Chapter

    29

Unlike other days, today’s listening had turned the conference room into a self- conscious group of “HEs and SHEs.” At least that is how it appeared to Dr. Pressman as he looked up from removing tape number nine.

It had been a long tape, as well. He turned it over and confirmed...it was the extended play type with not only more time, but certainly more information...valuable information that aroused the personal attitudes of everyone in the room...even Dr. Farnsworth, whose pen and paper was lying idle as he quietly conferred with his associates...very quietly conferred. As the doctors glanced at their colleagues, it was obvious, each wanted a few moments to settle their thoughts. For some, even the “E” word, “emotion,” had slipped in under the fortified and guarded psyche of professionalism. Yes, thought Dr. Pressman, Charlie-Charles, as some had begun to call the younger one, definitely had their attention now.

Dr. Deidre Elenore Snow was the first to stand and break the silence. A lady of grace and poise, she had always been the focus of much debate at Milton. There wasn’t a doctor in the hospital that hadn’t at one time or another lusted after both the mind and body of this untouchable single woman, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear in the quiet corners of the lunch room, rumors of who was going to be the first to break the ice many thought occupied the hidden passageways beneath her always professional, always respectful projection. Perhaps it was the distinguished way she used her thirty-two-year-old credentials around the hospital that garnered her so much respect. Or maybe the way she could calm almost any situation with merely her presence. But whatever the reason, today certainly wasn’t going to be the exception to any rule, even among relative strangers from around the country. No, among both “HEs and SHEs,” familiar and unfamiliar, Dr. Snow’s charm and intelligence was the rule everyone would like to follow. She was about to recruit some new followers as well.

With the compassionate and understanding voice all doctors aspired to have, she said, “That’s the kind of man every woman should meet, don’t you think?”

A partial dissenter, one Dr. Winslow from the hard corridors of New York’s Bellevue residency, answered with a biting retort that saved Dr. Pressman the trouble of shaking up the room. “Hardly the appropriate thing to say about a murderer.”

Dr. Snow whipped around without skipping a beat and said, “From up here, it’s hard to read your tag, but I seem to remember your face. You are a doctor aren’t you or was it a badge I saw hanging from your lapel?”

“Dr. Snow, my name tag reads ‘Dr. Ernest Winslow’ and I’m well aware of your outspoken and charming ways, but we’re talking here about a man accused of murder whose brains are obviously in need of overhaul. He’s anything but the kind of man I would want to meet.”

“I would hope so, Ernie,” she quipped back, sending the room into a much-needed burst of laughter. “I didn’t mean to suggest Charlie-Charles was any less complicated than we know he is. It’s just that vulnerabilities are only beginning to be shared by your gender in the last few years and it gives us of the weaker sex a nice kind of ‘needed’ feeling. Ask your mother. I’m sure she would have had those kind of feelings when you were born.”

Everyone in the room was surreptitiously enjoying guarded glances of Dr. Snow’s quick way of controlling her position, but she had more important things to bring out than a one-on-one battle with another doctor.

“Mothers and children generally understand the Charlie-Charles people of the world. I think we’ve got to muster up all the memories of our own mother/children experiences to really get into one of the answers we need. Who was pulling whose string? Who was playing the parent, who the child? Who’s the manipulator, if you will? Ms. Sobel apparently had more than one reason in feeling rejected. Perhaps, the next tape will bear me out, but for now, I’d like all of you to consider what I said earlier. I think he’s being true to his feelings.  If there truly was some serious physical alterations of him in Mexico… who knows?  Might there have been an accident that somehow changed his voice slightly and then required some facial and hair alterations that did manage to hold most of how he appeared before such an accident?  He voice on the recording suggests he experiencing further suffering after the Sobel encounter.  At least that how he came across to me as the tape ended. Dr. Pressman?”

