The Children's War

by C. P. Boyko

  “In any event,” said Burris, “he must not have been getting enough oxygen for some of this time, because when they finally got him out he was blue, and they took him straight to intensive care.”

  Doctor Rubenand opened his mouth audibly, and put down his pen. “That,” he said, “is what I meant by ‘birth trauma.’”

  Rachel held Oxley more tightly, as if they were crossing a busy street.

  Doctor Rubenand prescribed some tests, which Rachel forgot or feigned to forget to take Oxley to. Burris was bemused and irate. “You are toying with our son’s health!” —But Rachel did not see it that way. The tests were only diagnostic, and she did not believe that anything was wrong with Oxley anyway. When Burris threatened to rearrange his schedule and take Oxley to the appointments himself, Rachel yielded. “Oh, there’s no point in our both going.”

  None of the tests were conclusive, but Burris was nevertheless convinced that he now had the complete picture. Through negligence, disorderliness, conceit, callousness, and unprofessionalism, Doctor Leahy, Doctor Paschava, and the staff at the hospital had subjected his wife and his son to birth trauma. Gradually he arrived at the decision that, to teach them a lesson, and to prevent such a thing from happening again, it was his duty to sue.

  The lawyers he interviewed were grandiose and discouraging. Hospitals, they said, had formidable legal departments; dozens of people would need to be deposed, thousands of pages of records and policy subpoenaed; the lawsuit could drag on for years, with no guarantee of victory. They all demanded sizeable retainer fees and a free hand; and Burris could not bring himself to commit.

  At last he appealed to a cousin’s brother-in-law, a man by the name of Lucrenzo Tabbat, who was reputed within the family to be a splendid litigator. He had carved out a successful practice representing himself against large corporations, who usually found it simpler and less costly to offer him a quiet settlement. He did not consider these nuisance suits, for he was a man who was genuinely and personally affronted by shoddy products, misleading solecisms, and implicit promises unfulfilled. Burris told him their story, and Lucrenzo’s interest was piqued. After all, doctors had deep pockets, and there was no question that the Kornoreks had a good case; if this wrong had been done to him, he would have chewed on it for years. The size of the undertaking was no deterrent, either, for vanity made him industrious. He asked for no retainer, but worked the only way that he knew how: by adopting Burris and Rachel’s cause as his own.

  Rachel did not cooperate with the lawyer, because she did not like him. He was scrawny, and wheedling, and had a face like a dried fig—and, as her friend Chelsea pointed out, he was a man: “Until women support women against the system of patriarchy that oppresses them, nothing will change, and justice, when not an outright travesty, will remain a mirage.” Rachel agreed; she did not approve of the lawsuit because she could not see how money changing hands between a few men would improve the lot of women or of babies. It would be far more effective, surely, to educate the pregnant woman directly, and empower her to take control of her own body and birthing. As for Lucrenzo, she felt towards him what she felt lately towards most men: an amused impatience, as if all their frantic exploits were only a kind of dirty frolicking in the garden, or building of model airplanes on the kitchen table—high-spirited but irrelevant and obstructive busywork. She secretly, and only half consciously, felt that no man, however vigorous, could have withstood the ordeal that she and every other mother had undergone.

  And though she felt the same kind of tolerant exasperation towards Chelsea, Alexis, and her other childless friends, she began again to attend their feminist rallies and their consciousness-raising sessions. The other women no longer treated her as a wayward pupil, but solicited her opinions and deferred to her experience. It was not just the presence of Oxley at these meetings that accorded her this authority, but something new in her face and bearing. She looked older than they remembered.

  Perhaps too she was less wayward than she had been. Certainly there was much in what the feminists said that, with the jargon removed, she could agree with. And though she might doubt the universality of this or that blanket denunciation, she needed only to picture Doctor Leahy or Doctor Paschava to admit that it applied to some men at least. When the others talked about “the system,” or “patriarchy,” or “the oppressors,” she brought to mind the hospital, or substituted for these abstractions the abstraction of the medical establishment, and in this way could participate in the conversation and share in the indignation.

  She enjoyed the storytelling portions of these meetings best. Although a few of the women used personal anecdotes to glorify themselves, to monopolize the floor, or to preface a political harangue, most of them were modestly and ingenuously candid as they described their power struggles at work, the double standards they encountered at school, the outmoded attitudes of their family, and the harassment they braved every day simply walking down the street. Rachel was both appalled and galvanized to discover that no relationship between a man and a woman, or indeed between a boy and a girl, was without its inequalities and exploitations. From the awkward, unwanted first kiss to the traditional postures of sex, and from the proprietary language of wedding vows to the patrilineal inheritance of property and name, the very fabric of society was woven from the symbolic or actual domination of the male over the female.

