by Helen Wells
“Oh, gosh,” Bob said, and laughed a little. “That’s work. How many more pictures are there?”
“Only the ten more. Weren’t his stories interesting, Miss Cherry?”
He had, in fact, conjured up extraordinarily vivid scenes. In private with Cherry, Dr. Hope said he was encouraged by today’s try. “He put his finger on a family consisting of father, mother, and two sons—and he described the family attitudes of each one of them.”
“And that scene on the rocky beach—”
“Yes, that’s a clue, too. An accident there involving the two boys, somehow. We’ll follow up these leads, Miss Cherry.”
The session cost Bob something, though. After Dr. Hope left, Dr. Watson noted he had a slight return of the stammering and physical slowness, and a tendency to stare. He had the orderly, George, give Bob a relaxing warm sponge bath and a back rub. Then Cherry brought him some warm broth.
“Dr. Hope said it would do this boy good,” Dr. Watson boomed to Cherry and Mrs. Peters, “to visit with the other fellows on the ward tomorrow. Isn’t it about time? That doorway is wide enough for us to wheel out his bed.”
Cherry and the head nurse asked Bob, the next morning after breakfast, how he would feel about being wheeled out onto the ward. “For a get-acquainted visit,” said Mrs. Peters. “The other men would like to know you. They’re a friendly group.”
Bob looked terrified for an instant. Cherry told him that he wouldn’t have to stay any longer than he wanted to, and that Dr. Hope thought some companionship would be a good idea. Bob still hesitated.
“If I could be of any use to anybody,” he said. “In that case—”
Mrs. Peters picked up his cue. “Sam Jones, who’s broken his right shoulder, mentioned that he’d like to write a letter this morning. If you could write Sam’s letter for him—?”
“I’d like to do that,” Bob said. “And maybe the other men won’t find me odd.”
Cherry was delighted with the way the entire ward welcomed him. Disabled temporarily themselves, the men were subdued, sympathetic company for Bob. He smiled from his bed at young Tommy who rapidly rolled over his wheelchair to shake hands. The orderly rolled Bob along between the double row of beds, while Cherry performed introductions. Bob looked with pity at the long-term spine patient, who said cockily, “Today’s the day I try my luck at sitting up. Maybe next week I’ll be walking around on crutches.” Bob nodded, but he was unable to find words. Old Mr. Pape, resembling a snail in its shell under the cast that protected his broken hip, waved to Bob.
Cherry bent and whispered, “Want to go back to your room now?”
“No. It’s interesting here. They’re nice,” Bob whispered back. “But why do they have to wear those faded, pinkish bathrobes?”
“The hospital budget can’t afford quite everything.”
“But those old robes are dispiriting. Maybe I could buy new bathrobes for the ward.”
He suggested it so matter-of-factly that Cherry saw he meant what he said. It sounded as if, in his usual life, he might be a man able to afford this act of generosity.
By propping a notebook against his good knee, Bob managed to write the letter that Sam dictated. Cherry noticed his handwriting: it was small, neat, exact, like the script of a scientist, and he printed all the capital letters. She noticed, too, when she came by with a tray of medicines and chemicals that he seemed to know a good deal about them.
“Who is this young man?” Cherry thought. “He seems to be highly trained in the organic sciences. Wonder what his work is—and where?”
All of a sudden he grew tired and had to be taken back to the quiet of his room. It was too bad, because Mr. Pape was having his sixtieth birthday today, and the volunteers in their blue smocks were just bringing in an immense birthday cake, to serve at lunch. Bob received a piece, anyway, complete with a candle. He enjoyed being part of the life of the ward; that was a hopeful step in his recovery.
On Friday, the following day, Dr. Hope came again. He had given Bob a chance to rest, and now they would attempt the next ten TAT pictures.
Again Cherry lowered the shades and turned on the lamp, so that Bob’s room was half in shadow. Dr. Hope sat down beside Bob’s bed, with Cherry seated nearby, and started to talk casually. Any outsider would have thought these three people were three friends having a visit, and so, in a way, they were—except that each of their “visits” had so much at stake.
