Chapter 14

It had been very strange, Kerry thought, finding herself in room 13 of the R Wing with no idea of how she'd gotten there. The hour had been late when she'd awakened, long past her quitting time, but that hadn't been her first consideration.

The first thing she'd noticed was the body of Father Merrik, lying collapsed against the far wall. It took her only a moment to discern that he was dead past any hope of resuscitation. The next thing she'd noticed was the quiet, haunted looking woman sitting shell-shocked on her bed, the patient, Angela D., whom she'd never before laid eyes on. Dr. Walsh knew this for a fact, yet it didn't feel true. Somehow the young psychiatrist felt as if she knew this patient very well indeed. She vaguely recalled the priest's review of her case on her rounds the day before, accompanied by the hint of some disturbing memory that she couldn't pin down. That didn't matter. At the moment she'd awakened in the R Wing, she'd had the hardest time tearing her gaze away from the patient's eyes.

Later, with the investigation of the incident remaining open, the administrators decided that it made sense for Dr. Walsh to continue the Father's work with this patient. No other psychiatric provider had interacted with her, but somehow Kerry had managed to establish a rapport. So she worked with the patient on a daily basis and the weeks passed.

During the following six months, life at the hospital ground on in the habituated manner. Patients were admitted. Some moved onto or off of the wards. Meds were prescribed and administered. Doctors and guards made their rounds. Occasionally Kerry wondered why no mention of the dead guard had been made, but by the time she'd awakened and left room 13, there'd been no blood and no sign of either guard, dead or alive.

Kerry spoke with the persona prima, Angela D., and found the woman to be engaging, intelligent, and very positive despite her ordeal. Never once did she manifested a persona alter in Kerry's presence, and soon Dr. Walsh began to question the continued validity of her diagnosis. She ordered physiological tests and gave cognitive batteries. There were blood assays and CAT scans, MRIs and radioactive dye X-rays. She ran IQ tests and engaged in psychoanalysis. She found Angela D. to be remarkably healthy and sane. More than that, she found that with each day she enjoyed her patient's company more. She looked forward to coming to work as never before.

At the end of six months, Dr. Kerry Walsh ordered her patient removed from the R Wing and provisionally placed in the open ward. She reduced her medications. The patient asked for books and periodicals, and spent her days reading and listening to classical music and jazz. Kerry was finding the rationale and necessity for keeping her in the hospital to be increasingly questionable.

Outside the hospital Kerry's life was changing as well. Sharon's increasing exposure in the art world, and the resulting fame it brought, were straining their relationship. Kerry noted the increasing levels of stress her partner was under and the sharpening of her temper, the unremitting focus of her obsessive tendencies, and her increasing lack of involvement in their relationship. The lighthearted and irreverent painter she'd known was growing into a tense, driven career woman who spared little time or energy on anything else. Kerry felt like an observer rather than a participant in her own home life.

The break came when Sharon argued that they move to New York City, where she'd engaged an agent and had several exhibitions scheduled for the coming year. Shipping her work, flying to meetings, and attending the circuit of her peers' openings demanded her presence at the epicenter of the contemporary art world. She thought Kerry would have no trouble starting a practice in the City of Neurosis. But Kerry had no interest in moving from their home to a city. She was involved in her residency after completing her internship, and her current work was interesting and rewarding. The thought of trading her life for the hustle and bustle of New York, while reestablishing herself in her practice had no appeal. She could end up as an uncaring and overworked healthcare provider with a sadistic nurse.

In early March Kerry bought out Sharon's share in the ownership of their house, and at the end of the month helped her pack for her move to the big city. For weeks afterward the studio stood empty, and upon returning home in the evenings, Kerry would sit in the empty room with a glass of wine, listening to the stereo until she dozed off in her chair. There was a hole in her life, but somehow she didn't feel empty.

