The Lobotomist's Wife(23)

“This is it! This is it, Ruthie. I am certain.” Robert kept pacing and looked up at her, shaking the thick journal in his hand. “Moniz has done it. Remember the chimpanzees? Moniz has used human subjects. Twenty patients. Twenty!”

“Robert, what on earth?”

“What? Here is what: Moniz has performed a surgery on the brains of twenty patients. I told you at the congress last year that he was planning something. I could just tell. And as I suspected, it is what I’ve been circling around. He has proven it!”

“Proven what, exactly?”

“The frontal lobe connection. He’s figured it out!”

Ruth walked the length of the large oriental rug and stood squarely in Robert’s path to stop his perpetual motion. “Can we sit? So I can warm up and you can slow down and explain?” She grabbed his hand and led him back to the study, where she poured them each a snifter of brandy to sip by the fire. “Now what, exactly, has Dr. Moniz done?”

“Remember the presentation we attended in London? Fulton and Jacobsen’s chimpanzees?” Ruth nodded. Of course she did. “Well, Moniz has performed his own procedure—a leucotomy, he called it—on twenty patients with varying degrees of psychosis and agitated depression, and not only did every one of them survive, their conditions all improved—less violent, more placid, happy even. This is it, Ruth. The answer is surgical. We have to do brain coring. Emeraldine Hospital can be the place to bring leucotomy to the States and I the one to do it!”

“Do you really think?” Ruth’s pulse quickened. Robert’s enthusiasm was contagious and she couldn’t help but begin to get excited.

“I don’t just think, Ruth, I know!” Robert stood up abruptly, shattering the snifter he had placed on the floor.

Ruth looked down at the shards of splintered crystal in a pool of deepening crimson, as the remaining brandy soaked into the rug. The last time broken glass had littered the front of this fireplace was Harry’s final visit to Magnolia Bluff. He was so angry when Bernard told him he had to go to Payne Whitney for treatment that he had thrown his glass at the hearth. Ruth hadn’t ever seen him snap at their father before. She wondered now, if this leucotomy had been a possibility for Harry, would the whole course of her life have been different? Would he still be here with her today? She shook off the thought as Robert continued on, oblivious to her momentary lapse into melancholy.

“We need to hire a neurosurgeon . . . as soon as possible. And I think I know just the man for the job. While I understand and can likely navigate every corner of the brain, I’m not equipped to open the cranium of living people on my own. Oh, but once we have this surgeon . . .” Robert turned to Ruth and grabbed her in a hearty embrace. “This is it, my darling! I can feel it in my bones.”

Dr. Edward Wilkinson was a young neurosurgeon who had worked under Fulton in the primate lab at Yale. He was particularly interested in Robert’s line of inquiry and had sought Robert out after a guest lecture in New Haven. Robert enjoyed the adulation and, sensing a protégé in the making, had stayed in touch with the young doctor over the past several years. He was sure Edward would make the perfect partner for the new project.

While Dr. Wilkinson didn’t have much of a professional track record yet, he had glowing recommendations from his professors and a deep determination that, Robert told Ruth, reminded him of his younger self. As soon as Robert had decided that neurosurgery was the key to his new treatment for mental illness, he knew Edward Wilkinson would be the perfect man for the job. Nevertheless, Ruth insisted on a complete search process, interviewing dozens of doctors to ensure she had properly vetted all available candidates. In the end, she agreed Edward was the one.

“He is entirely unlike most of the others I have interviewed, in the best possible way,” Ruth said excitedly to her boss.

“Ah yes,” Charles Hayden said with a grin. “These neurosurgeons tend to be a rather arrogant bunch, don’t they?”

“Spectacularly so! Each one has been more impressed with himself and his accomplishments than the next, and none have seemed to have any interest in the work we are trying to do here. Whereas not only has Dr. Wilkinson worked in the primate research lab, he was the sole applicant to know about Dr. Moniz’s leucotomy study.”

“Well, to be fair, most in the field wouldn’t know about that study. If it weren’t for you and your husband, I would be among the men bumbling in the dark on that one.”

“You’re right, I suppose.” Ruth paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps Robert’s rubbed off on me too much. I used to tease him for assuming the cutting-edge research that he studies is common knowledge. And now, here I am doing the same!” Ruth smiled at that idea. “Nevertheless, I think Dr. Wilkinson is the man we have been looking for.”

Edward Wilkinson carried himself so inconspicuously that it took careful scrutiny to realize how tall and handsome he actually was. His unassuming manner, combined with his obvious intellect, made him stand out to Ruth and, in the end, impressed Hayden in equal measure.

“Dr. Wilkinson, I would love to hear from you directly as to why you are interested in this role, as it is far from a traditional one for a neurosurgeon.”

“Yes, sir. Of course. I suppose my interests aren’t entirely traditional.” He looked up from his fidgeting hands directly at Ruth and Charles, and as his floppy blond hair moved away from his eyes, Ruth was startled by the brightness of their blue hue. “Mr. Hayden, Mrs. Apter, I am endlessly fascinated by the puzzle of the mind. I want to touch it, and to heal it. I want to be the safest, most accurate, most effective surgeon I can possibly be. But I want to use my skills in the name of progress.”