Mind Over Mind

by Karina L. Fabian

  The woman reached for him, then pulled her hand back and leaned a little closer to the man, who looked at Edith in askance.

  “Ydrel, how long has he been like that?” Edith asked.

  “Since about 5:30 this morning. He’s been kind of fading in and out for a while, though. It’s OK.”

  Looking at the way the couple all but huddled together on the couch, Joshua thought it was far less than “OK.” Was this party their idea? If so, they weren’t getting the happy bonding time they’d probably hoped for.

  “Mr. Goldstein is a Holocaust survivor,” Edith explained to Joshua and to the couple. “He has Alzheimer’s, and it takes him back to the memory of those days. Ydrel’s found that if he plays the part of a freedom fighter trying to help him escape, it keeps him focused away from the worst of the memories.”

  “Really?” Josh was impressed. It wasn’t much different than the work he and his father did.

  “More like psychic self-defense,” Ydrel retorted hotly. “Really. Do you know what kind of fear that man feels? What he projects? It hides in the shadows and behind doors and if I drop my guard for a second, it pounces. Then I’m the one living his fear, feeling his tortures. Do you know where he was this morning? In this boxcar, packed in with all these people and children were crying and there wasn’t enough air to breathe and people were passing out, only they couldn’t fall down because we were packed in so tightly—” His eyes widened and turned inward and he started to wrap his arms about himself.

  The woman leaned her head into the man’s shoulder and he pulled her closer. Joshua saw a ring. Husband and wife, then. Ydrel’s parents? He wished he’d gotten more of a briefing than just “Ydrel’s turning eighteen.”

  Edith sat beside Ydrel and laid a hand on his arm in a gesture both reassuring and restraining. “It was his life, Ydrel, his memories. And he survived it. And he has lots of happy memories, too.”

  “Why can’t he project those?” Ydrel sighed, then shook himself and stood. He circled Joshua slowly, scrutinizing him from head to toe. Josh stood calmly; he’d had this happen before. “So, Joshua Abraham Lawson,” Ydrel drawled the name, “welcome to the land of the rich and loony, minimum security. Hope you’ll find we’re not all whiners using our money to buy attention. Did Edith tell you what it means to be working in a swanky facility like ours?”

  Josh bristled. Crazy or not, this guy’s attitude stunk. He took on a parody of a Jersey accent. “You want I should call you ‘sir’?”

  “Ooooh. Found a witty one, didn’t you, Edith? It means, at least to me, that as long as there’s money to be made off me, I never get to leave.” He continued to circle, just enough inside Joshua’s personal space to make him feel edgy. Even though Ydrel stood a couple of inches shorter than Joshua’s 5’11”, he seemed to loom. Joshua forced himself to relax, to move outside himself and stare ahead laconically, studying Ydrel with his peripheral vision. Edith watched, her face neutral, while the couple shifted nervously, but did nothing. Meanwhile, the young client continued to circle. “I’m a prisoner here, Joshua, as long as the money holds out and they can manipulate my family into fearing me—”

  “Ydrel, that’s enough!” Edith scolded. She didn’t raise her voice, and in fact, sat down and regarded the client with stern gaze and crossed arms. She tilted her head toward the seat on the couch.

  Ydrel stopped his menace and regarded Edith with a sad smile. “Not you, Edith. You’ve been nothing but kind. You just think I’m delusional. Malachai knows better.”

  Joshua spared a glance at his “family.” Not parents, then? Or was Ydrel including others—siblings at home, maybe? They were silent through the exchange, but they watched Edith intently, waiting for some signal from her to tell them what to do. Maybe Ydrel wasn’t so far off in his assessment. Great.

  Ydrel gave the last of his smile to the couple, then turned back to Joshua and resumed his circling. Edith merely watched. So much for “that’s enough”—or was she testing Joshua already?

  Ydrel continued his monologue. “Doctor Malachai knows I have paranormal abilities—good words, eh? His words. He’s studying me, like a lab animal, until he finds a way to duplicate my talents in normal humans. Until then, he’ll keep using me. If I resist, I get punished. If I cooperate, he gets that much closer to his goal. Either way, I’m stuck here.”

  Then, Ydrel stopped. Joshua glanced sideways at him. He had a faraway look, as if he was seeing something that surprised and scared him a little. When he spoke, his voice matched his expression. His pupils seemed unusually contracted for the light.

