Connie Willis: Lincoln’s Dreams

“Where is she?” he said, and swept past me into the solarium.

Annie had backed into the table holding the African violets and was standing there, her hands at her sides. She had knocked one of the violets over, and muddy water dripped off the edge of the table onto the floor.

“Thank God you’re all right!” he said, and took hold of her wrist. “I’ve called the hospital, and they’ll have a room ready when we get there. Are you feeling any pain?”

“Yes,” she said, and looked across the room at me. Broun stood up.

“Where? In your arm?”

“No,” she said, still looking at me. “Not in my arm.”

“Well, where then? Back, jaw, where? This is important!” he said angrily, but he didn’t wait for her answer. He turned to look at Broun, and as he did he pulled Annie with him, her arm coming up smartly, like a corpse’s.

“Call an ambulance,” he said.

“No,” Annie said, to Broun, not to me. “Please.”

I had thought I could do it. She had already lived through that other surrender. I had not thought this one would be so bad. But that surrender had been different. Lincoln had told Grant to “let ’em up easy,” and Grant had. He hadn’t taken Lee prisoner at Appomattox. He hadn’t even demanded Lee’s sword. He had arranged for rations to be distributed to the men and for the officers to keep their horses, and then he had let Lee go.

I looked at Broun standing there in his black overcoat, his arms hanging at his sides as if he were overcome with fatigue or sorrow, and then back at Richard. I could have surrendered to Lincoln, I thought. I could have surrendered to Grant. But not to Longstreet. Not to Longstreet.

“Let go of her,” I said. Richard turned and looked at me. “There’s no need for an ambulance. We’ve already been to see a doctor. In Fredericksburg. Dr. Barton.”

“What did he say? Why didn’t he have her admitted to a hospital?”

“He did. He took her in and did an EKG on her and ran blood tests. He asked her if she’d been taking any drugs, and she told him Elavil.” I waited to see what effect that had on him.

“You didn’t say anything about this on the phone.”

“Doctor Barton wanted to know why somebody had prescribed Elavil for a heart condition.”

Annie and Broun stood perfectly still, watching him. The room was so quiet I could hear the water from the African violet dripping onto the floor.

“A mild sedative was indicated for the patient’s insomnia,” he said in his Good Shrink voice. “The record from Annie’s family doctor indicated nothing more than a functional heart murmur, and her EKG confirmed that. There were no symptoms of heart disease, and Elavil is only contraindicated in cases of maximum and long-term dosage. I prescribed a mild dose, monitored the patient carefully, and removed her from the drug immediately when it failed to have any effect on her symptoms.”

“Her symptoms,” I said. “You mean the dreams?”

“Yes,” he said. He still didn’t let go of Annie’s wrist.

“I asked Dr. Barton about the dreams,” I said. “He said he didn’t know what was causing them until he saw her blood tests this morning. They showed traces of Thorazine. He said the Thorazine was probably causing the dreams. He asked Annie who’d prescribed Thorazine for her, and she said nobody. She said she didn’t know what he was talking about, that she’d never taken any Thorazine.”

“Thorazine was indicated,” he said. “It’s routinely prescribed in cases of sleep disorders.”

“Dr. Barton said that Thorazine is prescribed for institutionalized mental patients, not for people with bad dreams.”

“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You still believe she’s having Robert E. Lee’s dreams.”

“Dr. Barton said it was a crime for a doctor to give a patient a drug without this knowledge. He said a doctor could lose his license for that. Is that true, Richard? Could you lose your license?”

“You bastard,” my old roommate said, and let go of Annie’s wrist. “I was only trying to help you, Annie. I had a duty as a doctor.”

“Don’t you talk to me about duty,” Annie said, cradling her arm like a baby against her, “not when you wouldn’t let me do mine.”

Broun made a sound. His face under the beard was deathly pale. He looked sick, like a writer who had just heard the words he wrote spoken in earnest.

“Call the ambulance,” Richard said to Broun.

“No,” Broun said. “She’s having Robert E. Lee’s dreams.”

“You’ve convinced him, too, haven’t you?” he said to me. “You’re all crazy, you know that?”

“Like Lincoln?” Broun said.

“Call an ambulance,” Richard said, and Broun turned and stumbled up the stairs.

“I told Annie I was going to prescribe Thorazine for her and informed her of its side effects,” the Good Shrink said. “She took the first dose herself, Thorazine will sometimes temporarily impair the patient’s short-term memory.”

“After the Civil War, Longstreet wrote long, involved explanations of how he hadn’t let Lee down at Pickett’s Charge,” I said, “how it was all Lee’s fault. But it didn’t work. There were too many eyewitnesses.”

“Is this supposed to be something Robert E. Lee dreamed?”

“No,” I said. “It’s supposed to be a warning. I have two Thorazine capsules and all those messages you left on the answering machine on tape. You leave her alone or I’ll send them to your boss, Dr. Stone, at the Sleep Institute. I’ll tell him you gave a patient Thorazine without her knowledge. I’ll tell him you gave Elavil to a patient with a heart condition.”

Broun came down the stairs, carrying the answering machine. He had wrenched it out of the wall. The shredded ends of the wire dragged on the floor beside him.

“If you still want to call an ambulance, you’ll have to use the phone next door, Richard,” I said, “only I doubt if our neighbor will let you in. Not after she had you arrested once.”

“You bastard,” he said again. “I’m not going to let you get away with this. I called you, did you know that? To tell you I had a patient who was having terrible dreams and I didn’t know what to do. I called you and you weren’t home.”

“Did you call me for help or were you trying to establish an alibi?” I said, but he had already slammed the door shut behind him.

I pulled my coat on. “He may try to follow us,” I said. “He’s parked at least a block away. If we go right now, we can lose him.” I grabbed up Annie’s gloves and thrust them at her.

“Do you have any money?” I said to Broun. He fumbled in his pockets and came up with a twenty and some change. “Is that all?” I said, shouting at him as if I were trying to wake him up.

He reached into the inside pocket of the jacket that was still hanging over the bannister with his right hand, still holding the answering machine in the other, and pulled out a wad of bills. He handed it to me and then sat down heavily on the loveseat.

“Thank you,” I said. I snatched up Annie’s suitcase and hustled her out the door. Broun didn’t answer me. I could see him through the solarium window when I started the car, still sitting there cradling the answering machine against him, like a man asleep.

The rain was trying to turn into snow. I took side streets as far as Ohio Drive and then turned onto the Memorial Parkway. After we’d crossed the bridge, I looked behind me and then went on past the Washington Memorial Parkway exit.

“I’m not going to take you to the airport,” I said. “Richard may not be that far behind us,” I went on hastily so she wouldn’t think this was another trap and that I was taking her to a hospital. “I’m going to take you to the Arlington Metro stop. You can take the Metro to the airport, if you want, or to the train station or the bus, and Richard won’t have any idea where you’ve gone.” And neither will I, I thought.