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Rat Race

<h2>CHAPTER 22</h2> The white-coated medical man—he said that he was associate psychiatrist at the Phipps Clinic—beckoned me to follow him into a side-room. He waved me to be seated and closed the door. "You see, Mr. Tompkins," he told me, "everybody's crazy." There is no point in recounting the stages which had converted my panic flight from the wrath of the Secret Service into this interview with one of Johns Hopkins psychiatric staff, except that I had been amazed by the ease with which he had drawn me aside shortly after I had sat down in the waiting-room. "Of course I realize, doctor," I replied, "that everyone must be abnormal since that is how you establish an average normality. My case is so peculiar, though, that I'd like to have you check on me." "Here we can take you only on the recommendation of a registered physician or psychiatrist," he told me. "We're understaffed and over-crowded as it is. My advice to you would be to return to your home—you live near New York, you say—and put yourself in the hands of your regular family physician. There are plenty of institutions in your part of the country which are fully qualified to give the necessary treatment. Even if you were recommended to us now we could only put you on the waiting list." I murmured something vague about war-conditions and neurotics, but he raised his hand like a traffic-cop and interrupted me. "The war, at least so far as active service is concerned, has taken a load off us, Mr. Tompkins," he informed me. "You see, in normal times people live under any number of pressures which force them to restrain their natural impulses. War gives them outlets—including sex, a sense of gang solidarity, and permission to commit acts of violence and homicide—which would result in jail-sentences for them at other times. Of course, there are a good many psychos coming out of actual combat but the government takes care of them. No, the bulk of our current cases are essential civilians: generals, administrators, politicians, business executives—who find that the war simply redoubles the pressures on them. Some of them are really insane in the medical sense but their positions are so high that we dare not insist on their hospitalization. Instead, we have a simple prescription which most of them find no difficulty in taking. Perhaps it would help in your case." "What's that?" I asked. "Oh, just go out and get drunk now and then, and find yourself a girl-friend. Blow off steam, in other words. Find an outlet for your natural impulses. If the White House had consulted me, Roosevelt might still—Oh, well, no use crying over spilt milk. Half the mental trouble in this country is due to people trying to be something they are not, and the other half is due to people trying not to be something that they naturally are. Primitive people are rarely troubled with neuroses." "But you said that everybody's crazy, doctor," I objected. "How does that fit into the picture?" "Mr. Tompkins," the psychiatrist remarked, "you must have noticed that the only sane people today are the alleged lunatics, who do what makes them happy. Take the man who thinks he is Napoleon. He is Napoleon and is much happier than those who try to tell him that he isn't. The real maniacs are now in control of the asylum. There's a theory among the psychiatrists that certain forms of paranoia are contagious. Every now and then a doctor or a nurse here and at other mental clinics goes what they call crazy and has to join the patients. My theory is that it is sanity which is contagious and that the only sane people are those who have sense enough to be crazy. They are locked up at once for fear that others will go sane, too. Now, take me, I'm—" At that moment two husky young men came in and led him away. After a short interval one of them returned. "I'm sorry this happened, sir," he apologized. "Dr. Murdoch is a tragic case. He was formerly employed here and every now and then he still manages to escape to one of our consultation rooms. He's quite harmless. What was he telling you?" "That the only sane people in the world were the lunatics," I said. The young man nodded. "Yes, that's his usual line. That's what got him committed in the first place. For my money, he's right but he oughtn't to go around saying it. And what can we do for you?" I told him that the "associate psychiatrist" had advised me to put myself in the hands of my family doctor and had prescribed a dose of wine, women and song as a method of restoring my mental balance. I was troubled by serious loss of memory, I said, and needed treatment. He nodded again. "Boy, when I finish my internship and start private practice, am I going to clean up in the upper brackets with that one! Murdoch's crazy to waste that on these people in Phipps. They can't follow his advice. This one is strictly for Park Avenue." I left the clinic, phoned the hotel in Washington from a pay-booth in a corner drug-store, and told Germaine to join me at Pook's Hill. I said that I had had to leave Washington in a hurry and would explain when I saw her. I added that I'd just had a consultation at Johns Hopkins and had decided to take medical treatment. "I know one thing you don't need treatment for—your nerve!" she replied and hung up on me. When I reached the house in Bedford Hills, I was welcomed by Mary-Myrtle at the front door and by the loud barking of Ponto from my bedroom. Germaine had not yet returned. "How's Ponto?" I asked the maid. "Oh, he's fine," she told me, "just fine. He eats his food and sleeps regular and is just like he was." "Good, I'll take a look at him." I went upstairs and held my bedroom door ajar. "Hullo, Ponto old boy," I said in the curious tone one uses towards dogs, children and public men. "Here I am back from Washington." He lay on my bed, with ears pricked up, gazing at me intently. "Yes, Ponto," I continued. "I got the Order of Merit from President Truman himself and met all the big shots, so if you take a bite at me now it will be sabotage." Ponto put his ears back and let his tongue dangle from the side of his mouth, while his tail made a haze as it thumped delightedly on the pillow. If he hadn't been an animal, I would have said he was laughing. "There, old fellow," I soothed him. He wuffed