On a Beam of Light (18 page)

“I trust you. Please tell me what happened, for God’s sake. “

I told him the whole story, beginning with his burning his hand on the stove, the lumbering cow, about his father’s accident and hospitalization, and about Uncle Dave and Aunt Catherine. He listened with the most rapt attention until Uncle Dave came down the stairs. At that point he shouted “No!” and buried his face in his hands. A moment later he lifted his head. I was sure it would be prot, or maybe someone else. But it was still Rob. As they used to say in the movies, he had “passed the crisis. “

He asked me to go on. I told him about Harry. He shook his head as if he didn’t believe it, but then he nodded for me to continue. I brought up the subject of his father’s death and the first few appearances of prot, on up to his junior year of high school and his first date with Sally, her pregnancy, their wedding, and Paul. Again he wagged his head, but this time he merely stared off into space as if testing the logic behind it all. “Paul, you rotten son of a bitch, ” he blurted out, before breaking into a single, loud sob. That was what I had been waiting to hear.

“Paul is the father of your child. “

“I figured as much. “

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact is that you were Rebecca’s father. Paul is you. So is Harry. And so, believe it or not, is prot. “

“That’s pretty hard to swallow. “

“I think you’re ready to try. I’m going to make a copy of all the tapes and I want you to listen to them. Will you do that?”

“Yes. “

“Good. It would be best if you did it here and left prot outside. I don’t have any patient interviews Friday morning. I can ask Betty to bring you up then. Will you come and listen to the first three or four? If that works out you can hear the rest later on. “

“I’ll try. “

“I’m also going to give you some reading material. A few case histories of multiple personality disorder. “

“I’ll read them, I promise. I’ll do anything you say. “

“Good. “

“Only—”

“Only what?”

“Only—what happens next?”

“There are still a couple of loose ends to tie up. We’ll try to do that next session. Then the real work begins. “

“What kind of work?”

“It’s called integration. We need to bring you and prot and Paul and Harry into one single personality. That won’t be easy. It will depend a great deal on how badly you want to get well. “

I’ll do my best, Dr. Brewer. But… “

“Yes?”

“What will happen to them? Will they just disappear?”

“No. They’ll always be with you. They’ll always be a part of you. “

“I don’t think prot’s going to like that. “

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I will. Right now he’s hibernating again. “

“All right. I want you to go back to your room and think about everything we’ve talked about. “

He turned to go. Then he stopped and said, “Dr. Brewer?”

“Yes?”

“I have never been so happy in my life. And I don’t even know why. “

“We’ll try to find out together, Rob. One last thing. Except for my home in Connecticut you have been able to talk to me only in this room. From now on I want you to consider all of Ward Two your safe haven. Will you do that?”

“I’ll sure as hell try. “

Our time had run over. I was late for an executive committee meeting and I couldn’t have cared less.

It wasn’t quite that easy, of course—it was prot who returned to the wards. But I got a call from Betty that evening. She, in turn, had been phoned by one of the night nurses. Robert had made his first appearance in Ward Two. It happened in the lounge while he was watching a chess match. He kibitzed! It definitely wasn’t prot, who took no part in such “trivia. ” He didn’t stay out long—he was just testing the waters—but it was a glorious beginning.

Just before the scheduled trip to the zoo I made it a point to seek out prot, for two reasons. First, I wanted to make certain that it was he, and not Robert, who was going. And second, I wanted to ask him about Russell, who seemed to be languishing in the hospital, though the doctors couldn’t find much wrong with him.

I found him on the lawn surrounded by his usual coterie of patients and cats. As always, there was a certain amount of grumbling when I asked them all to excuse us, though everyone was eagerly awaiting the visit to the zoo and seemed to be in good spirits. He winked at them, promising he would rejoin them in a few minutes. “What’s wrong with Russell?” I asked him when we were alone.

“Nothing. “

“Nothing? He won’t eat. He won’t even get out of bed. “

“That often happens when a being is preparing to die. “

“Die? You just said nothing is wrong with him. “

“That’s right. Every being dies. Perfectly normal procedure. “

“You mean he wants to die?”

