Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) (5 page)

“Laurel Werling. She got caught turning in for overtime she didn’t work. Termination offense.”

I grabbed one of my notebooks and wrote down the names.

“And nobody said anything about the condition of Madeline’s body?”

“Condition? Like you mean, hacked arteries and dead as a ditch spade?”

I was a breath away from telling him about the driver ants. But I couldn’t.

“Bobby, something’s happening to me. I saw things—”

“Mum, they said you had some kind of fit. Then you whopped your head good. You died, for the love of Mike. They had to resuscitate you. Now you’ve been out of it for three days. Don’t worry about seeing things.”

“We’ve got to get back to Kingdom Hospital, Bobby. Something’s happening. I know it.”

“Mum, they aren’t going to let you out of here until they find out about those spots in your brain.”

“Tell me more about the scanning machines, Bobby. What’s that SPECT one do?”

Nurse Claudia and I spent most of the day just visiting together; I was her only patient, and we enjoyed each other’s company. She said that, working in the ICU, she usually had two very sick patients to look after, so it was practically a holiday to have just a chatterbox like me, with no tubes or IVs to tend to. I learned that she had three young children and a husband who’d lost his computer programming job after the technology boom went bust. She had been working double shifts lately for the overtime, which meant that she’d been looking after me for sixteen hours a day since I’d whacked my head, even though half the time I wasn’t quite all there. She was kind to Bobby, too, and explained all the procedures and equipment to us.

When I wasn’t having a heart-to-heart with Claudia, I was scribbling frantically in my notebooks, trying to set down a true and accurate account of my travels outside my body in the space between heaven and earth.

That evening the doctors gave the order, and I was released from the intensive care unit and moved out onto Boston General’s neurology ward. An orderly came to transport me and my things, but Nurse Claudia sent him away and said that she wanted to take me to my new quarters herself—an extraordinary kindness from an ICU nurse, for which I was grateful.

My new room was semiprivate: room 959, bed
2.
The privacy curtains were drawn around bed 1, so I was not able to meet my roommate.

Claudia wheeled me in and helped me arrange my things. She freshened the water in the vase of flowers, put my bag on the nightstand, and helped me select an appropriate healing crystal for the new environment.

Then she sat at my bedside and put her finger on her lips.
Shhh.

I looked toward bed 1 and the drawn curtain.

“She can’t hear us,” Claudia whispered.

If I wasn’t mistaken, Claudia’s eyes reddened again and tears welled. My heart went out to her immediately.

“What’s wrong, Claudia, dear?”

“You know my situation,” she whispered. “I have a good job, here. If I lost this job and had to find another…if I missed even a paycheck or two, it would destroy my family. It’s all a house of credit cards right now, and I’m just able to make the interest payments until my husband finds work.”

“Oh, my dear, I’ll pray that he does. But why would you lose your job? You’re an excellent and very kind nurse.”

She put her hand tenderly on mine.

“Thank you. I’m telling you this only because I like you so much, and I have to ask you not to reveal to anyone what I’m about to share with you.”

A tear squeaked out onto her cheek. She brushed it away and looked out toward the hallway, afraid someone might come in.

“Claudia, look in my eyes and see what you already know: I would never betray your confidence and trust. ”

“I know you wouldn’t. I’m just saying it for my own peace of mind. You must not tell a soul, not even Bobby.”

“Tell me,” I said. “Your secret will be safe.”

“It’s not a secret. It’s a warning and important advice. If you do end up needing surgery—”

“Knock, knock!” A cheery male voice came from somewhere on the other side of my neighbor’s drawn curtain. If the inhabitant of bed 1 had been sleeping, she’d have to be awake now.

Claudia stood up quickly and began straightening my things on the nightstand and tray table. She grabbed my Merlin crystal and held it up by its silk string.

“This one really is quite lovely,” she said, as if she had just been admiring it and discussing it with me.

A man peeked around the privacy curtain and smiled at us. I recognized the comb-over and the subdominant stature of Dr. Metzger, the butcher/psychiatrist. He’d changed out of his white lab coat into a folksy tweed sport coat and black turtleneck. If he grew a beard and put on some elbow patches, he could fit right into the psychology department at Faust College.

