by Gene Brewer
He stared at me in some amusement. “Well, if you ain’t, why do you teach your children the ‘glories’ of destroying your ‘enemies’?”
“I didn’t teach my children—”
“You sent them to school, didn’t you? They watched TV, didn’t they? You even took them to Gettysburg! What were they to think about all those heroic battles in all those wars?”
I gazed at him sitting in the dim light, one of his legs drawn up under him disarmingly. “Tell me—did Robert have a set of toy soldiers?”
“I saw some of them on my first visit.”
“That’s the only time?”
“Yep.”
“Later on—did he have any problem with the military?”
His eyebrows came up. “How on EARTH should I know?”
“He never mentioned anything about wanting to go into the military or, maybe, ways to keep out of it?”
“Nope. Never did.”
I made a note to find out whether a friend or relative of Rob’s had died in Vietnam. Or perhaps the killer of his wife and daughter had been wearing part of a military uniform when Robert encountered him.
As prot sank his teeth into another pear I asked him how he felt about being back at MPI. “You’ve added some new patients since I was here—interesting beings in every ward!”
I reminded myself to follow up on this appraisal as soon as time permitted. “Dr. Chakraborty tells me you’re still in excellent shape for a man your age.”
He smiled. “I told you that—remember?”
I didn’t argue the matter. Mainly I had wanted to get a blood sample to compare with an earlier one, which suggested, unless someone had gotten the tubes mixed up (this happens more often than you might imagine), that his DNA was quite different from Robert’s. In any case, we would have the results in a few weeks.
“You remember Steve, my son-in-law?” I asked him.
“Sure Ah do. The astronomer.”
“He tells me there’s another planet orbiting K-MON and K-RIL. Is that right?”
“No. That’s not right.”
“It’s not??”
“That’s what I said. In fact, there are eight others. Most are too small to detect from EARTH with the primitive methods you insist on using.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about these planets before?”
“My dear sir, you never asked.”
“Well, are any of them inhabited?”
“I assume you mean by people?”
“By life of any kind.”
“Nope. Except for the occasional visitor, of course.”
“In other words, your solar system is very similar to ours.”
“Naturally.”
“Don’t you find that interesting?”
He ignored the implication of this astute observation. “Not particularly. For your information, doc, and that of your astronomer relatives, most solar systems around the GALAXY conform to this pattern. But only about one PLANET in five hundred supports the kind of life you’re talking about.”
I smiled at him, perhaps a bit too knowingly. “Just for the record, though, do all of those solar systems have nine planets?”
He ignored the condescending grin, too. “No, and neither does yours. Many STARS have no PLANETARY COMPANIONS at all. Others have a hundred or more. The average is about a dozen. Not counting all the little rocks you call ‘asteroids,’ of course.”
“Did you say the Earth doesn’t have nine planets?”
“There are a few out beyond PLUTO you haven’t found yet.”
There was no way to argue this point, so I let it drop. “Hear anything from Rob?”
“Not a peep.”
“And you still have no idea where he might be?”
“Nary a clue.”
“Could you find him if you wanted to?”
“Maybe. But he obviously doesn’t want to be found, does he?”
“Prot, I’m going to ask you another favor.”
“Here we go again.”
“I’m going to ask you to look hard for him. And when you find him, to give him this message: Tell him I won’t bother him right now; Giselle and I just want to get some information from him. Whether he wants to stay in graduate school, for example. After that he can go back to wherever he’s been keeping himself. Will you do that?”
“Pretty devious trick if you ask me, doc.” He crunched up and swallowed the last of a core. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, prot. I appreciate that.”
“No problemo.” With a straight face he added, “Where do you suggest I look?”
I studied him, not knowing whether he was joking or not. Sometime during the middle of a sleepless night, I had gotten a feeble idea. I told him I would like to speak to Paul now.
“Should I think pleasant thoughts or something?”
“Sure, if you like. Think about sailing over K-PAX in a balloon or pitching to Babe Ruth or something.” He closed his eyes and smiled happily, for all the world as if he were in the middle of some high adventure.
I waited for a moment. “Paul? Will you come forward please?” (Paul was the alter ego who first appeared when Robert reached puberty and, because of his earlier abuses, was unable to handle the sexual impulses of normal adolescence, for which prot was of no help whatsoever. He went on to volunteer his services with Rob’s late wife, Sarah.)
Prot shifted slightly in his chair, but Paul made no appearance.
“You might as well come on out, Paul,” I told him. “I can bring you forward with hypnosis any time I want.”
I wasn’t certain of that, but Paul was convinced, apparently. His eyes slowly opened and he stretched lazily. “Oh, hello, doc. How are things?”
I gazed into his eyes. Like prot’s they were playful, mischievous. “You remember the last time we chatted? It was a couple of years ago.”
“Like it was yesterday.”
“What have you been up to since that time?”
“Not much.”
“You haven’t made an appearance since Rob left the hospital?”
“Only a couple of times a week.”
