Trust Me
by Michael Lambert
“Thank you all for coming, some of you, voluntarily, others...less so,” said Doctor Robert as he quickly scanned the room. This group therapy session had patients with a variety of delusions and treatment in its various stages. There were those who were brought in dosed-up to the eyeballs and others who were still, in a way, feeling around their psychoses. Doctor Robert had been working with this group for the last nine weeks and was just getting the hang of what their problems were. Then Greg walked in.
“Increase the dosage to 50 cc’s” he said to the nurse as he entered the room in jeans and a checked shirt. He was going to the be the toughest “nut” to crack. Pardon the pun. He was someone who suffered from perhaps the most dangerous of all delusions. The delusion that he was a Doctor. Doctor Robert observed shrewdly as Greg walked casually into the room, no notes, no white coat, his pretense of authority in his youthful gait and manner being all the more tragic knowing his past, knowing what drove him to such a delusion. Doctor Robert merely sat there and shook his head before starting the session.
“Good afternoon, Greg,” began Doctor Robert. “Thank you for coming.”
“That’s Doctor Greg, Robert,” Greg retorted whilst rolling his shirt sleeves up.
“Greg,” began Doctor Robert.
“I SAID IT’S DOCTOR GREG!” replied Greg angrily. “I didn’t attend 3 years of medical school to be referred to as Mister.”
“Yes, I’ve seen Austin Powers too, Greg,” Doctor Robert responded calmly “And it’s 4 years not 3.”
“Yeah, like you’d know,” Greg replied. Over the weeks their therapy sessions had become more fraught as Greg had learned ever more about Doctor Robert’s method and was trying to use them to turn the tables on him. Outside the hospital he’d been a successful young man, but when the downturn hit he lost everything, his job, his fiance, his home, hell they even repossessed his car. Coping with such a huge loss of self-esteem his psyche had tried to create a new identity to cling onto and this was it. Doctor Robert had seen it all before, many times, and shaking Greg from his delusion was perhaps going to be the biggest challenge he’d faced in a while. But he’d not been beaten yet.
“I would know. I am a Doctor,” said Greg, staring defiantly into Doctor Robert’s warm gaze. He had some steel behind his eyes but almost all delusional’s had what they thought was rock solid walls around their fake persona.
“How long have you been working here, Greg?” Doctor Robert asked, calmly folding his arms as he sat back in certainty in his chair.
“How...how long?” Greg stammered. Doctor Robert nodded. “Two years.”
“Two years?” asked Doctor Robert.
“Y...yes,” Greg answered, flicking calculations through his head. “No wait it’s just a year.”
“Just a year? You don’t sound so sure,” questioned Doctor Robert.
“Yeah, it’s a year, I got confused cause I’m just entering my second year.”
“So with college and university that would make you...?” continued Doctor Robert. Greg stared intently at Doctor Robert while working the numbers and gulping hard.
“It’s 32, Greg,” Doctor Robert said, flatly. “That would make you 32.”
“Yeah, that’s right I’m 32.” Greg continued.
“You’re 32?” asked Doctor Robert.
“I’m 32,” said Greg, flicking a hand through his sandy brown hair. “I have boyish good looks.”
“Really?” replied Doctor Robert. “Let me explain something to you, Greg. Doctors in the real world don’t look like they stepped off the set of Grey’s Anatomy. They look like saggy faced old crotches, like me. Not little boys who look like they belong more on a Wall Street trading floor.”
“Really?” asked Greg, folding his arms.
“Yeah,” replied Doctor Robert. “You’re suffering from an acute personality disorder, but I can help you, Greg. If you let me.”
“You can help me?” Greg began. “I don’t think so, Robert. I’m not the one with the problem here.”
The two men stared at each other arms folded, mirroring each other like an old married couple. Doctor Robert pitied Greg, but he couldn’t let that stop him from reforming his severed ties with reality. The rest of the group just watched, most of them transfixed by Doctor Robert’s mental assassination of Greg, and the rest too medicated to care. Greg rolled his sleeves up, pursed his lips and began to speak.
“For me, Robert, it was 3 years in medical school,” began Greg. Doctor Robert raised his eyebrows quizzically, drawing even more lines on his ever aging face. “Yeah, it was. I was a prodigy, Robert. I finished school 2 years early and only spent 3 at med school.”
