The Thanatos Syndrome

voice—doctor showing slides at a medical conference—I explain the exemption of Fedville from treated water, the sodium-additive arrangement, the presenting behavior of Mrs . Cheney, the anal lesions of this child, her curious linguistic regression, the extraordinary I.Q. of that child—not omitting Ricky’s perfect score in Concentration.
    â€œRicky?” says Bob, not comprehending.
    â€œRicky is all right, Bob. He’s at Lucy’s house.”
    â€œWhat?” says Bob. “Ricky?”
    â€œI understood you wanted to have him in the program, Bob.”
    â€œYeah, but at first-level minimum dosage, to improve his—he was flunking math—Jesus, they didn’t—Is he all right?”
    â€œHe’s fine. He’s not injured. He’s with Claude at Lucy’s house. You can pick him up any time.”
    â€œThank God,” says Bob. “Thanks, Tom.”
    â€œThat’s okay, Bob. He’s with Claude at Lucy’s house.”
    â€œJesus,” says Bob.
    Max seems not to be listening. His attention seems to be caught by one photograph, the one depicting Van Dorn supine, bearing the child aloft and impaled between his knees, the child’s expression, demure, as pleased as if she had just won the spelling bee, legs kicking up happily. The child is facing the camera and therefore appears to be looking at the viewer of the photograph.
    As Max examines the photographs he falls into an old habit, hissing a tune between tip of tongue and teeth, which I remember him doing as house physician standing with a patient’s chart in the nurses’ station—a sinister, amiable hissing, the attending intern casting about: How did I screw up this time?
    Max is also nodding in his old abstracted way. “So,” he says to no one.
    Bob Comeaux has come alongside, head medically-comradely aslant, like the attending physician co-inspecting an X-ray with the chief on grand rounds. He too is nodding, hands in pockets, upper lip folded against his teeth.
    â€œBob,” he says in his old ominous-gentle, grand-rounds voice, head back, looking along his cheek. “Just what are we doing here?”
    Bob is clucking back-of-tongue-from-teeth tck tck tck meditatively, resident considering case: it’s amazing how everything you do, even late in life, you did in school.
    Silence, except for the spirituals.
    â€œWhat are we doing here?” Max asks again.
    â€œWe are listening to the darkies singing,” I say.
    â€œAll I can say is this,” says Bob Comeaux. He’s squinting into the afternoon sunlight, hat in his hands, head leaning back against the jamb. “I don’t know about those, whatever they are”—he nods toward, without quite looking at, the photographs—“but I will say this, you try the best you can to help folks. And what do you get? I’ll tell you what you get. You get the same thing Lister got, Galileo got, Pasteur got. Ridicule. Did that son of a bitch use Ricky?” he asks in a different voice.
    â€œRicky’s okay, Bob.”
    Silence, except for the singing.
    I looked over Jordan and what did I see,
    Coming for to carry me home.
    A band of angels coming after me,
    Coming for to carry me home.
    â€œDon’t tell me that’s not beautiful,” says Bob absently.
    â€œRight, Bob,” I say. “Now here’s what we ought to do.” I exchange glances with Max—one of our “group” glances. We understand each other. We know something movies and TV don’t know. Here’s where movies and TV go wrong. You don’t shoot X for what he did to Y, even though he deserves shooting. You allow X a way out so he can help Y. X is going to have enough trouble as it is. Max already recognizes a tone in my voice, the clinical-helper voice of the “resource person” in group therapy. He and I have run many a group. It’s like two cops playing tough cop and softy cop.
    â€œWhat’s that, Doctor?” asks Max in his tough cop voice.
    â€œThis is just an idea to kick around. I was thinking: Now that Blue Boy is closed down, wouldn’t it make sense to use the NIH discretionary funds and the Ford money to help Father Smith reactivate the hospice? The good Father is a nut, as we all know, but his place can be useful as a facility for your terminal cases—for one thing, save you an awful lot of money. He’s going to need all the help we