Secret Dreams (19 page)

He imagined a face with a hideous harelip, with two front teeth showing through a slash of pink gums. What else had the Schandereins failed to tell him? How long since the girl had stopped washing herself? How long had they given up trying to tend to her?

Why hadn't he asked the parents the questions he needed the answers to? Because they tried to make him feel inferior? So he cleverly insulted them and sent them on their way. They must have felt deserving of his punishment, swallowing it like a dose of medicine and making good their escape. A headache crept up the back of his neck, crawling around his ear.

“Fräulein, I will return later tonight with your meal.” To the mystification of the kitchen staff and the floor orderlies, Herr Doktor made out a list of new instructions. So twice a day a scullery maid brought the girl's meals to his office,- and in the quiet of the afternoon, or even late at night, he brought the patient her food himself. In an odd way, it brought him close to Fräulein S … as though by touching her plate, he touched the girl herself.

Herr Doktor sat at the end of the hall, with room 401 far down the row of private doors. The chair under him was an uncomfortably severe Puritan meetinghouse chair, meant to keep the sitter awake and alert for long periods of time. The usual occupant was a muddle-headed orderly named Zeik, a soft dumpling of a fellow who always managed to outwit the chair. First, he curled his hip around this way, then he twisted his torso the other way, settling his bulk, and presto! he fell instantly asleep with his head thrown back, his Adam's apple jutting out as he snored.

But tonight Herr Doktor had relieved Zeik from floor duty and, try as he might, had not found the secret position that would relieve the pulsing aches in his lower back. How had that idiot Zeik done it?

Earlier in the evening he had gone to Fräulein Schanderein's door and announced, “Fräulein Schanderein, I have brought your meal. I shall leave it outside your door, I have sent the floor orderly away for the night and will take his place at the end of the hall.”

He set the covered plate from the kitchen near the door crack, where, if she reached outside, she could easily slide her meal within. Then he watched the hot plate of food, with the steam rising from the little hole in its tin cover, slowly cool, the steam vanishing. He had given up looking at the plate. Perhaps she didn't understand anything at all. If she didn't know there was a “door,” how could she open it? If she didn't know about “plates,” how could she eat from one?

But all that was some time ago.

A mess of papers lay on Herr Doktors lap, Notes-of-Procedure destined for the desk of Herr Direktor Bleuler: pointless justifications of his eccentric treatments for the girl. He had long since ceased trying to finish the reports.

“You will never enter the Victim's room, Herr Jung.” He had heard no sound of footsteps approaching. Herr Senior Physician Nekken. At last Direktor Bleulers favorite diagnostician had come around to “consult,” Nekken. What an unpleasant name. Spelled slightly differently, with a c, Necken, and you had the word for tease
—
a kidder, a joker, Loki the Trickster…. Had that been the original spelling? Just pondering it made Herr Doktor warm behind the ears. Controlling his face around Senior Physician Nekken was the single most important goal. Controlling his face so as not to show fear. Nekken always wore a long, swallowtail coat, reminding Herr Doktor of a tall praying mantis. He had thin, tapered fingers like forceps and a narrow embalmer's face: a face filled with gray and tepid thoughts, like peeling back layers of epidermis with his clean fingernails to stare lovingly into a cold dead brain.

The man's hooked nose and stiff red hair always made Herr Doktor want to say, “This is a Jew's face.” Though it wasn't true. Nor could Herr Doktor account for this nasty bit of hatred. Branding Nekken a Jew called up pictures from those fairy books of long-nosed Rumpelstiltskin as he pranced by the fire, gloating over the firstborn he'd snatch from the pretty maiden trapped in the high tower once he spun the king's straw into gold … misformed, ugly thoughts of poisoned wells, ravished virgins, loathing, greed, and cruelty. Cursing Nekken a Jew made him the lowest form of life, lower than a louse.

