He Wanted the Moon

by Mimi Baird,Eve Claxton

  While conversing with these two, I used the term “Cue-tips” without any special meaning. In my office I use prepared applicators—wooden sticks with cotton tips—called “Q Tips.” Near the pool table were some steel braces to be used in gluing on those velvet pads called “cue tips” which the hostess had pointed out to me and referred to by this term.

  The next day, as I sat at the piano, Mr. Denis came along.

  “What did you mean when you said ‘Q Tips’ last night?” he asked.

  “Oh,” I said. “Do you mean in reference to that ‘crap’ about the pool balls?”

  He looked surprised, turned and left the room. It was after this that some of the patients began to get rough in their remarks to me.

  A state trooper came in and mingled with nurses and patients for a while. I found that he was a very pleasant kind of officer and fun to talk with. I asked to see his handcuffs and put them on. They happened to be exactly like the ones used to take me to Westborough. It was interesting to study the automatic tightening mechanism. As one struggles in them, they are apt to close more tightly on the wrist.

  “How are you taught to shoot nowadays?” I asked the officer. “Do you use the technique of Wyatt Earp?”

  The officer and the nurse were standing there. Both looked surprised and uneasy. The term “Wyatt Earp” must have sounded a little crazy to them. I went on to explain.

  “Wyatt Earp was a frontier marshal. He carried two guns given to him by the Wells Fargo express. He shot from the hip and aimed just below the middle of the abdominal region, a large target and a very effective target.”

  The officer and nurse looked a little relieved when I was able to translate my original statement into language easily understandable to them.

  I wandered out through the back door and found the police cruising car still there.

  “This reminds me of the time the bear came in to the bathroom,” I heard the French woman say.

  I went into the kitchen and found the nurse making coffee for the policeman. I talked with the officer about hours and wages. I found that he had many interesting things to say. I expressed my views regarding hours and wages for local and state police and how their services might be improved by more favorable working hours and high wages, enabling the public to employ a better type of man.

  The French woman came wandering through the kitchen.

  “This reminds me of the time the bear came in to the bathroom,” she said again as she left the kitchen.

  I went to bed but lay awake thinking and wondering about so many things. The police cruising car stood outside, its radio picking up many messages from headquarters. The car must have stayed outside the window of our room until 3 a.m.

  Monday morning was uneventful. After lunch, Emma, the French woman, Betty and I were sitting back of the little cottage, talking. Betty laughed. Somehow this made me mad. A tennis game was suggested. Emma and I played Betty and the French woman. My game rose to top form. My smashing serves fell into corners of the serving courts and were seldom returned. My aggressive game, especially my tornado serve, had evidently awakened the attention of several patients who usually watched us play. One by one they left. Did they sense my anger? Did they think I was unduly upset?

  MARY Lou Lee—checker game

  Two red chickens out in front. Danger, danger, danger.

  Nurse, I and Mary Lou walk in the moat, walk and run.

  10 p.m. to bed. I sleep until about midnight, ask for amytal, take one or two doses, awake at 4:30 or 5 a.m., get up and talk with nurse and attendant.

  Toward breakfast time, I am showing the attendant wrestling and jiu-jitsu, many holds not in the books.

  Mary Lou comes out.

  Breakfast.

  Morning, outside, Jewish attendant, and several Jewish patients around. Someone hands me a newspaper clipping with headline: “Jewish women seek U.S. port.”

  I sit with them on grass and say, “The trouble with this world is that there’s not enough of the spirit of tolerance and forgiveness,” and I talk on in this vein.

  A Jewish seamstress comments: “I never believed in four leafed clovers before. I found one yesterday.”

  Lunch.

  Afternoon nap.

  Afternoon on lawn.

  Dinner.

  Early evening on lawn.

  Radio, much talk about invasion of the Continent by allies.

  TUESDAY morning, eleven days after my arrival at Baldpate, I was up early as usual, sitting in the swing, rocking back and forth. Betty Winn came out of the rear entrance of the main building and walked toward me. I got up and went over to her and walked at her side as she went over to the hospital where she took her insulin treatments.

  “This is serious,” she said as we walked along.

  “What do you mean, Betty?”

  “I can read minds too,” said Betty. “It’s easy.”

  We walked on in this view for four or five minutes. Betty, a perfectly sensible girl usually, seemed to be trying to say something to me, but seemed obliged to clothe her language in such a way as to conceal her purposes from the others, in case I should quote her statements. Or perhaps she was just trying to reach me by suggestion or reference. I could not understand her. At the hospital, she gave me a cigarette. We both smoked a few minutes and then she went in the hospital and I walked back to my swing.

  After breakfast, I wandered around and at about 9 a.m. the Houston woman came out of the old inn building. I joined her and walked to the occupational therapy unit. As we entered, the therapist turned to me.

