The Nirvana Plague Page 4

  “Let’s drop this ‘Mrs. Hanover’ business, OK? How about you call me Karen and I’ll call you — whatever you like.”

  “Carl will do fine.” He flashed her a smile. “When’s the last time you spoke with Roger?”

  “Yesterday morning before I left the apartment to go to my office.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “I didn’t notice much difference. He seemed distant and cold, just as he has been for the past week. I asked him if he’d had his morning meds, and he said yes.”

  “That was the last round of medication he took. Sometime yesterday things began to change for him.”

  As he continued, she looked away, out her window. She watched the dark blocks of the suburban landscape gliding past like half-sunk hulks. No streetlights were lit. No neon signs. Now and then she caught warm light spilling from a bare window, or the fluttering glow of a television backlighting a closed blind.

  “But the Roger I interviewed this morning was unlike any Roger Sturgeon I’ve seen since I began treating him a decade ago. In fact, in some ways, he was unlike any other patient I’ve ever had. I haven’t been able to put my finger on exactly what was so different about him. I’ve been thinking about it all day. Now I never knew Roger before he was ill, of course, but I can get a sense of Roger’s normal personality beneath the distortions of his illness, as I’m sure you can still see the echoes of the Roger you knew before.”

  She didn’t answer. She was crying again, and kept her face turned away. Out over the lake, the blinking red and white lights of approaching jets slowly circled in toward the city.

  “Well, in a similar way, when I talked with him this morning, I could still see the echoes of the diseased personality, and the symptoms typical of his form of disorder, but it was largely obscured by a completely new set of behavioral and speech patterns. It’s rare for anyone — whether normal or diseased — to manifest sudden and dramatic personality changes. Your basic personality tends to be pretty stable — by definition. Your personality is those characteristics of your behavior that don’t change much over time. Generally, dramatic sudden-onset personality changes only happen as a result of physical or chemical insult to the brain. However, there is, in this case, no reason to suspect that anything like that has occurred.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I need to work with Roger some more.”

  “Letting him walk out of the hospital probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do then.” She regretted saying it the instant it was out of her mouth.

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon.”

  “Let’s hope alive.” She said it sadly, not sarcastically. And it hurt to be genuine.

  “When he does turn up, I’d like for you to call me right away. I want to try to get to the bottom of this quickly before it gets out of control.”

  “Seems to me it is already out of control.”

  “I didn’t mean your husband, or his condition,” Marley said coolly. “Though, of course, that is also my concern. But whatever has happened to your husband, it may be catching.”

  Karen laughed. That was quaint. “Catching?”

  “Yes. This afternoon, two more patients on the seventh floor refused their medications. The ward staff fears the outbreak of a general rebellion. That’s why I was at the hospital late again this evening. In fact, I’d only just got home when I called you in your car.”

  “It was kind of you to come rescue me. I’m sorry if I haven’t been very gracious about it.”

  “I understand.”

  “That’s what we pay you for, right?”

  Marley didn’t respond.

  “Shit. See, I can’t stop myself.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy.”

  “I suppose if you couldn’t tolerate a little gratuitous abuse you wouldn’t be in this line of work.”

  Marley laughed — a little. “No, I guess you’re right about that.”

  “Anyway, you were saying. So what did you learn at the hospital?”

  “I learned that your husband had been talking with these other two patients all morning, as well as some others.”

  “Roger was talking to the other patients?”

  “Yes. And more.”

  “And more?”

  “As I understand it, one of the female patients he was talking with this afternoon suddenly became quite agitated. This particular woman has a long history of depression, sometimes sinking into catatonia, but no history of mania or lability. According to the orderly who was sitting with them on the ward — I mean, Roger and the other two patients — she suddenly had quite a dramatic outburst. Screaming and rigid. She had to be isolated. However, she continued to be quite agitated. When I arrived, she appeared to be extremely frightened. We were discussing whether to try to stabilize her with a mild sedative when one of the staff came to tell me that Roger was asking if he could speak to her.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “No. I told them to bring Roger into my office and asked him what was going on. He said she was just confused. I asked him what she was confused about. He said it was like when you wake in the middle of a dream and you’re not sure what’s real. I didn’t really understand what he was getting at, but it struck me how aptly his metaphor captured her current emotional state. So I decided to let him go in and talk to her, and he did. She was still standing quite rigid in a corner of the isolation room, looking very frightened. Whenever anyone entered the room she would start screaming. But she didn’t when Roger went in. He walked straight over to her and embraced her.”

  “He embraced her?” Karen couldn’t remember the last time her husband had held her, or allowed her to hold him.

  “Yes.”

  “Roger put his arms around her?”

  “Yes. And she went limp almost at once. Then he led her over to the bed, and she lay down and went to sleep.”

  “I can’t believe it. Who was the patient?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I know all the patients on the floor anyway.”

  “I still can’t tell you that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have any friends in the hospital.”

