“The squeamishness is understandable, perhaps. Electroshock treatments were developed out of earlier ‘terror-inducing therapies.’ An example of this is the Bedlam baptism you were asking about earlier. The world bedlam itself comes from Bethlehem. More specifically, the Bethlehem Asylum in London, which was part medical centre, part carnival sideshow. Members of the public could pay a penny to watch the raving antics of the lunatics—from a safe distance, of course.”
As the professor spoke, a series of increasingly horrific images appeared.
“Here we have an early form of hydrotherapy. The patient is locked into a cage and then dunked into water, repeatedly. The idea was to bring them to the brink of death—and then pull back.”
The woodblock images had given way to black-and-white photographs from the 1940s and ’50s. Patients being bound, eyes wide in fear, as they were submerged in large vats. A Bedlam baptism, as it was known.
“Death can be very therapeutic. Tends to strip the madness away. It was terrible, of course. And inhumane. But it was also . . .” he chose his next word carefully, “. . . cleansing.”
With that, the PowerPoint ended and Cerletti turned the class’s attention back to the electroshock table. “This is not a lecture on the history of psychiatry. That’s beyond my purview. But it does bring us up to the present, and this lovely instrument here.” He placed a fatherly hand on the unit hooked up to the table. “Small. Compact. Elegant in its simplicity. The patient is strapped in and a series of pulses are passed through his or her brain. This triggers a seizure, which in turn has a calming effect on the patient. Works like a charm, it truly does.”
A raised hand. A question about its application.
“Today? Mainly for clinical depression,” said Cerletti. “But this treatment can also be used for bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, even anger management. A typical course might run six to twelve treatments, bilateral. Or unilateral, with the current passed through only one lobe, usually the right cerebral hemisphere. As I said, extremely effective and completely safe.”
“Then why the restraints?”
It was a voice from the back of the room. Cerletti squinted into the darkness. “Thomas?” The professor’s lips tightened into what might easily have been mistaken for a smile. “The prodigal son returns. I was wondering when you would show up. Thought we’d lost you forever. Still hanging with the undergrads, I see. You’ve skipped our last three appointments, haven’t submitted even the trace of an abstract. Is there a reason you’re auditing my class?”
Thomas made his way down the aisle toward the electroconvulsive unit. “If the procedure is so safe, why do we need to strap them down?”
“Class, Mr. Rosanoff is asking why, given that this procedure is so benign, we are required to restrain the patients. I’m afraid it’s often necessary to treat people involuntarily. Following proper judicial proceedings, of course. With some patients we may need to apply electroshock treatments twenty or thirty times over the course of a year. Some of them lash out, become violent. Their fears are completely unfounded, but unfortunately—”
“May I?” Thomas walked onto the stage, composed and calm. A façade.
“Of course. Be my guest.” Professor Cerletti threw a smile to the audience.
Thomas looked out at the class. “I took my lab from Professor Cerletti on this same topic many years ago.”
“Oh, not so many. You make me sound old.”
“Not old,” said Thomas. “Distinguished.” They both had a chuckle over that one. “The restraints are easily applied,” said Thomas. “Allow me to demonstrate. Professor? Just the wrists. I won’t bother with your ankles.”
“Of course.” Cerletti leaned back against the table, placed his arms down at his sides. “Oftentimes the patient is sedated prior to this,” he said. “As you can see, it’s a simple hook-and-latch.”
Thomas threaded the leather straps through and tightened them, first one wrist, then the other.
“And even if I struggle”—Professor Cerletti demonstrated this—“there is no damage to my wrists.”
“We then apply gel to the contact points,” said Thomas. He brought a tube of gel over, dabbed a bit on both of Cerletti’s temples. “This is to prevent the skin from burning.”
“Exactly. Now, please undo the straps.”
“It’s a funny thing,” Thomas said, addressing the class. “Many, many doctors have prescribed this treatment, and yet I don’t know a single one who has ever volunteered to try it on themselves.” He turned to Cerletti. “Why is that?” Then, leaning in so close that only he and Cerletti could hear, he whispered, “I know what you’ve been doing in Tent City, you fucking murderer.”