“He’s ready to leave EARTH. He wants to go home. “

“Uh—you mean heaven?”

“Yep. “

I spotted Jackie somersaulting on the lawn. She, too, was happily anticipating an adventure. “But you don’t believe in heaven, do you, prot?”

“No, but he does. And with human beings, believing is the same as truth, isn’t it?”

“Can you help him?”

“Help him die?”

“No, dammit, help him live!”

“If he wants to die, that’s his right, don’t you think? Besides, he’ll be back.”

I thought for a moment he was talking about the second coming. Then I remembered his theory about the collapse of the universe and the reversal of time. I threw up my hands and walked off. How do you reason with a crazy person?

As I was trudging back into the building I met Giselle and some of the nurses and security guards coming out. They all grinned and waved, delighted, like the patients, to be having a rare outing, away from all this. I wouldn’t have minded the trip myself, despite the heat and humidity, but I had to attend some meetings for Villers, whose wife was having surgery in the same hospital where Russell was calmly awaiting the end.

Rudolph and Michael were both discharged that morning, and I was more than elated to sign the release papers and escort them to the gate. Not as happy as they were, though. Particularly Mike, who was to take an EMS orientation class the following week. Rudolph, a totally different person from his former self, shook hands and wished me good luck with the rest of the patients. “But don’t let prot get away, ” he admonished. “He’s the best doctor you have. “

That same evening, after everyone had returned from the zoo, Rob asked Dustin (who was perfectly normal at the chessboard) for a game. Rob lost that battle, and the next several as well, but he appeared, at last, to be winning the war.

I got another report that Villers had spent a rare night at MPI, sitting up until dawn talking with Cassandra. He was unshaven and not wearing a tie, something I myself had never seen. I couldn’t believe he was only looking for racing tips, and I wondered whether his wife’s illness might not be more serious than he let on. I made a mental note to ask him about it as soon as I found time.

The Bronx Zoo is one of the premier animal-holding facilities in the United States. Occupying more than 250 acres in the heart of a major metropolitan area, it is the biggest urban sanctuary in the world. Noted for its attempts to preserve many of the planet’s endangered species, it houses such diverse specimens as Pere David’s deer and the European bison, not to mention a variety of rare rodents, snakes, and insects.

The original idea had been to take only those patients from One and Two who were deemed capable of handling the trip. Prot vetoed this, pointing out that permanent harm could come to those who wanted to come but were not permitted. Thus, about thirty-five of our inmates boarded the bus that morning, all those (except for the residents of Ward Four) who had expressed a desire to go. They were divided into groups of six, each accompanied by three staff members—a clinical trainee, a nurse, an orderly or security guard—and a zoo volunteer.

Giselle reported to me the following morning that the outing was a tremendous success for everyone concerned, greatly boosting morale for the staff as well as the patients, and plans were soon in the works for a series of four trips a year: the zoo, the Museum of Natural History, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Prot’s reaction varied from ecstasy at seeing so many different animals, to depression in finding all of them “incarcerated without benefit of trial. ” He proceeded from cage to cage, compound to compound, stopping at each to visit the inhabitants, and wherever he went, the elephants or zebras or swans ran trumpeting and honking to congregate as close to him as possible. He, in turn, seemed to “reassure” them, uttering various peculiar sounds and making subtle gestures. According to Giselle, the animals seemed, for all the world, to be listening to what he had to say, and he to them.

But the loudest supplicants were the chimpanzees and gorillas, who whined and screeched like so many pleading children. Prot, in turn, caused further commotion among the security people and zoo volunteers by leaping over the retaining wall and poking his fingers through the wire screens for a touch, which immediately quieted the apes, if not his hosts.

