The Forgetting Time(19)
“I’ve been to three specialists, two psychologists now, and you. And nobody can tell me anything at all. Nobody will give me even the possibility of a diagnosis.”
“The child is four. That’s young for an accurate mental health diagnosis.”
“Doctor, I can’t even bathe my son.” The last time she’d tried, a week before, he had worked himself into such a state that he’d triggered an asthma attack.
It had been his first attack in eighteen months. As she’d held the nebulizer to his face, his ragged breaths amplifying in her ears like the sound of failure, she’d made a commitment to herself: she’d stop waiting for him to get better. She’d do whatever it took to help him now.
“Behavior therapy might help—”
“He’s done that. It hasn’t worked. Nothing’s worked. Doctor—please. You’ve done this for a long time. Haven’t you ever seen a case like Noah’s?”
“Well.” Dr. Remson leaned back, putting his hands on his big corduroy knees. “Perhaps there was one.”
“There was a similar case?” Janie held her breath. She couldn’t look him in the eyes, focusing instead on the toe of his shoe. Dr. Remson followed her gaze, his brows knit together, the two of them watching his black foot tap tapping against the deep crimson squares on the Persian rug.
“It was during my residency at Bellevue, many years ago. There was a child there who spoke often of something traumatic that had happened to him during a war. He drew violent pictures of bayoneting. Rape.”
She shuddered. She could see the drawings as if they were right in front of her, the blood drawn in red crayon, the stick figure with its wide-open mouth.
“He was from a small town in New Jersey, a loving, intact family to all reports. They swore up and down he had never seen any images like the ones he drew. It was very startling. He was only five.”
A case like Noah’s. The puzzle pieces of Noah finally fitting together, forming a picture. She felt relief, and a chill of foreboding.
“And what was his diagnosis?”
The psychiatrist winced. “He was a bit older than Noah. And still far too young for the diagnosis.”
“The diagnosis?”
“Childhood-onset schizophrenia.” He pulled his sweater across his belly, as if his words had caused a drop in temperature. “It’s rare, of course, in a child this young.”
“Schizophrenia?” The word hung high up in the newly cold air for a moment, sparkling like a jagged icicle, before understanding fell. “You think Noah has schizophrenia.”
“He’s too young, as I said, for a proper diagnosis. But we have to consider it. We can’t rule it out.” His eyes watched her steadily beneath the heavy lids. “We’ll know more with time.”
She stared down at the carpet. The crimson pattern was dense, unfathomable, squares within squares within squares.
He paused for a moment. “There is sometimes a genetic component. You said you don’t know anything about the father’s family?”
She shook her head miserably. After sporadic, nighttime Googling that had gone nowhere for years, she’d been trying more seriously to hunt down Jeff from Houston. The week before, she’d gone one step farther: she’d spent the better part of two days looking through every recorded Rhodes Scholar for the last two decades. She’d focused on every Jeff and Geoffrey, every scholar from Texas and then from every other state, and there was nobody who’d looked even remotely like the man who had told her his name was Jeff. She’d called the hotel in Trinidad, but it was now a Holiday Inn.
So Jeff—if he even was Jeff—had not been a Rhodes Scholar. He probably hadn’t been to Oxford. (She’d looked him up at Balliol College, too, and found nothing.) Perhaps he wasn’t even a businessman. He’d made it up—but why? She’d thought it had been to impress her, but now she wondered: had he been in the throes of a full-blown psychosis?
Janie felt the doctor’s intent gaze hovering above her like some kind of brown furry bat, but she couldn’t lift her eyes to meet it. She looked at her knees, clad in their gray tights; they suddenly seemed absurd to her, their grayness, their roundness.
“I know you want answers,” Remson was saying. “But this is the best we can do. We can and will reevaluate as the treatment progresses. In the meantime there are various antipsychotic medications we can try. We can put Noah on a very small dose now, if you like. I’ll write you a prescription.”
The words had been slipping slowly through her mind, as if she were quietly, sleepily freezing to death, but at that word—medication—Janie jolted awake.
“Medication?” She lifted her head. “But he’s only four!”
The doctor nodded apologetically, lifting the palms of his hands. “The medication may help him to have a more normal life. We’d reevaluate every few months, once we get the dosage right. And, of course, I’ll keep seeing him. Twice a week.” He pulled a ballpoint pen from a cup on the table beside him and wrote out a script.
He tore the paper off his pad and handed it to her as if this were an everyday thing. His face was awful in its blandness. “Why don’t you take some time to process this,” he said, “and we’ll talk next week.” His outstretched hand still had the prescription for the antipsychotic. Janie had a strange, overwhelming desire to crumple it in his face. Instead she grabbed it and shoved it in her pocket.