Read Online Patient H.M. by Luke Dittrich - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Luke Dittrich
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making motions with his hands. He was trying to tell her something without words. Just as she did the night before, when she tried to decipher the whispers behind the door, she tried to decipher Peter’s hands. At first she didn’t understand, but then suddenly she did, and she knew what she had to do.
She gave her children their lunch, then sent them off to play with some friends. Once they left, she walked to a neighbor’s garage and went inside. There was a car in the garage, and she clambered up on top of it. She removed the shirt she was wearing. She began to tear the shirt into long strips of fabric, then tied the long strips of fabric together. This was what Peter had been pantomiming with his hands. This was what he had wanted her to do.
When she was done, she reached up and tied one end of the rope she had just made to a beam in the garage and placed the other end, the noose, over her head.
—
A neighbor found my grandmother standing there, half undressed, trying to kill herself with her handmade rope. The neighbor placed a phone call. My grandfather came home from the hospital at about three P.M. , and my grandmother began telling him everything, about the plot and the court-martial and the whispering friends, about how what she had tried to do was for everyone’s good, that it was the only way for her to stop the darkness from spreading. He listened to her, shocked. There had been no signs. None that he had seen, anyway. None that anyone had seen, for that matter. It was as though he and his wife had inhabited the same world all of their lives together, and then, with no warning, she departed for a new one. A world completely invisible to him.
They went to the hospital together. A psychiatrist interviewed her. They checked her in to an open ward. My grandfather stayed with her that night in her bed, while someone stayed home with the children. She was affectionate with him, imploring him to make love to her, but then became agitated, emotional, confused. In the middle of the night she got up out of bed and wandered into another room on the ward. There was a woman lying in a bed there. My grandmother stood at the bedside for a moment looking down at her.
“Why do you lie there in women’s clothing?” she said, and slapped the patient across the face.
They restrained her. They took her to a closed ward, one where she was not free to wander. They kept her there for two months while my grandfather made arrangements for a longer-term solution. Her condition varied from day to day, week to week. She cried for hours and hours. She reported that someone had killed her children, that their heads were buried in the walls of her room. She reported that events too terrible to describe were taking place just beneath her floor. For the first ten days she refused to eat, claiming that the food they brought was contaminated with white lead. When my grandfather visited, she accused him of selfishness, of sleeping with other women, of giving her nothing but loneliness since the day they married.
On March 25, 1944, an ambulance took her from the closed ward to the train depot, and soon the entire family boarded a train for a three-day cross-country trip back home to Connecticut. The children were not aware of what was happening. They knew their mother had been somewhere else, and they knew they were now being tended to by a cartoonishly stern nanny, Mrs. Thornfeldt, but the details, the whys, were out of reach. A neighbor had given them a large bag filled with packages to take on their trip. They’d open a new one each morning, revealing a fresh gift for every day on the rails. They knew their mother was on the train with them, but they didn’t know why she’d been confined to a locked drawing room. My grandfather visited her in the drawing room. He watched her chain-smoke. He watched her eat. Eventually he gave her several doses of Luminal and watched her sleep.
Three days after leaving Walla Walla, the train
She gave her children their lunch, then sent them off to play with some friends. Once they left, she walked to a neighbor’s garage and went inside. There was a car in the garage, and she clambered up on top of it. She removed the shirt she was wearing. She began to tear the shirt into long strips of fabric, then tied the long strips of fabric together. This was what Peter had been pantomiming with his hands. This was what he had wanted her to do.
When she was done, she reached up and tied one end of the rope she had just made to a beam in the garage and placed the other end, the noose, over her head.
—
A neighbor found my grandmother standing there, half undressed, trying to kill herself with her handmade rope. The neighbor placed a phone call. My grandfather came home from the hospital at about three P.M. , and my grandmother began telling him everything, about the plot and the court-martial and the whispering friends, about how what she had tried to do was for everyone’s good, that it was the only way for her to stop the darkness from spreading. He listened to her, shocked. There had been no signs. None that he had seen, anyway. None that anyone had seen, for that matter. It was as though he and his wife had inhabited the same world all of their lives together, and then, with no warning, she departed for a new one. A world completely invisible to him.
They went to the hospital together. A psychiatrist interviewed her. They checked her in to an open ward. My grandfather stayed with her that night in her bed, while someone stayed home with the children. She was affectionate with him, imploring him to make love to her, but then became agitated, emotional, confused. In the middle of the night she got up out of bed and wandered into another room on the ward. There was a woman lying in a bed there. My grandmother stood at the bedside for a moment looking down at her.
“Why do you lie there in women’s clothing?” she said, and slapped the patient across the face.
They restrained her. They took her to a closed ward, one where she was not free to wander. They kept her there for two months while my grandfather made arrangements for a longer-term solution. Her condition varied from day to day, week to week. She cried for hours and hours. She reported that someone had killed her children, that their heads were buried in the walls of her room. She reported that events too terrible to describe were taking place just beneath her floor. For the first ten days she refused to eat, claiming that the food they brought was contaminated with white lead. When my grandfather visited, she accused him of selfishness, of sleeping with other women, of giving her nothing but loneliness since the day they married.
On March 25, 1944, an ambulance took her from the closed ward to the train depot, and soon the entire family boarded a train for a three-day cross-country trip back home to Connecticut. The children were not aware of what was happening. They knew their mother had been somewhere else, and they knew they were now being tended to by a cartoonishly stern nanny, Mrs. Thornfeldt, but the details, the whys, were out of reach. A neighbor had given them a large bag filled with packages to take on their trip. They’d open a new one each morning, revealing a fresh gift for every day on the rails. They knew their mother was on the train with them, but they didn’t know why she’d been confined to a locked drawing room. My grandfather visited her in the drawing room. He watched her chain-smoke. He watched her eat. Eventually he gave her several doses of Luminal and watched her sleep.
Three days after leaving Walla Walla, the train
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