Authors: Thomas Cater
He likened her to a happy puppet, laughing and
swaggering drunkenly, and falling down on her arse.
“
Case: Jedidiah Jones
: i
njected
alcohol into sub-cortical white matter. Patient’s depression was relieved.
While seeming to be emotionally charged, feelings have less depth and emotional
equilibrium cannot be sustained. Example: anger may suddenly flare up, but
forgotten just as quickly. More operations required on this patient.
“Later:
Resected portions of the left hemisphere.
Six cores made into each frontal lobe. Patient has recovered equilibrium at the
price of intellectual impoverishment.”
There were several addenda to this case, including,
“I
hope I have done the right thing. I feel it is better for Jed to survive with a
simplified intellect capable of elementary deeds than a mind wherein the
disorder of psychosis reins. ‘The world can accommodate the most humble
laborer, but it distrusts and fears the words and deeds of the convoluted
thinker.’”
Nice quote, I thought.
Another entry reported,
“Convulsions and episodes
of violence occurred resulting in death. During autopsy, I removed the thyroid,
thymus and pituitary for production of serum. I have completed fifty series of
injections on Alberichs to restore the inadequate development of their own
thyroids. I have also observed an unusual development to their lower jaw. It
seems to be growing out of proportion with the rest of their undeveloped
bodies. But in a case like this, who can say what is normal?”
Something was also going on near my own giddy thymus,
some joyous apprehension of events about to be revealed. A great pain in the
heart for unfinished work accompanied it. I knew, however, what the result was
going to be. I was trying to make something happen again, the way it should,
but did not.
I wondered about other experiments Grier may have been
conducting. There must have been others. Didn’t the Alberichs say, “They came
to us without eyes?” Surely, all of those tests and experiments weren’t
performed as a prelude to one operation?
I found another paragraph about L. The date was several
months later.
“L continues to gain weight. I checked with the kitchen and it
cannot be her diet. I suspect she is pregnant. I will have the floor nurse
watch to see if there is any sickness. How could this have happened? I hope,
god forbid, the child’s father isn’t one of the patients.”
I made a note of the page and the paragraph on my chronological
table. There was a good chance that Elinore was three or four months pregnant
at that time. I wondered if she was aware of the fact. I began to feel the same
trepidation Grier felt when I thought about what Samuel might do when he found
out.
I had to keep reminding myself that all of this nasty business
happened more than a half century ago, and all the parties to the drama were
dead and buried, but unfortunately not gone.
More information about L.
“She is most assuredly pregnant,”
the note declared
, “But what am I to do? If he finds out, I am ruined.
He’ll send me to prison. I must find out if she knows what has happened. If she
doesn’t … for the time being, I’ll tell her she has a tumor.”
A tumor? Damn, that was a nasty, a butt-saving trick, just
when I was getting fond of liking him.
“She knows it’s a child,”
notes on the following pages confirmed.
“What’s
more she has plans to marry her lover and has sworn me to secrecy. Thank God,
at least the child wasn’t conceived in the hospital, but in her own home.”
There was another appended note:
“Samuel is
scheduled to return within the week and with the wild creature. I hope he
doesn’t insist upon going through with this insane operation. I should not have
confided my studies and research with him.”
The creature? It sounded as if he were finally talking
baboon. Yabadabadoo said the monkey to the chimp. I thought I’d give myself
some breathing room and take a break. I knew he wasn’t talking lobotomy. It was
the cutting and dicing he’d been rehearsing; the eye transplant.
I needed something sweet to enjoy. My urine was once
again beginning to smell like hard apple cider. I needed a granulated sugar
sandwich or something equally as molecularly devastating, but it was not to be.
I spooned Skippy peanut butter from a plastic jar on two slices of bread, cut and
chopped onions into thick rings, and filled their centers with chewable bits of
banana; a feast fit for a king. It was the kind of pleasure a reasonable man couldn’t
live without.
I didn’t want to believe there were so many misfits
living in the world, making life difficult and complicated for the rest of us.
I could not imagine how they managed to hang on for so long, or how much better
everything would be if men exercised free will over every one but themselves. I
ate my sandwich and crawled back into bed.
I thumbed rapidly through the pages looking for more
notes on L. I turned a page and found several scale drawings of enormous brown
eyes gazing peacefully out from beneath a furry brow. There were lists of
numbers, measurements, written in the margins corresponding to letters and
lines surrounding the eyes.
In the opposite margin, there was a similar list of
figures. The two columns matched almost perfectly, but the words and the
letters were strange and incomprehensible, as if they had been written in
shorthand or code.
I gazed into the drawing of those two eyes for a long
time. If what I suspected had happened, it was something I did not want to
believe could ever happen again.
I forced myself to turn the pages of the journal.
“We have made a home for it in the tombs. The little
people are looking after it. It is rather docile considering its reputation for
ferocity.”
It appeared that Grier was back in control. He may have
confided his fears and the discoveries about Elinore’s condition to Samuel. He
was taking everything in stride.
There was an increase in activity at the hospital during
those summer and autumn days. On average, more than a dozen operations were
performed in a week. Grier was working with renewed vigor, as if he were racing
the clock. A deadline of some kind had been set.
“I am no closer to success now than I have been in the
past,”
he noted.
“Regrettably, L
continues to wax round and sleek. There is a wild humor in the eyes of her
father. I am glad she cannot see it. The news did not sit well with him.”
A few days later:
“The madness in his eyes has
spread to his brain. He asked me to take the child from her womb to insure its demise.