With little to come home to, Kerry put her energy into her work. In particular, she spent time with her patient, Angela D. Outside of their therapeutic interactions, the two women found time for simple conversations over meals, long aimless walks on the hospital grounds, and sessions listening to the music CDs Kerry brought from home. They were comfortable in silence or in speech, for there was a balm in their company that healed the spirits of both. One telling evening, Kerry fell sound asleep on the sofa listening to soft jazz. Beside her, Angela drew a blanket over her and only woke her when the ward was being locked for the night. She even made sure the guard didn't wake her on his rounds.

The soft voice and gentle hand on her shoulder that she awoke to were things that Kerry had missed. At first she tried to cuddle into the warmth beside her and finally opened her eyes to see the endless blue of her patient looking at her with far more than simple fondness. In her semi-wakeful state, Kerry had to fight the urge to lean in and kiss her. She'd acknowledged the growing attraction she felt for her patient, but she'd also marked the fact that Angela had been equally captivated, staring into her green eyes as she'd leaned a fraction of an inch closer in response. Strangely, Kerry felt no embarrassment over the intimacy of the moment, only a hope that its promise would come to fruition. She felt that she'd wait as long as necessary to make it happen.

In early June, after yet another battery of testing showed Angela D. to be free of psychopathologies, Kerry Walsh stopped her medications and ordered her released. She could find no reason to justify her continued confinement at the hospital.

By that point Angela had been in treatment for over a year. She'd spent 8 months at the hospital and 6 months in Father Merrik's care before that. She hadn't had a psychotic break since late the previous October. Kerry had made conspicuous mention of these facts in Angela's medical record, stating that she had been asymptomatic for the final 8 months of her treatment and that technically, she'd originally been confined for observation only. That had been her status under Father Merrik, something he'd never changed even after revising her diagnosis. Kerry was attempting to minimize the stigma of Angela's mental health problems. She did these things in hopes of aiding the woman in any future searches for employment.

It was a bright sunny day when the papers for her release were finally completed. Kerry took Angela out across the lawn to the old orchard that marked the boundary of the hospital's grounds. Despite all the times she'd stared across that distance from the building, she'd never set foot among those trees. Almost as if it had been set there for them, they came across a weathered bench and sat down to talk.

"Today your life changes, Angela," Kerry began, "and I'm happy that you'll be free to find your place in the world again." She took a moment to look over at her patient's long dark hair shifting in the slight breeze and she gazed into the celestial blue of her eyes. "I want you to know that I'll miss you…more than miss you," she confessed. Kerry paused again and breathed a sigh, looking up through the gnarled branches to the bright, open sky. Beside her Angela sat, attentive, but saying nothing.

"Years ago I had a doctor who helped me conquer my past," Kerry revealed. "In fact I was diagnosed with the same condition Father Merrik listed in your case, MPD/DID." Beside her, Angela softly gasped. She would never have guessed that her doctor had borne any serious mental condition. Kerry took a deep breath and continued. "I wasn't a whole, single person until I was 16, and all my memories of my life before that are completely suppressed. I even created a less traumatic past to spare myself the lack of memories I didn't want to remember." Kerry was still looking up through the trees, finding it easier to speak to the impersonal sky while revealing things she'd never spoken of to another living soul besides Dr. Ann.

"All that's past, but what I wanted to tell you is that my doctor spared no effort to help me. She worked with me tirelessly for over 4 years in the hospital, and when I integrated my alter egos, she took me in since I was still a minor. She became my legal guardian and so much more. She continued to work with me until I left for college. In many respects, I am the woman she made me. I even followed her in becoming a psychiatrist."

Kerry sucked in a deep cleansing breath. She'd found that speaking of Dr. Ann and her personal history was easier than she'd expected. Part of that was her audience; Angela had firsthand knowledge of a similar situation and they'd developed a closeness that negated Kerry's conditioned embarrassment about her ordeal. But more than that, Kerry felt the presence of a kindred spirit in Angela, something she'd never encountered before.

