The dimmest of the hospital attendants during Leeson’s stay was a thicknecked man called Bream. His features were contradictory — eyes small but heavily lashed, nose pocked but noble, the lips under his patchy moustache plump. Because of this he appeared both dainty and brutish, the latter quality inevitably winning out when he opened his mouth to speak. Perhaps this was why it came as a surprise to Leeson that Bream, of all people, would have been aware of his anniversary, entering Leeson’s ward as he did, carrying a mahogany box on a silver tray. And perhaps it was because Bream was smiling that Leeson believed he was being brought tea — not tea slopped from a pot into a cup as usual, but tea displayed in a proper tea box, one that, when opened, would reveal rows of canisters containing a variety of imported leaves. Never mind that the gesture did not make sense after Bream’s behaviour following breakfast: the big man had chased Leeson around the day room for upending the card table, had crossed his arms over Leeson’s so that he couldn’t move, had walked Leeson back toward his bed step by step, as if they were a four-legged monster in a sensation play.
“I’d rather—” Leeson had entreated before sensing the futility of his overture. Still, a few scuffled steps later, Bream, sensing Leeson’s resignation, had relaxed his grip and the solicitor had wriggled free, marching quickly toward his ward unescorted.
A short time later, Dr. Thorpe strolled into the ward. He conferred with a tall, sallow-looking gentleman with reddish hair and a trimmed beard. Leeson grinned, delighted at the possibility of a party in his honour.
“Leeson,” Thorpe began, slowly and clearly, “this is Dr. Bedford. He is going to help ease your agitation.” Having announced this, Thorpe turned to Bedford and began to reiterate in low tones his patient’s predicament, listing off the symptoms he’d later record in his report: increased anxiety, troubled sleep, fleeting moments of clarity as to the exact nature of the harm he’d caused and demands at odd hours to see a commissioner who could release him to Emily so that he might plead forgiveness for his error.
After this, Bedford sat stiffly on the edge of the mattress and repositioned the box Bream had set on the side table. He made a few notes about his perception of the patient — an amiable-seeming man who smiled up at him with pleasure, an expression that was both unexpected and welcome. Bedford had thus far taken his galvanizing machine to three asylums and his patients had ranged from wary to hysterical. The last patient here at the Whitmore, Hopper, had gone so far as to wrap his hands around Bedford’s neck, reddening the medical electrician’s skin before the attendants managed to free him.
Now, with the air of a man about to conduct a chamber orchestra, Bedford extended his arms, lifted the lid on the box and pulled out the wires. The door on the far side of the ward creaked open and Herschel came in to sit on his own bed behind Leeson’s.
“What age is he?” Bedford asked Dr. Thorpe.
“Forty-three,” Leeson answered, tilting his head to get a better look at the selection of tea. Bedford pulled the electrodes from their case just then and drew the wire transmitters toward Leeson’s hands, nodding for Bream to fasten his wrists so that the transmitters could be applied to the base of each palm. The attendant’s hand descended just as Leeson jerked his own away.
“Easy now,” Bedford said, smiling reassuringly.
Suddenly aware of what was coming, and unsure how to stop it, Leeson opened and closed his mouth, trying to find the words that would rectify the misunderstanding. Bedford leaned close, whispered, Shhh as one might to a child. Bream, taking two strips of cotton from the doctor’s black bag, bound Leeson’s wrists to the bed frame and then stood back while Bedford made a few more adjustments to the dials on the front of the machine. Herschel, in the whitewash of the room, began to hiccup.
“Ready?” Bedford pursed his lips, then nodded at Super intendent Thorpe as if to allay the doubts Thorpe had expressed that very morning. It was a nod intended to communicate that they were alike: two men in a world of imbeciles. He turned back to the machine and flicked a small brass lever ever so gently with his knuckle. Leeson looked at his arm as the electric charge scurried up it and a wave of nausea rolled down his throat; a hundred points of light prickled his eyes. His bowels loosened and he had to clench his buttocks for fear of what might come out. Bedford’s face appeared then in the air above him, a finger and thumb forcing his eye open.
“The jarring disrupts the electrical patterns in the brain,” Bedford announced to the room as he checked Leeson’s eyes. He pulled out his pocket watch. “It is a process that is best carried out gradually and not in one instant. We will administer two treatments today, two tomorrow, and then evaluate his progress.” He stood and turned to Thorpe. “You will see results, sir, believe me.”
Leeson closed his eyes. Emily was in the room then — or so he thought — her gentle face a few inches above his.
When Leeson opened his eyes after his second fit, the doctor’s hawk-like nose and tobacco-coloured moustache came into focus. Then a hand appeared, its fingers snapping over Leeson’s forehead, and Bedford, speaking slowly as if through molasses, asked, “Can you say your name, sir?”
Leeson steered his gaze away. Over the doctor’s shoulder he saw Herschel, mouth ajar, hovering near the back wall of the room, his fat hands in his black hair. He sensed someone else observing but couldn’t lift his head to see whom.
Ockley, the attendant who had replaced Bream for the afternoon session, shook Leeson’s arm. “Give ’em yer name.”
“Charles,” Leeson said, his eyes darting across the room to meet Herschel’s.
“Excellent.” Bedford clapped his hands and then rubbed them together. “It’s too soon, of course, to see the results, but we ought to press on. I’d like to do another round tomorrow.”
Jane has procured support material for the Bedford collection that includes a transcript of Bedford’s one surviving journal, case reports, personal letters and his final medical censure. Leeson’s full name is nowhere to be found in these documents, though there are records of patients from around the date of the Whitmore visit, patients referred to as “JH” and “CL.” Superintendent Thorpe, probably regretting his association with Bedford as well as his own brief susceptibility to a programme he sensed was dangerous, seems to have expunged Bedford from many of the Whitmore’s records. Still, we believe the electro-shock machine tells its own story, the strap that the doctor would have carried it by worn to dullness even as the box’s wood remains polished, as if it were oiled regularly and stored with great care. Some of us are fascinated by it and others are averse, giving it a wide berth when we come upstairs with Jane to watch her dismantle the collection. One of us gently clearing his throat as if he can feel his air holes stoppered, just as we imagine Leeson did.
Bedford’s letters and his journal also say a lot. From them we know that in the early years of his practice the good doctor often relied on analogy. In his journal he recorded an exchange with a patient, “MP,” who’d come to see him in his home against her husband’s wishes. He recounted his suggestion to her that electro-shock therapy was “simply a matter of relighting the lamp of the brain,” noting how she’d turned to the lamp on the table beside him, considering it from under the brim of her hat. “More accurately,” he added, “it is a way not only of relighting the lamp, but also of refining the wick to effect maximal illumination.” She’d smiled at that — the word refine.