“I can come back later, if you’d like?” he offered.

“Oh no, Dr. Metzger, that’s all right,” Claudia said. “I’m just getting my friend, Mrs. Druse, all settled into her new home.”

She winked at me and added, “Sally, I’ll be back day after tomorrow to finish our conversation.”

“Look at you!” Dr. Metzger said to me. “Up and about, and riding the fence line already. I sensed that you weren’t the type to stay bedridden for long.”

“Well then, you have a good sense about people, which is how you wound up in psychiatry,” I said.

“And how are you feeling? Any headaches? Dizziness? Your cranial checks were shipshape, and the lab work shows all values in normal range.” He made a thumbs-up at me, as if I were the Little Leaguer and he my coach.

“I have headaches, but otherwise I feel fine. I’d love to get the pictures of my brain done and then go home to Lewiston. Dr. Massingale can watch over me there and look after my headaches.”

As he talked, he made his way over to the chair vacated by Claudia.

“Well, yes,” he said, “Dr. Massingale referred you to our service and asked us to do some brain imaging, but she also asked us to look at the total you as well, Mrs. Druse. How were you feeling before all of this happened? Any unusual sensations or episodes? Any strange feelings, emotions, unusual thought patterns?”

He took a seat, opened a chart, and looked to be settling in for a nice long psychiatric examination, for which I would undoubtedly be charged a handsome fee. Furthermore, it seemed the diagnostic session was to take place within earshot of another patient I hadn’t met yet.

“Excuse me,” I said, and turned in the direction of the bed next to me. “Hello?” I said into the drawn curtain. “Knock, knock. I’m told I have a roommate. Is that true?”

Dr. Metzger smiled and stopped me with a gentle there-there wave of his hand. “Mrs. Druse, really there’s no reason to be concerned about disturbing your neighbor. She’s…unresponsive right now.”

“In a coma?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “She can’t hear what we are saying. Correction—she can’t
process
what we are saying.”

“Does
she
have a name?”

“Yes. Nancy Conlan has been here for, oh, several months. She won’t—” His hand just fluttered off in the direction of the land where nothing matters.

I lowered my voice anyway. “I don’t need a psychiatrist, Doctor.” I was polite, even pleasant, about it—no need to get nasty. Yet.

“No, probably not,” he admitted, “but we’d like to rule out as many things as possible while you’re with us here in Boston. We’d like to do another scan or two and some tests to see, well, to see what’s going on with you. ”

He didn’t elaborate.
What’s going on with me?

“What do the scans show? Exactly,” I asked. “Is it possible to look at the scans and see my highly developed capacity for mystical experiences?”

He almost laughed, but he caught himself in time. A flatlander, I could tell; probably didn’t believe or care about the spiritual life—his or anybody else’s.

“The scans are so expensive, we’re still using them only to diagnose and treat life-threatening illnesses, at least here in this hospital.”

I didn’t know him well enough to be blunt, but tumors or no, my seventy-five-year-old skull was going to the grave unopened, of that I was sure. I had no intention of having surgery, certainly not under the likes of Dr. Stegman. All I wanted from Metzger were a few of the more interesting brain scans and EEGs, which he could order up with a stroke of his Montblanc pen.

“I appreciate the value of the brain imaging,” I said. “Did you see in
The New York Times
where the Dalai Lama is also passionately interested in it?”

“I…missed that.”

“He is, and he’s made several visits to America to meet with neuroscientists who are scanning and studying the brains of Zen monks while they are meditating.”

“Interesting,” he said. “You’ll be getting an MRI scan this afternoon. So you and the Dalai Lama can compare notes.”

“Delightful. I assure you, Doctor, if you study my scans carefully you will notice an exceptional amount of activity in the brain centers associated with positive emotions, especially compassion, mindfulness, and spirituality.”

He at least feigned interest at this point.

“Yes, I’m sure we will see evidence of your…
spiritedness,
Mrs. Druse. I’d like to ask you about some of your mystical experiences. Dr. Massingale mentioned in your history that you have certain…gifts.”

