Though most mental patients live in worlds of their own, they are nevertheless perfectly well aware that something about them isn’t quite right, and they certainly don’t enjoy their private hell. For the most part they try very hard to follow instructions, take their medications, get better. Despite our best efforts, however, we sometimes can’t help them. The Manhattan Psychiatric Institute is more tragic than most hospitals in this regard because we take in so many unique and difficult cases, often after other institutions have already treated them and made little progress with their ailments.
Now we seemed to have one less of those difficult cases, thanks to fled, who stood along the back wall watching the proceedings like a proud parent. I could see she was grinning, and even from a distance I detected a little twinkle in her eye. She saw me and loped over. “You can tell me later what happened here,” I said. “Right now we have an appointment with your alter ego.”
* * *
I asked fled to remain for a moment outside Room 520, where I found Dr. Tewksbury patiently waiting with Filbert. Virginia, too, had missed the Monday meeting because she had met them at the gate, brought them up, and remained with them until I arrived (Laura Chang chaired the meeting in her absence). As soon as I came in she excused herself.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for this?” I asked her, certain she would love to witness the proceedings (though she would never admit it).
“No, thanks. I’ve got a hospital to direct.” She went for the door before turning to add, with a hint of a smile, “Or is it a circus I’m running here?”
Filbert’s appearance didn’t surprise me. We had, after all, only recently enjoyed the company of one of his cousins—Okeemon the bonobo (not to mention fled herself). Filbert was a little bigger and more agitated than the hippie chimp, but otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. Consequently, I kept an eye on his hands.
It was the appearance of Ellen Tewksbury that shocked me. On the phone she sounded much like Giselle—young, petite, attractive (yes, it sometimes shows in the voice, which often reflects the confident feeling one has in her appearance). Dr. Tewksbury (“Tewks” I learned to call her) was none of those. She was, I would guess, in her early seventies, and considerably larger than I would have thought. Not fat, just huge. More than six feet tall and built like a tackle. Even her teeth were big, as were her heavy horn-rimmed glasses. I supposed one would have to be pretty hefty to handle animals as strong and unpredictable as chimpanzees. Her hair, on the other hand, was a strikingly bright red, and her hands were surprisingly small and soft.
Filbert seemed to be having a good time. Though all the papers had long been pilfered from Goldfarb’s desk and strewn everywhere, he delighted in opening and closing the drawers, sometimes reaching into one of them to pull out a forgotten pencil or paper clip, hooting to announce each new discovery. Finally, Tewks placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. That’s when he noticed fled standing in the doorway.
He ran for her. Neither his guardian nor I tried to stop him. He jumped into her arms and screamed with pleasure, as if she were his long-lost mother. Finally she whispered something in his ear, and he began, finally, to quiet down.
Tewksbury herself was unable to take her eyes off our alien visitor, as if a lifelong dream had come true. I managed a brief introduction and they clasped their hands together warmly. Filbert, though trying to remain calm as instructed, was obviously beside himself with joy, whirling and clapping and hanging onto one or the other’s arms, ignoring me altogether.
I reminded them why we were there, and suggested we get started on the procedure. Fled took her usual chair. I indicated that Tewks should take the one to the right of the desk. For his part, Filbert leaped onto the desk itself, facing fled. Finally, I sat down behind it and glanced at all three of them. “Are we ready?”
Fled and Tewksbury nodded. Filbert looked from one to the other, and he nodded, too.
I reminded the ethologist that we already had fled’s permission for the hypnosis procedure, that there was no risk of a perilous outcome, etc. She and Filbert nodded again. “Okay, then, here we go. Fled, I’m going to count forward from one to five, and when I get to five, you will find yourself in a deep—”
I didn’t hear her counting to herself, but her head slowly fell to her chest, and immediately she was “gone.” I tried to repeat exactly what I had done the previous time (I had reviewed the videotape at home), hoping for a similar result. “Just relax,” I whispered. “Close your eyes if you like. Now I’m going to speak to someone else. You may listen or not, as you wish. I’d like anyone with fled to please come forward and identify yourself….”
We waited for what seemed like a full minute before fled began to withdraw. Finally she shrank down as usual, apparently trying to make herself invisible. She seemed to take almost a fetal position, and became excruciatingly quiet.
At this point Filbert jumped off the desk and edged his way toward fled, who remained completely motionless. He inched closer until he was crouching right beside her. Gently he reached out and touched her face with a finger.
Fled, or whoever she was, seemed to relax a bit. Her hand came up and she stroked Filbert’s arm. He began to make some guttural noises to which fled’s alter ego did not respond. But he persisted with a kind of cooing and caressing of her face with the back of his hand, and then he circled around and began to groom her, picking imaginary insects from her back and shoulders. “Fled” responded with some clucking sounds of her own. This went on for several minutes until Tewks reached over and touched Filbert. He turned to her and began to sign a few words, and she relayed the message: “He says she’s afraid.”
“Can he ask her what she’s afraid of?”
She signed something to him, and he repeated it verbally to fled’s alter. We all waited for a minute or two before the hushed response came to Filbert to Tewks to me: “I’m afraid of the growl creatures.” The alter’s eyes darted around wildly.
“He means the dogs,” Tewksbury translated.
“Tell him to ask her what dogs she’s afraid of.”
Filbert’s head swiveled between Tewks and the alter as he translated the question and the response. “The dogs of the naked beasts who come to hurt.” He continued to groom the alter.
I had some idea of what she meant, of course, but what I really wanted to hear about was her relationship to fled. I asked Tewks, “Can you tell where she’s from? She’s not a bonobo, is she?”
(For the sake of brevity, I have omitted the various back-and-forth signing that ensued.) “No, she’s not a bonobo. She’s a lowland chimpanzee, probably from Congo, like Filbert. Otherwise, they would have a more difficult time communicating.”