Cerletti opened his mouth, eyes bulging, tried to speak, but was left dumbstruck. Had they tested the professor’s galvanic skin responses, the results would have been palpable.
Thomas attached the electrodes to Cerletti’s temples, turned to the machine, set the dial. “Class, pay attention.”
And with that, Cerletti yelled, face pink with perspiration, “Stop this! Right now! Right this instant!”
“Let’s begin with, oh, 200 Volts. Perfectly safe.” He put his hand on the switch.
The students shifted in their seats, exchanged looks, not sure what was going on. They were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Was Cerletti’s reaction part of the demonstration?
Cerletti began to shriek—there was no other word for it—spittle flying, neck twisting as he threw himself against the restraints, trying to wrench his wrists free. “You little cocksucker! Let me out right now, you little fuck!”
The class looked on, agog, and before anyone could react, Thomas flipped the main switch.
Cerletti, in tears, tensed up, wincing in anticipation of . . . nothing. The expected jolt of current never came.
Thomas leaned down, picked up the unplugged cord, said to the class, “First, do no harm.”
He left the stage, and then, almost as an afterthought, said, “Before I forget, would someone please release Professor Cerletti?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
DR. ROSANOFF STRODE DOWN the hallway, scattering students and staff, his lab coat billowing behind him like a cape. He’d been called away in mid-interview (a follow-up to the Psychology Today profile) and he wasn’t happy.
He threw open the door to the staff room with one straight-armed shove, zeroed in immediately on Anton Cerletti, sitting distraught in the corner.
This room rarely saw police officers. Usually, budget allotments were haggled over, doctoral candidates discussed and dismissed, absent colleagues mocked. Not today. Thomas was at one end of the table, flanked by officers who were evidently taking a statement, and Cerletti was at the other end. Cerletti started to get up when he saw Dr. Rosanoff coming at him, but was told, “Sit down.”
Professor Cerletti did as he was told.
“You’re not pressing charges.”
Cerletti looked up at Dr. Rosanoff, flustered and afraid. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
“You’re not pressing charges. Understood?”
“It was an assault. There are witnesses.”
“A misunderstanding. A classroom demonstration gone awry. Thomas is an exemplary student, under a lot of stress. Med school will do that to you. It was a misunderstanding, nothing more.”
“But he . . . he tied me down.”
“You volunteered.”
“He flipped the switch.”
“There was no power. He assumed you were demonstrating the panic that a patient might exhibit.” Dr. Rosanoff cast a glance to the police officers in the other corner, then back to the man cowering below him. An Ichabod figure. A lesser Caesar. “For that you called in the police? You prick.”
Cerletti, eyes up, beseeching. “I didn’t call the police. He did.”
Dr. Rosanoff stepped back. “What?”
“He’s making wild accusations. He”—Cerletti’s voice became hushed, desperate—“he’s saying that I?
??ve been killing homeless people with injections down in the, in the slums.” He tried to laugh it off, but his laughter came out tinged with hysteria. “He’s telling the police I’m a murderer.”
“Ask him!” It was Thomas, yelling from the other end of the table. The officers tried to calm him down, but he persisted, hurtling his accusations across the room. “I know the exact date of the first occurrence. It was the same day Amy and I broke up. I walked around in a daze for hours. I don’t remember where I went or what I did, but I remember the date. It’s burnt into my memory. Ask him where he was on the seventh! Ask him!” It wasn’t clear whether Thomas was talking to the police officers or his father. “Ask him! That was when the first body was found in Tent City. That was no overdose, that was Professor Cerletti!”
“Thomas!” Dr. Rosanoff shouted. “That’s enough!”
