Page 29 - Effable Encounters

Fantasy and Fugue

respiration exhibited during the earlier episodes; his face bore no
expression at all. Then he opened his eyes; to Wheelhouse they
appeared as twin pools of deepest black, an illusion he attributed to
the room’s lighting and the patient’s dysfunctional reactions to
stimuli.
“Hello, Mister Albert Chesterton,” the doctor began
pleasantly. “Do you know where you are and who I am?”
The patient nodded slowly. “Yes.” he said, his voice unreadable for
affect. Chesterton’s hands had interlaced on his lap, eight folded
fingers under two threaded thumbs.
The impatient Doctor Wheelhouse tapped his pen, unwilling to
prompt further but unable to elicit a response otherwise. “Well, what
do you have to say, Mr. Chesterton? We haven’t all day, you know.”
The erstwhile seller of shoes focused his vision on the
unsmiling healer of souls. “I’m quite certain we do, sir, whoever you
are; it is, in fact, a given.”
Wheelhouse wrote ‘3rd voice ???’ on his pad. Evidently he had
succeeded in eliciting a more basic Albert Chesterton. This subject
countered the doctor’s pointed remarks with material displaying
neither positive nor negative themes. Or would he?
The doctor put on his cheeriest face.
“What would you say, Mr. Chesterton, if I were to tell you that you
have been totally cured, and that you could go home today?”
Impassively, the man replied, “Nothing.”
“No, wait,” said the psychiatrist, pretending to consult his notes.
“I’m sorry, but that’s wrong. Your test results show that you have
terminal prostate cancer. You will probably die a very painful death
within three weeks. What do you say to that?”
“Not a thing.” Chesterton remained imperturbable, his attention
resting calmly on the psychiatrist’s forehead.
Dr. Wheelhouse turned and walked back behind his desk. He sat
down heavily and surveyed his notes. The emergence of
this fundamental element confirmed a worst-case diagnosis; the self
had been effaced. The patient might modulate motifs, the first two
voices reasserting themselves in temporary episodes, but their
antithesis would never synthesize into a persona functional in the
larger society.

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