Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) (8 page)

“Hey,” said Renn. “I got to get out of here to my bowling game. Do you think that next time I come around, you could ask it some things for me?”

“I’d be happy to,” I said.

I was on needles and pins (or noodles and prunes, as my mother used to say) waiting for my official meeting with the doctors about my scans. Not only had I achieved a mystical transformation, but it was also certifiable, because it had happened right there under the scanner. The doctors were late for our meeting, probably because they were still upstairs watching reruns of my enlightenment on the monitors, unable to tear themselves away from the big event. Maybe my scans could inspire them to start a whole new study here at Boston General on brain imaging and mystical states. Maybe my scans would appear in
Science
or
Nature,
right next to the scans of a Zen monk from Tibet experiencing nirvana.

It was all too exciting. I felt guilty being blessed with such good fortune while Nancy Conlan languished in the next bed. This morning she’d been grimacing, gagging, and lurching spastically, tugging at her restraints, and rattling the bedrails. When I had asked Claudia about the restraints in the ICU, she said nurses were required to use them to keep the patients from yanking out their tubes. Case in point: Nancy had pulled out her feeding tube twice.

Once that morning, while I was waiting for the doctors, Nancy laughed out loud, or at least it sounded like a laugh, which was eerie in the extreme. I got out of bed and went to have a look. She paralyzed me with a glance, because she seemed to be staring right through my eyes and out the back of my head. When she breathed, she made a soft rasping sound and the dark hole of her mouth got bigger and smaller. She grimaced, and her mouth started that gumming motion again, like she was chewing on a big nothing bone, using her lips instead of her teeth. Then her eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, and she was gone again.

It occurred to me that her brain might have a few flickering flames of consciousness left—just enough to realize that it was the feeding tube keeping her alive, and maybe she knew in her own way that it had to go. But the hospital administrators weren’t about to let that happen, so they had tied her down in bed.

I asked Tiffany—or was it Jennifer? (I mixed them up daily)—to give Nancy something to calm her down before her family came to visit that evening. I died inside at the thought of her husband or her parents finding Nancy grimacing or laughing, or lunging spastically against her restraints.

I heard an angry voice, one I instantly recognized from my first waking moments in the intensive cere unit.

“Good morning, madam,” said Dr. Stegman. “And how are we feeling?”

For this excursion, the alpha male sturgeon had brought a reduced entourage consisting only of his sycophantic manservant, Metzger, and three other doctors.

Stegman took a seat in Bobby’s chair, and the others spread out along the low-lying heating and air-conditioning register, which doubled as a shelf for extra bedding and supplies. Stegman used his opposable thumbs to scroll his way through a handheld computer while Metzger introduced the two mature females, Dr. Cantrell and Dr. Mayfield, as neurologists, and another subdominant male, Dr. Gilmore, as a radiologist specializing in magnetic resonance imaging. I searched Dr. Gilmore’s face for any lingering traces of astonishment left over from his study of my remarkable scan patterns; none in evidence. Instead, he gave me a perfunctory smile and began reviewing his notes and “presenting” to Stegman.

As soon as introductions were completed, Stegman put away his toy computer, shook his blown-dry mane at me, and said, “Madam, it’s high time for us to come clean with each other.”

I looked at the other doctors, but they looked down at their notes.

Stegman continued, “We now have indications from the electroencephalograms and the magnetic resonance imaging that strongly suggest you have a seizure disorder.”

My hands trembled in my lap. I didn’t want the beast to see my fear, so I clutched at my channeling crystal (I’d worn it because I knew Mussolini would be here).

“You have proof of seizures? I don’t have seizures,” I said uncertainly. “I don’t… remember anything like that.”

“I assure you that you have complex partial seizures. Probably often. And these seizures are most likely being caused either by the fresh hemorrhage in your temporal lobe or by the older-looking, more puzzling irregularity in your frontal lobe.”

