Hope, Levy, Marc [good summer reads TXT] 📗

doctor a voice message, asking him to call her as soon as possible. She needed to see him today.

Her appointment was in the middle of the afternoon, and Betsy spent half an hour waiting before the doctor was ready to see her. He apologized. He had done the best he could to squeeze her in between two appointments, but Betsy didn’t mind—she wasn’t a patient, she said. The doctor reminded her that he couldn’t discuss Melly’s health without Melly being there. It would be a breach of medical confidentiality.

Betsy reminded him that her husband had donated a significant sum to Longview, before sharing her worries, or rather, Harold’s worries.

The doctor drew out his tablet and traced an oval on the screen with his finger. This was a brain, he said. Not all doctors knew how to draw. He drew a cross to show the part of the occipital lobe that had been damaged, and explained again that the surgeons had replaced it with a transplant, which he was proud to say had been accepted.

Before her discharge from the Center, Melly had undergone yet another series of exams, he added. These assessments were very costly and would generally have been deemed redundant. But the research director had personally requested they be carried out as a precaution.

Ultimately, it had indeed been redundant: the atomic and biological imaging results showed yet again that Melly’s brain was in perfect working order. And the cognitive tests further supported the findings.

Her memory impairment remained a mystery, but the doctor was sure this was merely temporary.

Betsy mustered up every last drop of courage she had and asked the question that had kept her awake all night. Did her daughter have a personality disorder? The doctor asked her to explain what exactly she meant by that, and Betsy stuttered over the word.

“Schizophrenia.”

The doctor shot her a condescending glance before patting her hand reassuringly. Melly had no symptoms that would indicate any such thing.

But Betsy wanted to know what other explanation there could be for her impairments, the distress that sometimes flitted over her face, the nightmares that haunted her when night fell.

The doctor claimed her nightmares were a good sign. Emotional memory needed stimulus to be triggered, he said. The process was too complex to explain to Betsy, but in short, he told her that over time, Melly would be confronted by everyday situations that would serve as switches, reigniting her brain’s electrical flow. He left it there. It was complicated enough as it was, and he made a reference to “Prost’s cupcake” to help her better understand. Betsy had to correct him. The famous French writer he was referring to was Proust, and it wasn’t a cupcake, but a madeleine. The doctor thanked her for shedding light on the matter. He had always thought that Madeleine was the name of the writer’s wife.

Suddenly, the doctor looked up, a thoughtful expression on his face, and Betsy detected a glint in his eye, as if he had finally understood the reasoning behind their meeting.

Because of the trauma and stress Melly had been put through, it was possible that Melly had developed an identity disorder, although this was purely hypothetical, he rushed to say. The symptoms of this varied, but the disorder could indeed manifest as an inability to handle past events. It could involve dissociative amnesia and depersonalization. In summary, patients with the disorder no longer knew whether their memories were real, or even whether they themselves were.

Although it was merely hypothetical, this diagnosis satisfied Betsy, and the doctor skyrocketed in her esteem. He had plummeted when he had explained a little earlier that everything was as it should be, when she knew for a fact that it wasn’t.

Depersonalization. Betsy nodded. That was exactly what Harold had tried to explain. Dear old Harold, she thought. Beneath the ranting and raving, he had a lot of good sense.

Melly must have lost her personality, and that wasn’t too much of a problem, as personalities could come back. Especially her daughter’s, which had once been larger than life itself.

Mrs. Barnett seemed calmer than when she first came in, and the doctor sensed he had hit on a rational explanation that would keep Harold Barnett happy too. The mountain of problems he had predicted upon hearing that Mrs. Barnett wanted to see him as soon as possible was down to the size of a gentle hill, soon to be flattened and disappear altogether. No matter if he was running an hour late for his next appointment. He would make sure that it disappeared.

Now that they knew what the problem was, Betsy said, What to do about it?

Generally, the doctor would have advised additional assessments to support the diagnosis, but not this time. He scribbled out a prescription on his tablet. He would prescribe drug therapy. He left Mrs. Barnett to collect her order from the Center’s pharmacy and returned to talk her through the dosage.

After a heartfelt shake of hands, Betsy left the Center with a spring in her step. And as Walt held open the car door, the thought crossed her mind that if only the world were governed by women like herself, it would be full of so many more solutions than problems.

That night, dinner was held half an hour earlier than usual. Betsy was brimming with excitement and asked the family to gather for dinner at six thirty that evening. She waited until everyone was seated around the table before saying she had an important announcement to make.

A little while later, as Melly and Harold looked on astonished, she finished recounting her appointment with the wonderfully charming and competent doctor from the Longview Center.

“So, dear, you’ll need to take two of these pills, morning and night, and in a few weeks’ time, your memory will be up and running again. You’ll be able to let your imagination run wild once more; your feeling and creative spirit will be back.”

“I didn’t even know I was sick,”