Patient_Crew

by Hannah Kaplan

  Over the next few hours, Marla gave me a crash course in psychiatric diagnosis. She agreed there were certain people who heard voices that were properly diagnosed as schizophrenic. She also explained that there were many other patients who heard voices and are not mentally ill. She was convinced that I fit into the latter category and saw me as a link between her theory, and fact. I felt that I was no different from Zeffie and Momma—bat shit crazy. Marla considered the voices real, and believed they served a purpose. I would not attempt to explain the sum of Marla’s medical hypothesis and conclusions. My mental health is not meant to be the subject of this story. I will tell you, that I have never been formally diagnosed, and that I have no doubt (in theory) that I am mentally ill. A diagnosis is a label. Labeling is limited, inconsistent and at best, an unnecessary evil.

  “These voices brought us together. It’s our job to figure out what the purpose is,” she said. “Will you agree to be my test subject?”

  “Test subject? Like a lab rat? Are you going to drug me, stick needles and stuff in me?” I was standing and ready to run.

  “No, no, no,” she laughed, “just the opposite actually. I’ll set you up in a room at my house so that I’m not forced by any laws to give you medication. I practice behavior modification. I live with my husband Tim. He’s a great person…works for the government. I’ve treated other patients in my home. I’ll admit it’s a little unorthodox, but it’s better than being committed. If I take you to a hospital, you will be committed.”

  “Government?” I put my shoes on. “You want me for a government experiment?”

  She laughed again, so hard that I could hardly understand her words. “Oh heaven’s no—this is not—you will not be a government experiment. Tim works for the CIA, in foreign affairs. He has nothing to do with my work, other than his undying support for it, and me. You should think about it while I check my messages,” she laughed again.

  She surely does laugh a lot, I thought. What else was there to think about? I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I went home. That was not a choice. My head seemed quiet in that moment, but I knew it wouldn’t last. If there were even the slightest chance she could make the voices leave I had to stay.

  I moved in with Tim and Marla Todd the next day, therapy began immediately. Marla quit her hands-on work at the clinic and became a silent partner in the business, this way she could dedicate all of her time to me, which she did with fervent passion, staying with me all day everyday for two years. She sat in a chair beside my bed and watched me gaze into space repeating out-loud what the voices (only I could hear) said. The sessions, as Marla called them, were constant in those first years. She’d study scores of cases, medical theories, and specialists in the behavioral sciences but would always conflate my condition with the books written by Betsy Holder. Marla was awed by Betsy’s grasp on my condition and hung on her every word, using all of her suggestions. It was early evening after a lengthy session that Marla pounced on my bed laughing like a hyena, and began to explain her recent discovery.

  “I’ve been keeping a chart of the sessions. I’ve kept track of their length, and the space of time between them,” she said.

  “You mean the crazy shit my imaginary friends say over and over and over? My God when will they stop? When will whatever you are doing to me work? How long will this last? Isn’t there a pill I can take? I need a break! I want it gone!” I jumped out of the bed where I’d been lying flat in a self-induced semi-catatonic state speaking each phrase out loud that the now five voices in my head repeated, over and over, word for word. “I want them gone and I want to go home! This is not the kind of life I ever wanted to live! Who wants to live like this? I want to go home.” I didn’t know whether or not I had a home. Pop had died eight months after I left, and Albee died a few months later. I would have never known if not for Tim keeping up with the news in Sunny. I had not communicated with anyone, but no matter how wonderful Tim and Marla had been this was not home. As usual, Marla didn’t react to my outburst.

  “Twenty-eight months ago when you first arrived the voices were talking sixteen out of every twenty-four hours. When you started speaking what they say—out loud—it went down to fourteen out of every twenty-four hours. When we started recording the sessions, they decreased by four more hours. Today,” she stopped took in a deep breath and smiled through her tears. “Today, I not only recorded what they said I transcribed it. Guess what the results were?” There was that laugh again.

  “Please spare me the suspense.”

  “You go right ahead and be a party pooper, but my guess is that you are grumpy because of all the sleep you’ve had today,” she was too perky for anyone’s good. “The voices have been active for five hours. If I could write faster, it would have been half that. You know what this means?”

  “No,” I said. “What does this mean?”

  “This is a monumental discovery,” she said with pride. “We now know what it is they want. You can write it twice as fast.” She held my hands in hers.

  “What do they want?” I asked pulling my hands away.

  “They want you to write what they say, silly,” she giggled. “When I wrote, they stopped being repetitive. When all of them have had their say they are finished.”

  “How long between the last two sessions?” I asked.

  “Three hours,” she said. “But that number will be raised. Not only that, but I think—no—I know it’s the solution to lessening their activity.”

  From that moment on, when the voices began to speak I sat on the floor with a pad of paper propped up on each leg. With a pencil in each hand I transcribed what they said, simultaneously, two at a time. After writing what they say, they go to the back of my head and hum, allowing me the freedom to go on with the rest of my day.