For Herr Doktor felt Nekken
was
the lowest form of life: a brilliant diagnostician always ready to pronounce a given patient's state incurable. Nekken's favorite therapies were the radical ones that showed immediate results. Hydrotherapy — where he calmly directed his favorite goons to sling an old grandmother under cold jets of water — no wonder the chronic melancholia over the recent death of her husband suddenly vanished. Or in the case of a lusty young ironworker whose arm trembled after a finger was crushed in a forge: strap him to the electroshock table and apply a good galvanic dose to the entire side of his body. Miracle! The lad bounded out of the Burghölzli like a jackrabbit, with his bill paid and a letter from Herr Senior Physician certifying the young smelter fit for service at the mill. But give Nekken a talkative dwarf who continually handled himself or the stoically quiet Bricklayer, and the easy pronouncement “incurable” fell from his thin lips with a sad look for the idiot who wasted his time with such patients.

And now Herr Senior Physician Nekken stood over the chair with that nauseating look of sympathy for the hopelessly deluded. “It's a pity you have to go through the business of those reports,”

“A pity,” Herr Doktor replied, keeping his eyes on the plate sitting far down the hall. “Would you care to finish them for me? The recommended treatment is simple-, leave her alone and see what happens.”

Nekken smiled indulgently. “Alas, I don't concur. In fact, I wouldn't have taken on the case at all.”

“The parents obviously didn't want her any longer. And besides, they can afford to pay.”

“Ah, the profit of it all … How long do you intend to relieve Nurse Bosch and Orderly Zeik of their duties?” Nekken inquired politely.

“I don't know.”

“How long do you intend to sit here tonight?”

“I don't know.”

“What are you going to do when the Victim doesn't open the door and get her meal?”

“Probably eat it myself for breakfast and then return the dirty plate to the kitchen.”

A dry, mirthless chuckle. “What's for breakfast, then?”

Herr Doktor twisted around in the uncomfortable chair. With a wan smile he answered, “Honestly, Herr Nekken, Î didn't look under the cover. But I suspect pot roast.”

He stared once more at the plate sitting on the hall floor outside 401. He did not try to shuffle his incomplete reports, nor look too busy for further conversation. He had parried Nekken's jabs without cracking. It was enough. And though he knew the gaunt Herr Senior Physician looked far down his nose at all below his station, Herr Doktor felt some pity for the tall man at his side. No one to talk to. No friends. Wandering about the Burghölzli for lack of anything better to do. The tall man stood quietly against the wall for several more moments, perhaps joining Herr Doktor Jung in the contemplation of the cold food plate at 401…

“Well, my headstrong friend, I wish you a productive vigil.”

“Thank you, Herr Nekken.”

The senior physician clicked his heels and bowed sharply. Herr Doktor nodded his head in reply. Nekken made to leave, but paused on the stairwell. “Oh, by the way — I'm afraid the Executive Committee reconsidered the dwarfs jelly. We'll be cutting it off at the end of the week. You can, of course, appeal.”

Herr Thumb meant nothing to the man,- this was just pure spite. The exercise of arbitrary power. Herr Doktor stifled the urge to spit.

“Cutting it off at the end of the week?” he said lightly. “And then you'll be cutting it off for good. Why don't we preserve the dwarfs member in spirits and return it to him?” He went on blithely. “Or maybe stuff the dingus so he can handle it as the need arises.”

Nekken stared at him wide-eyed. Then suddenly showed his teeth. “Cutting it off for good!” He clicked his heels and bowed again, then clattered down the stairs, laughing as he went. “Cutting it off at the end of the week —- then cutting it off for good! Ha-ha-ha! By all means, return it stuffed! Ha-ha-ha!”

The clattering laughter faded. Herr Doktor wondered what kind of report Nekken would make to Direktor Bleuler about his pointless vigil. A benign one, probably, something like: Herr Junior Physician Jung is proceeding cautiously and with a good deal of candor toward the girl in 401. It is too early to say whether it is the proper course. Naturally, if it is
not
the proper way, some organic trouble will soon materialize and 401 will have to be rediagnosed. I'll want two orderlies, Nurse Bosch, and restraints in order to make the examination myself….

Ja, that's what Herr Nekken would say, giving his junior colleague enough rope to hang himself. And after the elapsed time of wasteful coddling, the news would worm around the hospital that Herr Doktor Jung had ignored an organic condition for X number of weeks. Willfully ignored or misdiagnosed … which was worse? He stared at the pile of papers on his lap,- they were blurry and indistinct, one shifting into another….

