After lunch, she picked up the phone and, before she could think better of it, dialed the number of the Payne Whitney clinic, the website of which had come up repeatedly in her morning’s search. “Judith Lang,” she told the operator, who connected her without a word. “Dr. Lang, hello,” she said, as her voice was converted into ones and zeros by the hospital’s voice mail system. “This is Emily, Emily Kaplan. I hope you’re doing well. And I hope you won’t think this is too weird, but I’m calling because I have a, a bit of a problem that, um, lies within your area of expertise—” Inwardly, she cringed; why was she speaking like this? “And, I guess, I don’t really have anyone else to consult about it, so I was hoping you might have just a few minutes to talk to me. I’m so sorry to trouble you. You can reach me at work…”
The following day, Emily found herself navigating the familiar corridors of the Payne Whitney pavilion, curiously filled with emotion. She had not thought she would return to this place without Curtis. Mrs. Lang—Dr. Lang—sat inside her sanctum on the second floor, conversing intently with one of her interchangeable residents—or interns, Emily couldn’t remember which was which—and waved Emily in without slowing her monologue. “We’ll just be a minute,” she called. “We’ve had a slight emergency this morning.” Emily smiled uncomfortably and walked over to the window, studying the small, tree-rimmed square below with great concentration so as not to appear overly interested in the discussion they’d foisted upon her, which had to do with a patient refusing medication. “Okay, that’s it. You’re all set with this?” she asked the resident.
“Good to go,” he said, a phrase Emily disliked.
“This is Emily Kaplan, by the way,” she told the man, swiveling back on her vast leather chair and reaching one arm in Emily’s direction. “A friend of Curtis’s. Her father runs the postpartum depression clinic at UNC.”
“Interesting,” said the resident, with a stiff grin that made it clear that it wasn’t.
“Okay, well, we need to grab some lunch,” Dr. Lang told him, waving a long hand at him and turning to Emily. “I’ll see you on rounds at three.” Tripping slightly over the doorjamb, the resident rushed out, and Mrs. Lang gave Emily a small, awkward hug. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“No,” Emily said, though she’d meant, actually, to say yes. “Not really.”
“Hmmm,” Dr. Lang murmured half an hour later, chewing thoughtfully on a bite of roast beef. “Your sister does sound like a classic borderline. The paranoia, the chain of broken relationships, the life lived in chaos, always making herself out to be the victim. Though I can see why they were thinking manic depression. She clearly has the periods of intense focus—”
“Yes!”
“—followed by periods of despair, but that’s pretty typical.” Electroconvulsive therapy, she said, was being used lately to treat severe depression or manic depression when drugs weren’t working. Dr. Lang herself occasionally prescribed it for patients. They were just starting to use it on “borderlines.” “The ECT, you understand, doesn’t do anything for the borderline personality disorder, most likely. It just treats your sister’s depression. And mania. It treats the symptoms, rather than curing the disease itself.” Emily nodded. “Did they do unilateral or bilateral?” Emily confessed that she didn’t know. “How many treatments did you say she had?” Emily didn’t know this either. “Hmmm. Well, how long was she at Brattleboro?”
“About three months. But I don’t think they started them right away.”
“Criminal.” Popping the last bit of sandwich into her mouth, Dr. Lang vigorously wiped crumbs from her lap, glanced crisply at her watch, and stood up, towering over Emily, who sat before the remains of her salad, unsure if she should follow. She decided to stand. “It’s just criminal. Releasing a patient like that. Midway through treatment. If that.” She began walking toward the elevator. Emily followed, two steps to every one of the doctor’s. “I’ll call Jay Fleming, get her records. Can you make me a list of the other hospitals she’s been at?”
“Ye—”
“And does she have a doctor in Chapel Hill? Or someone at Duke?”
“Yes. I think so. I can find out.”
“Email it to me today.”
“Okay—”
“Generally patients with problems as severe as your sister’s do ECT every two weeks for about a year. Not once or twice, then never again. And they’re monitored closely for years afterward.” She pressed, with great precision, on the elevator’s up button. “So we’ll need to get her started again. Do you want to bring her in tomorrow?”
Emily shook her head and grimaced. “No, no, I don’t think she’d come. She thinks she’s well now and if I suggest she see a psychiatrist she’d… freak out.” Dr. Lang gave her a stern look.
“Well,” she said, her tone, Emily thought, slightly colder, “would you want me to come meet her in a casual way? We could all have lunch at that nice Thai place? Or I could stop by your apartment?” Emily considered. How would she explain a lunch date with someone their mom’s age? She could say Dr. Lang was a former professor, in town for a conference. “Or, would you rather I sent a resident? Someone closer to your own age?” She grinned. “They don’t let anyone over forty into Williamsburg, do they?”
“That might be better,” said Emily, laughing. Dr. Lang had never joked with her before. “He—or she—could come for Sunday brunch, if that’s good. We always have a big crowd. Clara won’t even notice one extra person.”
That Sunday, a sandy-haired young man rapped on her door, clad in neat garments that might have appeared in the dictionary under the term “casual attire”: faded jeans of no particular style or brand, flannel shirt of nondescript color, bulky wool sweater striated with cables and loops, one creamy strand of wool unraveling at the joint between collar and shoulder seam, all of which appeared to have been pressed, down to the loose thread. “I’m Dr. Gitter,” he said, glancing nervously around. “Josh Gitter.” He may or may not have been the resident she’d met earlier in the week on her visit to Dr. Lang’s office, for he was pale, blinking, bespectacled, mildly Jewish, moderately preppy, like the rest of Dr. Lang’s minions.
“Come in,” said Emily, leading him into the apartment. “It’s a little smoky in here. I hope that’s okay.” The doctor smiled a quick, tight smile—as if to say that it wasn’t okay, but he was happy to suffer for the sake of the common good—sizing up the various bearded and tattooed persons before him, taking pulls off their cigarettes and swills of Clara’s dark, thick coffee.
“Hey,” shouted the anarchist publisher. His son was racing madly around the room, chasing a stray cat that had climbed in through the window, lured by the platters of lox. “Hey,” the others shouted, waving ringed fingers holding half-eaten bagels. “Welcome!” Clara called. Dr. Gitter raised his hand, said “Thanks,” and smiled at Emily. “Have some coffee,” she said quickly, leading him to Clara’s latest recovery project: a gold velvet chair with a tufted, buttoned back.
And there he remained, silent and unmoving but for the occasional bite of bagel—garlic, without butter or cream cheese—for an hour, while Clara’s throng rose and fell, in waves of chatter and laughter, around him. At one, he rose from the chair—a quick, Dr. Lang–style movement—and gestured toward the door with his head. Emily followed him into the vestibule. “Can we talk outside?” he asked, in a quiet voice that wasn’t exactly a whisper.
“Sure.” The gravity of his tone caused her, stupidly, to giggle. “I’ll walk you to the subway.” She grabbed her coat and keys and slipped out the door.