The Thanatos Syndrome

suppression of cortical function?
    I am thinking of my sole contribution to medical science, a paper I wrote some years ago after an explosion in the physics lab at Tulane on the effect of a heavy-sodium fallout on the inhibitory function of the cerebral cortex on sexual behavior, which earned me a write-up in Time and some small local fame. I did in fact make a contribution toward the development of the present-day CORTscan, a scanning device for measuring localized cerebral functions. But there’s no reason to suspect a heavy-sodium factor in these cases. There’s been no explosion. It is true that the nuclear facility at Grand Mer has a sodium reactor, but there’s been no accident—or even an “occurrence,” as they call it.
    But accident or not, are there not signs of a suppression of cortical function in Mickey and Donna? I’m thinking particularly of the posterior speech center, Wernicke’s area, Brodmann 39 and 40, in the left brain of right-handed people. It is not only the major speech center but, according to neurologists, the locus of self-consciousness, the “I,” the utterer, the “self”—whatever one chooses to call that peculiar trait of humans by which they utter sentences and which makes them curious about how they look in a mirror—when a chimp will look behind the mirror for another chimp.
    Yes, I’ve been away, and yes , I’ve not been so well myself. But there’s an advantage in absence and return. One notices changes which other people don’t. Tommy has grown six inches, hadn’t you noticed? Betty looks ill. Mickey and Donna? Maybe they, my patients, are not crazy, but something’s going on here. What I need is objective evidence, more cases …
    But first I must convince Max and Bob that I am not crazy myself, or at least no crazier than most doctors.

5. MEET BOB COMEAUX and Max in Bob’s splendid office in Fedville, the federal complex housing the qualitarian center, communicable diseases control, and the AIDS quarantine. He’s at the top now, director of something or other—Quality of Life Division, or something like—in the penthouse of the monolith with a splendid panoramic view of the river in its great sweep from the haze of Baton Rouge to the south to the wooded loess hills of St. Francisville to the north. Except for the cooling tower of Grand Mer looming directly opposite and flying its plume of steam like Mt. St. Helens, it could be the same quaint lordly river of Mark Twain, its foul waters all gold and rose in the sunset. There’s even a stern-wheeler, the new Robert E. Lee, huffing upstream, hauling tourists to the plantations.
    Max and Bob are cordial and uneasy, having no stomach for this chore, riding herd on a colleague—what doctor would? Ordinarily we get along with standard medical jokes and doctors’ horsing around, but this business is official, legal, and awkward.
    Accordingly, they go out of their way to be easy, yawn and stretch a lot, sit anywhere but in chairs. Bob is dressed for riding, in flared stretch pants, field boots, and suede jacket, as if he had dropped in from the stables. There’s a connection between us. We went to the same medical school in the East and so we talk about Murray’s Bar and Grill on upper Broadway and old Doc So-and-so at Columbia-Presbyterian, as if we were classmates. In fact, we didn’t even know each other. He was some years after me. He’s from Long Island, but is very much the Southern horseman now, as handsome as Blake Carrington, with his steel-gray eyes and steel-gray sideburns brushed straight back like the rest of his hair, and his easy way of half sitting on his desk, swinging one leg and leaning over, hands in pockets. There is not a single wrinkle on his smooth tanned face except for a fold of skin at the corner of each eye, which gives him a slightly Oriental look.
    There is a manila file on the desk next to his thigh.
    Max doesn’t do as good a job at acting casual. He’s dressed too carefully in suit and vest, like a local doctor summoned before a congressional committee. He’s concerned about me and seems at a loss—Max of all people—not knowing what to say except to express his concern. “You’re okay, Tom?” he asks softly, keeping hold of my hand after the handshake. “Sure.” “Are you sure?” he asks. “Sure.”
    For some reason I