“There’s been a mistake.” My voice shook, even as I fought to control it. “I think I can explain. I deliberately worked myself into an intense spiritual experience while I was inside the scanning device. I meditated before and during the scan, because I was curious about what parts of my brain would be active during my meditation. I inadvertently had an episode of true enlightenment, ladies and gentlemen, and I fear that you mistook the energy from my mystical experience for the electrical discharges from a common seizure.”

Stegman leaned forward and peered at me as if he were an eminent entomologist and I a rare species of bug mounted and wriggling on a pin. He uttered the most fearsome and deadly assessment in the physician’s repertory, a declaration that should excite terror in the hearts of all patients who hear it used to describe their diseases or disorders: “Interesting.” On a medical doctor’s lips, the adjective portends months if not years of testing, pain, suffering, and debilitation, while the medical industrial complex brings its technological and diagnostic might to bear on the fascinating intricacies of an ill-defined infirmity. No expense will be spared to understand and explain the
interesting
disorder, until its mystery is defined…even if, as is often the case, it’s done on autopsy after the patient has died. “Very interesting” can be even worse. The ancient Chinese curse—
May you live in interesting times
—could be modified for moderns to read:
May you develop interesting diseases.

“Madam, I gather Dr. Metzger was ever so gentle with you the other day in suggesting to you that you may have a seizure disorder. My psychiatric colleagues tend to be bighearted camp counselors worried about damaging the patient’s fragile self-esteem, so they do a kind of ignoramus waltz around the issue of seizures. He asked you about your symptoms, and you were not forthcoming.”

“I told him what I thought he needed to know,” I said. “And I didn’t tell him what was none of his business.”

“We’ve all had decades of experience dealing with this kind ofthing,” said Stegman. “You have what is called a temporal lobe personality.” Nods all around again. “And since you are so coy with us and insist on keeping your symptoms to yourself, I shall tell you a little bit about what is going on with you.”

He appeared to be making notes about something else, perhaps another patient, while he rattled off the tiresome details of my condition.

“Lately, you’ve had extreme sensations, hallucinations, which may take the form of strange odors, sights, sounds, voices. Some patients say that their ‘feelings are on fire,’ meaning that which used to be simply pleasant or unpleasant now has assumed gigantic proportions. Now instead of an agreeable sensation, you experience glory itself; instead of the merely unpleasant, you are faced with terrifying, shocking visions or a hopeless sense of impending doom. You go to heaven regularly, or it’s the end of the world. You have sensed God or the Devil’s presence in your life as never before. Perhaps you feel you have grasped the true meaning of the cosmos, the ever elusive meaning of life. Or you’ve seen the end of the world, heard angels or devils speaking to you. It’s all quite common for people with your condition.”

Then he tapped my notebook, which was open on my tray table, with only two blank pages left in the spiral hinder.

“Hypergraphia,” he said. “A common symptom of the temporal lobe personality. Lots of writing because, of course, God or the Devil is talking and you’ve got to get it all down. What’s a visionary to do with glimpses into the infinite but make a careful record, setting down all of your special insights in excruciating detail for those who do not have such gifts?”

He reached for the notebook. “Do you mind?”

I grabbed the notebook and clasped it to my bosom, then put my channeling crystal on top of it.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I can assure you we’ve all had our fill of prolix narratives about divine raptures and heavenly ecstasy before. Haven’t we?”

The other doctors didn’t nod, because they didn’t approve of Stegman’s bedside manner, but it was clear that they concurred with his general theories. I was shaking under what amounted to a diagnostic assault.

“I’m a surgeon, madam, not a psychiatrist or a neurologist. I will be the Dutch uncle who gives you the hard facts. Tough love. If you allow these electrical storms to continue raging through your temporal lobe, you will irreparably damage your brain.

“Surgery is a last resort. Our first line of defense is drug therapy, because if we can control the seizure activity with medication, then I won’t have to open your nut and go prospecting in there for whatever is causing you to have seizures.”

The other doctors solemnly nodded and apparently agreed with everything the medical gorilla had to say. So like it or not, and whether Stegman was an arrogant brute or a genius or both, I had to face the fact that at least five doctors at one of the finest medical establishments in the country felt I had a seizure disorder that needed to be treated. It was as if I had suddenly been told that I had a multiple personality disorder and would be meeting the other people inside me this afternoon.