I was somewhat taken aback by this matter-of-fact reply. “Really? What do you do when you come out?”
“Oh, this and that. Try to satisfy Giselle’s needs, for the most part. Don’t let that innocent look fool you—she’s a tiger in bed. Or tigress . . . ?”
I was crestfallen. If Paul was, in fact, assuming Rob’s conjugal duties at this late date, he had probably been doing so in 1995. In that case, was Robert in on the deception? Why would he want to pretend that he was making such terrific progress when he was, in fact, still as miserable as ever? Had he been using his apparent “recovery” to distract us from something even worse than his profound sexual dysfunction?
There was nothing to do but take things as they came. “Are you aware of everything Rob has been up to during the last two years?”
“More or less. He studies a lot. Dull stuff. I usually sleep when he does that. Love to sleep.”
“Bully for you,” I said enviously. “But you’re aware of what’s going on with him most of the time—is that right?”
“Okay. Okay. I have eavesdropped on Rob’s private life. I need to be ready if he fails to live up to his obligations. You understand.”
“Yes, I think I do, finally.” In fact, I felt like a damn fool, and almost said so. “Anything else to report? Anything you’ve seen or heard that his doctor ought to know about?”
He scratched his chin and contemplated the ceiling. “Can’t think of a thing, doc. All of his equipment seems to work okay.”
“What about last Thursday? Were you aware that Rob called on prot to return?”
“Sure—I couldn’t miss something as obvious as that.”
“What was he doing at the time?”
“Giving the kid—my kid—a bath. He’s a slippery little bastard.”
“Anything happen while he was doing that? Did Rob suddenly
become ill, or did he cry out, or faint—anything like that?”
“Not a thing. All at once prot was there and Rob wasn’t.”
“Who finished the bath?”
“Prot, I s’pose. What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts on that?”
He pondered this. “Not really.”
“Well, do you know where Rob went?”
“Nope. When this happens he can stay away for ages, damn him.”
“Why ‘damn him’?”
“Are you kidding? No Rob, no pussy wussy.”
“Paul, when did Rob first call you?”
“He was—I don’t know—twelve or thirteen, I guess. Something like that.”
“And you’ve been around ever since?”
“From time to time.”
“Exactly how often did he call you, and under what circumstances?”
“I told you—he needed someone to take over whenever he got an erection and had to do something about it.”
“With girls?”
“With himself, mostly.”
“And later on, with girls.”
“Nope. Only one girl. What was her name again? Oh, yeah. Sarah. Only he called her Sally. A little dippy, but a good lay.” His smile was not like prot’s—there was an element of sarcasm in it. “Different from Giselle. I imagine all women are different. I’ve only had two.” He sat up straighter, looked directly at me (until then his eyes had shifted from place to place, never focusing on anything for more than a few seconds) and winked. “You’d probably know more about that than I would....”
He was quite wrong about that, but I wasn’t about to go into it. “So you just—what—lie around and wait for the right moment?”
“That’s about it.”
“What about Harry? What has he been up to?”
“That little shit? Haven’t heard from him in a long time.”
“And as I recall, there’s no one else there with you besides Rob, prot, and Harry—is that right?”
“I already told you that a couple of years ago. You hounded Rob like this, too, and look what happened.”
“All right, Paul, that’s all for today. You can go back to sleep now.”
He yawned. “So long, doc. By the way, you got any other patients that need some help? I’m horny as hell.”
“I’ll let you know.”
He shrugged, nodded, and his eyes slowly closed.
I was not unhappy to see this somewhat disgusting young man, who seemed to be interested in little besides sex, withdraw. Perhaps this said more about my own hangups than his promiscuity, but I had no time to dwell on the matter. Before prot could make a reappearance, I asked Harry to come forward. (It was Harry who took over whenever Rob was being abused by his uncle. Indeed, there is reason to believe that it was he, not Robert, who killed the murderer of his wife and daughter, perhaps confusing him for Uncle Dave.) It took a while, but he finally opened his eyes and looked around the room, blinking, presumably trying to figure out where he was.
“Hi, Harry. How are you doing?” The picture of a five-year-old boy with a beard had a somewhat comical effect.
“Okay, I guess.” He frowned. “You’re that doctor, aren’t you?”
“You remember me?”
“What happened to your beard?” Oblivious to his own, he rubbed his nose and wiped his finger on his pants.
“Oh, I’ve got it in a jar at home.”
His eyes widened, but he said nothing.
“What have you been up to the last couple of years?”
“Just waitin’, keepin’ an eye out.”
“For Uncle Dave?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
He shuffled his feet. “I guess not.”
“Were you around when prot came back this time?”
He felt the vinyl arms of his chair. “Who’s ‘prot’?”
“Never mind. Were you there when Rob left last week?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What happened?”
Another frown. “I dunno.” His nose seemed plugged, as if he had a cold. “He was givin’ somebody a bath.”
“And he left without any warning?”
“I guess so.”
“Any idea where he went?”
