by Gene Brewer
I was puzzled. I hadn’t expected this. Had prot decided to throw Rob into the water, to force him to sink or swim? I quickly explained the situation to him—where he was, what had happened. He looked at me with a hint of amusement, just as prot might have done. When we left the little waiting room he was happy and relaxed, which was more than could be said for me.
On the way back to the hospital he played with the gizmos, waved at the staring passersby, seemed to soak up the excitement of the city, which he had never seen. “From now on, the whole world is your safe haven,” I told him, though it was obviously unnecessary. By the time we got “home” he was sound asleep, his head resting on Giselle’s shoulder.
The morning after the televised interview a pair of CIA agents were in my (Villers’s) office waiting for me. They demanded to speak with prot.
“I don’t know where he is,” I responded truthfully.
“You mean he’s gone?”
“Looks that way.”
They seemed dubious, but one of them suddenly came up with a notebook and scribbled something into it. He ripped out a page and handed it to me. It was a beeper number. “If he shows up again, let us know right away.” I almost expected them to insist that I eat the message, but they whirled around simultaneously and rushed out the door, as if all hell were breaking loose somewhere.
After they had gone I went to look for Rob. I found him in his room with Giselle. Both were reading or, perhaps, studying. They looked exactly like a couple of college students preparing for exams in a coed dorm.
I took a look at the stack of dusty books resting on Rob’s little table like old treasure chests about to be opened: Birds of the Northeast, Moby Dick, and several others. In his hands rested a recent tome by Oliver Sacks. As normal as apple pie, I thought, with no little satisfaction.
Giselle was taking notes from a book called Unexplained Mysteries. On the floor next to her chair was a typed manuscript, the first draft of her article about UFO’s.
“How are you feeling, Rob?”
“Never felt better, doc,” he assured me.
“I just stopped in to give you this,” I said, handing him the tape Karen had made of the talk show. “And to ask you whether you would be willing to submit to a few simple tests during your regular session tomorrow.”
“Anything you say,” he replied, without even asking what kind of tests they were.
I hurried out, late for a meeting, which dragged on and on. Though it was supposed to be a discussion about plans for the new wing, no one wanted to talk about anything other than prot’s TV appearance the previous evening. Having been through all of it before, I finally excused myself and returned to my office, where I called Robert’s mother. Confident that Rob would be around for a while, I told her of my guarded optimism about his prognosis and invited her to visit him and see for herself. She was somewhat hesitant about traveling alone, but said she would come if “that nice young girl” (Giselle, whom she had met on her previous visit to the hospital) would go with her.
I told her I didn’t think that would be a problem.
With that pleasant chore taken care of, I took a call from Betty. “Dr. Villers phoned yesterday while you were gone. He wanted to speak with prot. He said it was urgent. He called again later, but I couldn’t find prot—only Robert. I suggested he talk to Cassandra. He said it was too late for that.”
“It may be too late for prot, too.”
“That’s too bad. He sounded desperate.”
All the rest of that week we were inundated with calls to the 800 number. A few of the callers pledged money to the hospital. Some had a relative or friend they wanted admitted. Several producers from other talk shows wanted prot to come on their programs “and do that trick.” Most of those who telephoned, however, did not apply for admission of a loved one or contribute funds toward the new wing or make prot a job offer. Instead, they wanted to know where to call or write to him, when they would see him again, how to get to K-PAX.
A few reporters called as well, asking for prot’s life story and all the rest. Unable to convince them that prot had no “life story,” and perhaps no longer existed, I finally referred them to Giselle.
Then the letters started to pour in, thousands of them, most addressed to “prot, c/o Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY.” I didn’t open any of these, but I did take a look at some of the ones addressed to “prot’s keepers,” or the like. Some of these called him “the devil” (as Russell had at one time), and some even threatened him with bodily harm. Others thought he was a kind of Christ-like figure, “a messiah for our time,” who had come to “save us from ourselves.” Oddly, not one person saw him for what he really was—part of a mentally ill person who seemed to be on the road to recovery.
But prot made no appearance that week (much to Villers’s great dismay). I felt somehow betrayed. If he had, in fact, “departed” this world for good, he had done so without giving us any notice, something he had assured me he would not do. Still, I couldn’t help think of the last time he had “returned” to K-PAX, and the Robert he had left behind. Rob was a very different person this time, smiling and confident. Maybe that was all anyone could expect.
One of the things I would never forget about prot was his ability to communicate with the autistic patients. Perhaps that explains the dream I had the night after the talk show.
I was in what appeared to be a space capsule. I could see out some tiny windows into a shimmering blue sky. The cabin was further lit by some sort of instrument panel. It was dazzling. There were dozens of dials and computer screens, all aglow with green and amber lights.
Suddenly there was a tremendous noise and everything began to vibrate. I felt the force of gravity pulling me down and down and then, after a few minutes, the noise and vibration ceased and I was floating free, miles above the Earth, looking down at the most beautiful planet in the universe.