No matter what was wrong with me, I could no longer bear the arrogant brute who seemed to know everything about my pathology and still managed not to know my first or last name, calling me
madam
instead with maddening regularity.

“Did I mention to you that the Dalai Lama is keenly interested in brain imaging?” I asked.

Dr. Stegman’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. At least he stopped writing in his notes. He looked at me even harder and raised an eyebrow.

“Very interesting,” he said. “Madam, we are medical scientists. We conduct our medical practice according to reliable data from carefully designed studies.”

“Well,” I explained, “there are scientific studies showing that people have religious experiences when their temporal lobes are stimulated by magnetic fields. There was a
Newsweek
special issue on it last year called ‘Religion and the Brain.’ Would you like me to find you a copy?”

“People may or may not have religious experiences,” he said. “I don’t really care if they do. I am aware of studies showing that some twenty million Americans curtail travel and other major undertakings on Friday the thirteenth. Does that mean that Friday the thirteenth must therefore ipso facto be unlucky?”

“I believe that your scanning machine captured a powerful religious experience, Dr. Stegman. My faith is very strong.”

“You
believe,”
he chuckled. “Your faith is very strong. Remind me to give you a tour of our psychiatric ward, madam. I can introduce you to a host of Mad Hatters and March Hares with a wide variety of passionate faiths and beliefs, all of which proves absolutely nothing.”

Dr. Nasty didn’t wait for a reply. Instead he got up out of his chair, pulled out a digital microrecorder, and began walking away with Metzger.

Stegman dictated as he walked. “Head trauma. Room 959, bed 2.”

I saw Dr. Metzger scramble to hold up my chart and point at my name, and Stegman read it. “Mrs. Eleanor Druse. Patient is referred to Dr. Metzger for antiseizure drug therapy and geriatric psychiatric evaluation to rule out senile dementia, with an eye toward perhaps trying her on a course of antipsychotic medications. Patient has had nonclinical epileptic temporal lobe seizures documented by EEG. Her symptoms include depersonalization, flight of ideas, poor reality testing, visual and auditory hallucinations, agitation, hypergraphia, poor hygiene, and religious delusions consistent with temporal lobe personality. Thank you for referring this very interesting patient to our service.”

Bobby went back to Lewiston for three days to work at the Kingdom. Then he surprised me by taking a vacation day and driving back down to see me. Such a sweet boy to look after his mum. He brought me a jar of my favorite Hawaiian white honey from the organic food store down the street. Such a thoughtful gift. I really did try to focus on the white honey, instead of dwelling on how I’d asked him to find out as much as he could about the fire that burned the old Kingdom Hospital to the ground when I was still a little girl. I’d told him that I needed to know about the fire so I could decipher Madeline Kruger’s cryptic note to me the night she’d died.
The little girl who saved us is still lost. The fire did not kill her.

Not only had I asked Bobby for information, I had followed up with explicit suggestions about how and where he might find out about the fire and any little girls that almost died in it. I had reminded him that I was still an emeritus professor at Faust College, and that the librarian, Judy Harris, would be happy to dig up the history of the old hospital and the fire. Or what about the Lewiston
Sun Journal
? How far back do their archives go? Somebody’s got to have access to back issues of the old Lewiston
Daily Sun.

Did Bobby do any of those things? Did he bring me a shred of paper representing even a token attempt at research? No. He devoted all of five minutes to investigating the fire. On his coffee break, he wandered down to the medical library and asked Mr. Benjamin Bates, the librarian, if he knew anything about the fire that burned the old hospital to the ground some time in the 1930s. The frustrations of being a parent never end! I charged the boy with finding out
everything he could
about the fire. Instead, he returned to Boston and made the following report:

“Mum, the old Kingdom Hospital burned down on November second, 1939. No little girls died in the fire. Only two people died. Some old doctor and a boy.”