On a Beam of Light (4 page)

I glanced at Robert and, to my surprise, found him staring at me. I didn’t ask him how he felt. He looked terrible. “I’m sorry, ” he croaked.

I wasn’t clear what he was sorry about—it could have been any number of things. But I said, immediately, “Thank you, Robert. I’m sorry, too. “

His eyes slammed shut and his head dropped down again. Apparently the only reason he had come out was to offer this pathetic apology to me, or perhaps to the world. I gazed at him sadly for a moment before he sat up and stretched.

“Thank you, prot. “

“For what?”

“For—never mind. All right, I’m going to wake you up now. I’m going to count back from five to one. You will awaken slowly, and when I get to—”

“Five-four-three-two-one, ” he sang out. “Hiya, doc. Did Rob say anything to you yet?” Note: When awake, prot could not remember anything that transpired while he was under hypnosis.

“Yes, he did. “

“No kidding? Well, it was only a matter of time. “

“The question is, how much time do we have?”

“All the time in the WORLD. “

“Prot, do you know anything about Rob that I don’t know?”

“Such as?”

“Why he feels so worthless?”

“No idea, coach. Probably has something to do with his life on EARTH. “

“But you talk to him, don’t you?”

“Not about that. “

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t want to. “

“Maybe he does now. “

“Don’t hold your breath. “

“Okay, I’ll let you off the hook for today. See if you can find out anything more from Robert, and I’ll see you again on Friday. “

“Put plenty of fruit on that hook, ” he advised as he ambled out.

I was on the “back forty” watching a badminton game played without shuttlecocks when Giselle came running toward me. I hadn’t seen her since her encounter with prot two days earlier. “It’s like you said, ” she panted. “He’s just the same!”

I asked her whether he had told her when he was leaving.

“Not yet, ” she confessed. “But he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry!” She looked absolutely moonstruck.

I reminded her to try to find out when it would be and to let me know “ASAP. ” “But be subtle about it, ” I added inanely.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that she had already gone through all the correspondence the hospital had received about prot and K-PAX. What did, however, was the information that more letters were beginning to come in.

“But nobody knows he’s back. “

“Somebody does! Or maybe they just anticipated his return. But the amazing thing is that a lot of them were addressed specifically to prot, care of MPI, or to prot, K-PAX. Or to the hospital with the notation to ‘please forward. ‘ In fact, some were just addressed to ‘prot, ‘ no address given. “

“So I heard. “

“But don’t you see what that means?”

“What?”

“It means that a lot of people wanted their letters or calls to go directly to prot, not to anyone else. “

“Isn’t that what you would expect?”

“Not really. Furthermore, a lot of it was marked PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. “

“So?”

“So I think most people don’t trust us with the letters. I wouldn’t, would you?”

Perhaps she was right. I had read some of those addressed to me, many of which began: “You idiot!”

While I was mulling over this unwanted development, she added, “Besides, you may have a legal problem if you don’t turn them over to him. “

“What legal problem?”

“Tampering with the U. S. mails. “

“Don’t be ridiculous. Prot is a patient here, and we have a right—”

“Maybe you should ask your lawyer. “

“Maybe I will. “

“No need. I already spoke to him. There was a case in 1989 in which evidence obtained from the correspondence of a patient at one of the state institutions was thrown out of court as illegal search and seizure. On top of that the hospital was fined for tampering with the mails. Anyway, ” she argued further, “if he’s just a part of Robert’s personality as you seem to think, what harm can it possibly do?”

“I don’t know, ” I answered truthfully, thinking more about Robert than about a stack of Santa Glaus mail or what prot might do with it. “All right. But just give him the ones specifically addressed to him. ” I suddenly felt like a Watergate criminal trying to minimize the damage, though I didn’t know what the fallout might be.

“Next item. I got a call from Dr. Flynn last night. “

“Oh, yes. I was going to ask you to call him. “

“I guess he couldn’t wait. Anyway, I arranged for him to meet with prot. “

“Just don’t let him take too much of prot’s time. He won’t be the last caller you’ll have. “

“I know. I’ve already heard from a cetologist and an anthropologist. “

“Maybe that’s enough for now…. “

“We’ll see. ” She skipped away, leaving me alone with Jackie, a thirty-two-year-old “child, ” who was sitting on the damp ground (the lawn had been watered during the lunch hour) near the outer wall, digging a hole and ecstatically smelling each spoonful of the soft earth before squeezing it into a ball and carefully stacking it on top of the others. She had a mustache of soil, but I wasn’t about to stop her and suggest she wash her dirty face.