  “I know. But I was there. I saw it happen.”

  Karen looked out again at the faceless dark buildings. Roger was out there somewhere. Like a dog lost in the wilderness. What was he doing at this moment? Trying to find his way home? Or just drifting along?

  “In fact, he doesn’t have any friends at all,” she said, quietly. “He doesn’t even treat me like a friend.”

  “It was quite remarkable.”

  “Well, why do you say it’s catching? What else happened?”

  “I interviewed the other female patient who had been seen talking to Roger. She exhibited behaviors quite similar to Roger’s new presentation. I have been treating this woman for several years, and her history and symptoms are quite different than Roger’s. The other woman, the one who had been isolated, is not one of my patients, but I spoke with her doctor by phone. I also talked to the orderly and several of the staff about what had happened. By that time, she was awake from her nap, and, with her doctor’s permission, I interviewed her as well. Her behavior now shows remarkable similarities with Roger’s new symptoms and the other patient’s.”

  “Busy day in the loony bin.” It was better to be bitchy than helpless.

  “Yes,” Marley said. “An interesting day.” Then added, “For a change.”

  “Bored with your work, doc?”

  They fell silent for a while. Karen watched the taillights of the other cars. Marley drove fast and passed frequently. But the car rode so smoothly it didn’t feel fast. It was like floating through a school of flashing red fish. After a while she said, “So what do you think is going on?”

  “Well, as I said, it’s difficult to put my finger on it exactly. Each of them seems to be struggling to express something that they can’t find the words for, or can’t get
clear in their minds. However, they don’t appear to feel confused so much as frustrated, or perhaps anxious. Each of them seems to avoid using personal pronouns, especially in the first person. Each of them seems much calmer than before. And, of course, each of them has refused medication.”

  He didn’t say anything else for a minute as he negotiated traffic, exiting onto McCormick Boulevard.

  “Now,” he resumed, in a lecture hall tone, “none of the symptoms I just described is a particularly unusual manifestation, either individually or as a set. What is unusual is that none of these symptoms has been a feature of the symptomatologies of any of these patients before now. In fact, until now these three people have been exhibiting rather different presentations, and now they are all presenting with strikingly similar behavioral and verbal symptoms.”

  “So. What is it?”

  “The three most obvious candidates are biochemical pollution, infectious disease, and sympathetic reaction. Frankly, I don’t think any of these is tenable. If there was some sort of chemical contamination going on, it would be affecting everyone on the ward.”

  “And it would be a big coincidence that these happen to be three people who were talking to each other all morning.”

  “Right. On the other hand, if it was infectious disease, then presumably the two female patients contracted it from your husband only today, which means—”

  “That it would have to have a remarkably short gestation period.”

  “Right again. And it would also seem to produce a remarkably well-defined set of rather sophisticated behavioral changes. We have never seen a disease that can affect human behavior that consistently and that profoundly. Humans are just too complex. Diseases like Alzheimers, or neurological toxins such as lead and mercury, take much longer to manifest their effects on the system.”

  “So what about the third factor?”

  “Sympathetic reaction isn’t particularly prevalent among these types of patients. One of the most debilitating aspects of schizophrenia is how isolating it is. Though chronic patients living together on a ward for a long time do tend to show similarities in their symptoms — that’s true of people in general — it’s a basic aspect of how our social groups work. But even so, patients don’t just sit down and have a conversation one morning and get up with radically altered personalities.”

  “Unless they’re doing it deliberately.”

  “Yes. But I don’t have any suspicion that they are doing so. One of these women has been institutionalized for most of the past twelve years. She has been far more resistant to medical treatment than your husband. Although, her doctor told me, they have been unable to locate any lesions or other apparent neurological insult, he believes there is a high probability that her illness has a physical etiology. In light of the change I saw in her personality today, I would now say that is unlikely to be the case.”

  “But that doesn’t explain anything either.”

  “No.”

  Marley braked suddenly and turned into her street. He drove like there was no one else on the road.

  “It’s just here,” she said, pointing out one in a long row of tenements.

  Marley drilled the car over to the curb.

  She looked up hoping to see a light on, but it was dark.

  “We used to have a house,” she said, “when Roger was still teaching. Once the insurance ran out and the money was gone, we had to sell it. Anyway, it’s better for him here. He likes being near the campus. For some reason he was afraid of our neighbors in the suburbs. The Stepford people.”

  “I live in the suburbs.”

  She put out her hand to him. “Thanks again for rescuing me. I really appreciate it.”

  He shook her hand, but said, “Why don’t I walk you up, in case he has come home. I’d like to talk to him as soon as possible.”

  “He’s not home.”

  “Let me walk you up anyway, just to be sure. I’d feel better about it.”

  They lived on the second floor. Marley followed her up the stairs. Karen felt embarrassed by the grimy wallpaper. Most of their neighbors were students. As they came up, she clicked her remote and her door popped open and the lights came on inside.

