Group Therapy
The late afternoon sunlight shone through barred windows, cutting through the dull blue room in great golden boxes . Dr. Emile Klein sat in a circle of equally dull blue chairs, looking at the faces of the men in them. They had no unifying commonality other than the off-white inmate jumpsuits issued to all patients at the Dammasch State Hospital. Dammasch mental hospital really, he didn’t know why the bureaucrats always seemed so adverse to the truth. He had moved from New York to pursue research at Stanford not long after the Zimbardo experiment made headlines. “Out west”, he remembered thinking, “they are really doing it!” Remembering the certainty that had led him from New York to California, and then to the Oregon State Hospital, another mental hospital. He let his mind wander over the chain of events that led to him taking the Head of Transitional Therapy position at here Dammasch.
With an effort he pulled his attention back to the room. There were thirteen of them today, inauspicious. They ranged from a tiny, soft spoken Central American man in his 70’s , to several hardened criminal types, probably neo-nazis. Then there was his newest patient, a brooding and dangerous looking young man of 18 or so. Star, Nicholas Star, goes by Nick, born August 9th, 1970. “Jesus, he just turned 18,” Emile thought,cringing slightly as he always did when he said, thought or did things that fell outside of acceptable behavior for a nice Jewish kid from Crown Heights. Calling out to Jesus was one of those socially acceptable swears that the people of his generation just picked up, but that didn’t prevent the tiny stabs of shame or the imagined voice of his bubbe from chastising him.
He was having a day of it, refocusing again, “thank you Deandre,” making eye contact as he spoke and smiling in the way he knew made his newly forming crow’s feet more prominent. His ex-wife had always said that he could charm a snake with that smile. Moving his gaze from face to face now, “would anyone else like to add anything?” Silence. Everyone was feeling it today, evidently. Awkwardness claimed it’s tiny victory. “Well we have a new addition to our merry band, as I am sure you have all noticed,” a jolt ran through his body when he briefly locked eyes with his new patient. Doing his best to cover up for his suddenly racing heart and strange uneasiness, “Nick, would you mind introducing yourself and while you are at it tell us why you think you are here?” A moment of silent vertigo seemed to capture the room as the young man lifted his head and stared at each of the other men one at a time. No one seemed to even breathe until he spoke with an unexpectedly smooth, but flat baritone, “I am only here for one purpose Dr. K.” Emile did a small involuntary playback of the session, had anyone called him that today? “And can you tell us what is, that purpose?” he asked as prepared to record what he anticipated would be a delusional diatribe. “I am here to meet you Emile.” Deadpan, not even a twitch, somebody cleared a throat after what seemed eternity. He couldn’t quite get his equilibrium, “That’s very convenient, and now that we have met what’s next for you?” “I think, I have no choice but to stay, I need to figure somethings out, like whether or not I am right about you. You’re not at all what I expected.” Still no facial tells at all, this kid would make a formidable poker player. “Do you get cartoons here? I haven’t watched Saturday morning cartoons in a lifetime at least,” he continued in his flat, low near drawl. “The hospital policy is that the TV schedule is set in advance and selected by good behavior candidates, but I think you will be in luck, Christian here is a Saturday morning enthusiast, and he has control of the scheduling from7 until 10 tomorrow morning.” “Good,” Nicholas Star said as he abruptly stood and walked toward the open entryway. He paused at the threshold, “am I allowed to return to my room?” When Emile gave the smallest of nods, the young man turned and disappeared around the corner.
No one said anything for about half a minute, the amount of time that the other patients knew would take Nick out of earshot. Deandre spoke up, “I think the new kid wants to be yo bitch Dr. K,” he said with a forced laugh. “You, right ‘andre, he’s definitely sweet on the doc.” Chaos broke out for several minutes as the men began to vacillate between speculation and fantasy, until Christian Meadows stood up announcing, “he’s the devil, he’s gonna kill us, he’s gonna cut us, stab us, stab you doc, he wants to kill you.” More Chaos, one of those days, at least I am off tomorrow Dr. Klein reflected as calmed and dispersed the group, before making walking back to his office to fire up the Apple IIgs and add today’s session to the archive. He was already forgetting the discomfort as the full 16 color display came to life. He smiled, still disbelieving that the hospital had signed off on the expenditure, and as he sat down he was already thinking past the session and planning on how to tie together the next stages of his research.
My personal Webpages