by Keith Korman
“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 Nek
ken’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.”
Nurse Bosch’s face flushed,- her chest swelled as though to protest. She struggled against herself for a moment. Then blurted:
“May I speak plainly, sir?”
Here it came….
“Yes, of course, Nurse.”
Emboldened, she thrust her soft chin out and plowed on: “You’re wrong, sir. It won’t do the little fellow any good. They might as well cut it off like a harem guard’s and be done with it!”
“I see,” Herr Doktor said quietly “But what if it does do him some good?”
“I don’t see how it can do anything but make him worse. It’ll come off sooner or later, mark my words. And what if the jelly got out of his hands? What if one of the Sisters swallowed some and got sick? What would you say then?”
He looked dumbfounded. The Sisters? Two nights of sleeping curled up like a hunchback with his neck broken, two nights of waking up cotton-mouthed in a rumpled shirt, two nights of eating cold food at four in the morning. And now this —- the pinhead sisters spooning petroleum jelly into their gummy mouths. Did this stupid woman really think little Herr Thumb would ever let the precious stuff out of his sight? He heard himself barking:
“Oh, just give the dwarf his goddamned grease, will you, Nurse? If one of the idiot sisters swallows some, she’ll have the first normal bowel movement of her life!”
For a long moment Nurse Bosch said nothing. Her happy pig face had fallen to frowns. She folded the prescription slip, tucking it into the pocket over her breast.
“Very well, Herr Doktor.”
She left him sitting in the hallway. They did not speak again for over a week.
He gave himself a limit of three days. But when no one on the staff seemed to care whether the patient starved to death or not, he let it go another day. And then another. Room 401 had a small sink in one corner, and once late at night he heard the tap going —- so she was drinking at least.
The fifth day came. Again, he had fallen asleep around midnight and awoke at four. But he had Sunday off. Ah, to be home with Emma. A bath. A bed. A clean shirt …
The plate was gone.
Gone!
He wanted to shout, Look! Look, everyone! She’s feeding herself. Feeding herself! He dashed off, trying to find someone, a witness, anyone. He found Orderly Zeik sound asleep outside the Incurable Men’s ward. Wonderful Zeik, snoozing away on a high backless three-legged stool, supported on no sides whatsoever. Amazing!
But he didn’t pause long to admire Zeik’s knack for comfort; he nearly tugged the orderly off the stool. The poor man first thought he was being punished for sleeping on duty. He fell plaintively to his knees and began to grovel for his job, mumbling, “Please, Herr Doktor, don’t get rid of Zeik. Zeik won’t fall asleep again. I promise to be good. Promise to stay awake …” And so on.
But after some sharp words, Zeik tucked in his shirt and groggily followed Herr Doktor back to the fourth floor. He had heard about the junior physician’s new “therapy”,- he wasn’t stupid like everyone thought. The two of them stood in the stairwell a moment. Herr Doktor smoothed back the bristles of his crew cut, polished his glasses, and put them on again. At last he led the orderly into the hall.
The plate was in its usual place by the door.
“Oh, yes, I see,” Zeik said, not seeing at all.
Herr Doktor almost rushed down the hall to throw the plate back into room 401. The orderly looked dumbly at him, pouting a little for being yanked off his stool. Herr Doktor didn’t trust himself to speak without screaming. But he did manage to utter quietly, “Wait here a minute, please.”
With every bone in his body screeching at him to bolt down the hall, he took his deliberate time and calmly walked to the plate before her door. Was it all a hallucination? Him, wanting to see the plate gone? Simply overlooking it when he woke? In his heart burned a little flame of hope. Maybe he wasn’t wrong. Maybe …
He stooped and picked the cover off the plate. Then stifled a sob. But he knew he must show absolutely nothing — to anyone — or everything might collapse. There on the plate lay the scattered remains of a meal. It had been thoroughly wolfed down, with only little shreds of this or that left behind. He couldn’t even tell what the meal had been. He swallowed several times before he spoke….
“Zeik?”
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
“You are my witness. On the thirteenth of October, 1905, Fräulein Schanderein consumed her first meal in five and half days, between the hours of one and four in the morning.”
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
From the tone of Zeik’s voice, he knew the orderly was missing the significance of this. He may not have been aware that the victim had been refusing food. Or had taken the incredibly bold step of drawing the plate inside her room, eating it, and then putting it out for collection.