Bob started bravely on the first of the next ten pictures. Here were two or three people in a meadow at dusk, moving toward each other—or were they going away from each other?—and far away over the hills, someone was coming. For this picture, and for the next four, Bob drew from the turmoil inside him curiously troubling, revealing stories.
He was startled when Dr. Hope handed him the sixteenth card. So was Cherry. It was blank.
“But I can’t—What do you want me to tell?”
Dr. Hope said, “I’d like you to imagine a picture, describe it to Miss Cherry and me, and then tell us a story about it as you’ve done for the other cards.”
“Well, it’s in an office. Not in an office building—in a factory, more likely. Two men are quarreling.” Bob hesitated. “They’re very angry with each other. Especially the older one.” He stopped dead.
“Can you tell us who they are?” Dr. Hope prompted. “Partners, friends? Or perhaps what they’re quarreling about?”
Bob looked confused. The direct question had upset him. He stammered and lapsed into silence.
“Never mind,” the psychiatrist said gently. “It’s an office, and the two men are quarreling.”
“Yes. The two men are quarreling. Accusations, denials. Someone’s guilty.”
Cherry and Dr. Hope listened acutely. They did not dare interrupt with questions at this point.
“They shout at each other—it’s in an office—
Bob rambled on and grew incoherent.
“That’s enough. Next card,” Dr. Hope said briskly, to bring Bob back to himself.
“Oh. Yes. Well, let’s see.” Bob drew a quivering breath and composed himself. “This picture shows a farmhouse, or maybe it’s a country inn—”
His storytelling for the last of the cards was uneventful. Again Dr. Hope praised and encouraged him at the session’s end. Bob gave him a quizzical glance.
“You know, it’s rather hard to take this game seriously, Doctor. The times before, when I talked to you sort of half-asleep from the injections—I found it hard to take all that seriously, too. I can’t see how it can help bring back my memory.”
“It’s a technique that works,” Dr. Hope assured him. Bob listlessly picked at the blanket. “You want to get well, don’t you?” Bob nodded, without enthusiasm.
“Perhaps he’s just fatigued,” Cherry suggested to Dr. Hope after they left Bob’s room.
“No. That unwillingness to regard his memories seriously is a facet of his unwillingness to return to the real world. He’s fled from his troubles by forgetting them and he doesn’t wish to return and face the bad situation he fled.”
“I noticed,” Cherry said, “that he never mentions the future. The other day when I mentioned planning for his future, he lost his temper.”
“That’s right. Hasn’t the morale yet. But he will. He’s improving.”
Dr. Hope discussed today’s session with Cherry. She sensed that he did it to instruct her, and to fix the points gained by stating them aloud.
“Two men quarreling. One is older than the other. The older one is the angrier of the two. Why? Hmm.”
“Is one of them Bob, possibly?” Cherry asked.
“Possibly. We don’t know. Remember, Bob’s stories are a mixture of fact and fantasy. All of it revealing.”
Cherry reminded Dr. Hope, “When Bob told the ‘violin’ story, he mentioned the younger brother with the violin and the older brother who sort of envied him. Could the two men quarreling be the two brothers, grown up?”
“I thought of that, too,
” Dr. Hope said. “But we mustn’t leap to conclusions. Keep our thinking fluid. Now. The two men make accusations and denials, but Bob said ‘someone’ is guilty. Who is guilty? Is one of the two men guilty? Or is it a third person?”
Cherry saw there was no point in asking about a dozen questions that came to mind. Dr. Hope and she, somehow, must secure the facts.
The psychiatrist promptly took the next step.
Late that same Friday afternoon he returned to their patient. Cherry waited outside Bob’s room. It was late; she wore her street clothes, and knew that her friends expected her within the hour. She, Bill, Sue Pritchard, and Joe Hall planned to drive out into the country for supper, on a double date, in this still-mild, last week of September. Cherry counted back on her fingers. This was Friday the twenty-sixth; Bob had been admitted to Hilton Hospital on Wednesday, September tenth; he had been under treatment for a little more than two weeks. He was better, but how few identifying facts they had discovered!
