Long Way Home(97)

*

On Thursday morning, the Barnetts and I were nervous yet hopeful as we drove to the hospital. Along the way, we rehearsed everything we wanted to tell the doctor and prayed that he would have good news for us in return.

“We’ve seen several encouraging signs in these past few weeks,” Mr. Barnett told Dr. Morgan as we took our seats. The doctor was already lighting a cigarette. “Jim has been talking to us a bit more, and he responded very well to seeing his old friends when we took him to the memorial service. It seemed like the trip and the day away from the hospital did him good, and we—”

Dr. Morgan brushed away his words with a wave of his cigarette before Mr. B. could finish. “Anecdotal reports are fine in their context, but we haven’t documented any clinical signs of improvement from either the insulin treatments or the recent electroshock therapy. Nightmares continue to disrupt his sleep. He has no appetite and is losing weight. He won’t participate in sports or other activities, and he remains silent in our group therapy sessions.”

I heard Mr. Barnett sigh. “So what’s next?” I shifted in my chair, prepared to stand up and object if Dr. Morgan mentioned the water torture treatment that Joe had described.

“I plan to suspend the shock therapy for a week to give his brain a chance to adapt before attempting private therapy sessions. But in order for me to understand him better and make progress with his therapy, I’ll need you to describe any traumatic incidents from his childhood that might be at the root of his neurosis.”

Mr. and Mrs. Barnett looked at each other. They had to be even more frustrated than I was. “We’re very willing to talk about Jim’s childhood,” Mr. Barnett said slowly. “But I really don’t see how it will help. I believe he had a very happy childhood.”

“He’s our only child and is dearly loved,” Mrs. Barnett added. “By us and by his grandparents, when they were alive.”

“Yes,” her husband continued, “and while their deaths were sad for all of us, they weren’t what I’d call traumatic. Jim worked alongside me in my veterinary practice, so he was realistic about the natural process of death. He was studying veterinary medicine at Cornell when he enlisted.”

“He was popular in school,” Mrs. Barnett said. “He had a lot of friends; he got good grades. He played sports and went on dates.”

“There were a few typical boyhood incidents and scrapes. The usual teenage stuff.”

“But we never had to worry about him for a moment.”

Dr. Morgan looked as though he didn’t believe a word they were saying. He gestured to me. “And who are you? Sister? Girlfriend?” I was so startled that I couldn’t speak.

Mrs. Barnett reached for my hand. “Peggy has been a friend of ours and Jimmy’s for many years.”

The doctor leaned forward in his chair. He appeared angry. “Look, I can’t help Corporal Barnett unless someone is willing to be perfectly honest with me.”

The fact that he had practically accused the Barnetts of lying helped me find my tongue. “Everything they just said is the God’s honest truth. Jimmy was happy before the war. But I’ve been reading the letters he sent home from overseas and talking with his Army buddies about his experiences as a medic, and I think he saw a lot of tragic things during the war. Jimmy’s Army unit liberated a Nazi concentration camp. He kept working there after the war ended, and one of his friends said Jimmy got so depressed that he needed to take a week’s leave. I think Jimmy needs to talk about those memories. They must be a terrible burden to carry around.”

“Was this friend a medical professional?”

“He was an Army medic, like Jimmy.”

The doctor shook his head as he tapped the ash from his cigarette. “I believe I explained once before that wartime experiences merely exacerbate underlying childhood trauma.”

“How could any trauma be worse than witnessing what happened in those death camps?” Mr. Barnett said. “Have you seen the pictures and read the reports? I know my son, and witnessing what went on there must have broken his heart. I fought in the first war and saw a lot of horrors, yet it nearly broke my heart just to read about the camps.”

The doctor extinguished the first cigarette and pulled out a second one. “Let me try to explain this to you the same way we present it to our patients. For many soldiers, combat stress puts them in a heightened state of alert, like a cat that reacts physically when threatened by a dog—hackles raised, claws extended, adrenaline pumping in readiness to fight or flee. They’ve been conditioned to react this way by events in their childhood and the stress of warfare keeps them in this heightened state even after the threat is gone. The goal of the insulin and electrotherapies is to shock patients out of this state. Their bodies must learn to relax and return to normal.”

The doctor paused to take a puff of his new cigarette and I had to stifle the urge to say, “Baloney! Jimmy isn’t a startled cat!”

“Corporal Barnett’s condition is an extreme example of this,” the doctor continued. “His reaction to the perceived threat was to shut off all outside stimuli until he became nearly catatonic. Perhaps he reacted similarly but on a smaller scale during childhood, retreating to his room, refusing to communicate, becoming moody and withdrawn.”

Mrs. Barnett looked at her husband. “Jimmy was never like that, was he, Gordon?”