  “Don’t come in here!” she said to me abruptly and in a loud, high-pitched voice. “You’re dressed up to go swimming.” I was merely dressed in an ordinary sort of clothes. What could she have meant? I turned and walked away. The idea of going down to the lake appealed to me. I wanted to be alone. I went down the driveway to the road and walked along toward the lake. An attendant came alongside of me in his car and stopped. We talked.

  “Do you suppose it is all right for me to go down to the lake?” I asked.

  “Better get permission,” he said.

  I turned around, went back to the main building, climbed the stairs to the second floor and found the nurse in charge at the nurse’s office.

  “May I go down to the lake?” I asked.

  “Do you feel well?” she asked. “You’ve been looking flushed and upset.”

  “I feel just fine. I just thought I’d like to go down to the lake.”

  “It’s alright to go to the lake, but don’t go in swimming.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said and went back to the road. The attendant was still waiting in his car.

  “I obtained permission to go to the lake,” I remarked as I passed his car. I followed the road down to the lake, got on the path on the far side of the lake and walked deep into the woods. I wanted to be alone, away from the constant riddle and annoyance of things other patients were saying to me.

  I crossed a road and went on and on, staying in the woods. I came to a little house by the highway and found that I could not go on except by following the main highway or by going on in a wooded section heavily overgrown with thickets. I knocked on the door of the house, a new one just built, and asked to use the telephone. I wanted to get a taxi to go back to the hospital, thinking that I may have been gone a little too long and that I should hasten back. It’s true also that I would have loved to climb in a taxi and leave the state.

  Baldpate Hospital, 1944

  The patient got on fairly well at the “Inn” until June 6, 1944, when he left the premises without authorization, visited a farm and waded in a lake nearby. He was apprehended and returned to Baldpate where he seemed confused in supplying details of his expedition. A few days later he began to be irritable, demanding, surly and restless. With a menacing grimace he stated, “What were the bitter pills they have been giving me? If you are giving me the wrong medicine somebody is going to get into trouble.”

  CHAPTER ELEVE
N

  In his records, it is noted that while at Baldpate hospital my father “destroyed two iron hospital beds, broke the panels of his room, and threatened to strike the nurses.” Only two weeks after his admittance to Baldpate, his behavior was deemed too unruly for the hospital’s standards, and he was transferred without delay back to Westborough.

  Westborough State Hospital, 1944

  June 10

  The patient cooperated well on being returned to our hospital. He came back dressed in a Palm Beach suit, brown shoes, made a very excellent appearance and came back to the hospital accompanied by two State Troopers, one on either side, carrying his large brown suitcases. He readily greeted the writer and was friendly. He was slightly over-talkative, but not too much so. When he was asked what happened, he stated it was all a misunderstanding, tried to maintain he had not attempted to escape from Baldpate, that one of the Doctors had given him permission to go down by the lake, that this Doctor had gone on vacation and those left in charge thought he overstepped his privileges. It happened on two occasions. He stated that each time the car picked him up he was on his way back to the hospital. “I would not be going in that direction if I was trying to escape,” he stated.

  June 13

  This patient is quiet, cooperative and adjusting well. He spends considerable time writing and does some reading. He readily indulges in conversation. He does seem slightly tense. At times he tries to be very jovial. One of the jokes he tried to make was really rather sensuous and he made this even though a female nurse was standing in the group. He himself laughed more at it than the others. He still tends to show euphoria and shows no depression. There really have been no gross changes in this patient’s condition since his return to the hospital. In fact, the writer feels that his condition is the same as it was for a few weeks before he left our hospital to go to Baldpate.

  June 30

  The writer today served the notification to the patient that his “license was revoked” by the Board of Registration in Medicine as of June 21st, 1944, at least it was voted such at a meeting on that date. The patient was ordered to remove all of his signs, public displays etc. and to no longer receive money for the practice of medicine. The original was given to the patient and the writer signed a copy that he had been served the original. This was notarized and returned to the Board of Registration in Medicine. Patient had little to say. He did, after reading the notice, want to know if it was temporary or permanent and he immediately wrote a letter to his lawyer.

  THREE weeks after my readmission to Westborough, I was sitting on the grass next to the Proctor building when Dr. Boyd walked toward me.

  “I have very bad news for you,” he said. He handed me a letter.

  In technical language the letter directed me to appear before the Board of Registration and to provide reasons why my medical license should not be suspended, cancelled or revoked on grounds of insanity, according to section, etc. etc.

  Immediately I wrote a letter to my lawyer, Mr. Dodge, asking him to arrange for me to be at the hearing. As I wrote, I stated two strong intuitions:

  1. Dr. Lang will not let me go to the hearing.

  2. My license will be revoked, no matter what happens.

  Three or four days later, my lawyer wrote: “Impossible to arrange for you to be at hearing.”

  ONE morning, two and a half weeks after readmission, I went with the occupational therapist nurse to the library. A patient came in holding a little robin that had just hatched out. She found it on the grass. It could not find its nest.

  We went to a large room, equipped for occupational therapy, with every type of equipment. I played the piano. I sat at the window. I saw a patient running towards the lake. She was easily overtaken and returned to the dormitory.

