The Thanatos Syndrome

Agincourt, and here are all these people tranquillized, stoned out on something, grinning and patting one another, presenting rearward. What happened to the bluebird of happiness or the jaybird ruckus? These folks act more like Rhode Island Reds scratching in the barnyard or those sparrows befouling the martin house.
    Are they better or worse?
    I think it’s a syndrome, but I am not sure. I aim to find out.
    First call Cousin Lucy. She’s an M.D., Vassar smart and Southern shrewd, a sane person, perhaps the only one around. And she knows me.
    Maybe she can tell me who’s crazy and who’s not.
    She calls me between Ella Murdoch Smith and Kev ’n’ Debbie.
    She’s at the hospital, in the doctors’ lounge, taking a break. Can she see me?
    Sure, I’ll be there around twelve, to see Mickey LaFaye.
    Good. She’s got an impaction in the same room. An intern screwed up and she’s got to do it. Do I have a few minutes now? she asks.
    Sure. Kev ’n’ Debbie haven’t arrived. They wouldn’t mind waiting anyhow. But what’s this all about?
    Can’t tell me now. Later.
    Well then, I have something to tell her. Okay? Okay. I can hear the crinkle of the plastic of the chair in the doctors’ lounge as she settles back. There’s a click and a long, hissing exhalation. She’s still smoking.
    We’re in luck. She doesn’t get called for twenty minutes. There’s time to tell her about my “syndrome.” I don’t get into case histories but summarize the symptoms and signs, the odd language behavior and sexual behavior. There are some things you don’t forget, like riding a bicycle or teaching interns. I don’t mention Ellen.
    It takes fifteen minutes.
    When I finish, there’s a long silence.
    â€œWell?” I say at last.
    She clears her throat and makes a small spitting noise. I can see her touch the tip of her tongue for a grain of tobacco, spit it out.
    â€œWhat I need to know,” I tell her, “is whether the two years away have warped my perspective, whether it is me, not they, who has become strange—in a word, whether I’m seeing things.”
    â€œYes,” she says in a changed voice.
    â€œYes what?”
    â€œYes, you’ve changed. Yes, the cases are real. You’re not seeing things.”
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    â€œAbout you or them?”
    â€œThem.”
    â€œI might have an idea. And about you too.”
    â€œI’ll look for you at the hospital around noon,” I tell her. Kev and Debbie are at the door. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

3. SECOND CONSULTATION WITH Mickey LaFaye.
    There is a slight unpleasantness about doing a psychiatric consultation in a small general hospital. Here a psychiatrist is ranked somewhere between a clergyman and an undertaker. One is tolerated. One sees the patient only if the patient has nothing else to do.
    In your office you are in control. You control where you sit, where the patient sits or lies, who speaks, what is said. You even control the silences. Here it is the patient who controls while you stand about on one foot, then the other; here it is Mickey lying at her ease among the pastel Kleenexes and Whitman Sampiers, chin at rest in her full, sumptuous throat, her tawny eyes watching me incuriously while I stand just clear of her bed as wary as a preacher.
    It is hardly an ideal setting for an interview, but I know what I want and do not intend to waste time.
    It is a double room in the medical wing. Mickey LaFaye is in the bed next to the window. I stand at her bed but not touching it, facing the window. Behind me, not six feet away, is the curtained-off bed of the second patient. Lucy is attending the patient. I recognized her legs under the curtain, the same strong calves and laced-up oxfords I remember from when she was interning in pathology and I used to see her standing on tiptoe, calves bunched, to get at the cadaver.
    Lucy is doing some procedure, no doubt clearing an impaction. The old woman is making querulous sounds of protest. She is not cooperating. Lucy’s murmur is soothing, but there is in it a note of rising impatience.
    Directly opposite me, not thirty feet away, through the window, across a completely enclosed quadrangle of grass, beyond another window, stands Bob Comeaux in the glass box of the nurses’ station. I caught his eye. He is dressed in his riding clothes,