Sarah screamed out and then sat down. For only a minute. She tried Martin’s phone again and then rang Dave Bradbury. He answered almost immediately.
‘Dave, it’s Sarah. Where’s Martin?’
‘He was heading off to pick you up at Mascot.’
‘He wasn’t there, I can’t get through on his phone and there are no messages from him.’
‘This is very strange.’
Sarah almost cried. ‘There is a very disturbing phone message for him. From a woman…’
Dave cut her off. ‘I think I’d better come over. I’ll be there in ten. Won’t bring Judy though.’
The ten-minute drive was enough for Dave to muster some options for shaping whatever message Bella had left.
Sarah was waiting at the front gate. He followed her inside, noting how overwrought she was. They tried Martin’s mobile again. Sarah asked Dave to listen to the phone message.
‘She says you were there, Dave. Who is she and what is going on?’
While Martin was his mate, covering for him was not in order. He couldn’t always be Sancho Panza. Sarah was owed what facts he knew although he would temper some of the specifics.
‘Her name is Bella but I don’t know her surname. She lives in a penthouse in Pymble and Martin called me around there this morning as she had cut her arms. Deliberate cuts.’
‘A patient of his?’
‘I don’t know but I doubt it.’
‘My God! If he was having an affair with a patient that would be the end of his medical career. But could she be a patient, perhaps delusional, imagining some relationship with Martin?’
‘I doubt it, Sarah.’
‘You clearly know more, Dave. If Martin is having an affair I need to know, especially as he has gone missing.’
‘Martin alluded to that possibility.’
‘Oh my God! This happens to other women. Other couples. Not to us.’
‘It happens, Sarah. But whatever it was, it’s clear that it has come to an end. Somewhat traumatically.’
‘But Dave. You work with Martin. You are his best friend. How long has it been going on?’
‘Buggered if I know. I’m totally staggered. It’s not the Martin I’ve known. He’s the last person I would ever suspect of infidelity.’
‘We had a bond. I can’t believe it.’
‘And she’s a dangerous woman for him to be involved with. Got a touch of the borderlines. More than a touch really. The full package. Very dangerous.’
‘What is it with men, Dave? Is it an age thing?’
‘Some woman claimed that having an affair is less about looking for someone else and more looking for a new self. The old perennial mid-life crisis?’
‘More a mid-life excuse, Dave.’
‘It’s pretty common, Sarah. I hear it from a lot of women who have sprung their husbands. Most are flabbergasted, saying that he must have taken leave of his senses, that he is chasing his youth or seeking to prove his virility. Most of those men – that I’ve seen at least – are more in self-doubting middle age, viewing life has become predictable. An infatuation – and the sex is perhaps only a bonus – gives them a lightness of being. They feel they have their life juices back again.’
‘That is so selfish. Why are men so self-indulgent?’
‘It’s not just men, Sarah. I’ve heard the same story from quite a few women, particularly in the last few years.’
‘And the same base motives?’
‘I’m not certain that it’s driven by selfishness. I think they get blindsided. And it’s usually followed by a lot of collateral damage.’
‘Indeed. But where is Martin now?’ Sarah contemplated something worse. That when Martin returned, and she knew he would return, would she be ever able to respect him again? He had lost his integrity. How would she feel towards him? She turned to Dave again.
‘When, if, he comes back, what am I to do? And what am I to feel? That he’s returned simply out of guilt? That he’s sought safety over freedom? That would make him an artificial man. Not the man I married and have loved and respected for years. And our relationship would also be artificial.’
‘I can’t imagine any relationship with Martin being artificial.’
Sarah became quite agitated. ‘But where is he now, Dave? Could you check with this Bella woman?’
‘I think that would be unwise.’
‘Should we ring the police?’
‘Not yet, Sarah. I think we need to keep this private.’
‘Oh Dave, I think I’m going out of my mind.’
An hour later, as they were having a second cup of coffee, they received a call from a doctor at the psychiatric unit.
WHAT TO ADMIT WHEN BEING ADMITTED
Martin had been taken by the police directly to the hospital’s emergency department, and they thoughtfully removed the handcuffs before helping him out of the car. They briefed the triage nurse about Martin’s speeding and his conviction that he could hear the voice of his dead mother, the policewoman adding that it was the first time that she had brought in a psychotic doctor. The triage nurse called the psychiatry clinical nurse consultant, who asked the police whether Martin had been violent at all or engaged in any self-harming behaviours. They said he was very subdued but had rambled for much of the time. One thought that he had made some Shakespearian reference. She escorted Martin through to an interview room, asking the police to wait outside, while she briefed the intern.
Alone, Martin inspected the room. He was convinced he was being watched, not just by the intern and the nurse who, while talking softly, kept turning to check on him. There was a print of the Laughing Cavalier on one wall, and the cavalier’s eyes followed Martin as he moved to the left or to the right. That was where they must have the camera and the bug. He wondered if he could escape. If not, he would need to ensure that he gave nothing away. His thoughts and plans were then interrupted by the intern and the CNC entering the room.
‘Doctor Homer, I’m Peter Yeoh, an intern. I just want to get a history.’
