The Ninth Wave Read online

  CHAPTER 26

  A Monday Morning Ride

  On Monday morning Hank and Georgia drove back to Los Angeles alone. Mike flew to San Francisco from Fresno. He was meeting with some members of the State Central Committee to talk over Cromwell's campaign.

  Georgia was driving. Hank was asleep. When they were just outside of Bakersfield, Hank groaned once and turned over.

  "Do you want something to eat, Hank?" she said.

  "Sure. What I need is some chili," Hank said. His eyes were bloodshot. He was hung over. They had already stopped three times so that Hank could eat. Each time he wolfed down a sandwich or a piece of pie ŕ la mode and walked back to the car and promptly went to sleep.

  "I'll pull in at the next restaurant," Georgia said. "You're the first person I ever saw who wanted to eat when he had a hangovers. Most people just want black coffee." Hank said nothing; he stared out at the fields, watched a truck load of pickers jog across a corduroy road. "Where did you go last night?"

  "Out. Someplace in Fresno," Hank said. "A couple of bars and then a dance hall. God, I haven't danced for years. I must have danced thirty dances last night. I think I had a good time. I feel good now. As if I had a good time. Maybe I did."

  "You're sure you want something to eat?" Georgia asked.

  "Yes. I'm sure. I like to eat when I'm hung. Also I like to talk. I've been sleeping so I wouldn't talk. I get boring. It's funny, I feel miserable physically, but inside I feel sort of weak and purged. Like after you take a cathartic. It makes me want to talk. Just tell me to stop if I get boring or euphoric."

  Georgia pulled over and parked by a small restaurant. They went in and Hank ordered a bowl of chili beans. Georgia had a cup of coffee. Hank gulped down the beans and ate three cellophane packets of crackers. He picked up a half dozen packets of the crackers when he left. Georgia continued to drive. Hank munched on the crackers.

  "Mike told me that you were going to specialize in psychiatry, but you switched to surgery," Georgia said.

  "That's right. There's more money in psychiatry, but I decided that surgery was more interesting."

  "Really? I would think psychiatry would be very interesting."

  Hank opened another packet of crackers. He ate them before he replied, "I was lying. It is more interesting than surgery. I've never talked it over with anyone, not even Mike. But I don't care now. I went into surgery because I couldn't stand psychiatry."

  "Do you really want to talk about it?"

  "Sure I want to talk about it," Hank said. He leaned back in the corner of the seat, closed his eyes and talked through the crackers. "I spent three years studying psychiatry, why shouldn't I talk about it? I was the hottest psychiatry intern they had. A real whiz. Superego, id, ego, narcissism, insulin shock, Rohrschach test, T.A.T., hydrotherapy, Méničre's Syndrome, hypertonia, ataxia, stuttering, paranoia, negativism, regression, metrazol, hypnogogic reverie, oneirosis . . . Jesus, I knew everything. I was going to be the boy wonder of psychiatry. I was going to save a tortured world . . . ole Hank Moore, all by himself."

  He opened his eyes, reached for another packet of crackers. He opened the packet and put two crackers in his mouth.

  "Then they gave me my first case," Hank said. "Jesus, I went at it carefully. She was thirty-five years old, married, four kids, a Catholic. I found out everything about her, just the way I'd been taught. Not forcing her, but letting her bring it out. She complained of headaches, walked with a limp, had occasional tinnitus and almost constant scintillating scotoma . . . "

  "What's that?" Georgia asked. "Scintillating scotoma?"

  "Bright spots before the eyes," Hank said and laughed. "Silly, eh? But she had more, much more than that. And I put it all down, the way you're supposed to. Neatly in a notebook. Subject was one of six siblings. Cruel, dominant father. Beat the kids on Saturday night before he went out and got drunk. Retiring mother. Subject had great fear of sex during menarche. Didn't know where babies came from until she was three months' pregnant. Married a shy linoleum salesman. Never experienced orgasm. Associated sex with pain, rape, bleeding. Subject suffered from intense depression, pains in abdomen, and fear of high places. That's just part of it, just a fraction. I got it all down, worked it over, slaved on it, consulted with experts, went through the books, listened endlessly to this fat whining woman talk and put down every single thing she said."

  "What was wrong with her?" Georgia asked.

  "I never found out. I gave her the most thorough physical that any person ever had. Blood count, urinalysis, regular X-rays, barium meal X-rays, spinal tap, Stanford-Binet I.Q. test, an ataxigraph, campimeter... there Was nothing I didn't do to that lady. I thought she might have Méničre's Syndrome so I tested for sludging of the blood in the labyrinth of the ear. No results. I discovered she had an enormous amount of water in her body and she said she ate salt in quantities . . . half a cupful a day. She heaped it on meat, eggs and potatoes. So I rushed to Freud and read about the symbolic meaning of salt arid concluded that she was suffering from a suppressed desire for immortality. She was literally trying to pickle herself, make a brine out of her blood and lymph. So that she could keep that defective, hulking, worn-out body of hers forever. The notebook got bigger and bigger. They gave me a secretary to transcribe the notes. Everyone thought it was going to be one of those epic cases; go down in all the textbooks. Moore's Syndrome they would call it."

