K-Pax Omnibus

by Gene Brewer

  “Sally and I never had sex—uh—sexual intercourse.”

  “What did you have?”

  “We just kissed and petted. That was all we did.”

  “Even after you were married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever find yourself with your clothes off?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How did you think that happened?”

  “They came off while we were kissing and petting.”

  “But nothing else happened?”

  “No.” Robert suddenly seemed less confident. He stared at his feet.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Do you know what sex is? How it operates?”

  Uncomfortably: “I have a vague idea.”

  “But you’ve never done it.”

  “No.”

  “Sally wasn’t interested?”

  “Oh, yes. She was.”

  “Didn’t you want to make love with her?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. We never—”

  “All right. Let’s not waste any more time. If you’re ready, I’d like to hypnotize you again.”

  He looked away.

  “Rob, this will probably be the last time. We’re very close to the heart of your difficulty. Do you trust me?”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled it harshly. “Yes.”

  “Good. Are you ready now?”

  He took another breath and nodded. Slowly, kicking and scratching all the way, he fell into a trance. I took him back to June 9, 1975. “Rob, you and Sally have just been married. Do you remember that moment?”

  “Of course. Our families were all there and it was a beautiful service.”

  “And after that?”

  “There was a reception in the church basement. Cake and punch and some cashews and blue candy in little silver dishes.”

  “Okay. The reception is over. What’s happening now?”

  “People are snapping our pictures.”

  “And after that?”

  “We’re leaving the church. Everyone is throwing rice at us as we run down the steps and out to the car.”

  “You bought a car?”

  “Yes. A ‘57 Ford Fairlane.”

  “Where did you get the money?”

  “We used our wedding money for the down payment.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’re driving away.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We don’t have enough money for a honeymoon, so we’re just going for a drive out in the country. It’s a beautiful spring day. It’s wonderful having Sally next to me with her head on my shoulder.”

  “I’m sure it is. All right, it’s early evening. Where are you now?”

  “The Hilltop House.”

  “What’s the Hilltop House?”

  “It’s a nice restaurant in Maroney. About fifty miles from Guelph.”

  “How is the dinner?”

  “Terrific. The best one we’ve ever had.”

  “What are you eating?”

  “Lobster. We’ve never had it before.”

  “Okay. Dinner is over. Where are you going now?”

  “We’re driving home.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Back in Guelph. A trailer park called Restful Haven.”

  “You have a trailer?”

  “Sally prefers to call it a mobile home.”

  “Do you own it or rent it?”

  “It was a present from Sally’s family. It’s a used one.”

  “All right. You’re home now. What’s happening?”

  “We’re going inside. I forgot to carry Sally over the threshold, so we’re going back out and I’m picking her up and carrying her in. She’s kissing me.”

  “What do you see, now that you’re inside?”

  “Somebody has put a box of diapers on the kitchen table. For a joke, I guess.”

  “Is Sally pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows about this?”

  “Probably everyone.”

  “You mean word gets around.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the father know?”

  “I don’t know who the father is. Maybe Sally told him. We never talked about it.”

  “What’s happening now?”

  “It’s starting to get dark. I’m not tired, but Sally wants to go to bed.”

  “Is she doing that?”

  “Yes. She’s in our little bathroom...now she’s coming out. She’s wearing a silk nightie. While she was in there I took off my clothes and got into bed.”

  “And is Sally getting in with you?”

  “Yes. Actually she’s jumping up and down on the bed and laughing.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “We have never had sex. I’ve never done it with anyone. Except—”

  “Yes, I know about Uncle Dave.”

  No response.

  “All right. What is happening now?”

  “Sally is snuggling up to me, rubbing her hand on my bare chest. She’s kissing my face and my neck. All of a sudden I’m very sleepy. I’m falling asleep.”

  “Rob? Are you asleep?”

  “Are you kidding? At a time like this?” His demeanor suddenly changed. He was alert, almost bugeyed. He seemed quite agitated. But it wasn’t prot. Or Harry.

  “Who are you?”

  “Never fear, Paul is here.”

  “Paul? You’re Paul? What are you doing here?”

  “Helping out.”

  “How are you helping out?”

  “Sally is horny as hell. She needs me. So does Rob.”

  “Rob? How does Rob need you?”

  “I’m showing Rob how to make love to his wife.”

  “But he’s asleep.”

  “Yeah, he always does that. But that’s not my problem.” He turned over and began to make kissing sounds.

  “All right, Paul. It’s an hour later. It’s all over. Sally’s asleep. What are you doing now?”

  “Just lying here. Sally’s head is on my shoulder. She is sound asleep. I can hear her breathing. I can smell her breath. Is that what lobster smells like?”

  “Aren’t you sleepy?”

  “A little. I’m just going to lie here and enjoy this until I doze off.” He was smiling.

