Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

Other night workers dropped by to talk. Viv handled incoming calls easily, as if talking to friends: a woman wanting to terminate with her therapist because he kept a live snake and a live owl in his office, a man wondering if it was possible to strangle yourself with your own two hands, and others. If there was no insurance, the caller was turfed to Candlewood State, down below the swamp.

A tap on the bulletproof glass announced the arrival of a well-worn, shabbily dressed older man who, from his battered nose spotted with red spider telangiectasia, I knew was a chronic alcoholic. My guard went up. I'd been abused by enough drunks and addicts in my internship to last a lifetime.

Viv buzzed him in. George had been Malik's patient two years before on Heidelberg East, Alcohol and Drug. Viv and Malik greeted him warmly. We all talked for a while. In two days with Malik I'd yet to see him leave for home. Half joking, I said, "What are you, Malik, a workaholic or something? Go home."

Silence. George and Malik and Viv exchanged glances.

"Not bad!" Malik said proudly. "Shall we, George?" They got up to go.

"Wait," I said. "What's 'not bad'?"

"If you need me," he replied, "I'll be at the meetin' down the hall."

"What meetin'?"

"Alcoholics Anonymous. A meetin' George here founded."

"The 'Misery Loves Company' meetin'," George said, smiling.

"George's my sponsor. We'll be just down the hall."

Malik an alcoholic? Dependent on an old drunk like George? I watched them walk off, the bulky, battered classic drunk and the thin trim doctor-also a drunk? Weird.

I began to be called out to attend to various problems around the hospital. The place was so big-350 beds-and so spread out, often I'd walk ten minutes between visits, my black bag pulling heavily at my arm socket by the time I arrived. Like a hired gunslinger riding into town, I'd walk in, feel the curious stares of the patients, be dkected by a lone mental health worker or nurse to the problem, do my thing, write it up, and leave, beeped along to another gathering of humans quarantined by some shared diagnosis, which Malik said didn't exist.

Outside again on the freshly mown grass, looking up at the darkening sky, I had to struggle to see the normalness of this grass, this sky, as if there were a torque on my sight, a spin on the natural world, this grouping together of crazy people pulling the iron in my blood, my brain, into an afterimage that was warped, and weird. Them, not me. Not like me, no way Jose. These people are sick. They are the patients, I am the psychiatrist. Prego.

"FORGET YOU'RE A psychiatrist. Wake up!" Malik. Pulling me away from the erotica of dreamlan±

Berry in a sari, four naked Thai dancers, an elephant, two

happy macaques, and a-

"We got a hot one! This is your big chance, come on!" Two A.M. I'd fallen asleep only eleven minutes before,

trying to write up my fourth patient, a paranoid MIT student

who'd seen a bug in his pizza and was sure it had been planted

by the FBI.

"Big chance for what?" I asked, feeling grubby, my shirt all

dried sweat, my underwear stale, my socks damp on my feet. All I wanted was a big chance for a shower.

'To learn. Zoe Bicker. Rich college kid. Dartmouth. Looks like she stepped out of Town and Country. Drove herself here. Won't say why. A mystery. And you and me and Primo are gonna solve it! Wake up!"

"Primo?"

"Live and off-color, Doc, y'get me?"

This "Primo" was a tall, bulky, uniformed member of Misery Security. My eye caught the glint of his badge, a bas relief of the Misery logo: a pine tree, a half-moon, and a duck rampant. Primo's face seemed to spread too far in all directions, and his thin dark hair was slicked, like Elvis's. Long black lashes shadowed dark eyes, a long large nose fell quickly to a smile where a Stim-U-Dent wedged itself between two scary teeth and one pink gum.

"We got some real doozies here tonight, Doc," Primo said. "Y'get me?"

"Forget you're a shrink," Malik said again. "You're sitting on a train. This Zoe sits down across from you. She's upset. You ask her about it. She tells you her story. An amazing story. You're totally absorbed."

"But I've got to get a psychiatric history."

"History comes from affect. Find the feeling, the red thread running through, you find out everything. What's the first question you ask?"

"What's your insurance coverage?"

"Bad news."

"Bad insurance?"

"Good insurance-she's rich. If we let her in, and she stays till Heiler comes back, he'll never let her out. And what are you gonna be with her?"

"Human," I said sleepily, "gonna be human."

Primo and he rolled their eyes. "Kid," Malik said, "you are on a roll."

Zoe Bicker sat forlornly in a corner, knees primly together, head lowered. She looked young, barely twenty. My "corner of the eye" take? Shame, and-from a man's red bandanna around her neck-love lost. She was slender, and her fine straight nose, hollowed cheeks, and thin lips gave her an aristocratic look. Her light brown hair had recently been styled in

that windswept look of fashion models, but now it looked mussed. She was girlishly dressed in a crisp white summer dress with tiny pink flowers encircling her slender neck. In one hand she clutched a red teddy bear, and I flashed on Heiler's famous diagnosis of BPO with SA, Stuffed Annual. In the other hand was a letter. Her face was ashen. I thought, Sitting on a train, and asked, "What's going on?"

"I don't feel all that bad anymore. I don't want to be dramatic. Maybe I should just leave. I'm sorry to bother you at this hour of the morning."

"Bad?" I asked, really nervous that Malik was watching. "About what?"

Silence. Earlier in the day Malik had mentioned "the Eskimo Effect." Just as Eskimos have names for different kinds of snow, shrinks have names for different kinds of silence. This was a silence of fear. It was hard to wait for her to respond when all I wanted to do was finish up and get some sleep. But then she looked me in the eye, a look of desperation, and said:

"If Mother knew… I want to die. I want to kill myself."

Oh shit, I thought, I don't need this. My mind tugged at its tether, wanting to run. She was staring at me, staring really hard. Things got quiet and still, but the stillness was so intense it seemed loud. Her little-girl eyes searched mine, searched hard. Her pain was palpable, like a thing, floating right there between us, a new element created by this searching, a flash.

Suddenly I felt enormous pressure-from her, from Malik-to do something to help her, and I found myself asking, "What about your mother?"

Whatever had been there between us fizzled. She looked away, stood up and said, "I don't need to be here. I'll go now." She took a step toward the door. "Okay?"

"No, wait-" I said, realizing I'd blown it.

"Why? I'll be better off at home. Why should I stay?"

I glanced at Malik and Primo. Stim-U-Dents hanging from their lips, their faces were pursed in concern, sad for this poor young woman, and suddenly I felt it too. Turning back to Zoe, I said, "God, you look sad."

Her eyes widened in surprise, startled that she had been understood. "It's awful!" she cried out, with self-loathing and rage. "I'm so fucked up!"

It was like a dam had burst. Crumpling down into her chair, she began to sob so hard that the chair shook. I had to fight the urge, in the face of all this watery pain, to head for the high ground. Then she told us of being dumped a few weeks ago by her latest boyfriend, a Dartmouth student, and of how this rejection echoed with a string of others, one-night stands and brief flings fueled by pot and booze and degradation. I followed the red thread of sorrow through her life, a saga of purposeless wealth and empty privilege. With a few questions from me it led back to struggles with her older brother, past a cool, powerful father, a rich and famous Manhattan corporate lawyer, to an obese mother raised in high society.