Walker Percy - The Second Coming

“Boy, you some lucky,” said Vance. “You want to know what I thought you had until Dr. Ellis here talked me out of it. You know I went to Chapel Hill and we know all about Duke assholes but this is one more smart asshole.”

Dr. Ellis nodded and pressed his lips together in a faint smile. Will Barrett wished Vance would not try to be funny. Dr. Ellis was not the sort of person to be called an asshole. Vance went down the bank of X-rays, snapping his fingernail against the heavy celluloid. “I thought you had a prostatic growth here—” pow “—with metastases here—” pow “—here in the brain—” pow “I’d have given you three months. But you’re some lucky. What you got I barely heard of and Dr. Ellis has written a paper about. He even invented a test for it. Frankly I think he invented the disease. And that ain’t all. They can’t cure it but they got a drug for it and we can control it. Ain’t that right, Doctor?”

Dr. Ellis went on with his nodding and faint smile. The two doctors fell back, folded their arms, and examined the X-rays as if they were a wall of Rembrandts. He saw that they were using the X-rays as stage props, something to look at so they could talk to him.

“I’m afraid Dr. Battle is doing himself an injustice,” said Dr. Ellis dryly, his eyes drifting along the X-rays. He saw that Dr. Ellis had a way of feigning inattention which in fact allowed him to pay strict attention. “He suggested all along that you had a petit-mal epilepsy, which in fact you do, a rare form, so rare it bears the name of its discoverer. It’s called Hausmann’s Syndrome. It is in fact a petit-mal temporal-lobe epilepsy which is characterized by typical symptoms. It is not too well controlled by Dilantin but there’s a new drug which works very well. That is to say, it clears up the symptoms. What we have to do is rule out a lesion in the temporal lobe. Dr. Battle favors that. I don’t. The odd thing about the treatment is—”

“What are the symptoms?” asked Will Barrett.

Dr. Ellis shrugged. “As I recalled, Dr. Hausmann listed such items as depression, fugues, certain delusions, sexual dysfunction alternating between impotence and satyriasis, hypertension, and what he called wahnsinnige Sehnsucht —I rather like that. It means inappropriate longing.”

It ought to be called Housmann not Hausmann, he thought, the disorder suffered by the poet who mourned dead Shropshire lads and rose-lipt maids and his own lost youth.

“As I was saying, the odd thing is that the drug is the simplest of all substances, so simple that no one would think of it — in fact, it was discovered by accident. It is nothing other than the hydrogen ion, a single nucleus of one proton, not even an electron. Isn’t that intriguing? that the most complex symptoms, wahnsinnige Sehnsucht, inappropriate longings, depression and such, can be cured by a single proton? Apparently it all comes down to pH. I’ve had a series of six cases, and in each one you have petit-mal seizures plus an unstable pH which fluctuates between a mild alkalosis and acidosis. It is apparently a high sensitivity to pH changes which causes the symptoms. For instance, this morning your pH ran seven point seven. The treatment is simple but pesky. It means checking your pH every couple of hours and calibrating the medication accordingly. Anyone can pass out from alkalosis — I could put Vance out just by having him hyperventilate — but you’re much more sensitive and therefore your pH must be monitored all the time. All my patients are doing well but have to be maintained under the most carefully controlled conditions.”

“What does that mean?” asked Will Barrett, taking note of the not unpleasant sensation of being caught up, diagnosed, recognized, planned for, of the prospect of one’s life being ordered henceforward, like joining the army.

“I’ve got this one case of Hausmann’s in the math department here at Duke. Instead of showing up for class he’d be found sitting in the stadium alone. Once he went to Kitty Hawk and lived in the dunes and nearly starved.”

The dunes? Yes.

“Now, under treatment, he meets his classes and publishes voluminously. Except for living in our convalescent wing, he has a normal life.”

“Here? He lives here in the hospital?”

“We have to monitor his blood pH every hour. One spoon of vinegar salad dressing and he’s in the depths. One Alka-Seltzer and he’s off for the dunes with two coeds. Heh heh. We don’t know whether it’s your internal governor on the blink or whether your limbic system is abnormally sensitive. Or whether you have a temporal-lobe lesion, though”—he snapped an X-ray—“I see no sign of it. Remarkable, don’t you think, that a few protons, plus or minus, can cause such complicated moods? Lithium, the simplest metal, controls depression. Hydrogen, the simplest atom, controls wahnsinnige Sehnsucht .”

“How about that?” said Vance.

The two doctors could have been enlisting him as a colleague. Will Barrett saw that it was his, Dr. Ellis’s, way of telling him good news, and a very good way it was, giving him a new lease on life as offhandedly as making an appointment. What a good fellow Dr. Ellis was!

Leslie came in, all smiles and melts, Jack Curl dancing behind her.

“Let’s head for the hills, Poppy.”

He looked at Dr. Ellis.

“Vance can monitor your pH as well as I. If he finds any sign of a lesion he can bring you back.”

“And here’s the bottom line,” said Jack Curl, coming too close. “Bertie’s got you signed up for the Seniors tournament next month and these two docs say you can make it. If—”

“If?”

“If you put up at my place so Vance can check your blood. You can start out on St. Mark’s putting green.”

He looked at Vance.

“You heard the man. Now let’s get out of here, old buddy. I got sick people to tend to. I can only add one item to Dr. Ellis’s diagnosis — incidentally, I concur with him now. I’ll make you a press bet that the hydrogen ion will correct your slice — that may be my contribution to medical literature: the correlation of blood pH and the golf slice. Who knows?” He gave him a wink. “The hydrogen ion may even solve the Jewish question. As a matter of fact, why don’t we try it for size — you’re on hydrogen now, your blood pH is exactly seven point four, normal. Is Groucho Marx dead or alive?”

“Dead.”

“Right. Now what happened to the Jews in North Carolina?”

“The Jews?” he said, frowning.

“Yes, the Jews.”

“Why, nothing. They’re going about their business as usual, I suppose.”

“Right. And what about that Jewish girl in high school you were raving about last night?”

“What Jewish girl?”

“What about the Jewish exodus?”

“What exodus?”

“What about your business in Georgia?”

“What business?”

“You were talking about some unfinished business in a Georgia swamp.”

“What swamp?”

“Let’s head for the hills, son.”

“From whence cometh our help,” said Leslie.

“Okay,” he said agreeably, blinking. Yes, he felt exactly as he felt when he was drafted in the army, a dazed content and a mild curiosity. His life was out of his hands.

THANKSGIVING FOUND HIM COMFORTABLY installed in St. Mark’s Convalescent Home taking pills and shots and having blood drawn every hour. Jack had put him in the penthouse suite overlooking the gorge. Leslie moved in his new clothes, cardigans, pipes, stereo, Bible, everything but the Greener and Luger. She had even retrieved the Mercedes from the maple tree, had it repaired and parked outside. With a significant look she handed the keys to him. Perhaps it was an act of faith in him.