  "Did you cure her?" Georgia asked.

  "Let me finish, Hank said. "I put her on a salt-free diet and nothing happened except she lost thirty pounds. She just liked salt. She didn't protest when I put her on the diet. She said the food was a little flat, but that was all. Matter of fact she didn't mind anything. She'd sit there, smiling a little anxiously, trying to be co-operative. She said her headaches were worse at certain times. It took me a month to discover that she had them worse in intercourse. Whenever she felt her husband tighten up and knew he was having orgasm, the headache would hit; flash through her head like a bullet. So back to the books I went; Reik, Freud, Carveth, Alexander. Hatred and revenge on Father, I concluded. Suppressed and emerged physically in the form of a crashing, instantaneous headache whenever she knew that any man was experiencing pleasure with her body.

  "I was sure of the diagnosis, but she didn't respond well to treatment. I probed her about her feelings during intercourse, tried to get her to admit that she hated it. But she would just blush and say, no, she really liked intercourse. In fact she was after her husband all the time for a little extra piece.

  "I gave a long wordy diagnosis and everyone smiled and agreed that ole Hank Moore was on his way. Then she jumped off the Arroyo Seco Bridge in Pasadena. I never did find out what was wrong with her. And I gave up psychiatry."

  "Why? Every intern must make mistakes at first," Georgia said. "That's what internships are for. So you make your mistakes under supervision."

  "I wasn't afraid of making mistakes," Hank said. "But later, after she had committed suicide, I went over my notes. And it all became clear. There was nothing wrong with the woman; not at first. She just wanted to talk to the nice young doctor and it didn't cost her anything and it kept her out of the house. It gave her a nice break. She kept changing the symptoms on me, just to keep my interest up. But at some point the whole thing changed. The more I talked the more she became apprehensive and frightened. And in the end I drove her to the bridge."

  "Oh, Hank, that's silly. She must have been way off base before she ever came to you."

  "But she wasn't," Hank said. "She just wanted a chance to get out of the house for a few hours a week and she liked to have someone to talk to. But at some point I got the thin end of the wedge into her brain. And every word I said drove it in farther. See, I really drove her to suicide. She was just a normal, whining, fat, bored housewife. And I, Hank the wonder intern, was clever enough to drive her nuts; I got her so worked up that she committed suicide."

  "Is surgery better?" Georgia asked.

  Hank sat up
. He rolled down the window and spat a mouthful of crackers out onto the highway. He rolled the window up.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm talking too much. Also I'm trying to be smart and flip. I don't feel that way about it. Really I liked psychiatry, but I just couldn't do it. Too chancy."

  "Too chancy?"

  "Yes. Too chancy. Too much guesswork. Too much opinion. Too much wild imagination. Too much of something that I don't have."

  "Are you a good surgeon?"

  "No. Just average, but I'll get better."

  "Well, why did you pick surgery then?"

  "Because it's sure. Absolutely, positively sure. If you're a surgeon, a cancer specialist brings in a patient and tells you that he's got a patient with a cancer in the cortex of the brain. He makes the diagnosis. It's all his responsibility. All the surgeon does is operate. The other guy takes all the responsibility."

  "But that's part of being a doctor," Georgia protested. "You have to be willing to make a diagnosis."

  "Not if you're a surgeon. They bring the patient in with the diagnosis already made. All you have to do is operate. They bring him in with his head shaved so close that it gleams like brass. You caliper off the distance, make a mark on the skull . . . it's all exact, precise, with instruments that measure the same thing on every person. No guesswork. You sponge off the skull with alcohol that kills the same kind of germs on every kind of head. You take a scalpel and cut and elevate and reflect a flap of skin. Same size on every head; same place; same problem. You clamp off the blood vessels. They're always in the same position in every person's head. Once in a while one vessel bleeds a little more than most and then you just electrocoagulate it. That's the only difference. Then you cut through the skullbone with a trephine; five holes, each exactly the same. You cut between them with a special stainless-steel wire saw. You elevate the flap of dura and gently explore the brain. And either it's there or it's not. Either you see a little yellow growth spreading across the surface, sending tiny ramifications into the healthy tissue, crowding against the sulci and causing the memory lapse and gradually killing the patient -- it's either there or it isn't. If it isn't you back out of the skull, sew the skin back over and the internist was wrong. Not you."

  "And if he was right?"

  "Then the operating nurse slaps an electric knife in your hand and slowly, gently, holding your breath, sweating, you cut it out. The curious little piece of flesh falls away from the brain, the electric knife seals off the blood vessels and, finally, it's just lying there . . . an ounce or two of crazy flesh. You pick the growth up with a forceps and start backing out. And you feel as good as if you'd done something really important. And no responsibility."

  "But somebody has to do the diagnosis, someone has to take the risk."

  Hank opened his eyes a slit, glanced down the long shiny hood of the car, down the rushing strip of black asphalt, saw dimly the beetlelike rush of the other cars, the green foliage alongside the highway. He smiled and closed his eyes.

  "Sure. Someone has to do it. Let someone do it that likes to take a chance, that likes guessing. I don't like it."