Finally she allowed herself to look over at her patient and she realized that the image of the tall, blue-eyed brunette had imprinted itself on her soul. She knew the shape of her mouth, the slope of her nose, and the arch of her brows. Even the expressions shifting on her face were familiar, as if she'd studied them for a lifetime. Kerry found that what she'd ask next about the future would be harder than all that she'd confessed about her past.

"Angela, what will you do when you leave?"

For a long time the brunette was silent. For a long time she cold only look into Kerry's eyes. She had come to know their depth and their luster, as if renewing memories she'd never known she had. It was strange, but every aspect of her doctor had been familiar from the moment she'd come back to herself in that room and seen Kerry for the first time. Whether from some depth of prescience gifted by her madness, or the conscious scrutiny she'd applied since, she'd come to know her therapist in the finest detail. Every nuance of expression, every curve and plane of her face, the subtleties of her scent, and the movement of her body; all these she had come to know more intimately than she had in any parent, sibling, or lover. She had no question that this was symbolic of something so deep it eluded her conscious mind and partook of an integral gravity more essential than anything in her mundane life had ever been. She felt as if it partook of the divine.

Angela had spent months pondering the meaning of her consuming fixation on her doctor. She sensed nothing pathological about it. Rather it constituted a reason to be; a compelling focus for her being that had resulted from the serendipitous interactions of her recent life. There was an inevitability about it as well, an underlying inescapability that had led her to believe that their coexistence together was preordained. And she didn't feel the least bit like fighting it.

As for her previous life, it would be impossible to resume what had been. Her old job, her apartment, even her fiancé were part of a whole that she'd been severed from over a year before. All of that had been a past life in another place, something lived by another person, and now she was set on finding the new life her heart dictated. There could be no going back, only progress forward, for she herself was not the same.

"There's nothing for me to go back to, as far as resuming my past life where I left off," she stated with certainty. "I have no interest in returning to what I was doing, or where I was doing it, or who I was doing it with." She took a deep breath, but she had thought long and hard about her options and the new person that she was. She could only gain by expressing the decision that she'd made. Beside her, Kerry held her breath.

"Sometimes the road is more important than the road's end, and the company one keeps along the way is more important than the destination. Now I find nothing so compelling nor any source of happiness so enticing that it could outshine the sight of the light in your eyes. I'll find work to do and a place to live, but those things are unimportant. What is important to me is being able to see you, to continue being near you, and to discover just where a road we could walk together can lead. Now that I'm free to leave, I believe I'll stay…if that's okay with you, doctor."

A slight grin curled the corners of her lips, and Kerry knew its curve as though she'd seen it all the days of her life. The widening smile she returned was one Angela could see even with her eyes closed, for she knew it in the depths of her soul. Kerry reached out to her friend, who was no longer her patient, but whom she was sure was her soulmate, and she wrapped her in a heartfelt embrace. Like the communion of touch between the two fallen angels, it ignited feelings of love that each had instinctually sought for a lifetime. On the higher planes of the spirit, neither of them would ever let go. The judgement that had been made in heaven had found its reflection on earth below.

Chapter 15

It was a warm spring day and Dr. McKenzie sat looked out the windows of his office, a spacious and quiet room, somewhat secluded, in the rear hallway of the hospital's main building. He enjoyed being further from the wards and the bustling orderlies, the nurses, and the staff. For the first time since he'd come to the hospital he couldn't hear the voices from the wards through his walls. He felt so much calmer now, and he worked so much more energetically. Old Father Merrik had had the right idea, and Dr. McKenzie had learned the value of relaxing surroundings from the man. Too bad he'd died that day up in that room in the R Wing, though what he'd been doing up there in his vestments was highly suspicious. The investigation concluded that he'd had a psychotic break brought on by performance stress and senile dementia, all exacerbated by the recurrence of his heart condition. It had been…unfortunate. The six months since had passed quickly.

Beyond the glass, Dr. McKenzie found the view across the expanse of lawn to be soothing. At the far end of the hospital grounds stood the old orchard, with trees retired from fruit production to a dotage of scenic embellishment. He'd heard that an old-time picker's bench was still standing there and he resolved to go over and have a look around someday. Maybe he'd take a bag lunch and sit in the sun. A soft rap at his door drew his attention. He checked his antique desk clock and saw that his visitor was right on time.

