“That I’m nuts,” he said, out of the side of his mouth that showed. “Now, look.”
He covered the other side of his face. Looked at himself with the other eye.
“They’re completely different, see.”
“What is?”
“The two sides of my face, you dumb sonofabitch! They should be the same, but they ain’t. My goddamn face, it’s split it in two. This fuckin’ war. Oh, I got a screw loose, all right.”
He turned away from the mirror and put a hand on my shoulder and grinned; there was a space between his two front teeth, I noticed. “We’re in the right place, you and me,” he said.
“I guess we are,” I said.
“Semper fi,” he shrugged, and strutted out.
I took a crap. That’s something I hadn’t forgotten how to do. I sat there crapping and finishing my smoke and thinking about how I wanted to get out of this place. How I wanted to go home.
Wherever the hell home was.
I flushed the shitter, went over to the sink, and threw some water on my face. Then I went out to meet the doctor.
He was waiting for me outside the nurse’s station; he wasn’t in military apparel. White coat, white pants. He seemed young for a medic, probably early thirties. Trim black hair, trim mustache, pale, kind of stocky.
He extended his hand for me to shake.
“Pleased to meet you, Private Heller,” he said.
“If that’s my name,” I said.
“That’s what I’d like to help you determine. I’m Doctor Wilcox.”
Civilian, apparently. “Glad to make your acquaintance, Doc. You really think you could help me find my way back? Back to my name. Back to where I come from.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I like your confidence,” I said, walking next to him down the hall. “But I always thought when a guy went bughouse, it was pretty permanent.”
“That’s not at all true,” he said, gesturing with a hand for me to enter a small room where two chairs and a small table waited; not a straitjacket in sight. I went in. He went on: “Many mental disorders respond well to therapy. And those due to some intensely stressful situation, such as combat, are often easier to deal with.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the trauma can be more or less temporary. Be grateful your problem isn’t a physical one. That it isn’t chronic.”
I sat down in one of the chairs. “You going to give me truth serum?”
He remained standing. “Sodium amatal is one possibility. Shock treatments, another. But first I’d like to try to knock your barrier down with simple hypnosis.”
“Haven’t you heard, Doc? Vaudeville is dead.”
He took that with a smile. “This is no sideshow attraction, Private. Hypnosis has often proved effective in certain types of battle neurosis-amnesia among them.”
“Well…”
“I think you’ll find this a less troublesome route than electric shock.”
“It cured Zangara.”
“Who’s Zangara?”
I shrugged. “Damned if I know. What do I have to do, Doc?”
“Just stand and face me. And cooperate. Do exactly as I say.”
I stood and faced him. “I’m in your hands.”
And then I was: his hands, his warm soothing hands, were on my either temple. “Relax completely and put your mind on going to sleep,” he said. His voice was monotonous and musical at the same time; his eyes were gray and placid and yet held me.
“All right, now,” he said, hands still on my temples, “keep your eyes on mine, keep your eyes on mine, and keep them fixed on mine, keep your mind entirely on falling asleep. Now you’re going into a deep sleep as we go on, you’re going to go into a deep sleep as we go on.”
His hands dropped from my temples, but his eyes held on. “Now clasp your hands in front of you”-I did; so did he-“clasp them tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, they’re getting tighter and tighter and tighter, and as they get tighter you’re falling asleep, as they get tighter you’re falling asleep, your eyes are getting heavy, heavy…”
My eyelids weighed a ton; stayed barely open, his eyes locking mine, his voice droning on: “Now your hands are locked tight, they’re locked tight, they’re locked tight. Can’t let go, they’re locked tight, you can’t let go; when I snap my fingers you’ll be able to let go, when I snap my fingers you’ll be able to let go, and then you’ll get sleepier, your eyes getting heavier-”
Snap!
“Now your eyes are getting heavier, heavier, heavier, you’re going into a deep, deep sleep, going into a deep, deep sleep, deep asleep, far asleep, now closed tight, closed tight, deep, deep sleep, deeply relaxed, far asleep…you’re far asleep…far asleep…now you’re in a deep sleep, no fear, no anxiety, no fear, no anxiety, now you’re in a deep, deep sleep.”
I was in darkness now, but his hands guided me, as did his voice: “Now just sit down in the chair behind you. Sit down in the chair behind you.” I did. “Lean back.” I did. “And now fall forward into a deep, deep sleep. And now falling forward, going further and further and further asleep. Now when I stroke your left arm it becomes rigid, like a bar of steel, as you go further asleep, further asleep.”
My arm, as if of its own will, extended, rod straight.
“Going further, further, further asleep. Rigid.”
I could feel him tugging at my arm, testing it.
“Cannot be bent or relaxed. Now when I touch the top of your head, when I touch the top of your head, that arm will relax and the other will become rigid. You’ll go further asleep. In a very deep sleep.”
His hand, lightly, touched the top of my head; my left arm relaxed, right one went sieg heil.
“And your sleep is deeper and deeper. Now when I touch this hand my finger will be hot. Now when I touch this hand my finger will be hot, you will not be able to bear it.”
Searing pain! Like red-hot shrapnel!
“Your arm is rigid. Now when I touch your hand you will no longer feel any pain there. Will be normal.”
Pain was gone, no trace of it.