  She grasped this truth at arm’s length, not realizing that it applied also to her own life, until one night, awed by the soft-spoken courage of a young woman who had been raped, she felt compelled to share a story of her own. She intended to talk about Oxley’s birth, but found it necessary first to talk about the pregnancy, and could not do that without telling about Burris and how they had met. She and Burris had told this story many times; but tonight it did not sound funny or charming. She stumbled, repeated herself, and apologized. The more lightly she tried to treat the facts, the more heavily they weighed: An older man, in a position of trust and power, had used that position and that power to inveigle her into a romantic and then a physical relationship. “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she said. “I was actually quite smitten by him.” But she recognized, even as she uttered them, that her protestations were the more incriminating, because they more starkly revealed his influence over her. Her tale was unique only in how literally Burris had hypnotized her. In the end, she did not need to say, and no one needed to point out to her, that she too had been raped.

  She did not confront Burris with her discovery; indeed, by the time she returned home that night, she no longer quite believed it. But a seed had been sown.

  Rachel suffered toothache for a year because, as she explained to her roommates, she was afraid of dentists. “I don’t like pain,” she confided; and she was allergic to painkillers. The last time she had visited a dentist, years ago in high school, she had vomited into the anesthesia mask. Her mind did not remember the terror of asphyxiation, or the claustrophobia of being drugged and hemmed in by bristling instruments of torture—but her body remembered. Now, only when the pain of toothache became less bearable than the anticipated pain of treatment did she finally, with a convulsive effort, make an appointment with a new dentist chosen at random from the phone book. She was too mortified by her last ordeal to ever return to the old one—whose receptionist still sent yearly checkup reminders to her mother’s address.

  Doctor Burris Kornorek was dapper, formal, confident, handsome, and foreign. He was tall but he stooped slightly, as though from courtesy. He had the velvety voice and enunciation of a radio broadcaster. He moved with an attentive deliberation that his patients found reassuring. He was an excellent dentist, in fact, and he knew it. Unfortunately for Rachel, his clinic in no way betrayed this excellence. His waiting room was demoralizing, his examination rooms were bleak and cluttered with equipment, and his assistants, who were both in love with him, were curt and unwelcoming to young women. After having her mouth disparagingly inspected b
y one of these, Rachel asked to use the washroom, and fled.

  An hour later, she was lying in bed, clutching her jaw, and mentally composing an apology, when the telephone rang. Chelsea brought her the handset and whispered, “I think you’ve won something.”

  “Is this Miss Rachel Gibbons speaking? This is Doctor Burris Kornorek calling. I understand that you had to leave our office today rather suddenly, and I simply wanted to make sure that you are quite all right.”

  Moved by his concern and shamed by her fear, Rachel offered to pay for the missed appointment and to book a new one.

  “I can fit you in tomorrow afternoon, but what guarantee do I have that you won’t abscond again?”

  Rachel made a full confession. At the mention of her allergy, Burris felt a jolt of excitement.

  “To dislike pain is very natural,” he reassured her, “and very healthy. Suffering serves no useful purpose, and moreover is avoidable. There are, thankfully, alternatives to medication.” —“Okay,” said Rachel. —“For instance: though it is strangely disesteemed in this country, studies have shown, and my own clinical experience confirms, that in about eighty percent of people, hypnosis can be quite effective.” —“Okay.” —“You would like to try?” —“Sure. I mean, if you think it will work.” —“Excellent. Then I will see you tomorrow at four o’clock.”

  Only after she had hung up did she begin to worry that she was one of the unsusceptible twenty percent, and that this would only be discovered too late. Her anxiety persisted until four o’clock the next day, when Doctor Kornorek greeted her in the empty waiting room, and with a warm guiding hand ushered her in to his private office.

  “Here we will begin,” he said, sighing contentedly. “Here we will be more comfortable.” His equanimity was contagious. Even as he outlined the upcoming procedure, Rachel felt that they were discussing someone else; she felt more like his collaborator than his patient.

  “Very well. First we will try a simple relaxation exercise.” —“Sure.”

  He told her to close her eyes, to breathe deeply, and to relax. He counted slowly, and with many soothing asides, down from ten. He told her to hold out an arm, to lower it, and then to open her eyes. His smile showed that he was satisfied, and she felt a flicker of complacence.

  “We will have no difficulty,” he said. —“I’m hypnotizable?” she asked. —“In fact, you are hypnotized.”

  This surprised her, but she did not betray her surprise. She had imagined that hypnosis would feel somehow different—like being asleep, or wrapped in a fog, or submerged in a warm bath. Nevertheless, she had no reason to doubt him; he was the expert. While he spoke, she probed gingerly in her mind, trying to determine how exactly her new consciousness differed from her everyday state.

  “In the examination room, we will take you even deeper, and then we can begin. You will be aware of everything happening, but will experience no discomfort, pain, or distress. You will remain altogether comfortable and relaxed throughout. If by some chance at any time you do feel a little twinge of pain, just raise your left hand, and we will pause again to settle you. There will be no hurry. So. Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” she said—and was relieved to notice that her voice was rather husky . . .