“You really expect me to believe that, Greg?” asked Doctor Robert.
“No, but you know what? What you think is irrelevant,” continued Greg. “Reality is sometimes everything but what it should be. Sometimes it's different, and I’ve suffered because of it my whole life, but I’m not gonna left that stop me from doing my job and helping you, Robert.”
“I think you have that in reverse, Greg,” said Doctor Robert.
“No I don’t. You forget I know you, Robert. I know what really happened to you,” Greg said, almost whispering. As he leant forward, his elbows on his thighs, as he did he noticed the tiniest of twitches in Doctor Robert’s face. Greg knew that he had to plough on.
“This is our ninth session now” said Greg, “and I’ve come to know you very well in that time. And I’d be lying if I didn’t...”
The door opened and Nurse Janice Selas placed a cup of coffee on the book case, as she did for him every session.
“Here’s your coffee, Doctor,” she said without looking at the group.
“THANK YOU. NURSE!” shouted both Greg and Doctor Robert. The sympathy they had for each other evaporated as their professional manner changed to pure rage.
“I’ll...put it in the 'Observation Room' for you,” replied Janice as she took the cup back outside. Doctor Robert and Greg glared at each other arms folded.
“Like I was saying, I’d be lying if I said I was going to give up on trying to get you cured,” Greg concluded, unable to disguise the hostility in his stare.
“You know, Greg, you’re not going to get anywhere by continuing with this charade,” Doctor Robert continued. This little upstart was attempting to burrow inside his head, cause doubt, chip away at his confidence but it wasn’t going to work. He’d been here too many times to fail now.
“This is no charade, Robert. This is real. You’ve been sent to this unit because you were caught out impersonating a Doctor.” Greg said, diverting his words back onto a gentler track.
“Greg. It’s you that was caught in a hospital pretending to be a Doctor,” replied Doctor Robert. Greg leant back in his chair shaking his head in anguish. “Greg, you nearly killed somebody.”
“No I didn’t, Robert. This is my job, this is what I do, for a living,” Greg countered. He was good. Doctor Robert had to give him that. And the delusion was so firmly set it would take bringing out his full medicinal knowledge to drag Greg back to reality.
“Wolfsbane...Medical uses?” asked Doctor Robert, arms so firmly crossed he was almost cutting off the circulation to his fingers.
“Well, it’s been a while since I had such basic medical knowledge tested but I’ll take that,” replied Greg with a rye smile. “It has been used in Western medicine but now is usually only found in Asian and Chinese medicine. Safer alternatives have since been found to a highly toxic compound, old man.”
The words old man were like sandpaper rubbing against Doctor Robert’s ego.
“Still know the ABC of respiratory system, old timer?” asked Greg, mockingly. Doctor Robert felt his heart rate quicken as Greg did everything he could to antagonize him, drive a wedge into his sanity, but he had to remain calm. He had to hold firm.
“Yes, Greg,” Doctor Robert replied calmly. “Even a psychologist like myself knows of the airways, breathing, circulation triumvirate of resuscitation. Speaking of which, if I am the poor deluded mental patient, you claim I am, what would you use to cure me?”
“Ah, well, that’s a good question,” began Greg, who suddenly came to life, sitting straight-backed in his chair. “I would recommend a three-pronged course of attack to break your delusions, firstly therapy sessions, like this one.”
“Very good,” interjected Doctor Robert,
“Thank you, but you’re not gonna distract me,” countered Greg.
“I wasn’t trying...” began Doctor Robert.
“Yeah, whetever,” Greg came back. “I’d then move on to electro-convulsive therapy.”
“It makes it sound nicer avoiding the word “Shock” and adding the word “Therapy” doesn’t it, Greg?” asked Doctor Robert.
“It doesn’t really hurt the patients,” replied Greg.
“And you would know, how?” asked Doctor Robert.
“I’ve sen the treatment,” Greg responded, coldly. “I can tell. The last course of action to bring you out of your deluded state is medication.”
“What kind, Greg?” continued Doctor Robert. “What specific drugs?”
“What specific drugs?” asked Greg. For the first time during their discussion he actually looked nervous. “Erm, well, I er...”
Greg stopped, looked at the rest of the group while his mind wandered before sighing and looking at the floor, resigned.
“I don’t know,” said Greg.
