggested a cognitive problem relating to language disabilities. Given VJ’s facility in French, it didn’t seem to make sense.

“I noticed that,” Jean said when Marsha queried it, “but since the overall score was so good I didn’t give it much significance. Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Marsha said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a result like this before. Oh well, let’s go on to the MMPI.”

Marsha put the personality inventory results in front of her. The first part was called the validity scales. Again something immediately aroused her attention. The F and K scales were mildly elevated and at the upper limit of what would be considered normal. Marsha pointed that out to Jean as well.

“But they are in the normal range,” Jean insisted.

“True,” Marsha said, “but you have to remember that all this is relative. Why would VJ’s validity scales be nearly abnormal?”

“He did the test quickly,” Jean said. “Maybe he got a little careless.”

“VJ is never careless,” Marsha said. “Well, I can’t explain this, but let’s go on.”

The second part of the report was the clinical scales, and Marsha noted that none were in the abnormal range. She was particularly happy to see that scale four and scale eight were well within normal limits. Those two scales referred to psychopathic deviation and schizophrenic behavior respectively. Marsha breathed a sigh of relief because these scales had a high degree of correlation with clinical reality, and she’d been afraid they would be elevated, given VJ’s history.

But then Marsha noted that scale three was “high normal.” That would mean VJ tended toward hysteria, constantly seeking affection and attention. That certainly did not correlate with Marsha’s experience.

“Was it your impression that VJ was cooperating when he took this test?” Marsha asked Jean.

“Absolutely,” Jean said.

“I suppose I should be happy with these results,” Marsha said, as she gathered the papers together, then stood them on end, tapping them against the desk until they were lined up.

“I think so,” Jean said encouragingly.

Marsha stapled the papers together, then tossed them into her briefcase. “Yet both the Wechsler and the MMPI are a little abnormal. Well, maybe unexpected is a better word. I’d have preferred they be unqualifyingly normal. By the way, how did VJ respond to the TAT with the man standing over the child with his arm raised?”

“VJ said he was giving a lecture.”

“The man or the child?” Marsha asked with a laugh.

“Definitely the man.”

“Any hostility involved?” Marsha asked.

“None.”

“Why was the man’s arm raised?”

“Because the man was talking about tennis, and he was showing the boy how to serve,” Jean said.

“Tennis? VJ has never played tennis.”

As Victor drove onto the grounds of Chimera, he noted that none of the previous night’s snow remained. It was still cloudy but the temperature had risen into the high forties.

He parked his car in the usual spot, but instead of heading directly into the administration building, he took the brown paper bag from the front seat of the car and went directly to his lab.

“Got some extra rush work for you,” he said to his head technician, Robert Grimes.

Robert was a painfully thin, intense man, who wore shirts with necks much too large for him, emphasizing his thinness. His eyes had a bulging look of continual surprise.

Victor pulled out the iced vials of VJ’s blood and sample bottles containing pieces of the dead children’s brains. “I want chromosome studies done on these.”

Robert picked up the blood vials, shook them, then examined the brain samples. “You want me to let other things go and do this?”

“That’s right,” Victor said. “I want it done as soon as possible. Plus I want some standard neural stains on the brain slices.”