I was jolted by something, thrown far off course, blinded by a shadow blocking my view. The next thing I knew I was back on the launch pad, and the darkness was gone from the window. A giant head appeared. It was Jerry. He had given me a ride in his perfect model. A huge eye peered in at me, and his mouth opened in a toothy grin. It was wonderful—for a moment I understood him, understood everything!
But then I woke up and, as always, I understood nothing.
Session Thirty-one
The visit from the nation’s most popular psychologist was scheduled for Friday. His books, Folk Psychiatry and Clean Up Your Mess, have been on the best-seller lists for years. I was on the lawn waiting for Cassandra to notice me when word came that, unfortunately, some “urgent business” had come up and our guest was forced to cancel at the last minute.
For some reason this annoyed me a great deal. I blurted out to the nurse, “What an ass—well, the medical term is ‘anal orifice.’”
On the positive side, this gave me some unexpected free time to catch up on a lot of paperwork. But as soon as I sat down there was a call from a Dr. Sternik, the ophthalmologist Giselle had mentioned earlier, who badly wanted to examine prot’s eyes.
“Sure,” I said, “go ahead. If you can find him.”
* * *
The first thing I asked Rob after he sat down was what he thought of the tape of the television show starring his alter ego, prot.
He took a peach from the fruit bowl. “Weird. Very weird.”
“How so?”
“It was like watching myself, only it wasn’t me at all.”
“As I’ve told you before, prot is a part of you.”
“I understand that, but it’s still hard to believe it.”
“Have you seen him in the last couple of days?”
“Not since we left the TV studio.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Nope. Does that mean I’m ready to go home?”
“We’ll see.”
Someone tapped lightly on the door. “Come in, Betty! All right, Rob, I’m going to ask Bet
ty to give you a few simple tests. For your information, these are the same ones we gave prot five years ago. I want to compare the results, see if there are any differences, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Good. And after you’re through here, Betty will take you to the clinic so you can give us a blood sample. That will only take a minute. And Dr. Chakraborty wants to get an EEG, which is a simple, painless recording of your brain waves.”
“Fine.”
Both were smiling broadly when I left them alone. Betty loves to administer tests of any kind; Rob was happy just to be in control of himself. She and Rob would miss Russell’s funeral, but Betty said she didn’t like funerals— she would rather remember the decedent as he was—and Rob barely knew him, if at all.
It was raining and the service was held in the lounge. A bunch of folding chairs had been brought in and everyone was facing the open casket, which was lying on the magazine table. It was a simple pine box, which is not only the usual choice for indigent patients, but had long been Russ’s own wish as well, after we declined to find him a cave with a big rock for a door.
Chaplain Green made a beautiful speech about Russell and his eternal life in heaven, filled with golden streets and singing angels, and yes, hamburgers on Saturday nights. It almost made me wish I were joining him. Then it was the turn of those who knew him best.
Some of the long-term staff stood up to say how much they would miss him, and a few of the patients paid their final respects. Even former residents Chuck and Mrs. Archer had come to add a story or two, as did Howie and Ernie, who had spent years in this institution and knew him well. For my part, what I remembered best about Russ was his in-your-face style of preaching, spouting prodigious amounts of spittle along with the Scriptures. I reminded the gathering about his early days at MPI, the days of fire and brimstone. He was something to see then, with his sandy hair blowing in the wind and his gray eyes all ablaze, and you could always depend on Russell to be around to give us God’s opinion of the tiniest event. In later years he had mellowed somewhat, but he never rested in his quest for lost souls. And now, for the first time in his life, he was at peace. I stopped there, stunned for a moment by a sudden understanding of the attractiveness of suicide for some people. I only hoped that none of the patients followed the same line of thought.
After the service I mingled for a while with some of our former patients, all of whom were doing well. We discussed, with considerable nostalgia, their days at the hospital (it’s strange how even a stay in a mental institution can seem like a happy time in retrospect). Chuck, especially, seemed a changed man, chatting away without the slightest comment on the odor of anyone present. But it wasn’t until everyone was leaving that he said, “It was good to see prot again.” Confused by his crossed eyes, perhaps, I thought for a moment he meant to say “Russell,” but Mrs. A and Ernie and Maria all nodded enthusiastically.
“Hasn’t changed a bit,” Ernie declared.
“Was prot here?” I asked as calmly as possible.
“Didn’t you see him? He was standing at the back of the crowd.”
I said my goodbyes and returned to my examining room. Rob and Betty were still there, busily engaged in the testing process. Thinking that maybe our former patients had generated visions of prot from the rich loam of their imaginations, I went back to my office, where I placed a call to Virginia Goldfarb.
“No,” she said, “I didn’t see him. Why? Was he supposed to be there?” Same for Beamish and Menninger.
I ran to the lawn and checked with several of the other patients still milling about the gravesite. All of them had seen prot.
I wanted to get away from my desk, from the hospital, from everything. But I didn’t know where to go. I wandered around for a while, ending up in Villers’s office, where I occupied myself with correspondence and budget matters until I got a call from our new administrator, Joe Goodrich, a nice young man and quite competent, despite his limited experience. I could tell he had something he wanted to say to me, but was having a hard time doing it. Finally he blurted, “I just got a call from the New York Times. Klaus Villers killed his wife and then himself. Apparently it happened last night. They want you to fax them his obituary. In fact, Dr. Villers left a note requesting that you take care of it.”