affectionately, jumped to the floor, and stood beside me, panting and drooling. "Thank God, you're well again, Ponto," I told him. "We can't have two loony people in this house. Now it's my turn to go to the vet's and be treated." Ponto's answer was to lick my hand convulsively and wag his tail and otherwise give a splendid impersonation of an affectionate "Friend of Man" whose beloved master has returned. So I took him downstairs with me and turned him out for a run on the lawn while I sat in my den and tried to get my thoughts in order. What worried me most was Virginia Rutherford's sudden change in manner. From having been definitely the woman scorned—angry, hurt and hell-bent for revenge—she had adopted an air of friendly complicity the moment I had left the White House. This made no sense to me. Germaine was unchanged but that was because she was a simple woman who was in the obvious process of falling in love with her own husband. Whatever I did would be all right with her, which was a great comfort but not much help. Then, too, I was beginning to get uneasy at the increasing glibness and complexity of the lies I was telling. It was almost as though I were playing a part for which at some time I had once rehearsed. As Tyler had told me in the State Department, it would be interesting to know how I happened to invent the legendary "Z-2." There was the crunch of gravel as an automobile slowed to a stop outside, the click of a key in the lock and then Germaine was in the den and in my arms, with all the etchings of ducks staring at her. "Winnie," she exclaimed. "You are the most unexpected person. I had the most awful time at the Willard after you phoned me. When I tried to pay the bill they wouldn't take my check because my name wasn't Grant. In fact, I had to telephone that nice Mrs. Jacklin before I could find a bank that would give me the money. Then that Mr. Harcourt from the F.B.I. came in and talked to me for the longest time. He seemed quite surprised when I told him you had gone to Johns Hopkins. Don't you feel well, dear?" "I never felt better," I assured her. "No, Jimmy, that was because somebody in the Secret Service got the idea that I ought to be put in an asylum. It's a nasty little trick of theirs, I gather, to send a man to the booby-bin for life if they don't like him but have no evidence against him. So I thought I'd play it smart and beat them to the punch. That's why I went to Baltimore, to get a mental check-up at the Phipps Clinic." "Did they—Are you—Are you all right?" she faltered. "I couldn't bear it if—" I laughed and gave her a good hug. "I'm all right," I told her. "They didn't have time to examine me but gave me two bits of advice. First, I was to get Jerry Rutherford to handle my case. I guess you need political influence now to get yourself locked up. And then, I was told that I ought to have more licker and wimmin in my life. It seems I'm getting in a rut." "Winnie!" "Uh-huh! They recommended it for curing highly inhibited cases like mine. I'm repressed or something." "It must be something," Germaine observed fifteen minutes later. "Oh, dear, I didn't even think whether the door was locked. I'm a sight. You don't act repressed to me." She turned her face towards me, her eyes laughing. "In any case, I'll have to see a doctor," I said, "and it might as well be Rutherford. He knows so much about me that I won't have to do a lot of explaining." "Winnie!" Germaine swung her feet to the floor and straightened her clothes. "Winnie," she repeated, "must you go to a doctor? Can't we try the other prescription—I mean, give it a good try?" I shook my head. "No can do. I've got to get my memory straightened out. You and I—well, we're all right now. But there's my business and then there's the Secret Service. I can't seem to remember a thing before the second of April and I did so much lying in Washington, trying to cover up, that I may get into real trouble. That's what Virginia said, that I'd lied myself into a worse mess than I'd lied myself out of." My wife pouted. "Don't these treatments take a long time?" she asked. "I remember when they sent Cousin Frederick to the asylum after that time when he put tear-gas in the air-conditioners in the Stock Exchange, it was three years before they let him out. Of course he was crazy, though we pretended it was only drink. That time he tried to tattoo the little Masters girl—But won't they keep you locked up and do things to you?" "Hanged if I know," I said, "but they can't keep me there a day longer than you or I want. It isn't as though I was being committed to an asylum. It's just that there's a bad crack in my memory. They'll try to find out what's wrong and patch it up. Perhaps I won't have to stay after all." "Do they let wives come and visit their husbands?" she asked dreamily. "I mean—" "I've never heard that the medical profession encouraged that kind of therapy," I told her. "Speaking of insanity," I continued, "Ponto, you will be glad to know, is back to normal." She got up and made a face at me. "Of course," she remarked with deliberate provocation, "If you think more of Ponto than you do of me. I'm so glad, Winnie, to know that Ponto is better. He's your dog, isn't he? What was wrong with him? What medicine did you give him? What did the vet say—" She ended in a startled squeak and ran for the door. "You beast!" she exclaimed, turning on me, "it was locked, all the time. Oh, Winnie—" A thousand years later she said once more, "Oh, Winnie!" Then she laughed. "Just the same," she said, "I'm glad about Ponto. I still think I don't like the way he's been acting." She yawned. "And now, sir," she added, "will you please let me go to my room. I'm still rather dirty from my trip and I ought to get a few things unpacked. And besides," she laughed again, "I'm ravenously hungry." "So am I," I remarked truthfully, "but—" "I know we're both crazy," she told me some time later, "and perhaps they'd better give us a double-room at the asylum. But I know that unless I eat something right away I'll be dead in the morning." "Let's see if there's anything in the ice-box," I said. "Mary's probably given up dinner long ago." "Her name is Myrtle," Germaine corrected me. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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