Dr. Hope came out of Bob’s room. He beckoned to Cherry and spoke rapidly.
“I reminded Bob of the stories he had told for the twenty TAT pictures and asked him to fill in certain important details. Also, I asked him to look back and say which stories came from his own experience, or a friend’s experience, or a book, or a movie. Not that the source of the story detracts—the patient selects certain key details to emphasize, anyway—but it’ll help us to know that the quarrel and the seashore incident are facts.”
“Or so he said,” Cherry murmured.
Dr. Hope grinned. “Or so he said. Also, I asked Bob which were his favorite and least favorite pictures. He likes best, the one of a white house or homestead, and he likes the seashore scene the least. He seems to believe those are actual places.”
“Were is that house? And that coastal beach?”
“He gave no hint. Unless they exist only in Bob’s imagination. … There’s a second step to follow up on these TAT pictures, and that may tell us. But I’m detaining you, Miss Cherry. No, I won’t tell you the next step until Monday.” He laughed. “Run along home and have a good weekend, and forget all about hospital matters.”
“As if I could! Or wanted to.” Cherry wished him a happy weekend, too, and ran down the stairs since the elevators were full.
On the way down she almost collided with Mrs. Leona Ball, who was coming up the stairs to find Cherry. The social worker waved a letter.
“The watch manufacturer answered our inquiry! I thought you’d be here late as usual, so I—Look here!”
The watch manufacturer stated that the watch bearing the given serial number had been sold two years ago to the Jennings Jewelry Shop in Cleveland, Ohio.
“Do you suppose the shop has a record of their customer for Bob’s watch?” Cherry asked. “Because if they have—” She was almost afraid to hope. If they had, she would at last have a definite, recent clue as to who Bob Smith was.
“I’ll write to Jennings Jewelry Shop before I leave the hospital today,” Leona Ball promised, “and I’ll send it air mail.”
CHAPTER VII
What Bob Recalled
AT SEVEN A.M. ON MONDAY CHERRY WAS ON HER WAY TO her ward, reporting in with dozens of people in white. She said good morning to dietitians, doctors, therapists, nurses (she didn’t know everybody’s name, but that didn’t matter), and to nonmedical hospital people in blue: secretaries, guards, a few volunteers who were here this early. In an hour or two the secretaries, laboratory researchers, clerks, and still others would come in.
“What a special, skilled, wonderful world a hospital is!” Cherry thought. “Next to my family, I love this place best.” She knew her mother understood, but her father and Charlie grumbled good-naturedly that medical people formed a closed fraternity.
Just this weekend, when the Ameses had driven over to Dr. Fortune’s cottage, to take him and his young daughter Midge for a drive, they had been unable to pry him loose from his discussion with Dr. Harry Hope. Cherry was delighted to see “her” Dr. Fortune, who was a medical doctor and researcher, talking so earnestly with “her” psychiatrist. She’d known they were acquainted—through the hospital and the Hilton Clinic, and especially because in a small town like Hilton people knew all their neighbors. She had listened to them talk, and Cherry had grasped how closely the mind and the body interlock. After that, she felt she’d soon feel as much at ease with the psychiatrist as she did with the physician who had brought her and Charlie into the world.
Dr. Hope liked and admired the older Dr. Fortune. He told Cherry so this Monday at work.
“I could give you reasons in detail, but we’d better talk about what I plan next for Bob Smith. It’s the next step even if the watch manufacturer’s letter”—which Cherry had just reported to him—“leads us to some tangible information. You see, any actual facts the watch people may supply, such as Bob’s name and address, are important, very important, but they aren’t enough by themselves. We have to unearth what Bob himself thinks and feels about these facts. Now, this is how I propose to do it—Where’s the tape recordings of the stories he made up for the TAT pictures?”
“On the machine. I put them on in case you’d want to play them back and study them today.”
“I do, and I want you to listen to them with me.” Cherry was a little surprised. “This is the next step I wouldn’t tell you about last Friday.”