Zeik started for the stairwell in a hurry, obviously thinking him a little cracked. “Oh, and Zeik —”
The orderly ground to a halt.
“Sorry for waking you.”
Zeik brightened, magnanimously. “Think nothing of it, Herr Doktor. Feel free, anytime.”
For the first time in five days, Herr Doktor curled up in the puritan chair and really slept. Still sound asleep when the day shift arrived, but no one dared to wake him. Orderlies and nurses tiptoed around his spot. At last Nurse Bosch decided to do something about it. But since she was not on speaking terms with Herr Junior Physician, she found Zeik to do the job, sending him up to the fourth floor with the words: “Maybe we should get a double bed for the both of you.”
Zeik chewed this over as he thumped upstairs. Could there be a conspiracy somewhere, its sole object the undoing of Orderly Zeik? Doctors and nurses in it together … ?
After much tugging and calling of his name, Herr Doktor finally came awake, smiling into Zeik’s face as if it were the loveliest face in the world. Then he shot a worried glance down the hall. Ja, the plate sat just where he left it…. Herr Doktor rose from the chair, dragging the orderly by the wrist: just to be sure, just to be safe. They uncovered the lid from the plate. The meal had been eaten. Devoured. He peered closely into the orderly’s soft apple eyes, asking:
“Well, I didn’t eat it. Did you, Orderly Zeik?”
“Certainly not, Herr Doktor!” said the orderly in protest. “As I distinctly recall, you found me asleep!”
Zeik caught his breath, shocked at his own frankness.
Herr Doktor ignored the lapse. “Well, that settles it then. The girl ate it.” He drew himself up proudly in front of her door and exclaimed, “Fräulein! I hope you enjoyed your dinner last night. I must admit I was getting worried. I shall return this evening as usual, but if you wish me to collect your chamber pot right now, I would be happy to do so.”
He waited ten minutes. As no chamber pot emerged, he took the empty plate back to the kitchen. On the way past the orderlies’ table, one of them turned to another and whispered something inaudible. The table rattled with laughter. The sound following him across the cafeteria all the way to the used-plate slot…. He had an image of himself hurling the empty plate back at them. But then he looked at the bare china in his hands. Carefully, he placed the girl’s ravaged plate as the precious thing it was, upon a heap of soiled dishes.
For many days the ritual of fetching the victim’s meals remained the same. Herr Doktor Jung set up permanent residency at the end of the fourth-floor hallway. How he managed his married life no one knew, but clearly he did manage it, for he always appeared in fresh clothes when he did rounds with Direktor Bleuler and company later in the morning.
“Nek
ken tells me young Fräulein has begun eating again. À good sign, no? When do you think you’ll be able to examine her?” This as Direktor Bleuler tugged wearily at his beard, gazing at him from under heavy eyelids, a weary gaze that said, Come, come, don’t waste our time with a lot of poppycock now.
"If God knows, he hasn’t told me, Herr Direktor. And if he knows, he hasn’t told her either. I wish he’d tell one of us.”
Direktor Bleuler ran a thumb and forefinger into the crease of his beard. A dour smile. “Well, don’t look at me, young fellow —the Almighty hasn’t been to my office all week.”
But suddenly the ritual did change. He noticed it immediately and was at a loss to account for it. Where once no plates went into the room while the girl refused to eat — now plate after plate vanished into 401 and none came out.
A casebook entry from that week: Fifth day since the change. Fräulein S has collected at least a dozen plates already. And while I can clearly see her chamber pot from the viewing slit, it appears virtually empty. I checked the garden below her window on the off chance she dropped her stools into the bushes. No luck. My guess is that a person eating sparingly would have perhaps one elimination every three or four days. Maybe once in five. But if she kept them in her room, we’d be smelling them in the hallway by now. The patient must be forcing her feces down the drain in the sink. I suppose this is possible to do a little at a time using your fingers. I have not had the heart to try it myself — [Entry broken off.]
Entry a day later:
Î tried it With my own, naturally, and at home. Emma was not as put out about it as she might have been, though a considerable amount of explanation proved necessary. The explanations proved beneficial, however, for they completely took my mind off the revolting nature of the task and I found the whole business of messing about with the stuff had a calming effect, like modeling clay. One stops noticing the smell, especially as the water rinses it off your fingers. Cold water is essential, as warm water only cooks it.