Martin glared at him, his arms folded in some defiance. ‘I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might discriminate me.’
‘Discriminate?’
Martin started to chant. ‘Yes. Instead you need to explicate, collaborate, communicate, commiserate, mediate, arbitrate, adjudicate, prognosticate.’ As he chanted Martin heard Edina’s voice again.
‘Love it, Sunny boy. You’ve got the rhythmic “need you tonight” beat. Riff on my boy.’
‘…And so you should not discriminate or deprecate, nauseate, irritate, aggravate, insinuate, equivocate, implicate, manipulate, fabricate, liquidate, litigate, mutilate, invalidate, interrogate, emasculate, manipulate, flagellate, violate – or worst – exterminate…’
‘Doctor Homer, please!’
‘You don’t like INXS?’
‘In excess?’
‘Oh you are too young. As Disraeli said, youth is a blunder.’
‘Disraeli?’
‘My God, lad. Is there intelligent life on this earth?’
‘Doctor Homer. I just need to get a history. I understand that you think that your mother – your dead mother – is communicating with you?’
‘Have you read The Waste Land, Doctor Peter? That corpse you planted last year in your garden. Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Now Thomas Stearns knew a thing or two about the human condition, ante-mortem and post-mortem. Yes, my mother has bloomed and, as ever, is supporting me.’
‘You hear her voice?’
‘Loose lips sink ships, Martin.’
‘No. She is now silent.’
‘Have you actually seen her? I mean in the last few days.’
‘We don’t communicate by sight.’
So, thought Dr Yeoh, he’s psychotic. But he would let the psychiatry registrar work out a diagnosis. He just needed to do a routine physical, get bloods and do a urinary drug screen in case it might turn out to be a drug-related psychosis.
�
�Dr Homer. I just need to do a quick physical. Is that OK?’
Martin knew the question was rhetorical. He had little choice. And he had not had a physical for nearly a decade. Be interesting to see if he found anything. ‘Physical, wizzical…’
The intern undertook a fairly cursory examination but, remembering that psychotic states can be a consequence of organic factors, he knew a neurological review was required to exclude an intracranial lesion. Which included examining Martin’s eyes with an opthalmoscope.
‘Doctor Homer. I’m just going to examine your fundi.’ As Dr Yeoh leant over Martin to examine his left eye first, Martin quickly raised his head and kissed the intern fully on the lips. The intern leapt back, wiping his mouth.
‘Oh dear,’ observed Martin. ‘Unrequired and unrequited love.’ Edina laughed.
‘Certainly not love at first sight, Martin. Sight! Get it?’
The intern backed away, red in the face. The nurse moved to place herself between Martin and the intern.
‘Some droperidol?’ she asked.
The intern settled himself and suggested it might be best for the police to take Martin straight to the mental health unit. The psychiatry registrar could get the bloods, do the urinary drug screen and work out whether any injection was needed. Dr Yeoh felt faint and decided that he would need to abort his shift and go home. The nurse smiled to herself. A good story for the nurses’ supper review.
The psychiatry registrar was waiting in the observation unit of the mental health unit and, accompanied by two male psychiatry nurses, took Martin to an interview room. Martin was struck by her daintiness and prettiness – and her youth. Unlike the intern, she did not have her status symbol – a stethoscope – around her neck. Presumably, a self-protective strategy. And he observed the CCTV camera in a corner of the room.
‘Yes, Martin. They are still bugging you. Don’t admit to anything. Deny everything. Deflect, interject and be circumspect.’
The registrar introduced herself. ‘Hullo, I’m Doctor Bennett. I’m the duty psychiatry registrar and obviously want to take a history. What brought you into hospital. That sort of thing. But more importantly, I’d like to open up a conversation.’
Open up, mused Martin. What a prissy twat. I’ll give her openings. And so Martin launched into verbal flight, the words jumping from one theme to another.
‘I wish to retire into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and my face. Now when, now who, now where, nowhere. You’ll get the history, bit by bit from different people, but each time it will be a different history. Of different people. Of Bella. A beauty thrown into relief by her personality. I yearned towards her, waltzed around her, hypnotized with longing. And of my mother. Mother died recently. Exploded. To be born again first you have to die. No justice. You get justice in the next world. It’s the pick of the times, the season of jacarandas, the queer sultry spring of hope but the Jack Frost of climate change despair, the sun shining, lacking any alternative. I wrote to Miss Lonelyhearts for advice and help. For happy families are all unhappy in their own way…’
Martin ceased speaking and, pointing at the CCTV, expressed suspicion. ‘Your keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. For I am an invisible man. Don’t tell anybody but God. And no injection please. Inject that girl in white first. And let me go home. If only I could live next door to Mrs Dalloway, for I am the lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower. She said she would leave her messages in the street but I suggested it might be best to email me.’ Martin stood and walked to inspect the CCTV camera.
Dr Bennett took the opportunity to observe to the nurses, ‘Flight of ideas but I don’t follow the content.’
The older male nurse spoke quietly. ‘Mrs Dalloway was the title for a novel by Virginia Woolf. I also recognised a Tolstoy quote, and perhaps one by Camus. I think he’s reeling off a set of opening lines from novels, interspersed with some of his own preoccupations.’