Like many of our patients, Jackie has a tragic history. She was raised on a sheep farm in Vermont and spent most of her time out-of-doors. Home-schooled and isolated from close contact with other children, she developed an early interest in nature in all its color and variety. Unfortunately, Jackie’s parents were killed in an automobile accident when she was nine, and she was compelled to live with an aunt in Brooklyn. Almost immediately after that, on the playground of her new school, she was accidentally shot in the stomach by a ten-year-old boy trying to avenge the murder of an older brother. When she came out of the hospital she was mute, and she hasn’t spoken a word, nor mentally aged a day, since that time. In fact, one of the nurses still puts her hair up in pigtails, as her mother used to do when she was a girl.

Though she suffered no brain damage, nothing we have tried has proven successful in bringing her out of her dream world, the childhood she loved so much. She appears to live in a hypnotic state of her own making, from which we cannot arouse her.

But how she enjoys that world! When she plays with a toy or one of the cats she throws her entire being into it, focusing her concentration to the point of ignoring all outside stimuli, much like our autists. She takes in a sunset, or the sparrows flocking in the ginkgo trees, with rapture and serenity. It is a pleasure to watch her eat, her eyes closed and her mouth making little smacking noises.

It was patients like Jackie, and Michael, and others at the hospital that I vaguely hoped prot, before he disappeared again, might be able to help. God knows we weren’t doing much for them. Already he was instrumental in getting Robert to come out for a moment, if only to say he was sorry. But about what? Perhaps that he wasn’t going to be able to go through with it, to cooperate in his treatment. Or maybe it was, in fact, what it appeared to be: a hopeful sign, an attempt to communicate, a small beginning.

That afternoon, as I was hurrying to get to a committee meeting, I spotted prot in the rec room talking with two of our most pathetic patients. One of these is a twenty-seven-year-old Mexican-American male who is obsessed with the notion that he can fly if he simply puts his mind to it. His favorite author, of course, is Gabriel Garcia Mar-quez. No amount of medication or psychotherapy can convince him that only birds, bats, and insects can take to the air, and he spends most of his waking hours flapping back and forth across the lawn, never rising more than a foot or two above the ground.

How did this sorry condition come about? Manuel was the fourteenth of fourteen children. As such, he was the last into the bathtub, never got his share of the limited food, never had any new clothes, not even underwear or socks. On top of that, he was the “runt” of the bunch, barely making five feet in height. As a result he grew up with almost no self-esteem, and considered himself a failure before his life had even begun.

For reasons known only to himself he set an impossible goal: to fly. If he could accomplish this, he decided, he would be fit to join the ranks of his fellow human beings despite all his other “failures. ” He has been at it since he was sixteen.

The other is an African-American homosexual—I’ll call him Lou—who firmly believes he is pregnant. What makes him think so? If he places his hand on his abdomen he can feel the baby’s pulse. Arthur Beamish (who is gay himself), his staff physician and our newest psychiatrist, has not been able to convince him that everyone’s abdomen pulses with the beat of the abdominal aorta and other arteries, or to persuade him that fertilization in a man is impossible due to the absence of a major component of the reproductive system, namely an egg cell.

What has led to this bizarre conception? Lou has the mind of a woman trapped in a man’s body, a not uncommon gender-identity problem known as transsexualism. When he was a child he enjoyed dressing in his big sister’s clothing. His unmarried mother, who had problems of her own, encouraged this practice and insisted he urinate sitting down, and it wasn’t until he was twelve years old that the truth was discovered during a routine school physical. By that time Lou’s sexuality was firmly established in his mind. Indeed, he refers to himself as “she, ” something the staff does not encourage as it would only make things worse. Oddly, a benign cyst in his bladder caused some occasional minor bleeding, a fact he used to “prove, ” at least to himself, that he was menstruating.