Whether any information was conveyed by this means is not certain, but we have had reports from zoo officials that many of their charges have changed their behavior patterns significantly following prot’s visit. For example, the bears and tigers have ceased their endless pacing, and the incidence of bizarre conduct and self-mutilation among the primates has decreased substantially. When Giselle asked him what the animals were “telling” him, he replied, “They’re saying: ‘Help! Let us out!’” And how did he respond to that? “I encouraged them all to hang in there— the way things are going, the humans won’t be around much longer. “

Of course none of this proves that anything was communicated between prot and the zoo’s inhabitants. In order to test this possibility, Giselle asked him to write down any information he had obtained from them (e. g., their personal histories, which neither she nor prot would have had in their possession). When she gets his account, she plans to meet with zoo officials to determine whether there is anything of value in all this.

The only negative aspect of the outing was that some of the other patients managed to reach a conclusion similar to that of prot’s, demanding to know why the zoo’s inhabitants had been locked up, what crimes they had committed. Perhaps this concern had less to do with the animals themselves than with their own virtual imprisonment, which, in many cases, they see as unwarranted. Prot, for his part, has often reminded me that it’s the people outside the mental institutions who should be in here, and vice versa.

I still don’t know whether prot can talk to animals, but all that pales in comparison to what happened later that morning. As usual, I missed the whole thing, but those who saw it made sure I was filled in.

I was looking for Lou to see if he was still gaining weight when a contingent of manics, delusionals, and compulsives came running toward me, raving and shouting. I was beginning to feel some trepidation—were they upset that prot was disappearing on occasion and leaving Robert behind?— when one of them yelled that it was time to send Manuel home.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he just flew across the lawn!”

“Where is he?”

“He’s still out there!”

A cadre of patients trailing behind me, I headed down the stairs and out the front door, where I found Manuel sitting on the steps, his head in his hands. He was unashamedly crying.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long… ” he sobbed. “Now I can die. “

“Do you want to die, Manny?”

“No, no, no, it’s not that. It’s just that I was so afraid I would die before I flew, and my life would be for nothing. Now that I can die, it’s all right to live. I’m not afraid anymore. “

That made some sense, I suppose, at least to Manuel. “How did you do it, Manny? How did you get off the ground?”

“I don’t know, ” he confessed, with just a hint of Hispanic accent. “Prot said I needed to imagine exactly what it would be like to fly, down to the last tiny detail. I tried so much. I concentrated so hard…. ” He closed his dark, shining eyes and his head tilted left, then right, as if he were reliving his imagined flight. “All of a sudden I knew how to do it!”

“I’m going to ask Dr. Thorstein to meet with you as soon as he can, all right? I think you’ll be moving down to Ward One before long. “

Sniffling quietly, he said, matter-of-factly, “Everything is okay now. “

By this time some of the staff were also gathered around him. I asked one of the nurses whether any of them had seen Manuel lift off. No one had. Only the patients had witnessed this incredible feat.

Did they all lie? Not likely. Did Manuel fly? Also unlikely, though they claim he soared like an eagle. The important thing is that he believes it. From that day on he never flapped his arms again. His lifelong dream accomplished, he was happy, self-confident, at peace with the world.

I forgot all about Lou.

As soon as he came into my examining room I asked Rob whether he had read all the material I had given him, and listened to the tapes.

“Oh, yes, ” he said. “It’s hard to believe, but I think everything you told me is true. ” I gazed into his eyes for signs of uncertainty or even duplicity, and found none. Nor did he look away.

“I do, too. And I think we have nearly the whole story. There’s just one missing piece of the puzzle. Will you help me fit it in?”

“I’ll try. “

“It has to do with your wife and daughter. “

He sighed loudly. “I wondered when you were going to get to that. “

“It’s time, Rob. And I think you can handle it now. “

“I’m not so sure of that, but I want to try. “

“Good. I think we can do this without hypnosis. I just want you to tell me whatever you can about the day you came home from the slaughterhouse and found a man coming out your front door. “

Rob stared straight ahead and said nothing.

“You chased him back into the house, ” I prodded, “through the kitchen and out the rear door. The sprinkler was still going. Do you remember any of that?”