  “One day, I won’t be so useful. I’ll learn to do something Malachai can’t control. He’ll find some way to get rid of me. He’ll convince everyone I’m really psychotic. Violent. And he’ll drug me, take away my will...”

  Joshua watched the man stiffen and the woman start to twist her hands in her lap.

  “You know,” Joshua cut into his reverie, “I don’t think anyone has to convince your family of anything. You’re doing a fine job of scaring them yourself.” He wasn’t sure if he’d overstepped his bounds. He didn’t know Ydrel’s case, but he trusted his instincts.

  Ydrel blinked, then looked at Joshua with surprise and some respect. “You’re right. Sometimes, I get a little caught in my Gideon persona.” He brightened then and settled down on the couch next to the psychiatrist. Edith’s expression didn’t change, except that she arched her eyebrows and tilted her head slightly in the direction of his family.

  He looked at them, then his head turned sharply away, as if he’d been struck. He paused like that, eyes squinted as if in pain, then let out a shuddering sigh and looked back at them. “Some party, huh? I’m sorry. He’s right. I scared you and I, I’m sorry. Please. Can we start again? Joshua Abraham Lawson, meet my family: Aunt Katheryn and Uncle Douglas. Aunt Kate, Uncle Doug, meet Joshua Abraham Lawson, the new intern come to study me. He’s my present from Edith—an unusual gift,” he said, smiling at Joshua, then Edith. “Couldn’t you have at least found a girl?”

  “Darrel!” his aunt spoke for the first time, pronouncing the “a” like “ah” and emphasizing the “e,” which struck Joshua as weird. Almost atop her scolding, her husband commented, “Hell, if that’s what you wanted, you should have said something!”

  “Douglas!”

  Laughter broke the tension in the room. Edith motioned Joshua to sit, so he pulled a chair over from the table and sat on it backwards, his arms draped across the back.

  Douglas reached into his inner jacket pocket. “I did bring something else appropriate for one’s eighteenth birthday.” With a flourish, he pulled out a transparent flask. Dark amber liquid caught the light from the florescent lamps.

  “Douglas! How did you sneak that in here?!” Katie demanded.

  “Plastic flask. Happy Birthday, Darrel.”

  “It’s Ydrel. I’m eighteen. I can choose my own name. It’s not like you ever spelled or pronounced my old one right, anyway.” But nonetheless, he reached for the flask.

  Edith was quicker. “I think I’ll hang onto this. It’s against regulations—and in any case, you’re still underage.”

  “Legalistic crap. If the boy’s old enough to vote, he’s old enough to drink.”

  “Can the committed vote?” Ydrel asked.

  “Hell, how do you think Clinton got elected?”

  “Douglas!” Katie rolled her eyes. “Republicans,” she said to Joshua, as if it were a bad habit she couldn’t quite break her husband of.

  “At least my party wouldn’t put up a womanizing, draft-dodging, bureaucratic—”

  Edith started to interrupt what was apparently an old argument, but Ydrel stopped her with a raised hand. “It’s been a long day. Let them have their fun.” Then he looked over at Joshua. “Feeling vulnerable?”

  “What?”

  Ydrel indicated Joshua’s backwards-turned chair with a lazy wave of his hand, then shrugged. “’S OK. We all need barriers. Most of mine are up here.” He
tapped his temple.

  “It’s comfortable,” Joshua bristled.

  “Mine are, too. When they work. Hey,” he turned the arguing couple. “How about we shelve the politics and have cake instead?”

  The men sat in silence as Katie and Edith prepared the cake with candles. Douglas shifted uncomfortably and watched his wife gather paper plates. Ydrel, too, seemed to focus on his aunt, but then seemed to focus through her, then not focus at all, lost in dark thoughts. He smiled but didn’t seem to listen as they sang “Happy Birthday”; when the song died, he was still focused elsewhere.

  “Darrel, honey, make a wish.”

  Ydrel suddenly glared at his aunt. “Why? I wish for the same thing every year. It’s not like it’ll come true. I wish for my freedom. I wish to find someplace where people will believe me and not think I’m crazy or a guinea pig or—I wish I could go—” He bit his lip, stared down at his hands. Silence.