  Time went by at a steady pace as the voices in my head grew to seven. I spent my days always prepared for dictation. I was able to get my G.E.D. through Internet courses, and Marla (as my physician) monitored the test. I studied Marla’s library of books and learned as much as anyone would want or need to know about how the mentally ill brain works. When I became bored with those books, I would read Tim’s on the criminal brain. I learned nothing about the normal brain. The voices continued their daily chatter, paying no attention to my needs. They talked when they wanted to talk; I had no control. Each session was a different phrase, song, lecture and so on. Some sessions lasted hours some minutes. I no longer tried to be attentive to what they said. It bored me. When they talked, I went to an empty space deep within my mind. While the rest of my senses were tending to the voices and their needs, I was in a place of my own making, my solitude. I began to venture outside the house and it’s grounds after five years. The panic I felt agitated me. I imagined every eye on me watching my every move waiting for me to show the crazy.

  “Everything you’re feeling is normal,” Marla said. “This is your first public encounter since hearing the voices. Firsts are scary for everyone.”

  “What happens if they want to talk, and we’re out?” I asked.

  “Never go out unprepared. We put notepads and pencils in your bag,” she said.

  “So let’s say we’re picking up some groceries and in the middle of the dairy isle one of them starts talking, then another chimes in. Am I supposed to sit down right there next to the milk and start writing?” I chuckled. “Do you think that would draw attention?”

  Marla burst out laughing, “I can see the crowd gathering now. Oh, God help us.” She wiped away the tears her laughter had caused. “We need a signal.”

  “Like what?” I didn’t find as much humor in the probable scenario as Marla.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What if you whisper something to me like it’s getting loud in here; that’ll only work if you’re close by. If we are separated, but can still see each other, put your fingers in your ears and I’ll know what’s happening. Find a bathroom or go to the car and wait for me, whichever is faster. If you’re alone do
the same just be sure to lock the doors.”

  When we went out Marla made sure I had a car key, and I made a habit of scoping out the nearest bathroom. Unfortunately, the voices did come forward about forty percent of the time. Nevertheless, we went out together at least once a week. I learned my surroundings, acquired a driver’s license and Tim bought me a car. I never went far from the house when I was alone. On those days, I would drive to a nearby park and sit on the swings dreaming of what life might have been like with Jim. We would have a house on the land. Vicky would be our closest neighbor. Jim would wake up with the roosters and give me a kiss before pulling up his boots. I would make a breakfast of fresh eggs, and home baked bread. We would have had a future and planned for a family. Our life together was grand in my dreams, but I had no illusions of that dream ever coming true.

  Marla began to show a greater interest in reading the sessions and putting them in a certain order. She never suggested I should read them, nor was that something I wanted to do. I had no interest in the voices.

  “You need to name them,” she said after an extremely long session.

  “What?”

  “I said,” she spoke louder. “You need to name them.”

  “I heard what you said. I just don’t understand why you would say it.” I stretched my legs, fingers, and aching back.

  “My point is that, well, um,” Marla hedged.

  “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking, you’re going to anyway so let’s just cut to the chase. I’m starving and I’d like to catch some TV before it gets too late.” I stood in my arms crossed leg out defiant pose daring her to speak the wrong words.

  “I’ve been reading your transcripts a bit more seriously over the past month. I believe they—your voices—have something important to say, and I need to know who is saying what in order to put their phrases together. I hear rhyming, but I believe it’s from two different sources,” she scratched her head and fumbled through the notebooks. “There are statements and poems and demands and then just lists of numbers. Wouldn’t it be easier to understand what they were saying? We could give each of them a name to reflect their own unique personalities?”

  I turned away from her, stomped into the kitchen, and made a snack. I walked by Marla and her pile of notebooks on my way back to the bedroom, and noticed she had typed the sessions, and written commentary beside them. “You’re writing a book about me?” I asked. “Is that why you want me to name them? For your book?”

  “What did you expect?” she said. “I never lied to you. I told you that you were a test subject. I've never lied to you”

  “You never said you were going to write a book about me!” I yelled.

  “It’s not about you,” she said. “It’s about Patient: Crew. Don’t you think that’s better than Patient: Shanna Green? No one will ever know it’s you. You have to trust me on this. I’m protected by the law.”

  “Trust isn’t given it’s earned!”

  “Surely I’ve earned it by now,” she remained calm. Her tone was steady, flat, and devoid of emotion. I was her patient, she the Doctor.

  “Maybe it’s time I left. I should leave now so your book won’t have an ending. Who in the hell wants to read about a crazy bitch who hears voices anyway?”

  “Do you have any idea how many people you could help?” Marla asked. “What if other people who hear voices can write it down, the same as you do, and have the freedoms you’ve acquired because of it? Don’t you want to help others that are like you?”

  “What in the hell is going on in here?” Tim asked as he walked in on our argument. “You’re going to wake the dead for Christ sake.”