Dr Bennett smiled back. ‘Interpenetration of themes. Quite diagnostic really.’
Martin returned to his seat and looked balefully at Dr Bennett. ‘I must have been slandered, for without having done anything truly wrong I was arrested for having done nothing illegal. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the day is bright after a dark and stormy night, and now it’s the worst of times. For today, I was arrested when the clocks were striking thirteen. You’ll probably want to know what was going on, after all the crap the cops just told you. I’m not a sick man, nor am I a spiteful man, clanging with jarring couplets and string-taught with metaphors taking me to the snapping point. If you think I’m out of my mind that’s OK with me. It all happened more or less. Although the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born. I was born twice. To be reborn you have to die first. I don’t want to die. And who am “I”? In a sense, I am Martin Homer. But when Martin Homer was a little boy he was not Martin Homer.’
The young doctor leant forward to signal the need to interrupt. ‘Would you prefer me to call you Martin or Doctor Homer?’
Martin leant forward, pointing his finger at the doctor. ‘Just don’t call me Ishmael!’
But he was temporarily uncertain. ‘Doctor’ would allow him his professional status, allow him to preserve his authority as a senior doctor talking to this very young doctor and might accrue VIP advantages. He could use his authority to disarm her and ensure that that she would find no reason to admit such a senior medico. ‘Martin’ would communicate a parity relationship, suggest that he had an egalitarian view of the world, be more friendly and amiable, and so ensure that she would find no reason to admit such a companionable person.
‘Doctor Martin,’ he suggested.
‘So I understand that you were arrested speeding over the Harbour Bridge and that you told the police that your dead mother was navigating your car?’
‘How old are you, Doctor Bennett?’ Martin asked her peremptorily. He, Parsival, expected that she would be non-disclosive. It would put her on the back foot.
‘I’m twenty-six.’
‘A first-year trainee?’
‘Third year, actually.’ Martin noted the use of the word actually. She was on the defence.
‘I do not see a ring. Do you have a boyfriend?’
Dr Bennett’s smile disappeared. ‘This is not about me, Doctor Martin.’
‘And doctor, I don’t want it to be all about me. I’m not part of the me generation.’
‘Of course,’ she responded gently, seeking to settle him.
‘She’s trying to lull you, Sunny. Deny hearing me. Suggest you were speaking metaphorically.’
Dr Bennett proceeded. ‘But I do wish to know whether you felt you had been communicating with your mother.’
‘Would you be worried if I said I communicate with God?’
‘I guess it would depend on the means of communication.’
Martin smiled. ‘Means? But does the end justify the means?’
‘I don’t quite understand, Doctor Martin.’
‘You are not up to speed with your Greek philosophers, doctor. It was Sophocles who stated that the end excuses any evil. Of course, the deontological utilitarian debate has raged for centuries and, while it really depends on the particular principle under examination, it is not independent of the observer. I understand that there is a risk of me being incarcerated. And it was Sophocles again who said, When I do not understand, I like to say nothing…’
Dr Bennett interrupted him. ‘Doctor Martin, we are not discussing philosophy here…’
Martin responded tetchily. ‘But we are. I have been brought to a hospital by police and you are examining me, putting me at some risk of a very unfortunate and perhaps terrible, even evil, end. You may have the means but what do those means mean, you gamine? That’s all I want to know. No. I want more. I wish to hire a lawyer. In fact a barrister. A QC or should I not say an SC. I have plenty of money. I refuse to speak any more until I have my lawyer present.’
‘Your detrimental health unit you mean…’
‘And most likely involuntarily. That process will allow you legal representation, whether via the Mental Health Advocacy Service or a private lawyer. I think the best way for us to proceed now is for me to contact a relative and obtain a collateral account from someone who knows you well.’
Edina interrupted.
‘Don’t nominate me, Sunny. I don’t want to enter into any correspondence.’
Martin raced through the options. He suspected that he might be able to refuse any permission for them to make contact but would that really help? Clearly, Sarah and Dave were his first options, but who would be most likely to get him out of this place?
‘I think it would be best if we contact your wife,’ said Dr Bennett. ‘We have her contact details on the EMR. I’ll give her a ring now, and we’ll just have you stay in this room for a while.’
Dr Bennett went, leaving Martin with the two nurses. One roamed through her mobile phone while the other tried to engage Martin in desultory conversation.
He cut her off after five minutes, stating quietly and sadly, ‘All I need is a good night’s sleep.’
HOSPITAL HOSPITALITY
Dave was still with Sarah when the hospital made contact. Dr Bennett briefly explained that Martin had been brought in by the police and that he was in a ‘very confused’ state, so much so that he had been referred to the psychiatry service but she had been unable to get a clear history.
Sarah started crying, in relief and distress, and said she would go to the hospital immediately. She felt desperate to see Martin, and said she would then give Dr Bennett all the information she might seek.
Sarah gently rejected Dave’s offer to accompany her, being concerned that he might detail Martin’s affair.
In Two Minds Page 15