  Finally, he looked up, met his aunt’s sad eyes. “Tell you what: I’ll make a wish for you.” He made a great show of closing his eyes to wish hard then blowing out the candles in one long puff.

  “So, what did you wish for?” Her voice quavered a little and she drew in a breath.

  Ydrel smiled, this time a genuine happy smile. “Oh, you’ll find out in about six months.”

  Douglas turned to his wife. “Katie?”

  Edith smiled. “Kate, are you pregnant?”

  She smiled and nodded, but more nervously than Joshua would have expected. “I, I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I’ve lost so many—”

  “Not this one.” Ydrel spoke confidently. “This one will be strong and beautiful and healthy. I know.” Again, he met her eyes and smiled.

  The smile she returned was shaky, and full of hope and fear.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Here we are.” Dr. Bartlebort stopped at a door whose fancy nameplate declared “Office of Dr. D. Randall Malachai” with an accompanying alphabet of credentials. He smiled at Joshua. “Time to meet the head man himself. Dr. Malachai is head of the institution—but don’t worry; he’s just like any of us.”

  You mean he’ll treat me like I’m fourteen? Joshua kept his face schooled into polite neutrality. Most of the staff had treated him with respect, even though curious, but most of the psychiatrists seemed suspicious of this “kid” one of their own hired as an intern. He wondered how many had even bothered reading his résumé. He didn’t want to come off as an uppity intern, especially his first day, so he bit back the urge to finish sentences for them and settled for asking questions that displayed a depth of knowledge.

  Apparently his strategy worked, because Dr. Bartlebort introduced him to Dr. Malachai as “Edith’s project, though he seems to know his stuff” and didn’t bother to hide the surprise in his voice. He left Joshua at the door.

  Joshua walked into an office that was tasteful, professional and completely devoid of humor or warmth, despite the rich colors of the décor.

  A large cherry wood executive desk dominated the view as they first walked in. On the left corner was a pen and pencil nameplate with “Dr. D. Randall Malachai, MD, PhD,” and a slew of other initials in smaller print. A slim, black 21-inch computer monitor perched on the right corner. A small notebook with a pen sat with studied neglect among a stack of files. Behind the desk, the wall was plastered with framed professional certificates, guarded on either side by the matching cherry wood file cabinet and a bookshelf filled with professional books and journals. Those with Malachai’s name on the spine were on the perfect shelf to be noticed by someone sitting in the visitor’s chairs, Joshua noted. To the left of the desk were a low sofa and a higher quality version of the wing-backed chair Joshua had sat in the waiting room, with a coffee table between them. The room was so large it also held a small conference table; Dr. Malachai’s spot at the head was readily apparent by a small butler’s table, also in cherry wood. No expense spared here.

  “Sit.” Dr. Malachai indicated one of the two leather chairs in front of his desk, then stood and pulled his executive chair from behind the desk. His was slightly higher than the others. Dr. Malachai leaned back, ankle resting on one knee, arms crossed lightly. He smiled a patronizing smile that made Joshua’s hackles rise. Joshua had automatically put on the polite but distanced aura he always wore around people he disliked. He was usually successful at hiding his feelings, but something in Dr. Malachai’s smile said he saw through the facade. “So, you’ve met Deryl, or Ydrel, as he prefers to be called.”

  It was not a question, but Joshua answered anyway. “Yes, sir.”

  The smile quirked smugly. “It shows on your face. Tell me, did he describe me as a Nazi madman or a modern Dr. Strangelove?”

  “Uh, neither, sir, really, though he did give the impression you and he did not get along.” He kept his answer as neutral as possible while he tried to figure out where this was leading. He’d only known the senior psychiatrist for a minute, yet he already had the impression that Dr. Malachai never did anything idly.

  The psychiatrist chuckled. “All right. Keep your confidences if you feel you must. Just remember that there’s a line between developing trust and endangering an employee or client.” Then he looked away, and sighed. “You know, there was a time when Deryl confided in me. I like to think I was a father figure of sorts. Perhaps that explains some of his behavior to me now; developmentally, he’s at an age where he needs to define his identity, establish his independence, and of course, there’s only so much independence he can have due to his condition. Therefore, he seeks to make that ‘break,’ as it were, by rebelling against the closest thing to parent he has. Surely, you can identify with such teenage rebellion?”