Although a subject of intense verbal abuse throughout high school, he stubbornly maintained his female characteristics, wearing skirts and bras, using makeup,
etc.
He padded his breasts, of course, but so did some of the girls. After graduation, he and his mother moved to a different state where no one knew them, and Lou’s identity was secure. He got a job as a secretary for a large corporation, and it wasn’t long afterward that he fell in love with a man who happened to notice his five o’clock shadow in the elevator late one afternoon. A passionate relationship followed, and it was only a few months later that the urinary bleeding mysteriously stopped and Lou took this to mean he was pregnant. He was ecstatic. He badly wanted to have a child in order to validate his existence. Almost immediately thereafter he was afflicted with morning sickness, abdominal pains, fatigue, and all the rest. He has been wearing maternity clothes ever since.

The “father” of his child, frightened by something he did not understand, convinced Lou to seek psychiatric help, and he ended up with us at MPI. That was six months ago, and the baby is “due” in a few weeks. What will happen when it comes to term is a matter of conjecture and concern among staff members and patients alike. Lou, however, awaits that fateful day with sublime anticipation, as do some of the other inmates, who are already suggesting possible names for the new arrival.

I think I found the focus for my book, ” Giselle announced as I was coming out of my office.

“I’m on my way to a meeting. Want to walk?”

“Sure. ” She fell in beside me with quick little steps.

“Isn’t it space travel? UFO’s? Little green men?”

“Not really. The first chapter will be about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life. The second will be a rehash of my article about UFO’s. It’s the other chapters I’m talking about. “

“Have you asked him about UFO’s?”

“Uh-huh. “

“Well, what does he think?”

“He says ‘There ain’t any. ‘ “

“How does he know that?”

“He says it would be like riding a pogo stick a trillion times around the Earth.”

“So how does he account for all the sightings that people claim?”

“Wishful thinking. “

“Huh?”

“He says that even though there are no alien ships, there are a lot of humans who would like to believe otherwise. ‘

Klaus Villers joined us. “Hi, Klaus. What’s the focus of the other chapters, Giselle?”

“Whether or not he has any special powers. If he has one, maybe there are others. “

“You mean can he travel at superlight speed? That sort of thing?”

“Exactly. But there are other things, too. “

“Such as?”

“Well, we both know he can talk to animals, right?”

“Hold on. He says he can talk to animals, but how do we know that?”

“Has he ever lied to you?”

“That’s not the point. He may believe he can talk to them but that’s not the same as fact. Nor is anything else he says that we can’t verify. “

“I believe him. “

“That’s your prerogative. “

“Anyway, I’m going to try to find out whether he can or not. If he can, maybe he’s telling the truth about everything else. “

“Maybe and maybe not. But how do you propose to find out?”

“I’m going to ask him to speak with some animals whose history we know something about, and to tell me what they said to him. “

“Well, all we have are the cats. “

“That’s a start. But they all came from a pound, and we know very little about them. And cats never say much anyway. I’ve got a better idea. “

We stopped at the amphitheater. “This is where we get off. ” I thought Klaus would go on in, but he stopped, too. I glanced at my watch. “So what’s your idea?”

“I want to take him to the zoo. “

“Giselle! You know we can’t let you take prot to the zoo. Or anywhere else. “

“No, I mean make it an outing for all the patients in Wards One and Two. Or any others you think might want to go along. ” I heard Villers grunt. Whether it was a positive or a negative response, I couldn’t tell.

“Look, we’ve got to get to this meeting. Let me think about it. “

“Okay, boss. But you know it’s a good idea. ” And off she went, half walking, half running, presumably to find prot. Villers stared after her.

I didn’t pay much attention at the executive committee meeting, which had to do with ways to trim the budget in the wake of government cutbacks for treatment and research. I was thinking about prot’s alleged “superhuman” abilities. What had he really done that was so amazing? True, he knew a lot about astronomy, but so did Dr. Flynn and many others. He somehow managed to get from his room to Bess’s under our very noses five years ago. But that could have been some kind of hypnotic trick or simple inattention on our part. The only really inexplicable talent he possessed was his ability to “see” UV light, but even that had not been rigorously tested. None of these “powers” required an extraterrestrial origin. In any case, my chief concern was with Robert, and not prot.