Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“Yes,” she says in a changed voice.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, you’ve changed. Yes, the cases are real. You’re not seeing things.”

“What do you think?”

“About you or them?”

“Them.”

“I might have an idea. And about you too.”

“I’ll look for you at the hospital around noon,” I tell her. Kev and Debbie are at the door. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

3. SECOND CONSULTATION WITH Mickey LaFaye.

There is a slight unpleasantness about doing a psychiatric consultation in a small general hospital. Here a psychiatrist is ranked somewhere between a clergyman and an undertaker. One is tolerated. One sees the patient only if the patient has nothing else to do.

In your office you are in control. You control where you sit, where the patient sits or lies, who speaks, what is said. You even control the silences. Here it is the patient who controls while you stand about on one foot, then the other; here it is Mickey lying at her ease among the pastel Kleenexes and Whitman Sampiers, chin at rest in her full, sumptuous throat, her tawny eyes watching me incuriously while I stand just clear of her bed as wary as a preacher.

It is hardly an ideal setting for an interview, but I know what I want and do not intend to waste time.

It is a double room in the medical wing. Mickey LaFaye is in the bed next to the window. I stand at her bed but not touching it, facing the window. Behind me, not six feet away, is the curtained-off bed of the second patient. Lucy is attending the patient. I recognized her legs under the curtain, the same strong calves and laced-up oxfords I remember from when she was interning in pathology and I used to see her standing on tiptoe, calves bunched, to get at the cadaver.

Lucy is doing some procedure, no doubt clearing an impaction. The old woman is making querulous sounds of protest. She is not cooperating. Lucy’s murmur is soothing, but there is in it a note of rising impatience.

Directly opposite me, not thirty feet away, through the window, across a completely enclosed quadrangle of grass, beyond another window, stands Bob Comeaux in the glass box of the nurses’ station. I caught his eye. He is dressed in his riding clothes, turtleneck sweater, suede jacket. His office is not here at the hospital or close by but at the federal complex on the river. Dressed as he is, he is probably dropping by after his morning ride and before going to work. It is clear that he is doing just that, dropping by an ordinary small general hospital in his riding clothes, as much as to say that his real work as neurologist is elsewhere.

Standing next to him is Sue Brown, the floor nurse, a pleasant woman and an excellent nurse, who was glad to see me and made me welcome. She cheerfully entered the test I ordered in Mickey’s chart, which is no doubt the chart Bob Comeaux is holding.

“How do you feel, Mickey?”

“Oh, fine! Fine!” Her legs move under the covers. Again she somehow gives the effect of straddling.

“What are your plans when you leave here?”

“Vermont!” she says in the same mild exclamatory voice.

“You’re going back to your grandmother’s farm?”

“Yes!”

“Why are you going?”

“Cool! Too hot here! Vandals and police and all!”

“Where are the vandals?”

“Out at the ranch!”

“There has been some trouble out there?”

“Oh yes! Terrible!”

“I see. Who’s going to look after the ranch while you’re gone?”

“Dr. Comeaux!”

“Does going back to Vermont remind you of your dream?”

“Dream?” It is not so much a question as the puzzled repetition of the word.

“You remember. The dream you used to have about the cellar, the smell of winter apples, the expectation of something important about to happen which would tell you the secret of your life.”

“Apples? Oh yes. In the hamper next to the chimney.”

“That’s right. What are you going to do after you get to Vermont?” I am curious to know how she will answer a question which requires making a plan and telling of the plan in sentences.

“So much better there! Not to worry. Dr. Comeaux—”

“Dr. Comeaux says you’ll feel much better there?” Almost despite myself, I find myself repeating and filling out her utterances as one would with a child.

She nods emphatically. “Right. Power of attorney!”

“I see. Now, Mickey, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I’m going to do two quick little tests right now. All you have to do is follow along with me. Then I’m going to take you down to the PETscan room and they’re going to do another test. All you have to do is sit in a chair and they’ll put a funny cap on your head and let you listen to music and words — like a radio headset, okay?”

She nods eagerly. Now you’re talking! This is what she’s good at. Taking directions, cooperating — not like that bad old woman in the next bed! — playing the game.

“I’m going to crank you up straight. Now.”

I sit on the bed, leaning almost athwart her, and, taking her face in both hands, turn her directly toward me. I cover her left eye.

What do you see?”

“You.”

“Am I moving?”

“No.”

“Now.” With a forefinger I depress the fundus, the eyeball, of the open eye through the eyelid. “Am I moving now?”

“Yes.”

I take my hand away. “Now, with both eyes open, look back and forth as fast as you can.”

She does it, then looks at me hopefully, to see if she has done well.

“That’s fine. What happened?”

“What—”

“Did I move?”

“Yes! You — everything — the room—”

“That’s fine, Mickey.”

She looks pleased.

It is not fine. What is amazing is that with a normal eye and a normal brain, no matter how violent the movement of the eyes, the room — and I — will be perceived by you as what they are, stationary.

“Okay, Mickey. Now let’s do this. I’m going to roll the bed table right up here, give you pencil and paper, okay? Now, what I want you to do is make X’s and O’s like this.” I show her and she makes some X’s and O’s and looks up for approval.

“That’s fine, Mickey. Now here’s what I want you to do. Make an X and an O, then two X’s and O’s, then three X’s and three O’s and so on. Do you understand?”

She nods eagerly and starts making X’s and O’s. She makes an X and an O, two X’s and an O, then a series of X’s with an occasional O.

“That’s fine, Mickey. Now I want you to come along with me and we’ll—”

Before I get any further, she has obediently folded back the covers and swung her legs out without, I notice, taking the universal woman’s precaution of minding her gown, which rides up her not thin thighs.

“Just a moment, Mickey. I’ll get you a wheelchair.”

I become aware of a silence behind me, a silence, I realize, which has gone on for some time.

I turn. Lucy Lipscomb has come out of her curtained-off bed-room. I thought at first it was to give me a hand.

“Hello, Tom.” She smiles, then hesitates, mouth open, as if she wanted to tell me something.

“Lucy.”

“Could I have a word with you?” She is not smiling. “Wait a minute.” She peels off her gloves and goes into the bathroom.

I haven’t seen her for a year or so. She’s better-looking. Perhaps it’s the gleaming white coat, so starched that it rustles with every movement, against her dark skin. Perhaps she’s lost weight. Perhaps it’s the way her haircut doesn’t look butch anymore. She used to cut it herself, I thought. It was as rough-cut as a farmer’s — she is a farmer as well as a doctor. But instead of looking like a Buster Brown, it looks French, straight dark bangs come down her forehead at angles. No butch she. There is a reflex hammer and an ophthalmoscope in her breast pocket.