  Marley waited in the hall.

  She went in and called for Roger and returned.

  “You’ll call me when he shows up, won’t you?” Marley said.

  “Yes. All right.”

  “All right then.”

  Suddenly, she didn’t want to be alone there. “Should I just bring him back to the hospital?” she said.

  He turned back. “What about your car?”

  “They’ll bring it round here eventually.”

  “That’s a long tow, isn’t it? Can you afford it?”

  That’s getting personal, she thought. “I can afford you.”

  “Then you may as well pay me as pay the tow service,” Marley answered.

  “Sorry.”

  He smiled, a little victoriously, and went on: “So, have your car towed to the nearest service station for a recharge. When Roger comes back, you call me, and I’ll come talk to him and drive you both down to get your car. All right? Doctor’s orders.”

  She acquiesced, and shut the door, magnetic locks snicking tight. From the window she watched him get back into his Mercedes and drive off.

  Time for that drink, she thought, and headed for the kitchen.

  Chapter 5

  Late at night on the north side of Chicago.

  A man walks unhurriedly down a darkened street. The empty shells of dead shops mass against either curb, their fading grey faces cross-painted with ribbons of colorful graffiti. The man does not wonder where he is or why he’s here or where he’s going.

  Presently he comes upon a small pool of light and bare warmth in the emptiness of the desert neighborhood. On a street corner, five men huddle round a flame in a trash can, shoulders hunched, nodding and talking little jets of language at each other.

  “The fuck you did.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Bitch, ain’t got no such thing.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Man says he got a place down the Loop.”

  “Yeah? So’s my left nut.”

  “Right.”

  “Left, I said.”

  “Who the man got working it then?”

  The wanderer smiles vaguely as he nears the group. He walks so quietly, they don’t notice him till he’s quite close.

  “Who this?”

  “Fuck I know.”

  “Want something, man?”

  He walks on saying nothing.

  “Swallow your tongue?”

  “You lost, silent sam?”

  “Quiet, ain’t you?”

  “Man, I’m speaking at you, fuck.”

  “Let him go.”

  “Asswipe sombitch.”

  “Forget it.”

  Beyond the cold men and the barrel fire, two women stand in the crooked glare of an open door. Cigarette smoke and hard music drift from within. The women watch him approach and smile in welcome.

  “Hey, baby, how you doing?”

  “What you doing out here all alone?”

  As the wanderer passes by them, they step in front of him, and he stops. His eyes look calmly into theirs.

  “Want to come inside, hon?” says one.

  “Or do you want to come inside this?” says the other, opening her coat a little.

  The wanderer’s vague smile remains unchanged as he turns to go around them.

  “You lookin for something special, hon?”

  The wanderer walks away without speaking, but the two women follow him.

  “What’s your problem, man? You too good to speak to me, mister?”

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with you anyway? You see something you don’t like? That your problem? You don’t like what you seen?”

  He walks on without answering. They follow him closer, one on either side of him, their shoulders bumping his shoulders
.

  “Maybe you got no money? Maybe that’s your problem?”

  “How much money you got on you, man? Maybe we can work something out. How much you got?”

  He stops now and turns. The women press close to him, breasts against his arms, and their hands grope his body.

  “How much money you got, I said.”

  “You got a wallet, baby, or’s that just your lumpy little ass?”

  “What’s this?”

  “He got a roll?”

  “Fuck no.”

  As they search him, the women push him back into a dark doorway. He does not resist them. They open his coat, and search all his pockets. They unzip his pants and put their hands inside.

  “You like that?”

  He watches their faces as they fumble with him.

  “Ain’t you got nothing on you? What you doing out here anyway? What you looking for? Who are you?”

  “Can’t you talk?”

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you, man?”

  “Hey, stupid!”

  “You lookin at me? What you lookin at me like that for? You wanna look, you gotta pay. Nobody tell you you can look at me.”

  “You an idiot, baby? Huh? Answer me!”

  One of them pinches his cheek in her hand and pulls his face toward hers. “Look at me, bitch, when I’m talking to you! A woman is talking to you!” In the darkness, their faces are dim, but she sees in his eyes a glimmer of light. “No, you ain’t no idiot, are you? No, you’re just a bastard, ain’t you? You’re just a fucking asshole, ain’t you? Answer me!” She slaps him hard twice.

  Though he is taller and stronger than either woman, he does not try to defend himself from the blows. But now he finds his voice to speak, saying softly: “There’s nothing here to give.”

  His voice startles them.

  One says, “I don’t need nothing from you, asshole!”

  The other punches him in the stomach. She knows how to punch a man, and he grunts in pain, bending forward.

  They start hitting him freely. They punch him in the nose, and he protects his face with his arms as the blood pours from his nostrils. He tries to walk out between them, but they trip him and he stumbles. One grabs his coat and pulls him backward. The other kicks him hard in the groin, and he falls to his knees on the sidewalk gasping.