Cerletti tugged on Dr. Rosanoff’s lab coat. “Your son’s having a breakdown. He needs help. I was nowhere near there on the seventh. I was four hundred miles away, giving a lecture at Hopkins. The other dates as well. I can account for my schedule.” Although somewhere in his murky recollections, Cerletti was faintly aware he couldn’t account for every date. He remembered a long walk in a cold mist one evening and a familiar figure in the streetlights ahead of him. . . . But as quickly as the recollection arose, it fell away.
Dr. Rosanoff stepped in, closer than necessary, looming over Cerletti. “You want to talk to the authorities? Let’s.”
“Tom,” he pleaded. “I don’t have a choice.”
“We always have a choice, Anton. That’s all life is, a series of choices. And here is mine. If you press charges, I will cooperate, too. It’s only fair. We can both speak to the authorities, about all sorts of things. Cabbages and kings, Anton. And a certain arrangement you set up with the pharmaceuticals. The tests you ran, pulling patients off of sertindole to trigger psychotic reactions and then treating the results. You wouldn’t be hiding the suicide stats to get FDA approval, would you, Anton? Of course not. Sadly, the press might not see it that way.”
Professor Cerletti blanched. “Tom, please . . .”
“Borison and Richards? They weren’t in half as deep as you. And they got fifteen years. Each.” A long pause. “It doesn’t really matter who called the police, does it? You won’t be pressing charges regardless, will you?”
Cerletti shook his head, mouthed the word No.
“It was a misunderstanding, wasn’t it, Anton?”
He nodded, eyes down.
Dr. Rosanoff smiled with all his teeth, tapped his open hand against the side of Professor Cerletti’s face, a gesture that might have appeared friendly from afar but here had a definite sting to it. “Was that so hard? As for this craziness about Tent City, I’ll deal with that. Don’t worry. No one is going to blame you for the death of a couple of junkies nobody cares about.”
But on this Professor Cerletti disagreed. “That’s not true,” he said softly. “Thomas cares.”
• • •
Once the officers had taken the professor’s statement and received Dr. Rosanoff’s assurances regarding Thomas’s mental health, father and son walked in silence down the long hallways of the university’s east wing.
Thomas suddenly stopped. He looked at his father. “It wasn’t Cerletti. It was you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was you all along. Bernie saw you down by Tent City. Plus, you treated Charlie at the shelter. And you treated Eli. Those weren’t murders. Those were drug tests gone bad.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“The drug companies. How much are they paying you?”
“Oh for chrissake, Thomas. Any involvement I have with the pharmaceutical companies is to remove people from their meds, not to kill them. I stand in opposition to the overmedication of our population, remember? It hasn’t made me popular with Big Pharma.” And then, the kicker: “I was at the same conference Anton attended. I gave the keynote address. There were five hundred people in that audience. Are you going to accuse all of them as well?” He pulled out a pad and pen, scribbled something across it, tore off the page, and handed it to Thomas. “100 milligrams. Twice a day.”
And he left. Thomas watched as his father disappeared into converging lines of perspective.
“Thomassss . . .”
“Stop talking!” he yelled. But the hallway was empty of everything, even echoes.
That night, Thomas walked back and forth across his apartment, fitful, fidgety, taking pills by the fistful, washing them down with red wine directly from the bottle. The postcards on the counter asked their question, demanded an answer: REMEMBER ME. Except . . . it was no longer a question. It was a command. And it struck Thomas again how everything can hinge on a single turn of punctuation, how Remember me? becomes Remember me.
He threw back the wine and the pills, swallowed hard.
“Do I know you?!” That was what Eli always yelled—“Do I know you?!”—except when he hadn’t.
It stopped Thomas cold. Required reading. That’s what Cerletti had told him.
A question that wasn’t a question. Do I know you? And suddenly everything fell into place, like a tumbler turning in a lock.
I know exactly who you are.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“IT’S LATE, I KNOW, but I need your help.” Thomas was trying not to shout to be heard over the voices jumbling against each other in his head.
Bernie, on the phone, groggy. “Thomas? Is that you?”
“It’s late, I know, I’m sorry. But I need your help.”