Mmm. Maybe not a complete flatlander after all, if he was curious about gifts.

“How shall I say this? I am unusually sensitive to the world of the spirits, to wonder, and to the unity of all beings and things. Nondual awareness, some call it. Are you familiar with James Austin’s
Zen and the Brain?”

“I’m not. Perhaps I should be,” said Metzger. “You meditate, yes?”

“Every day. And I pray, too.”

“I ask you about peculiar sensations or visual disturbances because it is not at all uncommon for patients to experience auras and seizure activity without even realizing it. Subjectively the patient experiences the seizure as a daydream or perhaps a mystical experience. A vision of some kind? Voices? Have you ever sensed an unseen presence? Or perhaps heard a voice?”

I smiled and kept my counsel, made it look as if I was hard at work searching my memory. These institutional medical scientists can be ruthless if you confide the intimate details of your spiritual life. To them, imagination, religious devotion, and mystical awareness are all symptoms of mental illness.

“No visions that I can think of,” I said. “Just the mindfulness that comes with meditation. No voices that I can think of. But I know where you’re headed. That’s the old Thomas Szasz quote, right? ‘If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.’ Is that your line of inquiry here?”

I don’t think Metzger was ready for a batty septuagenarian to be quoting renowned psychiatrists back at him.

“Oh, yes, Szasz. That’s a good one. I’ve heard that,” he said. “The reason we ask so many questions about auras and potential seizures is that they can be very harmful to the brain,” he explained. “They may feel either unpleasant or frightening or pleasant and transcendent to the patient, but they are actually electrical discharges. Neurons firing, and those cells aren’t meant to discharge electricity in continuous bursts, like flushing a toilet over and over. Eventually the cells wear out, much the same way a battery dies. But unlike batteries, brain cells can’t be replaced.”

“Dead brain cells would be a tragedy,” I said. “Especially for a young person.”

I watched him ponder that one. Was I saying that it
wouldn’t
be a tragedy for an old person?

“I’m not fond of medications, Dr. Metzger. So if this is all leading up to me taking some kind of medicine, I don’t think that will be happening.”

My preemptive strike on the subject of medication disconcerted him, and I saw him prepare for a counterstrike, so I jumped on ahead to appeasement of sorts.

“Perhaps the brain images will convince me that I need to take medications. I assume they’ll tell us something about that, yes? Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing them?”

“The scans will tell us more about the fresh hemorrhage you suffered in your fall, and may also help us get a better viewof that older-looking lesion or scar in the frontal lobe. Which reminds me—”

He riffled through his papers and pulled out a report and refreshed his memory.

“Yes. When the radiologist looked at the images of that frontal lobe spot, the older scar, he thought it looked almost like it was inflicted transorbitally. ”

I looked at him and waited for an explanation.

He put his index finger just above his left eyelid and just under his eyebrow.

“Through the eye socket,” he said. “Up here? Any childhood head trauma? Any falls onto sharp objects? Anybody poke you in the eye or above the eye with a stick or a pen, perhaps? Anything like that?”

I shook my head. “I’m quite certain I’d remember that,” I said.

“I’m sure you would,” he said. “You may have had a seizure that night when you were visiting your friend at Kingdom Hospital, which in turn caused you to fall and whack your poor head. That’s why I asked you if you recall anything strange or unusual associated with that episode. Any visual or auditory disturbances? Any peculiar sensations or experiences?”

I put on my best happy face and made my eyes nice and sparkly for the good doctor.

“Well, I have another Thomas Szasz quote you might like,” I offered.

“Edify me, Mrs. Druse, please.”

“ ‘ In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.’ You aren’t trying to define me, are you, Dr. Metzger?”

I must have slipped into one of my little catnaps, because the next time I opened my eyes, there was Bobby in the chair next to my bed, his curly unkempt head buried in the sports section of
The Boston Globe.

“Bobby, I’m so glad you’re here. What did you find out back in Lewiston?”

He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, but then he sank back into his chair and withdrew again into his newspaper.