Chapter

 55

Pressman turned the recorder off. No one looked up.

His words were all that was necessary for the moment. “That nightmare, is still with him...with Mathews...and now it’s with us. Break for ten minutes.”

Pressman looked at the group’s lack of enthusiasm for breaking bondage with their chairs...chairs they had been occupying for fourteen hours over the past two days and said, “Uh, uh. Well… understood.  I tend to agree with your expressions.  We haven’t got time to give into...anything. But, those of you who need to, please take five and get your heads in the right place.”

Coffee, restrooms, fresh air, calls to offices for messages...all the usual break activity...that was the normal. But for this group of professionals, it was a more restful release to just give into their “non-professional” reactions. This was a break that Pressman sensed was going to compel most of the participants to review their personal feelings, feelings that doctors usually kept well-insulated, feelings that he knew many felt had been invaded and violated.

Contributing to the inordinate response was exhaustion. It had been a particularly long two-day session.

Reluctantly, most ventured out into the halls.

A few wandered outside onto the grounds. With their heads down, hands idly wandering around their pockets for something to ground their uneasiness, they folded into the landscape of patients like unexpected images found in a Monet impression.

Still others went to coffee machines, poured over-heated black liquids into their cups while a lesser number, not many, maybe six, took to the toilet stalls. A few minutes sitting with four walls of privacy around them, gave these few the comfort of knowing no one else was seeing their contemplation, their fully dressed and sitting contemplation.

One man stayed behind and now approached Pressman who stood at the table of tapes, organizing them back into the modest cardboard box they had arrived in. “The guy doesn’t leave much room for laughs, does he?” volunteered the sullen Farnsworth.

Pressman recognized the voice and turned. “Dr. Farnsworth, I’m beginning to like you. You enjoy running head-on into problems. Reminds me of my early years.” Pressman interlocked the flaps of the box and walked toward the door. “I’m going to make myself a root beer float. Care to join me?”

Farnsworth grinned as he met Pressman’s stride with, “You’re good.”

“What...” returned Pressman, “because I made you laugh?”

“Yeah. You know damn well I don’t humor easily.”

As they pushed open the double doors into the hall, “Root beer float?” continued Farnsworth; “I was a kid when I last had one of those.”

“That’s why I have them often,” quipped Pressman.

The group’s return was sporadic. Twenty minutes after the reconvening had started, the last of the twenty-three doctors returned.

As they took their seats, most were jocular, casual, and without the usual somber attitude that characterized long sessions such as these. This was not what he expected to see from an esteemed body of colleagues faced with the task of deciding the sanity of two men. To Pressman, this was a room full of restlessness and insecurity.

The next half hour turned into an hour, into two hours, and at 11:30 p.m., the third hour of debate and argument had worked its way up to a heated exchange, transcending the usual review of cases such as these.

Over the course of the three hours, Pressman realized these weren’t just another two patients to most of the men and women in the room. Pressman had seen it all, but never had two personalities done so much to challenge and arrest the almost sacred and God- like images most psychiatrists had of themselves.

Psychiatrists were usually faced with dealing with personality and psychological problems of the extreme. These two men were not extremes in the usual sense of the word. Here was one man whose unique identity crisis and another man’s breakdown, (a former colleagues’ breakdown, no less) had all but destroyed the objective fortification that years of schooling, internship, residency, and experience had given these doctors to deal with the extremes. But here they were facing a new reality.

These two men were icons of a societal disease. A disease that had progressively fostered and nurtured escape from that fundamental of all fundamental questions... “Who am I?” “What am I doing here?” One man pursuing the question as a new born, the other trying to help by listening and absorbing all the patient’s experiences along the way.

Pressman was concerned. This absorption that had broken one doctor, threatened the objectivity of a whole group now.

Charlie/Charles had, at least momentarily, pushed the “worst nightmare” button of this group of psychiatrists...the buried honest images of themselves as they were or how they might become if they let their guard down...if they dared—as Mathews had—venture out from behind the protection of their profession.