“It’s okay.” Bernie swallowed a yawn. “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.” Thomas could hear him fumble for his glasses. “What is it? Did Igor screw up again?”
“No, it’s not that.” The voices were growing louder now, were clamouring for attention. Not voices. Memories. Fragments of conversations, coming back in sharp relief.
They agreed to meet halfway, on the bridge. A faint mist hung over the water and the lights along the river glowed in halos of fog. Thomas tried to remain calm, but as he walked toward Bernie, he began to yell, voice cracking. “How did you know the name of my hamster?”
Bernie came over to him, wrought with concern. He could see flashes of anguish, perhaps even madness, behind Thomas’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“My hamster. How did you know about my hamster?”
“Thomas, everybody knows. Your life is on public record, remember? When you called, you said you needed my help. With what?”
“The truth.”
“Truth?” said Bernie. “What is truth?”
Thomas could feel his certainties waver. Was the name of his hamster even in his father’s book? His thoughts eddied like water circling a drain, and the look of concern on Bernie’s face was heartbreaking. It hit Thomas just then how few friends he really had. Perhaps only one.
“I’m—I’m having trouble,” he said.
“Thomas, we need to get you home.”
And then . . .
There it was. A faint twitch of the lips, the hint of a smile, there and then gone. A hell of a tell, that one.
Thomas’s gaze hardened. “The night Amy and I broke up . . .”
“The night she dumped you.”
“Where did you go?”
“I don’t recall. It was, as they say, a little drunk out that night.”
“Not after, before. When I phoned you. Where were you?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere.”
“You were out of breath.”
“I’m always out of breath.”
“You were downtown.”
“Fine.” Bernie sighed. “I was visiting an Asian massage parlour. Happy now? Not all of us can have your success with the ladies. Some of us are downright lonely.”
Thomas stepped closer. “Bullshit. ‘Do I know you?!’ That’s what Eli always shouts, what he always asks. But that’s not what he said when he met you, is it? He shouted, ‘I kn
ow you!’ and you looked scared. I thought it was because Eli was loud and full of fury. It wasn’t. You were worried he recognized you. He’d seen you before. You told me you’d spotted my dad down by Tent City, that you avoided him. I asked myself what my dad was doing down there. I should have been asking what you were doing down there. My father was scouting test subjects for a highly unethical drug regimen. You? You were scouting subjects of your own, but not for medical tests. It was for something much worse than that. Tell me I’m wrong, Bernie. I fucking dare you to tell me I’m wrong!”
“Is that what this is? You want some sort of confession? This isn’t church, Thomas. Go home.”
He turned to leave, but Thomas grabbed Bernie’s overcoat. Navy blue, not black. But who would know the difference in the dark? And when he shed his overcoat, the white of his lab jacket would emerge.
“What’s it like to be a bat, Bernie? What’s it like to be a bat?” Thomas threw the question at him. “That was required reading. I never bothered with Cerletti’s assignments, but you did. You were always the better student, Bernie. And it must have made an impression on you, that question. How can we really know what it’s like to be someone else? What’s it like to be a bat? That’s what you asked, wasn’t it? Before you killed them.”
When Bernie spoke, his breath was barely a whisper and full of mist. “I was just culling the herd, Thomas.”
“Jesus, Bernie.”
Bernie, eyes smiling, full of tears. “Every story needs a Satan. Every gospel needs its devil.”
The memories were crowding in, coming quicker. “I always forget you’re a former Catholic, Bernie.” “There’s no such thing as a former Catholic, Thomas.” And when their God helmet had first worked, when they thought they’d succeeded, Bernie had been jubilant: “Imagine the look on the priests’ faces! Imagine their reaction when we prove that God is merely a trick of the mind, that no one is watching out for us.” Visions of dendrites and neurons radiating outward. And buried in the brain, the almond and the seahorse: fear and anxiety nestled in beside memory and self-control. They bleed into one another. Remember me. Remember me.