He told me the same thing. Yes, I had probably had an episode. Yes, I would have to wait and see what would happen in my case. Yes, it would be two to five years of waiting. Yes, I had the disease. Yes.
I cracked completely. I couldn’t go back to the wards; I just went AWOL for a few days. I cried constantly. I was terrified and sad and angry. I had just celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday, I was just beginning to be successful as a writer, I was starting to look forward to leaving medicine and beginning a career as a writer, and now … this. This dreadful shadow.
Each morning I woke up tense, wondering if I was blind, or numb in another part of my body, or paralyzed. And I was going to have to wait years to find out for sure. I could hardly bear to wait a week. How could I wait two to five years? The suspense was intolerable.
But, since there was nothing I could do, eventually I had to go back to work, to resume some normalcy in my life. My internist said I should see a psychiatrist. Had I ever met Dr. Corman?
Yes, I said. I was well acquainted with Dr. Corman.
Dr. Corman listened to my story and sniffed. “Actually,” he said, “there is a third possibility besides spinal-cord tumor and multiple sclerosis.”
“What’s that?”
“Conversion hysteria.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. Conversion hysteria was an old psychiatric concept. Back in the nineteenth century, people—usually women—developed all sorts of bizarre symptoms, including seizures, blindness, and paralyses, that had no organic cause. These were considered hysterical symptoms, in which the patient converted some psychological problem into a physical manifestation.
I certainly knew such things happened. In the clinic I had treated a young woman with hysterical blindness. She would just become blind from time to time, then regain her sight. She was obviously screwed up. I had also seen one case of pseudocyesis—hysterical pregnancy. This woman developed all the signs of pregnancy and actually went into labor, though of course she didn’t deliver a baby, since she wasn’t pregnant.
“That’s not me,” I said. “I’m not hysterical.”
“Really?”
“Of course not,” I said, insulted. I pointed out that hysterics were mostly women.
“We’re seeing more hysterical men,” Dr. Corman said.
I pointed out that in cases of conversion hysteria patients showed a characteristic indifference to their diseases. They weren’t really worried. My woman who went blind from time to time complained about it, but she wasn’t as upset as you might expect. Whereas I was extremely upset about my case.
“Really?” Dr. Corman said.
He was annoying me. I said so.
“Well,” Dr. Corman said, “if I were you, I’d consider the fact that, of all your possible diagnoses, conversion hysteria is actually the most favorable.”
I didn’t believe that I was hysterical. Later on, other doctors who followed my case mentioned this possibility, too. Although the numbness continued for several years, I never developed further symptoms. And I learned that it was indeed common to have a single neurological episode. Fortunately, I have never had another. I have learned to knock on wood, and to take good care of my general health.
Almost ten years passed before I could look back and wonder whether the decision to leave medicine was so difficult, so traumatic, that I needed the added boost of a serious illness—or at least a possible illness. Because the immediate effect of the terrifying diagnosis was bracing: I was forced to ask myself what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, how I wanted to spend it.
And it was clear to me that if in fact I had only a few years of unencumbered activity, then I wanted to spend those years writing and not doing medicine, or any of the things that colleagues, friends, parents, or society in general expected me to do. The illness helped me to stand on my own, to make a difficult transition.
In quitting, I was following my instincts; I was doing what I really wanted to do. But most people saw only that I was giving up a lot of prestige. In those days, the prestige of physicians was high. Polls ranked doctors just below justices of the Supreme Court. To quit medicine to become a writer struck most people like quitting the Supreme Court to become a bail bondsman. They admired my determination, but they thought I was pretty unrealistic.
Then, in my last year of school, it became publicized that I had written a book called The Andromeda Strain and sold it to the movies for a lot of money. Overnight, I was identified as a successful writer, and it changed everything in my life. All the doctors and residents who had shunned me became suddenly interested in me. I had been eating lunch alone; now I was never alone—everybody wanted to sit with me. I was a celebrity.
The blatant insincerity of the way I was treated troubled me very much. I didn’t yet understand that people used celebrities as figures of fantasy; they didn’t want to know who you really were, any more than kids at Disneyland want Mickey Mouse to pull off his rubber head and reveal that he’s just a local teenager. The kids want to see Mickey. And the doctors in the cafeteria wanted to see Young Dr. Hollywood. And that was what they saw.
I just sat around and watched them do it.
The difficulties I experienced adjusting to my new position barely hinted at the kinds of experiences I would later have. Many of those experiences have been painful and difficult, but most have been, on balance, exciting. I often think back to medicine, and my life as a student. I wouldn’t have had to change if I had remained a doctor. Quitting medicine assured me that I would be forced into all sorts of changes I might not otherwise have made.
TRAVELS
1971–1986
Sex and Death in L.A.