  Georgia drove a few more-miles without speaking and Hank almost fell asleep.

  "Is it worthwhile studying surgery, Hank, if you're not very good at it?"

  "Good question. First, I'm not bad at it. I'm just not gifted in the fingers the way some of the surgeons are. But you can improve yourself by practice and so I do that. When I was at medical school I used to practice on old cadavers; the ones that were so sliced up they were about to send them away to wherever they send used-up cadavers. Sometimes I practiced on beef. I never told anyone about that. I'd get a big roast of beef, take it to my apartment, lay out the instruments and practice. Practice at tying knots with two fingers in a deep bloody cut; practice at feeling things with the tips of my fingers; practice at thin cuts . . . so thin that a hundred of them wouldn't cut through more than a quarter inch of flesh." Hank waved his hand in the air. "Don't worry. I'm good enough and I'm getting better. I'll be one of the best someday. Not right away, but someday."

  Hank opened his eyes again, looked sideways at Georgia. She was looking straight ahead, sitting easily in the seat. The speedometer held exactly at 60, not falling or rising a hair.

  "The only thing I saved from psychiatry is a name for what I'm feeling right now," Hank said. "Parorexia."

  "What's that?" Georgia asked, laughing.

  "Perverted appetite," Hank said. "I'm hungry for something else. Fried eggs. Stop at the next restaurant."

  They stopped and Hank ate four fried eggs and some toast. When they got back in the car, they drove through the mountain meadows -- on top of the Ridge Route. The lupin was turning brown and great patches of the flower marched over the hillsides. In a few places, deep gullies and ravines, there were still streaks of brown winter snow. Trucks crawled up the grade, their wheels barely turning, the diesel smoke hanging motionless in the air.

  "You were mad at Mike during the convention, weren't you?" Georgia asked.

  "For a little while. Then I got over it. I was really mad about him giving Moon's name to Cromwell. That was a hell of a thing. But last night when I was out on the town I thought it all out. I'm not sore anymore."

  "I'm glad. I wouldn't feel good if you were mad at Mike."

  "Well, I'm not mad anymore. I figured it doesn't make any difference. The Moon thing won't amount to anything. It'll just blow over. If I really thought that it would hurt Moon any, I'd have really given Mike hell . . . made Cromwell retract the statement or something. But it won't matter. Everyone will just forget it. Think it's a political attack and forget it."

  "Isn't Professor Moon a Communist?"

  "He's not a member of the Communist Party. He's one of those oddballs who likes to startle his students, and he's convinced himself that he believes in some special obscure aspects of primitive communism. But he's not a member of the Party. I'll bet he doesn't even know that there is a Communist Party."

  "I'm not so sure that everyone is going to forget it, Hank. People are worked up these days about Communism. What if the newspapers pick it up?"

  "They won't. Everyone knows that it was just politics. They'll forget about it." Hank leaned back in the seat and yawned. He rubbed his hands across his eyes. "That was a neat job that Mike pulled on the convention. I wonder if any of them realize what happened?"

  "What did he do to them, Hank?" Georgia asked. "Why did they all switch so easily from Gutler to Cromwell?"

  "Because they were a middle-class crowd," Hank said. "All clever, well-educated people. They all knew about mob psychology and emotionalism and they know it's not nice for respectable people to get too excited. They're stiff with respectability; really proper people. But they all thought that a political convention is different. There you can get excited and yell and parade around and it's all right. You're doing it in the interest of good government, for the state. But then Mike pulled a switch on them. After they had paraded around and acted foolish, they sat down; all feeling righteous and spent. And then the minister stands up and gives them hell. Suddenly they're all embarrassed sick. They hated the minister and Cromwell for reminding them of how foolish they'd been. Hell hath no fury like an embarrassed respectable person."

  "If they hated the minister and Cromwell, why did they go along with them?" Georgia asked.

  "Because they couldn't admit they hated the people that scotded them," Hank said. "They had to turn their hatred on the guy that made fools out of them . . . and that guy was Cutler. And the cards helped. They looked spontaneous, homemade, crude. Not like Cutler's slick, high-powered buttons and posters and photographs. Everyone thought the person next to him had scribbled out the cards. So they turned on Cutler, tore off his buttons and put on the hand-written cards for Cromwell. That was pretty clever of Mike. Really clever."

  "Mike was right," Georgia said. "The problem is not so much to get them to like your candidate as to persuade them to hate the other candidate."


  "Sure, he was right for a little group like a convention," Hank said. "But it's just a trick. You couldn't pull it on the whole voting public."

  Georgia glanced at Hank and her face was relieved; almost smiling.

  "But why can't Mike work a couple of tricks and win the election?"

  "Because you can't manipulate five million people the way you manipulate a few hundred people that are all gathered together in one hall. The mass of voters is just too big. That's their protection from people like Mike. Just their great big bulk makes them difficult to persuade and handle. Wait until Mike starts trying to manipulate five million people. Then you'll see. He'll get smothered. And it's a damn good thing."

  "That's funny, Hank, I just don't see Mike being wrong on this. I'd like to see him lose. But I don't think he will."

  The relief was still there on her face, but she wanted more assurance.