  She followed Doctor Kornorek to the examination room, sat in the reclining chair, and closed her eyes. Again he counted down from ten; she strained to concentrate on his voice, to let it enter and subdue her. She heard his assistant enter the room and begin moving tools around on a plastic table. Doctor Kornorek put a gloved finger in her mouth. She could smell his aftershave. He prodded her bad tooth and a spark of electricity shot through her jaw, causing her to curl her toes. But she did not make a sound, and she did not raise her left hand.

  “Here is the culprit. We will start by tidying him up a bit.”

  Now her mind was racing. Had it worked? Was she indeed hypnotized? She no longer felt relaxed; should she speak up? However, he had said that she would feel everything, but not be distressed by it. She felt distressed now, didn’t she? Perhaps—probably—it was her own fault. Before she opened her eyes and embarrassed them both by admitting that she was not hypnotized at all, she should try first to calm herself, and to return to the state of detached and trusting calm that she had experienced in his office. Silently she counted down from ten, and then, when he began scraping her tooth with a pick, again from twenty.

  No discomfort, she repeated to herself; he had promised no discomfort. So whatever this feeling was, it could not be discomfort.

  She should have said something earlier. By not objecting or raising her hand when he had first touched her tooth, she had disclaimed any pain, and had in effect signed the contract agreeing that she was hypnotized, as Doctor Kornorek supposed. She could not renege now without making them both look foolish.

  She decided that she would wait till she could bear the pain no longer, then she would raise her left hand—only that. After all, he would not have given her that instruction unless he thought it might be needed. She could raise her hand and still be hypnotized.

  She realized then with dread that of course she was hypnotized. Never could she have submitted to this torture—having the rotten enamel scraped from the surface of her toothache with a metal pick!—without being hypnotized. All this fevered introspection and uncertainty was part of being hypnotized, perhaps an indispensable part: her mind was indeed, after all, colluding with the dentist to restrain her body. Painlessness had never been the goal; he was only concerned that she lie still. And she was cooperating. She would not, could not, lift her hand, any more than she would ever scream or kick or claw his face. She was trapped, entangled in the skein of her own impotent thoughts. She felt the presence, somewhere near but out of sight, of a vast, eternal, suffocating horror . . .

  “And spit,” said Burris cheerily. If only, he thought, the editors at the Northeastern Journal of Dentistry could witness this triumphant vindication of his method! For the moment, he did not even feel any bitterness, only satisfaction. He might never be recognized by the Association, might never win a single disciple; but let fate only bring him a regular supply of such perfect subjects, and he would be happy. He paused briefly to admire her supple stillness, her prompt responsiveness, and the strong, steady heartbeat evident in her carotid artery. Indulging in a whim of dominance, he lightly pricked the tooth’s nerve, and marveled again at the young woman’s total submission.

  Later, Rachel told Chelsea and Alexis that she could not recommend hypnosis. But as the days passed and her toothache faded, her recollection of the event mellowed. Nevertheless, she feigned illness when the day of her follow-up appointment arrived, and wriggled out of scheduling another. She avoided the dentist’s solicitous phone calls, which became less frequent after a month. But then, in the middle of exam week, he appeared at the door of her apartment when both her roommates were out. Bemused, she invited him in for tea.

  Burris had been unable to stop thinking about her. Fate had not brought him any new patients, and he had been unable to interest any of his old patients in hypnosis—not even after increasing the cost of anesthetic. His hygienist, Melinda, was happy to let him practice on her; but her teeth were immaculate, and provided no scope for his power over her. He daydreamed of Miss Gibbons, and mooned over her X-rays, which revealed to his hungry eyes countless opportunities for preventive intervention. As the weeks passed, his movements became less assured, and his stoop became a slouch. Formerly he had relished meeting his patients in the street or in the grocery store, deriving a secret, pleasurable superiority from his intimate knowledge of their oral cavities; now he scarcely cared to acknowledge them outside his clinic, seeing in each of them only an unsuitable subject for hypnosis.

  She was as lovely as he remembered. Her crinkled eyes, her uncertain smile, even the way she stood—legs crossed at the ankles, supporting an elbow with one hand and clutching her lapels with th
e other—all attested eloquently to her suggestibility. For five minutes he stifled his yearning with small talk; at last he inquired after the tooth.

  “It doesn’t hurt at all anymore,” she said. —“I am quite happy to hear it. Of course, very few complications ever arise from a filling. Those few that do, unfortunately, can be extremely subtle. You might not yourself know anything was wrong until it was too late.” —Rachel apologized for missing the appointment and offered to reschedule. “I’ll be much freer next week, once my exams are over.” —Burris pontificated upon examinations for a while, deploring their restrictiveness, conceding their usefulness, and beseeching Rachel to not be unduly intimidated by them. “Even professors make mistakes. Some exam questions can be very poorly worded . . .” Eventually he allowed himself to drift back to the matter of Rachel’s oral health. “Probably there is no need for you to come all the way to my clinic. After all, I am here now. If you have a few minutes to spare . . .”

  “Yes, of course,” said Rachel, taking an involuntary step back.

  “Excellent,” he said, and produced a pair of gloves.

  “But,” she stammered, “I should probably put these tea things away first, don’t you think?”