The sheaf of papers fell off his knees onto the floor. He woke with a start. What a wonderfully comfortable chair, he thought. Soft as a feather bed. Then he realized his lower back was numb. Maybe the plate would be missing from its place beside the door! A wild, heart-leaping hope that persisted for several seconds, even though the girl's meal plate sat so obviously still untouched.

He went to it and lifted the cover. Pot roast. Green beans. Boiled potatoes. He took the plate back to the puritan chair, eating the beans and meat, leaving the potatoes. Then he returned the plate to its place by her door — the potatoes for her, if only she would take them. Through the big bay window at the end of the hall he saw the night coming to an end. A single bird chirped outside. Perhaps the sparrow who pecked at her windowsill the other day … ? That was his last thought until he woke again to the bustle of the day shift at 7 A.M. Nurse Bosch leaned over him, saying, “Why don't you go home, Herr Doktor, and change your shirt.”

This seemed the stupidest remark he had ever heard, but he simply got up, gathered his papers, and said, “Danke, Nurse Bosch.”

Before he left the corridor he retrieved the patient's untouched plate and announced through the glass viewing slit; “Fräulein, I'm taking your plate away, but I will return again with something from the kitchen for you to eat. If you wish your chamber pot emptied, I would be happy to take it with me now…"

He was dead tired, an aching, shallow-sleep, have-to-urinate, have-to-stretch-out-flat tired. Mouth dry and tongue puffy, grains of grit in his eyes. He wondered how many days he could keep this up. How many days could she go without eating?

He said to himself, Three days — three days before he surrendered and went back to the way it was before: a stone-faced orderly yanking open her door, dumping her food plate, and snatching out the chamber pot. But could they really go back to “before”? Three days seemed an awfully long time to go without eating.

Surely some hospital snoop was already ticking off the number of meals the patient refused. How long before someone hollered, Your patient is starving! Is that why he ate the crazy girl's meals — to cover the fact she hadn't eaten them herself?

Give it up! He didn't want to think about it. He had to pee. He wanted a drink of water. And ja! he wanted a clean shirt. He stood outside 401 for a few more minutes, willing himself not to move, not to budge. Waiting. Waiting for what? A slop pot… He turned away.

If someone snickered at him when he returned the girl's plate to the kitchen, he didn't remember…. He stole a couple of hours' sleep at home on the couch and made it back to the hospital by eleven for rounds with Direktor Bleuler and company. The next night sitting in the hall went almost exactly as the first. The two differences being that he finished his papers and Nekken never appeared. A third difference; he discovered the comfortable position in the chair. You twisted your torso one way, your hips the other, and threw your head back, settling into the weight of your body. So! Orderly Zeik wasn't so stupid after all — he must really remember him at Christmas.

In the morning when Nurse Bosch came to wake him, he went to the patient's door and repeated what he said the day before.

Now, on the third night when he came to the cafeteria to collect the plate for 401, his speech at the patient's door had become a standing joke. As he passed the orderlies' table, one of them said, “Fräulein!” in a low voice, and the rest of them collapsed into hiccuping laughter.

Early in the evening Nurse Bosch came around with one of his prescription slips in her hand: Herr Tom Thumb's last dose of salve. She had prepared the prescription herself — a tablespoon of clear petroleum jelly sitting in a fluted paper cup. She included a flat wooden spoon, which they often used as tongue depressors. What possible use could Herr Thumb find for the spoon? he wondered. Clearly Nurse Bosch didn't approve of his prescription in the slightest; the fluted paper cup dangled from her fingertips as if she held a dirty, contaminated thing.

“Here is the dwarfs final application, Herr Doktor,” she said coolly. “I thought you'd want to know.”

He took the prescription slip from her,- on it someone had overwritten:
Canceled
. An illegible signature. Nekken's signature. In a bold script he overwrote Nekken's order with the word
Appealed
and his own signature, then gave the slip back to Nurse Bosch.

“I've appealed to the Executive. In the months it'll take them to reach a final decision the prescription still stands. If anyone objects to using hospital stores for this therapy, you'll find a small quantity of petroleum jelly in my office, which we will make as a present to Herr Thumb. One tablespoon daily.”