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If time for me really is a series of bookmarks, then I feel as if someone has shaken the book and those yellowed slips of paper, torn matchbook covers and flattened coffee stirrers have fallen to the floor, and the dog-eared flaps have been pressed smooth.
McPherson’s voice hit the air like steel cable. “Executive Order three-nine-one of the Federal Code of Penitentiaries and Institutions for the Criminally Insane states that the peace officer’s requirement to bear arms is superseded only by the direct order of his immediate superiors or that of persons entrusted with the care and protection of penal or mental health facilities.
Gentlemen, you find yourself under the aegis of that exception. You will not be allowed to pass through this gate with your firearms.”
McPherson said, “In a less enlightened age, a patient like Gryce would have been put to death. But here they can study him, define a pathology, maybe isolate the abnormality in his brain that caused him to disengage so completely from acceptable patterns of behavior. If they can do that, maybe we can reach a day where that kind of disengagement can be rooted out of society entirely.”
Cawley sat behind the teak desk, spread his arms. “For the work. A moral fusion between law and order and clinical care. Just half a century ago, even less in some cases, the thinking on the kind of patients we deal with here was that they should, at best, be shackled and left in their own filth and waste. They were systematically beaten, as if that could drive the psychosis out. We demonized them. We tortured them. Spread them on racks, yes. Drove screws into their brains. Even drowned them on occasion.”
“If I ever had a son, I don’t know if I’d let him go to war. Even a war like that where we had no choice. I’m not sure that should be asked of anyone.” “What?” “Killing.”
There was no simple answer for that. How did anyone know where faith developed? One moment, it wasn’t there, the next it was. Teddy had known men in war whom he’d trust with his life on a battlefield and yet never with his wallet once they were off it. He’d known men he’d trust with his wallet and his wife but never to watch his back in a fight or go through a door with him.
“Look at it as a syllogism. Let’s say the syllogism begins with this principle: ’Insane men deny that they are insane.’ You follow?” “Sure,” Teddy said. “Okay, part two: ’Bob denies he is insane.’ Part three, the ’ergo’ part. ’Ergo—Bob is insane.’” She placed the scalpel on the ground by her knee and stoked the fire with a stick. “If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would otherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person’s actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled
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just couldn’t do that. No, no, no.”
But someday, Marshal, and it’s not far off, we’ll medicate human experience right out of the human experience. Do you understand that?”
HE WOULD SAY to her: “What’s wrong? What don’t I do? What don’t I give you? How can I make you happy?” And she’d say, “I’m happy.”
“No, you’re not. Tell me what I need to do. I’ll do it.” “I’m fine.” “You get so angry. And if you’re not angry, you’re too happy, bouncing off the walls.” “Which is it?” “It scares the kids, scares me. You’re not fine.” “I am.” “You’re sad all the time.” “No,” she’d say. “That’s you.”
She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who’d been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim.
But he’d failed her. Failed his children. Failed the lives they’d all built together because he’d refused to see Dolores, really see her, see that her insanity was not her fault, not something she could control, not some proof of moral weakness or lack of fortitude. He’d refused to see it because if she actually were his true love, his immortal other self, then what did that say about his brain, his sanity, his moral weakness? And so, he’d hidden from it, hidden from her. He’d left her alone, his one love, and let her mind consume itself.