  “I’m done with this,” I said and left while Marla attempted to explain the situation to Tim. After slamming the bedroom door behind me, I sat on the bed eating my snack and accepting what was being asked of me. She wanted me to make it personal. I had been successful at distancing myself from the voices for the better part of seven years, and now she was asking me to name them like pets. If I named them I would have to know them, and I did not want to know them. I wanted them to go away. I wanted to hate them as much as they’d caused me to hate myself.

  I was able to finish my snack before the voices came forward again. As my hands began to write I closed my eyes and left realty. I let myself see the relationship with Marla. She’d nurtured me and allowed me to exist in a semi normal state of being. I was not a prisoner; still she controlled my every move. Free to leave, but unprepared for life without her. The session filled forty-four pages and lasted two hours. I put the notebooks down and thought about where I would be without her. Without her, I would have been sent to an asylum or worse, if there were anything worse. Would I have known to write what they say?

  “Shanna,” Marla knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”

  “It’s your house, do what you want.” She came in and sat at the foot of the bed. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I said.

  “I should have discussed the book with you. We’re even Steven.”

  “Are you still going to write it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “We would have never come so far with your case if not for the books Doctors have written. You need to understand and trust that I would never put you in any sort of danger. No one will ever know the book is about you unless you want them to know.”

  “Never.”

  “Then, they won’t. I promise.”

  I began to explain each voice. She listened and took notes while I named them. “The Poet always rhymes, everything he says is poetry. Then there’s The Singer, he sings everything, and some of it rhymes. Sometimes he makes up music, and sometimes he uses music anyone would know, but with different lyrics. The Professor is the technical one he talks like a teacher. The one that says cool, and groovy man sounds like an old strung-out hippy. When I started writing Joseph started speaking. I think he’s their leader. The last one preaches so he’ll be The Preacher.” There was an uncomfortable pause when I’d finished.

  “Is that it?” she asked. “Is that all of them? Six?”

  “There’s another. We can call her Mother because she’s the only woman.”

  “We need a vacation.” Marla stood up, gathered her notes and headed out of the room.

  Tim wanted to go to Hawaii. Marla wanted Galveston. They forced me to be the tiebreaker. Since I had never been out of Texas or on a plane, I chose Galveston by car. Tim accused the women of having an alliance. We left on a Friday morning and by six that evening we were on the beach. The sun was setting as we finished our picnic dinner, and Marla topped off her glass of wine.

  “Whoa. Whoa,” Tim said.

  “What’s wrong?” Marla asked.

  “That’s your third glass.”

  “So?” Marla quizzed.

  “So maybe we should take it easy. I’m a federal agent,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just saying.”

  “You’re always just saying,” Marla laughed as she got the last word. “You and your badge are on vacation.”

  That is what I loved about Tim and Marla. They argued but never fought; they bickered at each other without raised voices and angry tones. Marla told me they had met in college. Tim said it was love at first sight. Marla claims to have stalked him for two years before he got up enough nerve to ask her out. Tim joined the Army Special Forces, and Marla continued her medical education and became a Psychiatrist. Tim served his time in the army, retired and became a C.I.A. agent.

  After my second glass of wine, the crew came forward with a vengeance demanding immediate attention. Marla saw it. Tim was confused. I was searching for my writing tools. When the session ended the setting sun had been replace by a rising moon. Marla was still next to me on the blanket. Tim was gone.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “Two hours.”

  “Where’s Tim?”

  “He went back to the room.”

  “Spooked?” I asked, knowing Tim had never witnessed a session in progress.<
br />
  She nodded. “He knows what you do. He wasn’t shocked, but there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.”

  Tim and I were far from what one would call close. We had a pleasant, cordial relationship. We joked with each other, and both liked to watch the Cowboys play football. He was fun to be around when he was around. He traveled at least once a month and spent several weeks at a time overseas. I never asked him about his job, or the C.I.A. He never asked me about the voices. We were comfortable with each other, and the last thing I wanted to do was screw it up.

  “Nothing ever stays the same,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Marla asked. “Nothing has changed. Tim is, and will be no different with you than he was before.” When Marla and I returned to our suite Tim was there to greet us.

  “Are you ok?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You?”

  “I’m good.” Nothing else was said. Tim remained the same.

  3.

  Marla’s first book was published without fanfare in our eighth year. She signed her share of books at the local bookstores, and her sales were fair on Amazon. Tim and I were proud of her, and her first commercial publication. She bought a new car and took us all on a shopping spree with the first royalty check. Ten months later her editor called to say the publisher wanted another book. He said the first book was in its second printing, and it was time to plan the next because of its growing popularity. The editor also insisted on her including at least one hundred pages of the patient sessions.

  “Why do they want more of the sessions?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Marla said. “Tim’s on the internet trying to pinpoint a reason. My editor said they wanted more of the sessions that’s all I know.”

  “Who exactly are they?” I asked. “And why the sessions? Did they say sessions, or did they say writings?”

  “Hold the phone Agent Green,” Marla laughed. “Tim, or should I say your partner, has already grilled me. Jeez you two are cut from the same cloth.”