“My grandpa still feels his leg, fifty years later. So strange.”
“Exactly. It’s no longer there. Nevertheless, it’s real, like the heat on your skin. I’m curious. After the sedation is given, does everything go black right away, or does it feel like it’s fading, or moving farther away?”
Again, that thoughtful pause. “When I was a kid I fell down a well. I remember lying at the bottom, my leg broke and blood everywhere. I was afraid no one would find me. All I could see above me was blue sky and clouds, but my mind still saw everything else. You know what I mean? I could visualize my house, the dock, the boats, and I could see my old dog, but I wasn’t really there. That’s what the drugs here do to me. They remove me from what I know. They take me away from myself.” His chuckle was self-conscious. “None of that made any sense, even to me.”
“It made sense to me, Major.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not,” she assured him. “What you’re saying makes sense to me.”
He held her gaze, and she stilled, waiting. “Are you allowed to call me Daniel?”
“If you’d prefer it, yes.”
She would have to keep that quiet from Dr. Bernstein, but she was glad that he had asked. He was reaching out. He wanted to find out if he had lost his mind, but he could proceed only if he trusted her. Marion would give him every reason to trust her, and she would never betray that trust. She would be his partner through this struggle. It was up to her to drop a rope to help him climb out of the well where he’d fallen, so he could emerge back into familiar territory.
At the same time, she had not given him permission to use her first name. There had to exist a doctor-patient relationship. She would not tell him that she knew very little about why he was experiencing all this, that she’d not found existing research on the topic nor a definitive therapy. But her title would give him the illusion they both needed.
“How do you feel about the medicine we give you here, Daniel? Does it help?”
“I’d call it a Band-Aid.”
“What does that mean?”
His focus softened. “Maybe the meds are covering up what’s broken in me, so whatever it is can heal underneath and form a scab. Or maybe the Band-Aid is trapping moisture where it needs air, and the wound is getting infected.”
It was an apt metaphor.
“Do you feel like you’re broken?”
Shrug. “Do you?”
“I guess we won’t know for sure until the Band-Aid’s removed,” she said. “I’m going to reduce the dosage bit by bit and observe how you do. I obviously can’t completely remove the sedatives. Not yet, anyway. You tend to get physical during your less-than-lucid moments. I hope that we can get to a point where you are able to determine what is real and what is a hallucination—”
“It never feels like a hallucination.”
“I understand. I do. But what you are experiencing is not what we would call a memory, not really. Memories are not typically that vivid. At the same time, what you see is not currently happening to you. When it happens, I want you to label it as a hallucination. Can you agree with me on that? When we recognize what they are, and give them a name, we get a little distance from them. From there, we can work toward helping to ease them. You may not be able to adjust your thinking while it’s happening, but when the episode is done, I would like you to remind yourself that it was a hallucination. Every time. Until you believe it.”
“I see what you’re doing. Okay, yeah.”
She reached for his chart and wrote some of her initial thoughts as wellas a new directive for the barbiturates. Then she set the clipboard back on the floor and sat back.
“How does it feel to be back over here?”
“You mean stuck in this closet of a room by myself with needle holes in my arm? Can’t say it’s the best place for me.”
“My question was poorly worded. I was wondering how you felt being here in Canada versus in Vietnam.”
“I haven’t seen much of Canada since I’ve been here, have I? It sure is quiet in this place, until some looney goes off in the hallway or something.” He exhaled. “But I know what you’re asking. It’s strange. When you’re over there, you miss your family. When you’re here, you want to be there again.”
“Even though you could easily be killed in that environment? You were there for a year. You know the fragility of human life. You’ve seen the worst of it, I imagine.”
“I have, and I do know it. But I miss my unit. I want to be with them.”
It was generally understood that if someone insisted on repeating an action that had already proven to be detrimental, even harmful to them, there might exist a type of psychological disorder. Daniel wanted to go back to a world that had taken his eye and nearly killed him, but Marion wasn’t certain why. Was that actually a disorder, or was it something else?
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Why would you choose to go back to a place that has a high probability of killing you?”
