I ran the situation through my mind. Someone had told my mother that I would try to fool her into believing I was doing fine in class and in social activities. I needed to confirm I wasn’t imagining things. Then there was Carl; he had been pretty rough on me. If I disappeared and never returned, would he get hit with the same self-recrimination I felt for what I had put him through? I couldn’t let that happen.
“All right,” I replied calmly. “I’m leaving.”
“That’s good,” Millington said.
I looked at my mother and Eric. I felt nothing. “But I’m not leaving until I get a chance to go back and say goodbye to my friends,” I said.
The room exploded with shouts of anger and disbelief. I sat stoically, saying nothing as everyone around me fell apart. Someone threatened to have me sedated.
“I suppose you could try that,” I replied, “but I’m not going to swallow any pills. That leaves an injection. You can try that, but you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”
More shouts. Millington stormed out. My mother headed to the bathroom in tears. I approached my brother and sat in front of him.
“Eric, I’m not asking for much,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense that they won’t let me pack or say goodbye to friends.”
I noticed he was tearing up.
“Eric,” I said, “I have to go back to school.”
A moment passed as he looked me in the eyes. I could tell he saw something; he understood. My mother returned.
“Mom,” he said, “he has to go back to school.”
A flurry of phone calls ensued. Finally, the administration compromised. I would be allowed to return before I left, but I could not speak to anyone other than a few friends in my room.
I would be given one hour. If I tried to stay longer or to speak with anyone else, I would be physically removed from campus by Swarthmore security officers.
An audio letter from
CARL MOOR, 1986
We started hearing rumors that someone had seen your mother and she was in town and then started to think, Well, Jesus, something’s up and he’s really sick. I had been walking down Parrish Hall toward the mail room, and I saw Mrs. Eichenwald.
I said, “Mrs. Eichenwald, what are you doing here?”
And she goes—she just turns to me, and she starts to cry. She says, “Kurt has something to tell you.”
And I said, “What is it?”
And she said, “I can’t tell you. Kurt’s going to tell you.”
And so I went rushing back to the room, and Franz and I were waiting around there, and we knew at that point that you were gonna die. We thought, Death. This is it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Carl and Franz waited nervously in our room. As part of my agreement to leave, I refused to allow anyone to give them details of what was happening. I feared they would be fed lies that I was imagining a social life and failing my classes. That could undermine my attempt to prove to myself I was active on campus. If I was delusional, I wouldn’t know; a conversation with Carl and Franz—if no one else had spoken to them yet—might give me the information I needed to be certain the administration was lying.
I arrived with my mother and brother. I didn’t know where to start. How to explain that going home, supposedly to allow me to get better, could instead set back my care—potentially forever—if Swarthmore’s falsehoods came with me?
“I’ve been thrown out of school,” I finally announced.
Instant relief for the roommates. I wasn’t dying. My mother filled in some blanks, and from their perspective, this meant I would spend a couple of months getting better. I’d be back soon. They couldn’t understand why I considered this such a big deal.
I had thought a lot about how to confirm to myself that the school was inventing falsehoods. I wasn’t going to ask, Didn’t I really do this? Didn’t I really do that? Instead, I talked about Sixteen Feet, the concert, my work with the Players Club, Pippin, and friends. They never contradicted me. When I expressed concern about leaving the a cappella group in the lurch, Carl assured me others could take over the administrative details and sing my leads.
That was all I needed to hear about Sixteen Feet. The school’s assertion that I imagined my role and fantasized a concert was a lie.
“Dickerson also said I’ve been disrupting campus life, that I’ve been a bad influence for other students.”
Franz interrupted. “No, you haven’t. Don’t think that. More people know about your seizures, but no one cares.”
I rambled. I didn’t know how to explain that the school’s false allegations were going to delay my treatment. I had never even told Carl about the dueling diagnoses between the Chicago neurologist and psychiatrist. Laying out my fears of reviving that battle in Dallas required a history lesson, and the clock was ticking; if I spent too much time on the past, I risked being dragged away by security before confirming everything I needed to know. I stumbled over some words and broke down again. For a moment, the room was silent.
“Well,” Carl said, “at least you’ve got your health.”
Everyone laughed. Carl’s reliable sense of humor got me back on track. I laid out the allegations that I was failing my courses but quickly moved on; I remembered my professors had disputed those claims the night before.
The end of my allotted hour approached. My brother grabbed a few shirts from my closet and stuffed them in a bag. I put on a heavy jacket; it wasn’t particularly cold, but I would need it in December. We didn’t have time to pack anything else. We left behind jeans, most of my button shirts, T-shirts, underwear, and socks. I said my goodbyes and walked toward the door.
I stopped, numb with realization. As soon as I passed through that doorway, I would be plunging back into the fight, begging my neurologist to treat me as I struggled to convince him that Swarthmore had lied to get rid of me. How could I convince anyone these tales from college officials were fictions? It was hopeless. My treatment, my life, was over.
“I’m not going,” I announced.