“The question of sanity verses insanity is most apparent in the lake dream and cove incident,” came Dr. Pressman’s response, “but they’re also textbook examples of extreme anxiety and fear. We don’t have to waste anyone’s time discoursing the obvious, but—and I want to emphasize this just as Dr. Snow has done—the first step to making a judgment on Charles, and I haven’t forgotten about Mathews either, is to determine his sincerity and truthfulness on the tapes. There’ll be plenty of time for the court to debate the crime and who did it. Our job is to make recommendations on the sanity of both of the accused. His tapes thus far are anything but an obvious attempt to play games with himself.”

“You think he’s letting the words just flow on those tapes?” said Dr. Farnsworth.

“What do you mean?” said Dr. Pressman.

Farnsworth made another of his sweeping gestures of the room and said, “How many of you understand what I mean? This Charlie-Charles is obviously a man who finds words of expression easy. We all know traumatized individuals are as often as not hampered with lack of expression skills. In Charles’s case, no such obstacle exists...at least none that I can see.”

Another doctor, Dr. Carrey, a black woman in her 60’s stood up. “Dr. Pressman, Dr. Snow, and Dr. Farnsworth, I’m probably the least experienced person in this room with such matters as insanity pleas, but one area I am rather well versed in and probably why the state appointed me to this body is the business of amnesia, in particular psychogenic and dissociative fugue states.” 

She turned her attention to Dr. Farnsworth.   “Dr. Farnsworth, as to your comment on Charlie-Charles’s ‘word flow’, I would suggest we all focus on the this man’s makings of a rather unique personality. He has all the classic characteristics of the psychogenic amnesiac and—this is where it gets interesting—he also has what appears to be a dissociative identity disorder. Rare, but found occasionally in fugue victims, namely an inability to recall past events and important information about other people and especially themselves, coupled with all the confusion he’s recorded with almost obsessive detail regarding his loss of memory and identity and well… the perfect fugue storm. You all know what I’m talking about.

She turned back to Dr. Farnsworth. “Now you don’t need me to create any discomfort with your thinking this through, Dr. Pressman’s dealing with your youthful ability just fine, and I’m not putting down your youth, it’s just that I want you to know that when you get a little older, you’ll have had enough time to treat some of the problems I’ve spent thirty some odd years with. When you do, you’ll know as I, and I’m sure others in this room as well, that experience can do a lot to slow you down, make you look at the flowers alongside the road—usually the ones you’ve been passing every day for years—and then one day the looking stops you and you lean down and smell them. Know what happens then, Dr. Farnsworth?”

“No, Dr. Carrey, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.” The doctor was well aware he was being given a snarky, but kind and heartfelt lesson, but it didn’t make it any more comfortable. The arrogant manner with which he had forged his reputation was being challenged again.

“Yes, doctor. When you start smelling the flowers...you too might find ‘words of expression’ come easy just like Charles.”

There wasn’t much more to say that day. Everyone was adhering to the customary procedure of gathering all information available on a patient before exercising final opinions. Following a few more comments supporting Dr. Snow’s position, the group gathered up their notes and made their way out. Dr. Pressman packed up the tapes and walked up to Dr. Farnsworth, who was organizing his scribbled note sheets. The young doctor’s associates had all left, leaving him looking like a small island nursing the aftermath of a storm.

“That wasn’t the whole storm she’s capable of letting fly, Doctor. You okay?”

Dr. Farnsworth looked up, surprised by his colleague’s fatherly tone of voice. He smiled to ward off the embarrassment. “Guess I need to tone down a bit if I’m going to survive you guys.”

“Not meant to slow you down. I’ve read your records.” Dr. Pressman extended his hand. Farnsworth hesitated then extended his own. “That slip of Randall’s I complimented you on picking up yesterday; well, I was pulling your string. I apologize.”

Both doctors exchanged nods, then walked out of the conference room.

Once in the hall, Dr. Farnsworth smiling and shaking his head.  “You know, Dr. Pressman, you’re something else sometimes.” 

“Yes, well…”  He patted Dr. Farnsworth on the shoulder, “Getting through this review will probably make us both ‘something else’.”