Of Another Kind Altogether Part 6
Cause and Effect
“So, Miss Mayer,” Dr. Jacobson offered, “tell me about you. Are you happy? Tell me what you think about things.”
Marilyn looked back at the psychiatrist. It was her initial visit with him. “I’m very happy now that I’m pregnant.”
“So I heard,” the psychiatrist replied. “I have your hospital notes. And I have a progress note written by the radiologist, Dr. Tilden.”
“Good. So you know the deal.”
“To what ‘deal’ are you referring?”
“Let’s not play games, Dr. Jacobson. You have the chart. You can tell me.”
The psychiatrist flipped through some page print-outs. “The ultrasound didn’t look too good—you knew that.”
“Yes. But nothing to worry about. You know about my communion, right?”
“At church?”
“God, is everyone a Catholic here? Damn.”
“We are in the St. Luke’s Medical Building, an actual wing of St. Luke’s Hospital, Miss Mayer. But your meaning of communion, if I read you right, is in the fellowship way, then?”
“More than that. In the kinship way, Doctor.”
“How so? With your kidnappers? There’s a word for that.”
“This isn’t any Stockholm Syndrome,” Marilyn said emphatically.
“I’m impressed, Miss Mayer.”
“Thank you. But they weren’t kidnappers.”
“Yes, I’ve read you think they were aliens.”
“And what do you think?”
“Well, I think Stockholm may not be such a stretch. To cut to the chase—”
“Yes, do that. Do exactly that, please.”
“To cut to the chase…you coped with your kidnapping by letting your mind sympathize with your kidnappers. And you are coping with your rape and subsequent pregnancy by saying it was alien probing and that you’ve been chosen in some way to bear a cosmic child of some sort.”
“Everything but the coping part you got right. I’m not coping. I’m manifesting.”
“Manifesting? What, exactly?”
“Communion.”
“Ah, yes. So, you’ve been chosen as the liaison between worlds.”
“More than that. Between every layer that is. Every time, every place, every existence”
“Right,” he patronized her. “Why did you tell my previous patient not to come to my office when the nurse called her?”
“For all the obvious reasons?”
“Hmm, such as?”
“Obvious reasons don’t have to be obvious at any one point, just in total.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It would have been bad for her and bad for you.”
“Well, Miss Mayer, too late now. I’ve seen her; you saw her leaving on your way in.” He was smiling at her when he said it.
“Yes, too late. I suppose it is.”
May I put you on some medicine that I think will help you?”
What kind of medicine?”
“It’s called a second-generation antipsychotic.”
“Sure, write a prescription.”
“I’ll fax it over to your pharmacy.”
“Even better,” Marilyn responded, but Dr. Jacobson could tell she was just blowing him off.
“Take the medicine, Marilyn, please. May I call you ‘Marilyn’?”
“Too late,” she said. “You already did.”
But she wasn’t smiling.
***
Four months later, Dr. Jacobson lay in a hospital bed in the cancer ward of St. Luke’s. It was in the dedicated hospice room. Marilyn knocked politely on the door.
“Yes?”
“Dr. Jacobson, do you remember me? Marilyn Mayer?”
“Professional…personal?”
“Professionally. Like right now.”
Dr. Jacobson looked puzzled between two winces from pain.
“I’ve seen a lot of patients in my time in practice, ma’am.”
“I’m the one who was abducted by aliens and impregnated by them. The last time we spoke you were ordering me an anti-psychotic.”
Dr. Jacobson remembered. It was two months before he had gotten his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He looked her over and noted her obvious pregnant shape.
“And you called me Marilyn.”
“Um, OK. I don’t remember that.”
“It doesn’t take much, Doctor. One choice here, one move there. Nodes of vulnerability all intersecting and tipping this balance or that momentum.”
“Miss Mayer—Marilyn…”
“You did it again.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t like that. That’s fair…Miss Mayer.”
“Doesn’t much matter.”
“You know, Miss Mayer, there’s a certain wisdom that comes with impending death. You know I’m dying, don’t you?”
“I’ve known it since the day I met you.”
“I see. Actually, no, I don’t see. Still, that wisdom—from death coming—tells me that nothing, as you said, much matters.”
“Oh, you are so wrong,” Marilyn said. “Everything matters. It’s how we live. Jumping from cause to effect at every turn. Switching tracks to different destinations.”
“I suppose,” he replied, “it’s the final destination that matters.” And then he closed his eyes. One day soon he would close them for the last time.
“This time,” she muttered under her breath, “you are so right.”
Marlyn wasn’t finished at St. Luke’s that day.
Her next stop was to see Missy on the Med/Surg floor, the ex-receptionist at her former OBGYN’s office. She was only 18, yet here she lay, too. Missy needed an explanation. Whether it would comfort her or not, Marilyn didn’t know. But she needed to hear it.
It was the least Marilyn could do for her.
____________
About the Creator
Gerard DiLeo
Retired, not tired. Hippocampus, behave!
Make me rich! https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
My substrack at https://substack.com/@drdileo
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Comments (2)
It might be fun to live in awareness of all the possibilities/realities. Then again, maybe not. Great stuff, Gerard!
Marilyn gives me the creeps. Also, I thought she was visiting Dr Jacobsen to kill him off, lol. I wonder if she'll kill off Missy hahahahaha