How could I have allowed myself to be manipulated by such a superstitious
fool?”
Entries were irregular for the next weeks. A word or a
sentence, but nothing definite until he started a new page in November:
“The decision has been made. Everything is in
readiness. I have reviewed the 28 pages of the Voynich manuscript and succeeded
twice at what few men have dared attempt. Regrettably, I have succeeded only
upon the dead or the dying. The key lies in not removing the eyes, but only the
corneas, replacing retinas with healthy cones. If what I am about to attempt
succeeds, then my fate is decided. But should I fail, I pray God shed his
redeeming mercy upon my soul.”
Voynich manuscript? It sounded like some kind of
medical treatise. The next entry was so hastily written that I could hardly
read it:
“She is still under the influence of opium, but alive!
I have renewed my pledge to the Almighty to keep my faith if he will but see us
both through this insanity to the end.”
Evidently, Grier had more to worry about then keeping
his pledge; the next few entries rattled his nerves and sent him scurrying for
solutions:
“We removed the bandages from her eyes today, and she
began to scream. She screamed incessantly until we sedated her. It was the only
way to silence her.”
His next entry was equally disturbing and desperate:
“She woke during the night. I was summoned from my
room. I could hear her pitiful screams echoing through the corridors. When I reached
her, she was still screaming. Her eyes were filled with blood! Red and orange!
A hideous color! Her screams were those of a tormented beast.
“Her eyes have lost all semblance of sanity. They look
like the frighten eyes of the wild thing we have stolen them from. I cannot
bear to look at her. We sedated her heavily again with a potion and strapped
her in bed. Then we transferred her to the chamber in the mineshaft where we keep
the pitiful creature caged. I cannot bear to hear her screams when she awakens;
they are also having terrible and frightening effects on the other patients.”
The entries were small and limited for the next few
weeks, almost as if he were waiting and pondering his dilemma in silence:
Nov. 9: “She is still screaming and sedatives are
useless.”
Nov. 10: “She is still screaming. There is a terrible
outrage in those orange eyes, as if she is looking through us and into our
souls. Oh, what a terrible sight!”
Nov. 11: “Screaming! Screaming! Will nothing silence her?
It is as if the Klikouchy have invaded her mind.”
The Klikouchy? Maybe there were such things. I went
back to the notes.
Nov. 12: “I have asked her father for permission to
operate. I hope leucotomy will help. It is the only solution I can think of to save
her sanity, and mine.”
Nov. 15: “May God forgive me for the terrible
atrocities I have committed upon that young woman’s mind and body. I have done
only what I thought was best.”
Nov. 17: It is done and not a moment too soon. I have
silenced her screams forever, I hope. She is still unconscious and will remain
so for a day or two. At last, a few days of peace.”
Nov. 20: “Peace at last.”
Nov 21: “I spoke too soon. It started again. She
screams as if Satan is tearing the soul from her body. Is there nothing that
can be done to help her?”
Nov. 24: “She has exhausted herself with screams and
has relapsed. The nurses have observed that she screams only when her eyes are
open. We have bandaged them tightly.”
Nov. 28: “It worked! But it was only temporary. She ripped
the bandage from her eyes and began screaming again. We have bound her hands
and eyes and all is quiet. We cannot keep her this way indefinitely. Something
must be done.”
Grier started making other entries in his journal
about other patients, but with only passing references to L. Such as,
‘She
sleeps as if at home among the dead.
’ Or
: ‘somehow she managed to free
her hands and removed the bandage from her eyes. For hours, we heard the sounds
of her screams coming from the tunnels beneath the hospital. It nearly drove us
mad. Two catatonic patients revived and echoed her screams. Something must be
done.’
In December, Grier made another entry in his journal
about L:
“I have hit upon a permanent solution, the only solution I dare
contemplate: I must remove her eyes, or sew them shut forever.”
A few weeks later, a note in the journal stated:
“It
is done and none too soon. The child within her womb is insistent. It wishes to
make its presence known.”
I
n
January
, Grier
made
what appeared to be
a rather uplifting note in his journal:
“A benevolent god has interceded to save all our
souls from damnation. A mental patient has delivered a premature male child
into our hands. It is weak and sickly. I feel it shall be short lived.”
A few days later, there was another brief entry:
“A six-pound bouncing baby boy! Perfect in every
detail! Samuel need never be the wiser. I have taken the baby away and made preparations
for its future care. We can only hope and pray that it is not inflicted with
the timeless malady of its brethren.”
I wondered what that malady might be and who were its brethren?
Then there were no more announcements of babies and
maladies, not another word about Elinore or her child.
According to the records Constance had uncovered,
Elinore was discharged from the hospital on February 28, 1924. However, there
was no mention in her hospital record of having given birth to a child. I made
a mental note to see if a birth or death certificate had been recorded at the
courthouse. From all appearances, it looked as if Zeke had saved the child’s
life.
I stared bleary eyed at the clock. It was
after midnight
.
I had been reading and re-reading for three and a half hours, thanks to Grier, I
had acquired some insight into what had actually happened to Elinore. She had
gone into the hospital with the hope of having her sight restored and emerged a
screaming lunatic with half a brain and only a vague memory of her child.
I closed the book and rubbed my eyes. I was bone
tired, sick and worried about something that had happened to someone 70 years
ago, and had died a dozen years ago. I was getting bent out of shape for
nothing. I needed rest and knew I’d probably sleep till noon the following day.
I backed the van out of Virgil’s driveway and parked on the street.