  “How many times has this happened before?”

  “Not too many. Until now. It’s been hard to find any privacy anywhere.”

  “Paul, are you the father of Sally’s child?”

  He started snapping his fingers. “How’d you guess?”

  “It wasn’t too difficult. Tell me: Can you hear everything that goes on with Rob?”

  “Sure.”

  “Does he know about you?”

  Snap, snap, snap. “Nope.”

  “How often do you come out?”

  “Only when Sally needs me.”

  “Why not any other time?”

  “Why should I? I’ve got a pretty good deal, don’t you think?”

  “From your point of view, I suppose it is. Okay, just one or two more questions.”

  “Shoot.” Snappity snap snap.

  “When did you first make an appearance?”

  “Oh, I guess Rob was eleven or twelve.”

  “And he needed to masturbate?”

  “He’d freak out every time he got a hard-on.”

  “All right. One last thing: Do you know about Harry?”

  “Sure. Nasty little kid.”

  “All right. You lie there a while. It’s getting late. You are falling asleep.” Still smiling, he closed his eyes and the finger-snapping stopped. “Now it’s morning. Time to get up.”

  His eyes opened, but he was no longer smiling.

  “Rob? Is that you?”

  He yawned. “Yes. What time is it?”

  “It’s still early. Is Sally there with you?”

&
nbsp; “Shh. She’s sleeping. God, she’s beautiful.”

  I lowered my voice. “I’m sure she is. Now we’re going to come forward in time. Imagine a calendar whose pages are turning rapidly forward. It’s 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995. We’re back in the present—September 13, 1995. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  I woke him up. He looked tired, but not nearly so exhausted as he had been after the previous session. “Rob, do you remember anything that just happened?”

  “You were going to hypnotize me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you?”

  “Uh-huh. And I think we’ve got most of the puzzle put together now.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” He seemed greatly relieved, though he didn’t yet know what the picture looked like.

  “I’m going to tell you something that you might find very disturbing. Please remember at all times that I’m trying to help you deal with your very understandable grief and confusion.”

  “I know.”

  “And remember that you can do or say anything that comes to mind. You are in your safe haven here.”

  “I remember.”

  “Good. Most of what we’ve learned about your past has come about through hypnosis. That’s because when a person is hypnotized he is able to recall many things that his conscious mind has repressed. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. I’ve hypnotized you several times now, and each time you told me some things about your past that you have consciously forgotten. Primarily because they are too painful to remember.”

  Robert seemed to freeze for a moment and, just as suddenly, thawed. It became clear to me then, if it wasn’t before, how much he wanted to get well. I felt enormously gratified. “At some point I’m going to let you hear the tapes of all the sessions we’ve had so far. For now I’m just going to summarize everything we’ve learned to this point. If it gets too rough, just stop me and we’ll pick it up some other time.”

  “I trust you. Please tell me what happened, for God’s sake.”

  I told him the whole story, beginning with his burning his hand on the stove, the lumbering cow, about his father’s accident and hospitalization, and about Uncle Dave and Aunt Catherine. He listened with the most rapt attention until Uncle Dave came down the stairs. At that point he shouted “No!” and buried his face in his hands. A moment later he lifted his head. I was sure it would be prot, or maybe someone else. But it was still Rob. As they used to say in the movies, he had “passed the crisis.”

  He asked me to go on. I told him about Harry. He shook his head as if he didn’t believe it, but then he nodded for me to continue. I brought up the subject of his father’s death and the first few appearances of prot, on up to his junior year of high school and his first date with Sally, her pregnancy, their wedding, and Paul. Again he wagged his head, but this time he merely stared off into space as if testing the logic behind it all. “Paul, you rotten son of a bitch!” he blurted out, before breaking into a single, loud sob. That was what I had been waiting to hear.

  “Paul is the father of your child.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fact is that you were Rebecca’s father. Paul is you. So is Harry. And so, believe it or not, is prot.”

  “That’s pretty hard to swallow.”

  “I think you’re ready to try. I’m going to make a copy of all the tapes and I want you to listen to them. Will you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. It would be best if you did it here and left prot outside. I don’t have any patient interviews Friday morning. I can ask Betty to bring you up then. Will you come and listen to the first three or four? If that works out you can hear the rest later on.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’m also going to give you some reading material. A few case histories of multiple personality disorder.”

  “I’ll read them, I promise. I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Good.”

  “Only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Only—what happens next?”

  “There are still a couple of loose ends to tie up. We’ll try to do that next session. Then the real work begins.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “It’s called integration. We need to bring you and prot and Paul and Harry into one single personality. That won’t be easy. It will depend a great deal on how badly you want to get well.”

  “I’ll do my best, Dr. Brewer. But...”

  “Yes?”

  “What will happen to them? Will they just disappear?”