  I played bridge with three other patients in the afternoon. We ate candy and drank cold drinks. I overheard the girl say that she put the little robin back on the grass. She came along later and found it half-eaten by a cat.

  Bridge was over. We returned the tables and chairs to the nurses’ house from which we had brought them.

  Dr. Boyd arrived.

  “You have been transferred to another ward,” he said. “Your things have already been sent over.”

  I felt a little happy.

  MY lawyer wrote that he appeared before the Board of Registration and they made it clear that revocation of my license was the most we could expect. My lawyer went on to say the license had been revoked. The news did not surprise me and I did not feel deeply shocked.

  Routine notices began to appear. There were instructions to notify medical societies and hospitals that my license had been revoked; to withdraw my name from the telephone book, the directory listing in my building, and from the door of my office.

  My secretary wrote that patients could no longer be accepted in my name. When answering the telephone the girls say, “Hello” instead of, “This is Dr. Baird’s office.”

  Gretta wrote that she couldn’t see me for six months on account of Massachusetts divorce laws.

  The agony of these activities did not upset me in any outward sense, but my heart was slowing breaking.

  ON Sunday, Dr. Boyd came to make a visit, one week or so after my transfer. He seemed surprised and inquisitive that I was not visibly upset over the revocation of my license.

  “The proper viewpoint is to make up your mind to get your license back again,” he advised.

  I hadn’t asked for his advice. I could see no other possible viewpoint to take, except to give up all hope, to surrender to defeat and mediocrity.

  Dr. Boyd couldn’t seem to comprehend why I didn’t get manic or deeply depressed over the question of my license. I bore up well. I did so on purpose, perhaps through pride, perhaps because I had expected it, perhaps because I had been through so much that I expected nothing but hard luck and continued reversals. I had all the courage, fight and stamina necessary to face my problem. I didn’t need for Dr. Boyd to advise me, to take a viewpoint that has long been natural for me: to struggle and fight.

  Boyd did most of the talking. He proceeded to give me a vast amount of unsolicited advice, dishing it out as if it were something that would straighten out my affairs very nicely. He spoke in a confident manner, as if he thought I’d been yearning for his help, as if I were greatly complimented to have him take the time to talk with me. I had not sought his advice; I did not want it. His advice was based upon little thought about my problem and very little knowledge of my case. He sat there confident, overbearing, fat, stupid, his mustache wriggling up and down. On and on he talked. He spoke with pride about the Westborough State Hospital.

  “About all we have to offer here is a regular life for our patients,” he said, as if Westborough had some magic to offer.

  Oh, dear God, I say to anyone who cares to listen: Westborough State Hospital and other places like it have nothing to offer; nothing but a jail-like incarceration, brutality and ugliness. The patients who come here recover not because of the treatment they receive, but in spite of it. Some are submerged by it, die of it.

  Boyd continued. He referred to the acute stage of my recent illness. He commented with sarcasm upon some of the things I’d said, my references to cosmic rays, my illusion concerning the yellow wall paint that I referred to as “riboflavin.” He gave his interpretation of the manic psychosis and emphasized speed of thought and action as factors to reckon with. I complimented him on this and said I preferred his interpretation to the usual one.

  “What is the usual one?” he asked.

  “Oh, most authorities just think of the manic psychosis as a state characterized by loss of inhibition,” I explained.

  “But that’s just a description of what happens, not interpretation,” he commented.

  I had flattered him. He puffed up a little. I’d wanted to keep peace with him. I disliked him heartily. Oh to get rid of him! But no, he was having a fine time. He dictated on how I was to manage my life in order to remain free of trouble.
He proposed to solve this problem that no one has ever solved before:

  “Lead a regular life, eat and sleep regularly,” Boyd said. “Have sexual intercourse about three times per week. Reduce your income to $15,000 per year. Don’t overwork. When you feel yourself getting manic, just don’t talk so much …”

  In general, he proposed that I just remember the symptoms and overcome them.

  This interview with Boyd was an endless affair.

  “You have a better brain than mine,” he went on.

  “I’m not so sure,” I replied, shuddering to think that my brain could deteriorate to a level with his.

  “Oh yes,” said he. “You have a better command of the general field of medicine.”

  He knew nothing of my talents and my shortcomings. He was not qualified to compare.

  Boyd also seemed to think I was happy about my divorce.

  “I’m not so sure that I am happy about it,” I said.

  “Aren’t you relieved to have your freedom, to be able to live as you choose?”

  “I’m not entirely sure!”

  “Of course, you know, the manics run the world,” Boyd continued. He developed this thesis along the usual lines.

  If he really thinks that manics are useful enough to run the world, I wondered to myself, then why do they keep me here at Westborough, on and on, when I am normal?

  “Well, I might have done this sooner for you,” Boyd concluded, condescendingly. “I thought it would be better to wait until now, when you’d benefit more.”