I walked to a bed and sat down. Eric cried, and my mother became hysterical; she knew security would show up any minute. She begged my roommates to help.
Carl stepped forward, grabbed me by the jacket lapels, and slammed me against a closet door. “Kurt,” he said, “go home. Go home now and beat this thing. If they’re so wrong to send you home, prove it. Don’t whine. Go home and beat it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I could beat epilepsy, even if it was uncontrolled. I couldn’t beat other people’s reactions and decisions. But Carl was right. I had no choice.
I hugged my roommates and walked out. Three minutes before the deadline, we notified security I was leaving. They had already been preparing to come get me.
* * *
—
A few hours into the flight home, I went into convulsions. The blood tests from the night before showed that my medication levels were still low, and the stress of the previous twenty-four hours likely served as a trigger. I bit my lip, and blood seeped from my mouth. My mother assured the crew I would be fine, and the pilots stayed on course to Dallas.
One of my best friends, Jason Kinchen, was waiting at the airport. We had been close since middle school, and I had told him about my epilepsy in the summer after freshman year. Jason attended Dartmouth College, which had a flexible study plan allowing students to take off the fall semester. He knew I had been traumatized by my abrupt expulsion and wanted to assure me that I had a friend at home to stand by me.
The plane arrived, and Jason watched EMTs rush on board. I was wheeled off, and he walked alongside my mother as they brought me to a room in the airport. My emotional collapse after my dismissal had been so strong that my mother now believed there was a good chance Swarthmore had been telling the truth, that I had been nonfunctional, and that I had lied when I told her at lu
nch about my school activities. Despite witnessing Dickerson’s phone calls with my professors, my mother had also become convinced in her panic that my supposed academic failures were real.
I woke up disoriented and confused but stayed silent. I remember thinking I was in danger but not knowing why. My mother hurried out of the room every so often, then burst back in a few minutes later. She called Naarden and arranged for me to be taken that night to Medical City. At some point, I heard her on the phone speaking to Talbot, the rehabilitative psychologist. “So far as he knows, it will be a medical admission,” she said.
Was she talking about me? Were they planning a psychiatric admission? Things were falling apart faster than I had anticipated.
Jason noticed my eyes had opened. He stood beside me.
“Hey, buddy. How are you doing?”
How did Jason get here? No matter. I needed to speak to him before anyone else did. “Jason, you need to listen. They are going to make it out that I’m crazy—”
My mother appeared. She told me that I was at the Dallas airport and had experienced a seizure on the plane. I was rolled outside in a wheelchair while Jason fetched his car. Someone loaded me into the backseat; my mother sat up front.
“We’re taking you to Medical City,” she told me.
“Yeah, I heard,” I said, my speech slurred. “As far as I’ll know, it will be a medical admission.”
My mother sighed. “I don’t know why I said that.”
“Because you believe them, Mom! Because Swarthmore ripped my legs out from under me, I can’t control my reactions, because I’m not some fucking robot, and so you think they’re right and that I’m crazy!”
“That’s not true,” she said.
We both knew she was lying.
Jason drove to the Medical City emergency room. I didn’t know why I was there. I’d had a seizure. What was an ER going to do?
My mind was jumbled and no one explained what was happening. I lay on a metal table. A woman came over and said, “I know this is going to hurt, but just…” The rest of the memory is gone.
Someone put something in my mouth and told me, “Bite.” I did but didn’t know what I was clenching in my teeth or who had put it there. I started putting pieces together.
I took the thing out of my mouth. “Are you about to do electroshock therapy?” I whimpered.
“No,” someone said. “That would cause a seizure. No one wants that.”
A woman again warned me that something was about to hurt. Suddenly I was in agony. The pain stopped, then I heard a voice. “We have to do it again.” My memories shot back to the biopsies in Chicago, but this was completely different. Then the severe pain returned. I woke up with a nurse taking my blood.
I was wheeled to my room. My father arrived, and he was walking with my mother. I saw Jason on my left.
“Don’t leave,” I pleaded with him.
“I won’t. I promise, I won’t.”
In the hospital bed, I thought through the events I could remember from the emergency room, trying to figure out what had happened. Why hadn’t anyone told me what they were doing?
Naarden appeared. I remember being impressed; I knew it was nighttime, and he had come to the hospital. He had his usual broad smile.
“So, Kurt, I understand you were having some trouble with your thinking,” he said.
I knew it. Swarthmore had told him their fabrications. But I wanted him to be explicit.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, that you weren’t functioning socially and you were having trouble with your classes—”
I bolted up in bed. “Dr. Naarden, it is a lie! They’re lying to you! I was functioning…”
I stopped. My voice rang in my ears. Desperation made me sound unstable. This, I knew, was my only chance to convince him that he could continue the treatment plan, that—other than the math issues—the Dilantin hadn’t harmed my ability to think.
Calm, calm. If you don’t sound calm, he won’t believe you.