  “No. They’ll always be with you. They’ll always be a part of you.”

  “I don’t think prot’s going to like that.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I will. Right now he’s hibernating again.”

  “All right. I want you to go back to your room and think about everything we’ve talked about.”

  He turned to go. Then he stopped and said, “Dr. Brewer?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have never been so happy in my life. And I don’t even know why.”

  “We’ll try to find out together, Rob. One last thing. Except for my home in Connecticut you have been able to talk to me only in this room. From now on I want you to consider all of Ward Two your safe haven. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll sure as hell try.”

  Our time had run over. I was late for an executive committee meeting and I couldn’t have cared less.

  It wasn’t quite that easy, of course—it was prot who returned to the wards. But I got a call from Betty that evening. She, in turn, had been phoned by one of the night nurses. Robert had made his first appearance in Ward Two. It happened in the lounge while he was watching a chess match. He kibitzed! It definitely wasn’t prot, who took no part in such “trivia.” He didn’t stay out long—he was just testing the waters—but it was a glorious beginning.

  Just before the scheduled trip to the zoo I made it a point to seek out prot, for two reasons. First, I wanted to make certain that it was he, and not Robert, who was going. And second, I wanted to ask him about Russell, who seemed to be languishing in the hospital, though the doctors couldn’t find much wrong with him.

  I found him on the lawn surrounded by his usual coterie of patients and cats. As always, there was a certain amount of grumbling when I asked them all to excuse us, though everyone was eagerly awaiting the visit to the zoo and seemed to be in good spirits. He winked at them, promising he would rejoin them in a few minutes. “What’s wrong with Russell?” I asked him when we were alone.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? He won’t eat. He won’t even get out of bed.”

  “That often happens when a being is preparing to die.”

  “Die? You just said nothing is wrong with him.”

  “That’s right. Every being dies. Perfectly normal procedure.”

  “You mean he wants to die?”

  “He’s ready to leave EARTH. He wants to go home.”

  “Uh—you mean heaven?”

  “Yep.”

  I spotted Jackie somersaulting on the lawn. She, too, was happily anticipating an adventure. “But you don’t believe in heaven, do you, prot?”

  “No, but he does. And with human beings, believing is the same as truth, isn’t it?”

  “Can you help him?”

  “Help him die?”

  “No, dammit, help him live!”

  “If he wants to die, that’s his right, don’t you think? Besides, he’ll be back.”

  I thought for a moment he was talking about the second coming. Then I remembered his theory about the collapse of the universe and the reversal of time. I threw up my hands and walked off. How do you reason with a crazy person?

  As I was trudging back into the building I met Giselle and some of the nurse
s and security guards coming out. They all grinned and waved, delighted, like the patients, to be having a rare outing, away from all this. I wouldn’t have minded the trip myself, despite the heat and humidity, but I had to attend some meetings for Villers, whose wife was having surgery in the same hospital where Russell was calmly awaiting the end.

  Rudolph and Michael were both discharged that morning, and I was more than elated to sign the release papers and escort them to the gate. Not as happy as they were, though. Particularly Mike, who was to take an EMS orientation class the following week. Rudolph, a totally different person from his former self, shook hands and wished me good luck with the rest of the patients. “But don’t let prot get away,” he admonished. “He’s the best doctor you have.”

  That same evening, after everyone had returned from the zoo, Rob asked Dustin (who was perfectly normal at the chessboard) for a game. Rob lost that battle, and the next several as well, but he appeared, at last, to be winning the war.

  I got another report that Villers had spent a rare night at MPI, sitting up until dawn talking with Cassandra. He was unshaven and not wearing a tie, something I myself had never seen. I couldn’t believe he was only looking for racing tips, and I wondered whether his wife’s illness might not be more serious than he let on. I made a mental note to ask him about it as soon as I found time.

  Session Twenty-eight

  The Bronx Zoo is one of the premier animal-holding facilities in the United States. Occupying more than 250 acres in the heart of a major metropolitan area, it is the biggest urban sanctuary in the world. Noted for its attempts to preserve many of the planet’s endangered species, it houses such diverse specimens as Père David’s deer and the European bison, not to mention a variety of rare rodents, snakes, and insects.

  The original idea had been to take only those patients from One and Two who were deemed capable of handling the trip. Prot vetoed this, pointing out that permanent harm could come to those who wanted to come but were not permitted. Thus, about thirty-five of our inmates boarded the bus that morning, all those (except for the residents of Ward Four) who had expressed a desire to go. They were divided into groups of six, each accompanied by three staff members—a clinical trainee, a nurse, an orderly or security guard—and a zoo volunteer.

  Giselle reported to me the following morning that the outing was a tremendous success for everyone concerned, greatly boosting morale for the staff as well as the patients, and plans were soon in the works for a series of four trips a year: the zoo, the Museum of Natural History, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.