Dr. McKenzie rose from his chair and walked over to open the door. He greeted the woman who stood there with genuine warmth and extended a sincere welcome to his colleague. She'd been something of an inspiration to him during his internship, but she'd left shortly after he'd arrived. He doubted that she'd even remember him.

"Dr. Penkowski, welcome," he said, offering his hand.

Anastasia greeted him with a warm smile as she took his hand. She barely remembered him by name and wouldn't have recognized him after so many years to save her life, but he was the last person who'd been close to both her mentor and her patient. After wondering about the incident for months she'd finally decided that she had to see him.

"Dr. McKenzie, it's good to see you again," she replied easily, "It's been so long that I'm surprised you remembered me. Then again, I suppose I cut a unique figure." She gestured with a crutch and offered him another smile to soften her self-deprecating remark.

"I remember your rounds, the depth of insight you shared with the interns, and the fact that your pace allowed us to ask more questions." He both praised her abilities and acknowledged her handicap, showing no discomfort about it in her presence. "Please come in and make yourself comfortable," he said, gesturing to the couch he'd inherited from Father Merrik, "would you like coffee?"

Anastasia looked over at the proffered seat and a smile lit her face.

"I'll be damned," she exclaimed, "I'm sure that's Father Merrik's old analyst's couch! I'm amazed it still exists." Her eyes took in the room in a sweeping glance. "Why, I wonder if that's the same fern I gave him back in '72. I can't believe it!"

Dr. McKenzie had moved over to the alcove and brought out a pair of coffee cups and saucers. Hearing the clink of the china, Dr. Penkowski answered his earlier question. "Coffee would be wonderful, thank you."

When her host brought her the cup another ghost of a smile curved her lips. The same china she remembered from 30 years ago; the pieces had been shipped from France when the old priest had first come back to the states after a decade in Africa. In her wisdom, she realized that her mentor had left his successor a last lesson in appreciating the quality of living most professionals denied themselves these days. Dr. McKenzie had inherited Father Merrik's office, his furnishings, and a measure of his tranquility. The thought warmed her heart as she sat sipping her coffee. Even the flavor was familiar.

Finally she looked up at the younger man who was quietly sipping from his cup, sitting in the armchair Lancaster had always sat in, and staring off out the window as he so often had. It was as if she were seeing a secular version of the priest as he might have been in his early 50s, a decade before she'd first met him. All he lacked was the pipe.

"Ahhh, Dr. McKenzie, this is delicious," she said, "you've continued Lancaster's tradition of hospitality. It's very pleasant. I hadn't realized how many memories a setting can trigger. Now I wish that I'd returned to visit before. I'm sorry that it's only the aftermath of a tragedy that's brought me back."

Dr. McKenzie lowered his cup and nodded in understanding. The years passed so quickly, one at a time, but without a pause, and all too soon the time was gone beyond recall. Times, places, and people, none remained unchanged.

"I wish I'd known him," the Chief Psychiatrist confessed. "I barely got to speak with him while he was here. It was inexcusable. I should have made more of an effort."

"He was a wonderful man," Ana said, "warm, compassionate, and very daring. His work took him all over the world, into some very dangerous places and situations." She paused for a moment, then continued sadly. "I had lost track of him too. He was out of the country for many years after I left the hospital and we never met again until shortly before his death. I too feel as if I should have made more of an effort."

The two psychiatrists sat quietly for several minutes reflecting on their loss. Somehow the silence comforted them both.

"Dr. McKenzie, I've read the reports of what happened up in the R Wing," Ana began, "and I was hoping you might have some further insights into what actually happened. In return, I may be able to shed some light on the case, though I'd prefer it be off the record, at least at first."