In 1971 I was living in Los Angeles and my wife was in La Jolla. We had separated, because, after five years together as students, she wanted to start a family and I wanted to pursue my career in books and movies. That was why I had gone to Los Angeles, to try to work in movies. Los Angeles was a strange city; I didn’t know anyone there, and I was lonely and unhappy much of the time.
I moved into an apartment building in West Hollywood that was well known as a place where people went when they got divorced, because you could rent a furnished apartment for only six months. My apartment was furnished in green crushed-velvet couches and chairs with a vaguely Mexican look. The carpet was green with gold flecks. The kitchen was yellow. The view overlooked the Sunset Strip. It was Hollywood, all right, and it was exciting!
In the afternoons I would sit by the swimming pool. The same group of tenants could always be found at the pool. There was a Rams football star and his actress girlfriend (they were always fighting); there was a model who had been Miss Arizona and was extremely beautiful in a bikini (she was always shy and insecure); there was an accountant with a portable radio and a big cigar who read the New York papers (he never spoke); there was a woman in her thirties reputed to be a madam (she always swam laps, and then read the Hollywood Reporter).
I had imagined that living in a Hollywood apartment would be more exciting than it was. The football player and his girlfriend made an attractive couple, but since they were always glaring at each other, I tended to stay away from them. And the lovely Miss Arizona was recuperating from an unhappy marriage to a rock-and-roll star; she never went out at all; she stayed home and watched television and worried about her car payments. There were some movie stars in the building, too, but they always wore dark glasses and never talked to ordinary people.
Later the accountant with the cigar stopped coming to the pool. I asked Miss Arizona if he had moved out. She showed me a newspaper clipping. The man had been found in the trunk of a Cadillac at Kennedy Airport with a bullet in his head.
You never knew what to expect. One night I was getting dressed for dinner when the front doorman knocked on my door.
“Dr. Crichton?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Miss Jenkins.”
“Miss Jenkins?” An unfamiliar name.
“In the building. You know Mis
s Jenkins?”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Well, she lives in the building; I thought you might have seen her.”
“What about her?”
“She fell off the commode.”
I couldn’t see why that was any business of mine, and I said so.
“I think you should see her.”
“Why?”
“She fell off the commode.”
“Well, did she hurt herself?”
“It is only one floor up, on the eighth floor.…”
“But why should I see her?”
“Because she fell off the commode.”
This conversation could go on forever. In the end, he led me upstairs and with a grave dignity unlocked the door to Miss Jenkins’s room.
Her apartment also contained green crushed-velvet furniture in a Mexican style. I recognized Miss Jenkins as a bespectacled woman of about forty with short blond hair, the younger of a pair of lesbians who had lived together in the building at least as long as I had. Miss Jenkins was now fully dressed, lying on her back on the living-room couch, one arm dangling limply on the floor. Her skin was pale blue. She did not seem to be breathing. Her lover, the other woman, was not there.
“Where is the other woman?” I said.
“Walking the dog.”
“Walking the dog? Does she know about Miss Jenkins?”
“Yes. She was the one who told me.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That Miss Jenkins fell off the commode.”
By now I had quickly checked Miss Jenkins, noting a thready pulse, shallow, intermittent respiration, dilated eyes, an open can of beer, and a half-empty bottle of sleeping pills.
The doorman said, “Is she dead?”
“No,” I said.
“No?” He seemed surprised.
“No,” I said. “She’s taken an overdose.”
“I was told,” he said, “that she fell off the commode.”
“Well, the problem is a drug overdose.”
“You can help her?”
“No,” I said.
“Aren’t you a doctor?”
“Yes, but I can’t do anything.” And indeed I could not. I was not licensed to practice medicine and I faced serious lawsuits if I did anything at all in this situation. “Call the police,” I said.
“I did,” he said. “Although at the time I was not sure if she was dead.”
“She’s not dead,” I said. “What did the police say?”
“They said to call the fire department.”
“Then call the fire department,” I said.
“Why should I call the fire department?” he said. In the end, I called the fire department and they said they would send an emergency vehicle.
Meanwhile, her roommate returned with a yapping Lhasa apso on a rhinestone leash. “What are you doing in my apartment?” she said suspiciously.
“This man is a doctor,” the doorman said.
“Why don’t you help her?”
“She’s taken a drug overdose,” I said.
“No, she fell off the commode,” the roommate said. She was a tall, slender woman of fifty, graying hair, a stern manner. She looked like a schoolteacher.
“Do you know what drugs she took?” I said.
“Are you really a doctor?” the woman said. “You look too young to be a doctor.”
By now the Lhasa was jumping on the comatose woman, licking her face and barking at me. The dog was leaving muddy footprints on Miss Jenkins’s blouse. The scene was becoming chaotic.
The roommate turned to me, holding the beer can. “Did you drink this beer?”
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure?” She was very suspicious.
“I just got here.”