Dr. Hope grinned at her, and Cherry grinned back comfortably. There was no more “witch doctoring” about treating mental disturbances than there was about nursing Bob’s leg fracture and secondary anemia through their progressive stages. The next step was this:
Dr. Hope and Cherry would pick out from Bob’s TAT stories those key words which he had used most frequently, or used when he grew upset or excited. From these words that were significant the psychiatrist would construct a word association test. “These words really are keys to what’s troubling Bob, and they can further unlock his memory.”
They listened together, and chose the words or phrases accident, large white house, can’t, perhaps, quarrel, and several others. Dr. Hope asked Cherry if she could contribute anything further from her observation of their patient.
“Well, from my conversations with Bob, I noticed he seemed familiar with medicines and chemicals.” Dr. Hope added the words medicines and chemicals to the list. “I’d guess chemicals especially,” Cherry said.
Dr. Hope said he needed to give more thought to the word association test, and admitted he had worked on it during part of the weekend. He telephoned the University Hospital to say that he would remain at Hilton Hospital all day today, and locked himself in Dr. Ray Watson’s office with the tape recordings and plenty of paper and pencils.
Meanwhile, Cherry performed her regular ward duties. The long-term spine patient actually was able to sit up in bed and reach for a brand-new pair of crutches. Every patient in the ward watched and was heartened, and Mrs. Peters had George wheel Bob in for a look, too.
“Congratulations,” Bob said.
“Thanks. You’ll get well, too.”
When Dr. Hope was finally ready, Bob’s bed was rolled back to his room, and the three of them met in Bob’s room as usual.
This test, too, was like a game. Dr. Hope had a long list of words that, he explained casually to Bob, he would fire one after another. Bob was to answer “off the top of your head—no fair stopping to reflect” with the first word or phrase, or situation, that occurred to him. Bob looked dubious but folded his hands and paid attention.
“White house?”—“Home.” “Chemicals?”—“Business.” “Mother?” Hesitance, then, “My fault.” “Necessary?”—“Handicapped.” “Quarrel?”—“No!” “Brother?”—“Accident.” “Can’t?”—“Can’t.”
To an outsider the word test between doctor and patient would have sounded like gibberish. But to Cherry, who from the beginning had heard every word of Bob’s shaky recall, a dim pattern began to emerge. After the word test was over, Dr. Hope encouraged Bo
b to talk.
“Now what was that about a business?”
“A family business,” Bob said.
“Yes. A business in chemicals?” Dr. Hope suggested.
“That’s right. We supply manufacturers of so-called miracle drugs. We’re not one of those huge chemicals manufacturing firms, such as you find in the Northeast and in California. We do have, however, a special formula which my father developed—patented the process—and we’re the only ones who can supply it.”
Cherry was amazed at Bob’s full, revealing speech. How clear and alert mentally he was becoming! She leaned forward to listen.
“Is your family business located in the Northeast?” Dr. Hope asked. No answer. “In California?”
“We’ve lost the business.”
“You have? Well, then, where was it located?”
“There isn’t a business any more, I tell you,” Bob said irritably.
“Yes, I see. Do you want to tell us how it was lost?”
Cherry remembered Bob’s description of two men quarreling in an office. He said now, unwilling, “I guess the business failed. It must have been that. It’s vague to me.”
Here, Cherry realized, was an area of his life that Bob was deliberately forgetting. That pinpointed some part of his difficulties. Dr. Hope said in a conversational tone:
“You’re trained in chemistry, aren’t you? Biochemistry, too?” Bob nodded. “I suppose you were in the family business, then.”
“For a while.”
“Bob, now you remember yourself at college, working in the laboratories. You’re wearing a white lab coat and when you look out the window at the campus, which college do you see?”
Bob thought hard. “I see it, all right, but I can’t recall the name.” He voluntarily described what he saw in his mind’s eye, but that place could have been any one of dozens of peaceful green campuses throughout the United States.
“Who else was in the family business?”
“My father, and he’s dead.”
Cherry suggested, “What about a brother?”