"Fair enough," he agreed, "though there isn't much I can add. No one who was up there that night survived but the patient and Dr, Walsh, and all that's in the report. We had three guards killed in the space of 24 hours. I believe the report only mentions the two on duty that night. All three deaths resulted from similar violent attacks; the men were killed with their own batons, viciously beaten to death. They succumbed to massive head trauma."

"I'd read that no one was ever brought to trial," Ana said.

"That's correct," Dr. McKenzie confirmed, "but I can emphasize that Father Merrik was not a victim of the same violence. He was found slumped over in room 13, where Dr. Walsh and the patient were, and he didn't have a mark on him. I believe it was his heart."

"Well, that agrees with the findings in the report. I'm very thankful that he wasn't a victim of violence. I suppose there've been a lot of questions as to why he was robed at the time," Anastasia remarked. Dr. McKenzie nodded in agreement. "How much did you know about Father Merrik's activities as a priest?"

"Almost nothing, really," Dr. McKenzie admitted, "though I'd heard that he was active in foreign missions for many years."

"That's correct, but it's only part of the story," Ana told him, "you see, Lancaster was a specialist of sorts…"

"A missionary?"

"Actually, he was assigned by the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, as exorcist-at-large. His special ministry was The Holy Rite for the Exorcism of Unclean Spirits and the Return to Grace of the Soul. It took him all over the world." She paused at the look of shock and disbelief on her colleague's face. "I know, I know, it seems outlandish in this day and age. I thought so too when Lancaster first told me, but in his foreign work, he ran across many cases in which modern psychology was regarded as magic, and demonic possession was a fact of life. In those cases, treatment was most effective when offered in a context that was acceptable to the patients he was treating."

"You know, unbelievable as that sounds it makes a kind of sense. Barring somatic causes, the mind is really what ultimately controls both the disease and the cure."

"Exactly," Dr. Penkowski agreed. "I know that Lancaster had diagnosed his patient as MPD/DID. Were you aware that he was treating her as a case of demonic possession?"

"I was aware that the patient's psychotic constructs included alter egos that had been produced through dissociation in response to a delusional encounter with a 'non-corporeal entity'."

"And did you at any time witness inexplicable behavior or manifestations associated with the patient's delusional architecture?"

Dr. McKenzie was about to answer no, but then he stopped and thought further. "Would such manifestations include three guards beaten to death without an assailant?" He was recalling the guard's report to the administrator when Raymond had been killed. It hadn't been possible for anyone to be present to assault him.

"It could, if they were driven to self-murder," Ana proposed, "but I was thinking more of poltergeist activity, disembodied voices, etc., etc."

Again he was about to answer no, when he remembered the voice taunting Dr. Walsh on rounds the first day after her return from vacation. Slowly he nodded his head yes.

"Those of us on rounds the first day Dr. Walsh came back from vacation heard a menacing voice coming from room 13. It appeared to have been directed at her, and she was disturbed by it. Father Merrik asked to speak with her about the incident."

Anastasia sighed. She was hearing another report of the same incident that Lancaster had spoken of that day when he'd come for a visit. It had upset him and what he'd said had upset her. She'd warned him about the danger Kerry could be facing and why. He'd known the dangers better than she had. It seemed that on that same night, Father Merrik had tried to treat his patient, using an exorcism in hopes of forestalling the danger to Kerry. Ana wondered if the concerns she'd expressed had sent her mentor to his death.

"I've read the summary of the incident in the report," Anastasia said, "and I suspect Father Merrik tried and failed to treat his patient by exorcising the presence she'd felt had invaded her. That makes sense to me since he was found in his robes. What you may not know is that Dr. Walsh had a history of MPD/DID. He felt that it made her particularly susceptible to the patent's psychological assaults."

She saw the look of shock on Dr. McKenzie's face. No, obviously he hadn't known. Kerry probably hadn't even shared the details of her manufactured psychohistory with him, let alone the suppressed memories of her true psychobiography.