She turned to the doorman. “Did you drink this beer?”
“No,” the doorman said. “I came with him.”
“This beer can wasn’t here before,” she said.
“Maybe Miss Jenkins drank it.”
I checked Miss Jenkins’s pupils again and the Lhasa apso bit my hand, drawing blood. The roommate saw the blood and began to scream. “What have you done to Buffy?”
She grabbed the barking dog into her arms, and then she began to kick me, shrieking, “You bastard! You bastard! Hurting a poor, innocent dog!”
I was trying to avoid her kicks, and I looked at the doorman. “Can’t you do something about this?”
“Shit, man,” he said.
There was a loud knock on the door, but nobody could get to the door, because the roommate was kicking and fighting. Now she was shouting, “You robbed me, you robbed me!”
Then we heard a loudspeaker voice say, “All right! You people inside, stand clear of the door, we’re coming through!”
“Shit,” the doorman said. “Cops!”
“So?”
“I’m carrying!”
“Aha!” the roommate shouted. “I knew it!” She flung open the door, and there stood a fireman in a yellow slicker and pointed hat, standing with his ax upraised. He was ready to hack down the door, and he looked disappointed to have it opened instead. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he said.
“She fell off the commode,” the roommate said.
“Did you put it out already?” the fireman said.
“I was walking the dog, I don’t know what happened.”
“There isn’t any smoke,” the fireman said suspiciously. “What are you people up to?”
“This woman’s had a drug overdose,” I said, pointing to Miss Jenkins on the couch.
“Hell, then we need the paramedics,” the fireman said, looking at the woman. He called on a walkie-talkie. “There’s no damn fire here,” he said. “Who reported a fire?”
“Nobody reported a fire,” I said.
“Somebody sure as hell did,” the fireman said.
“This man is not a doctor,” the roommate said.
“Who are you?” the fireman said.
“I’m a doctor,” I said.
“Then I’d like to know what he is doing in my apartment,” the roommate said.
“You got some identification?”
“I called him,” the doorman said. “Because he’s a doctor.”
“He is not a doctor.”
“All I want to know is, who reported a fire? Because that’s against the law.”
“Coming through,” the paramedics said, arriving at the door with a stretcher.
“Never mind,” the fireman said. “We already got a doctor here.”
“No, come in,” I said to the paramedics.
“You don’t want to treat her?” the paramedics said.
“I’m not licensed,” I said.
“He’s no doctor. He cut Buffy.”
“You’re not what?”
“I’m not licensed.”
“But you’re a doctor, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“I live in the building.”
“And he drank my beer.”
“You drank her beer?”
“No, I never drank any beer.”
“I think he took something, too.”
“You mean this beer here?”
Meanwhile, the paramedics were working on Miss Jenkins, getting ready to take her to the hospital. They asked what drugs she had taken, but the roommate would only say she had fallen off the commode. The fireman was giving me a hard time about being a doctor until Buffy leaned over and bit him viciously on the hand. “Son of a bitch!” the fireman said, reaching for his ax.
“Don’t you dare!” screamed the roommate, clutching her dog.
But all the fireman did was take his ax and head for the door. “Jesus, I hate Hollywood,” he said, and he slammed the door behind him.
I was out the door right after him. “Where are you going?” the fireman asked me.
“I have a date,” I said. “I’m late.”
“Y
eah, right,” he said, “Only think of yourself. You guys. Shit.”
It turned out the manager had listed my name on the lobby board with an “M.D.” after it, because he thought it gave the building class. Whenever there was a suicide attempt, the doormen would look at the building directory and call the doctor. I was the only doctor. I got all the calls. It was a large building. There was a suicide attempt nearly every week.
The second time it happened, I told the doorman right away, “I don’t have a license, I don’t practice, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Would you just check him? I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“He jumped from the twelfth floor. Would you just check him, make sure he’s dead?”
“Okay. Where is he?”
“Out front.”
I went with him to the lobby. There was a woman crying. I recognized her as a girl from Atlanta who had come to Los Angeles to sell cosmetics but who hoped to get discovered for the movies while she was here. She was always heavily made up. Now she was sobbing, “Oh, Billy, Billy …”
I hadn’t been aware this girl had a boyfriend. I looked at the doorman.
He nodded sadly. “Billy jumped from her balcony.”
“Oh.”
We went out to the street.
“Did you call the police?” I said.
“Do I have to?”
“Of course,” I said. “If he’s dead.”
Out on the street, I didn’t see a body immediately. I was tense now, steeling myself against what I might see, wondering how bad it would be, how gruesome. We walked around the side of the apartment building. Then the doorman pointed to some low bushes that were planted near the building. “Billy’s in there.”
“In there?”
For an awful moment I thought Billy might be a child. I walked forward to the bushes and saw the body of a yellow cat.
“Billy’s a cat?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“You called me out here for a cat?”