  As Malachai spoke, Joshua caught himself leaning forward, a student listening to the wise words of a mentor. Deliberately, he changed his posture to match that of the psychiatrist’s, replying peer to peer. “Actually, I never went through that, personally; my parents were strict, but gave me a lot of room to make my own decisions. I did witness it in some of my friends, however.” He did not add that those who rebelled the most were the ones whose parents were the most controlling.

  “Then you are lucky, indeed. At any rate, Edith believes Ydrel is at a stage where he may respond more openly to a peer rather than a parent. However, let’s talk about the rest of your internship: What do you intend to accomplish?”

  The rest of the conversation went smoothly, even pleasantly. Soon Malachai rose, saying he had some appointments, and led Joshua back to the nurse’s station, where he would be passed on to the next person on his agenda. Dr. Malachai spent a few minutes chatting with the nurses before going back to his office.

  “He’s so nice,” one nurse commented as he left.

  Somehow, “nice” was not a word Joshua could associate with Malachai. Charismatic, yes, and such charisma set his teeth on edge. Hitler had such charisma—

  Maybe Ydrel made a bigger impression on me than I thought. He had no reason to think so ill of the senior psychiatrist, yet his instincts clamored.

  Nonetheless, he thought of his mother. “Trust your feelings, Joshua,” she often told him, sometimes mimicking Obi Wan Kenobi, sometimes in complete earnest. She was a firm believer that there was more to humans than intellect and emotion, something she called “body knowledge,” so part of his education had been biospiritual focusing, intuitive medicine, and other “hocus-pocus chick stuff” as some of his friends—and even one of his professors—called it. Rique called her “Mama Kenobi” when she said those things to him. Joshua knew that his mother would tell him to trust those instincts; they’d tell him more than his intellect. Even when in opposition to what his intellect told him, his body knowledge was most often right.

  I wonder if Ydrel just has an abnormally strong inclination himself, so strong he can’t ignore—

  “Joshua?”

  He realized he’d been woolgathering about his encounter with Malachai and snapped back to the present. He turned to smile at Edith and they re
turned her office.

  She closed the door and opened the blinds to let in the late afternoon sun, then motioned him to sit while she filed notes and pulled out other files in preparation for tomorrow. She offered him time to collect his thoughts before answering. “Well, what do you think?”

  While he thought, he leaned back and let his eyes wander around the office. He hadn’t looked at it closely earlier, other than to note that it was large, expensive and full of plants and photos. Now he saw that the photos were of horses, some with her astride them, some framed with ribbons. The obligatory bookcase housed books on horses as well as a wide variety of fiction: Black Beauty, The Red Tent, The Nanny Diaries: A Novel.

  “Where’s your DSM?”

  Edith laughed. “On disk. I keep the rest of my books in the library or at home. I’d rather have my clients here thinking about other things than how I’ll diagnose their pathos.”

  Josh grunted. “Do a lot of riding?”

  “Did. Dressage. Went to Nationals twice. But that was a long time ago. Now, I just ride for pleasure. My husband’s a trainer, and we have a small horse farm. I’ll take you sometime. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’m the first intern here, aren’t I?”

  “Was it that apparent?”

  He gave her a half-smile-half grimace in answer, and she sighed.

  “I think we have a lot to teach, and an obligation to do so. I finally convinced the board to give it a try, and you’re our trial run. Does that bother you?”

  He shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t quite feel. “I guess I should be honored. I’ve been the guinea pig before, so no, it doesn’t bother me. Besides, I think I’ll learn a lot here.” It was a neutral answer, but one he meant. Edith had asked one of the therapists to show him all three facilities, then had taken him along on her afternoon rounds. He’d met a few clients he automatically pegged as “high-society whiners,” seen a few cases that were similar to those he’d helped with in Colorado, and encountered a pathos he’d only read about. He had three or four he was dying to study further, and he hoped they would work them into his schedule. He was to spend most of the summer in the minimum intensity care ward, but would be allowed to work with a few more serious cases in July or August—if he proved himself. With study, he’d probably be working twelve hours a day, but the knowledge he’d gain would be worth a semester of courses. And the experience, not to mention how it’d look on a résumé. Just in case the agent doesn’t work out.