"I treated her years ago," Ana told him, receiving another look of amazement, "and I had met with Father Merrik earlier on the day he died. He'd agreed to try to keep Dr. Walsh away from his patient. Why she was present there at his death was a complete surprise to me. I can't believe that he would have brought her up to that room."

"We have no way of knowing one way or the other, but if she was under assault by the patient's alter and had a history of dissociation, then I would agree that therapeutically, her presence would be contraindicated. Unfortunately questioning isn't…."

"Something must have happened that night, Dr. McKenzie," Anastasia concluded, "and we may never discover what that was." She let a sigh of resignation escape her. There was only one more thing she wanted to do at the hospital though she didn't believe it would give her any answers. It was merely for sentimental reasons; a search for some kind of closure. She found that the whole affair had left her feeling old and tired. "Would it be possible to see her, Dr. McKenzie?"

In the past, the Psychiatric Chief would have been inclined to refuse. There would be no point. But he'd come to the belief that clinical expedience should be secondary to the emotional health of those associated with the patient. Of course the patient's welfare took precedence, but in this case it certainly couldn't do any harm.

"Certainly, Dr. Penkowski," he said, "she's in room 13. I'll be glad to accompany you."

She nodded her appreciation of his gesture, reclaimed her crutches and got to her feet. Though she remembered the way, it would be comforting to have someone with her.

At the gate a guard keyed open the lock and rolled back the door. Drs. McKenzie and Penkowski made their way down the quiet hall of the R Wing and the guard unlocked the door of room 13.

Anastasia looked into the room and saw where her mentor had died.

"We keep them together, because though they've been catatonic all these months, for some reason they become highly agitated when separated. In fact when left together, we find that they invariably link hands, and so we've moved the beds together. Physical contact has a marked pacifying effect on both of them."

Indeed Kerry's right hand was clasped in Angela's left and their fingers had intertwined. Dr. Penkowski noted the slightest upcurling of both women's lips, as if some spiritual contentment had lent them each the hint of a smile. As Ana continued to stand looking down at her one-time patient, the child she'd helped and taken under her wing, she noted that a kind of glow or radiance enveloped both figures. It was subtle thing, akin to the aura surrounding a woman content in her pregnancy.

Anastasia had never seen Angela before, but Kerry she knew like a daughter. Her frozen expression and her attitude of comfortable repose gave Ana a distinct impression of happiness. Somewhere inside, her little girl had found peace and contentment, but it was not of this world. Somehow Ana couldn't feel wholly sad as she regarded them there together. At least neither appeared to be tortured by the presence of an indwelling spirit.

"They look happy," she whispered. "Do they always look that way?"

Dr. McKenzie confirmed her impression with a nod. Into whatever psycholandscape they had withdrawn, they had withdrawn there together. "Yes," he said, "they appear happy together, always. They were found this way the day Father Merrik died."

For some time he remained silent, looking down at the two women lost in their shared internal world.

"I hope they're happy," he finally said, "and somehow, I don't think their status will change. Their condition is in stasis and the prognosis doesn't favor a remission in either case. They'll be safe here, and they'll be kept together."

Dr. Penkowski nodded. She didn't think their condition would change either. Her little girl and the stranger beside her looked as if they'd each found a persona and a place too compelling to every leave.

"Thank you," she said softly.

They turned to go, but Anastasia looked back one last time.

"Be at peace, little girl," she whispered.

In the early years of the world Enoch had walked with God and was no more. It has been written that none shall confront the face of the Lord and live as other men, for the countenance of the Creator and the radiance of heaven are not for mortal flesh and blood. And having beheld the majesty of the Lord, their bodies, the vessels of the fallen angels, were struck down as if in a deep sleep, but their souls rejoiced in happiness all the days of the world.

Phantom Bard, Brooklyn, N.Y.

September 20 to October 21, 2004

Author's Notes: The scene depicted in Chapter 8 is based upon an incident related in the Gospel of St. Luke, 4:33-36.

Larry Fine was a member of a famous comic trio of the 30s and 40s, along with Moe Howard and Curly Shepherd.