He looked around the room. “No,” he said, though it sounded more like “dough.”
“All right. Did I ask you before whether you know about anyone else who lives with you and Rob?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, do you?”
“No.”
“What about Paul?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve never met Paul?”
He fidgeted with his shirt buttons. “Uh-uh.”
“Or anyone else besides Robin?” (Robert’s childhood name.)
“Uh-uh.”
“Anything else you want to tell me about Rob while you’re here?”
He wagged his head.
“All right, Harry. You can go.”
He looked around one last time before closing his eyes.
Again I waited for prot to reappear, but he just sat there, apparently asleep.
“Prot?”
His eyes popped open. “Present and accounted for.”
“Did you hear any of my conversations with Paul and Harry?”
“Not a word. Did I miss anything?”
“Apparently you’ve missed quite a lot. Both of us have. All right. Our time’s about up. You might as well go back to Ward Two.”
“So early?” He grabbed the last pear on his way to the door. “See you Friday,” he called out.
“Wait a second. I almost forgot.” I retrieved a weighty bundle, held together by two enormous rubber bands, that the mail room had sent over. “This is all the stuff that came for you while you were gone. We didn’t know where to forward it,” I added pointedly.
Ignoring the comment he took the package. “Thanks, doc.” He riffled through some of the letters. “I hope none of these beings want to go to K-PAX. The passenger list is just about filled up.”
As he left, I marveled at the confidence he exuded, his conviction that he was, in fact, a K-PAXian. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his mind. But neither is there any (in the patients’ minds) that our current “Christ” is the son of God, that our resident “Croesus” is a rich and powerful woman, or that any of our other delusionals are not who they think they are. For that matter, all of us probably harbor a number of delusions, thinking ourselves more or less attractive, smarter or dumber than we really are. On the other hand, perhaps we are all exactly who we think we are. Prot is right about one thing: truth is whatever we believe it to be.
The idea I had come up with the previous night wasn’t just feeble, it was decrepit. Except for the revelation that Rob had been faking his all-too-rapid recovery in 1995, neither Paul nor Harry were going to be of much help in finding out what happened the week before. Paul appeared to be little interested in Rob, much less prot, unless there was some sexual gratification in it; and Harry, who was only five, was apparently unaware of the existence of the other personalities, except, of course, for Robert. Unless there were someone in there I didn’t yet know about, all I had left was prot.
But even he didn’t seem particularly eager to work with Rob this time around, perhaps because of the latter’s (from prot’s point of view) intransigence. He had already spent several years trying to convince Robert to leave the world he was unable to deal with and return with him to the idyllic planet K-PAX, to no avail.
The questions still remained: What had happened to Robert, and why then? What did it have to do with bathing the baby, if anything? On top of that dilemma, how was I going to tell Giselle that she had been sleeping with two different men, and that Paul, not Rob, was the father of little Gene? The old retirement bug began buzzing around my ears, and I didn’t try very hard to swat it away. I almost felt sorry for Will, n
ow well into his third year of medical school. But I remembered my own student days, and those difficult, exciting years of residency. If I had the chance all over again, I’d probably do exactly the same thing, make the same damn mistakes, take the bad with the good.
After letting prot go a few minutes early I seized the opportunity to take a stroll on the grounds. For one thing I wanted to get a look at progress on the construction of the new wing, the Klaus M. and Emma R. Villers Laboratory for Experimental Therapy and Rehabilitation. More importantly, I have come to realize over the years that a great deal can be learned from informal encounters with the patients. The more contact we have with them the better we are able to spot subtle changes in their behavior, something that might be missed in the more formal setting of the examining room. Besides, it was a sunny November day, and there weren’t going to be many as pleasant for some time.
On this particular occasion I found Ophelia sitting with Alex on a bench not far from the side entrance, and I ambled over to speak with them. Ophelia is a young woman who will do anything anyone tells her to. An orphan who was passed from one foster home to another, she became obsessed early in life with trying to please her various parents so they wouldn’t dump her off on someone else. Like an anorexic, who can never be thin enough, she blamed herself for each perceived failure, and tried harder and harder to please everyone. Ironically, this blatantly sycophantic behavior drove away many prospective parents. At the same time, she suffered abuse from teachers and students, employers and co-workers in whatever situation she found herself. Eventually she learned to trust no one, while helplessly complying with every wish or command. She ended up with us when she was found wandering in Central Park after having been raped by a shoe salesman.
With her was another patient whom we call “Alex Trebek,” after the host of the popular television quiz show, Jeopardy. Perhaps because the real Mr. Trebek makes his job look so easy, our “Alex” firmly believes that he (or perhaps anyone) can do it as well as the original, and, indeed, has offered to substitute for Mr. Trebek, without notice, at any time. As with the route to Carnegie Hall, he thinks he can get there with practice, and he roams the wards and grounds shouting “Yes!” and “That’s right!” and “Correct!” This in itself would not place him with us. The problem with “Alex” is that these are the only words he utters.