No use. I was too scared of losing everything. I couldn’t control myself. “It’s all a lie!” I exploded.
Naarden listened silently.
“I promise you, it’s not true! I’ve been doing so well. I have lots of friends. I’ve been coming together for the first time in years! At worst, I’ve been too self-reflective, trying to understand everything that’s happened to me. I’m not taking a full course load, but you and the dean told me not to!”
He responded in a relaxed tone. “Yes, okay.”
I knew he was patronizing me. “This ‘not functioning socially’ stuff isn’t true! They made it up!” Once again, I listed everything I was doing—Sixteen Feet, Players Club, the musical.
I rubbed my forehead. “I’m not imagining these things. They happened. Please, if you don’t believe me, call my friends at Swarthmore; call my professors!”
Naarden tried to reassure me with a few soothing remarks, then asked my parents to accompany him into the hallway.
Jason walked to my bedside and started to speak. I held up two fingers. “Shhh!”
I heard Naarden. “I think that is what he really believes was happening, but…”
I stopped listening and grabbed Jason’s arms, pulling him closer so I could speak softly.
“Jason, I have been set up,” I said, desperation in my voice. “There are a bunch of lies about me. Anything you hear, don’t keep it from me. Anything I say, don’t repeat, because I have to have someone to trust!” I placed a hand over my eyes. “Please, please believe me.”
“I believe you,” Jason replied in a tone of horror. “I believe you.”
I looked at him again. “If you think I’m crazy, tell me, and I’ll talk with you about it. But don’t keep anything back! If someone tells you something, don’t believe it until you talk to me. Please promise me.”
“I promise,” he said.
* * *
—
The next morning, Naarden checked on me. My mother was sitting in a chair. I stayed silent out of fear I might start yelling in anger.
Suddenly, I realized: It was early November. Naarden had told me long ago that, if the seizures weren’t controlled by around this time, he would be adjusting my anticonvulsants, starting the switch from phenobarbital to Mysoline.
I spoke before he did. “You said you’d be changing my medication about now. When does that start?”
“Well,” he said, “before we start any adjustments, we have to figure out whether the Dilantin has been causing your cognitive problems at Swarthmore.”
“I didn’t have any cognitive problems!” I shouted.
“Kurt—” my mother started.
“No, shut up! The Dilantin was working! I had a social life. I was doing well in my classes!” I stopped and thought for a second. “Jesus Christ, I’m lying as easily as Swarthmore is,” I said softly.
“That’s—” Naarden started.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I’m not lying. I can’t say I was doing well in my classes any more truthfully than Swarthmore can say I was doing badly. There’s no way to judge.”
I stopped speaking. My mother was crying. I apologized for snapping at her so rudely.
“Please, Dr. Naarden, stick to the treatment plan,” I said. “I know I seem crazy. If you just tell me these lies aren’t going to cause my treatment to be changed, I’ll be fine. I promise.”
Naarden struck a thoughtful pose that I knew masked his alarm at what must have seemed like paranoia. I realized he couldn’t imagine that whoever had spoken to him from Swarthmore—Dickerson? Whitaker? Millington?—would fabricate a story. I was telling him that a college administration was conspiring against me. Even I thought that sounded insane.
“I’m not going to make any decisions right now,” he said. “There’
s a lot of conflicting information. Before we make any changes, we have to figure out what’s going on.”
“Okay, well, there were those diagnostic tests you wanted to do over Thanksgiving. That’s just a couple of weeks from now. Are you still doing them?”
“We need to work out some things. I’d like you to see a psychiatrist. He’ll help determine what’s going on.”
“I know what’s going on!” I cried. “I’m going to have to keep having seizures because everyone believes the school. I might have the only medication that’s ever worked taken away because I can’t convince you they’re lying.”
Naarden put a hand on my shoulder. “I told you from the beginning, I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to work with you to get the best control possible. We just need to take a break right now and reassess.”
Despair gave way to fury. “Fine! Take a break! But if you all ever figure out what’s really going on, don’t come to me and say, ‘Sorry we delayed everything. Now you need to stay home another semester to do the tests we were planning for November.’ I will not stay home longer because everybody’s too stupid to understand what’s happening!”
Had I seen the movie Rashomon? Naarden asked. What that film shows is that different people can have conflicting interpretations of the same events. “So there’s your perspective, there’s Swarthmore’s perspective, there’s my perspective, and there is the right perspective.”
“Fine,” I replied. “And mine is the right perspective.”
* * *
—
Proof. I need proof.
An hour later, I was alone in my hospital room. Right then, it was my word against people with job titles. I asked my parents and Naarden to phone my professors, but no one would. I couldn’t produce papers or tests. I glanced at the clock. Franz worked a main desk in Parrish Hall about this time. I grabbed the phone beside my bed and dialed. Seconds later, he was on the line. He asked how I was; I’m sure I sounded terrible.
“I need help,” I said. “Could you send a letter to my doctor? All it needs to say is what I was doing at school, whether I had a social life, whether I was doing things.”
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