I mumbled something and hung up. Though I hardly knew Klaus and Emma, I was profoundly saddened by this tragic news, and I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because it came so close after Russell’s death and prot’s apparent departure. Too much, too soon. I felt as if I were a spider at the bottom of a sink—no matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t get out. And prot wasn’t there to help me.
On Saturday I drove in and forced myself to spend the day processing those parts of Rob’s tests that Betty hadn’t finished. Chak had also stayed late on Friday to get the blood samples off to the lab for DNA analysis and typing, though we wouldn’t get the results for several weeks. I listened to a tape of La Bohème while I worked up the data. But I didn’t sing along or even hear much of it.
At first I didn’t believe the results, but I soon remembered that nothing about the case of Robert/prot could ever be routine. Here are the comparisons of some of Rob’s tests with those of prot, examined five years earlier:
In addition to the above, there were also slight differences in skin tone (fairness) and voice timbre. Robert and prot were two completely different people occupying the same body like a pair of Siamese twins.
As I looked over the data something kept flitting around my mind like a trapped butterfly trying to escape. Was it guilt about Klaus’s death? Finally, out flew an old adage with dull brown wings: Be suspicious of the patient who discharges himself, as Robert had begun hinting we should consider for him.
* * *
Will came into my office just as I was packing up to leave for what was left of the weekend. He wanted to talk about Dustin’s parents. I reminded him to finish his studies before he began his practice. But suddenly I felt a compelling need to confess my feelings of guilt about Klaus and Emma Villers. If I had tried to cultivate a friendship with him, I told Will, get to know him as well as some of his patients seemed to, maybe I could have done something. He listened intently to the whole thing, and when I was finished he said, “Sometimes you can’t do anything about a problem no matter how hard you try.”
“Son, I think you’ve got the makings of a fine shrink.”
“Thanks, Pop. Now, what about Dustin’s parents?”
I sighed, “Don’t worry—I’ll take care of it.”
“I wonder if parents aren’t the cause of half the mental problems in the world,” he mused.
“Damn near,” I sighed. “Prot would probably say we ought to do away with parenthood altogether.”
Session Thirty-two
The Monday-morning staff meeting began with a moment of silence for our departed colleague. After that I discussed my misgivings about Rob. By now everyone was aware that he was making excellent progress, and that there had been no appearances by prot (except, perhaps, to the patients at Russell’s funeral) for several days. Someone asked whether Robert, who showed no signs of psychosis whatever, wouldn’t do just as well in Ward One. I demurred: “Let’s wait to hear from Virginia and Carl” (Goldfarb and Thorstein were absent for Rosh Hoshanah).
Perhaps I was being overly cautious. I suppose everyone becomes more conservative as he gets older. I had, after all, been wary about Michael, who was doing very well as an EMS trainee, despite the fact that he had attempted suicide as recently as a few months earlier. And, thanks mainly to prot, Rudolph was also gone, Manuel was on the verge of departure, Lou had gotten through a very difficult delivery, and now Bert was making excellent progress as well. Maybe he had worked similar wonders with Rob.
After the brief meeting I went to see Bert, who unburdened himself of the whole story. After his girlfriend’s death, their unborn child kept growing and growing in his head like a kind of mental fetus. The headaches were excruciating. He kep
t everything bottled up inside for years, until he was well past forty, when his mother’s serendipitous discovery eventually triggered the cascade of events that sent him to us.
This is not unusual. Many nervous or other mental breakdowns result from a sudden eruption, like a geyser, of feelings long repressed. Most of us have something locked up inside, trying to break out. One of my former teachers once remarked that if science could find some way for the brain to let off this steam, a little at a time, there would be far less mental trauma in the world, and certainly in the hospitals. Unfortunately, so little attention is paid to mental health, even as part of a regular medical checkup, that such a goal has yet to be attained.
Bert told me how he had bought dolls and clothes and spent nearly every night of his adult life bathing his “daughter” (he had arbitrarily chosen the sex of the baby), and putting her to bed, taking care of her when she was “sick,” and all the rest. When he was finished, and the tears were over, I asked him again about adopting Jackie. By this time, the other patients had stopped whatever they were doing and drifted over to listen, and we all waited for the answer.
“It would be the happiest day of my life,” Bert blubbered, and I had no trouble believing him.
At that moment I heard something I had never heard in over thirty years of practice. The small group of patients that had gathered nearby broke into spontaneous applause. For a second I thought they were thanking me. But of course it was Bert (and prot) they were lauding, and I happily joined them.
Inflated with borrowed success, I headed for 3B. On the way there I thought hard about what prot had said and done to get Jerry to respond to him. It seemed simple enough—he just held his hand and gently stroked it, almost as if it were a bird or some small animal he was trying to calm.
I closed the door and eased over to where Jerry was finishing his replica of the space shuttle, complete with launch pad. Not wishing to disturb him, I crept closer.