This seven-month experience of Mathews and Charlie/Charles had aroused a consciousness in the doctors and softened the protection that had all but galvanized into steel. “Who am I, really?” The battle cry that had driven Charlie/Charles to this moment was now the question that disturbed the subjective minds of these highly paid doctors.

The softening had created the revelation that was undeniable now. They were all professional mothers and fathers whose hundreds of children had suddenly come home as a reminder of just how tenuous their own identities were.

The room was filled with mixed emotions. Personal anger fighting with personal identity. Personal identity fighting with personal compassion. And all for two people who had become for this group much more than just two men accused of murder.

After much listening, Dr. Pressman finally stood. “I’m afraid the hour is much too late to expect we’ll resolve any of this tonight. We can either reconvene on Monday or...”

Grumbling could be heard throughout the room. “I for one would like to continue now, but at worst, tomorrow morning at nine,” said Dr. Baker. She had not surprised the group when she had started off the evening by restating her long held position regarding their “mental incapacitation,” as she put it. Throughout the proceedings, she had maintained that Charlie/Charles was disturbed, but not insane. Mathews, however, had continued to create doubt in her mind as to his ability to remain objective in light of the loss of position he had sustained and the potential rewards, both monetarily and professionally, he stood to gain if he came out of this the hero. Both potentials, in her judgment, were beyond his ability to handle and he would crack. As far as she was concerned, he had. And she wanted to make sure everyone in the room agreed with her.

“For you, Dr. Baker, Saturdays and Sundays must be ‘business as usual’ but for some of us with other things to do...I vote for Monday,” said Dr. Snow.

More grumbling. Pro and con comments floated through the exhausted and the anxious.

Dr. Pressman had remained relatively silent throughout the evening, wanting to allow fresh perspectives to be voiced. Having spent a month with both of the accused, he had observations and thoughts he felt better expressed after hearing the others’ comments.

Now was not the hour, and he too wanted a couple of days to allow it all to settle. “All in favor of Monday?”

The majority of the room raised their weary arms and Dr. Baker was left, along with a few others, with their anxieties in check.

“Fine,” said Dr. Pressman. “Before you leave, let me just say that this is a an able-bodied group of highly skilled analysts, most of you experienced in the art of forensic psychiatry. It is obvious that the element of objectivity has been put on trial here tonight, and some of you, if not most, are having an opportunity to evaluate with a different state of mind than has been available to you in the past...I think. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

No one said anything.

“With that in mind,” he continued, “I would ask you to listen to that inner voice you too have within yourselves...the one Charlie/Charles listens too continually. I know I for one have a renewed respect for my own, and I think we can all benefit over the next two days by not sweeping it under the rug. This is not going to be a ‘slam dunk’ as Dr. Farnsworth felt was possible in the beginning. Enjoy your weekend and, oh, he went to the black board and scribed out Sanity and Insanity.  I needn’t remind you these are legal, not psychiatric terms. “Don’t be too hard on yourselves. I won’t be.”

By 12:30, Dr. Pressman was sufficiently exhausted to move from his office desk to his coat hanger. His shirt sleeve attire for the past week had felt good for a change. Here, especially, the office walls reminded him of all the formal impression he was expected to project as Milton’s Chief Psychiatrist. But now, even he had a longing to be rebellious, reckless, abandoning certain conditioning and traditional brain-washing that went with the territory of his position. Dr. Farnsworth, he thought, was at an enviable age; not old enough to fear loss of respect, not young enough to be ignorant of its value and necessity in the real world.

As he turned out the light, his last thought was not of himself or Dr. Farnsworth or any other doctor in the group. His fix was on two men he felt an unexplainable kinship with, far beyond the boundaries of professional practice. He would have to work on that over the next two days. He didn’t have any choice. He was expected to be the traditional grandfather as well as the one that might have just inherited an additional twenty-three children needing extra leadership. Monday, he would be expected to lead the march to Calvary. He would seek guidance from the only one he could turn to now... his own inner voice.