“I don’t know,” repeated Doctor Robert, the contempt almost showing in his voice. “You don’t know, do you, Greg?”
Greg shook his head, his masquerade in tatters.
“You nearly killed someone, Greg,” continued Doctor Robert. “You’re pretending to be a Doctor nearly killed a poor girl in surgery, Greg. You have to face that. You have to accept it.”
“No, I, no. It wasn’t me,” said Greg, shaking his head as if trying to shake away the doubts that were now circling around his psyche.
“If you face it I can help you, I can...” began Doctor Robert before a sudden movement in the room shifted his attention. A patient who had sat there, silent, for the entire exchange suddenly strode up out of his chair and headed for the 'observation room'.
“Where are you going, Mr Connors?” asked Doctor Robert as the patient impassively continued towards the door. “KURT, GET BACK HERE!” Doctor Robert shouted, but Kurt continued through to the 'observation room' to see Nurse Selas standing there, still holding the coffee that she had brought in for the Doctor.
“Ah, thank you, Nurse,” said Doctor Connors, taking the coffee off her, shaking his head. “You know it’s hard to believe that these poor bastards are so desperately deluded to think they’re Doctors.”
“Don’t you think you’d better get back in there, 'Doctor'?” she asked just before he took a sip.
Doctor Connors took a look back in at the group through the two way observation mirror and nodded in agreement as 'Doctor' Robert, continued to shout in for Kurt to return.
“Yes, yes I suppose you’re right,” he replied as he placed the cup back in her hands. “Just keep hold of that for me, will you, while I go back in to observe?”
Kurt headed back in and retook his seat, the defeated pose he'd held before he left the group had gone and a more confident pose had appeared in its place.
“Thank you again for rejoining us, Kurt,” said Doctor Robert.
Nurse Selas left the small broom cupboard sized room that masqueraded itself as the 'observation room' and walked into the real thing, where Doctor Paul Allen and his students watched the convoluted exchange in the amazing group therapy session.
“Your coffee, Paul,” she said handing him the cup.
“Thanks, Janice,” he replied his eyes, along with everyone of his students transfixed on the level of personality disorder going on in the room.
“I don’t why you have two observation rooms here, Doctor,” said Janice angrily.
“Well, we had to have this room built so the students can see in,” explained Doctor Paul. “Now this room is finished we can get the first room demolished, it was too small anyway.”
“Hmph!” Janice retorted before leaving, this time via the door behind the students. In the therapy room the debate continued to wage over who was in charge. 'Doctor' Kurt was now arguing with 'Doctor' Robert.
“There you have it ladies and gentlemen. The true fallout of the credit crunch.”
“So all of those patients think that they’re Doctors?” asked one of the students.
“Yep,” countered Paul, making a mental note of where the discussions were leading while also conversing with his students. Later on he would listen back to the sessions as they were all taped and have one-to-one sessions with each of the patients, but these group sessions allowed him to witness first-hand the length and depth of each patient’s delusional state.
“And they all used to be bankers?” asked another student.
“Precisely,” replied Paul.
“What caused this?” Asked the first student. Somewhere inside his own psyche Doctor Paul flicked the switch that he always had at the ready from Doctor to human being and revealed what were, at this stage, only theories. But they were all he had.
“Most of these people here are people who weren’t directly responsible, but who lost their jobs when the shit came down,” Began Doctor Paul. “Doctor” Robert was a bank manager for 24 years, “Doctor” Greg was a trader in the bear-pit on wall street, “Doctor” Connors was a risk assessor for Guild Sternum, the rest were derivatives traders, mortgage brokers, clerks, tellers and pretty much everything else to do with money that you can think of. We don’t precisely know what triggers them to think they’re Doctors. We believe that, with all of them, they each feel a sense of personal responsibility for the crash. They want to fix things, to make things better. But they’re powerless to do so. Some of the people in there have lost everything. And so in their psyche they identify with the one group of people who can make things better, that can fix things...Doctors. They identify with us so much that eventually it becomes a fixation, a compulsion and, as you can see, eventually a personality disorder.”
“How are you treating them, Doctor?”
“A combination of medication, electro-convulsive therapy and one-to-one sessions to try and break the spell. I use these sessions to see how those therapies are working but today’s session was also to show how far we still have to go.”
The students watched as a second argument heated up between Robert and Kurt over who was more qualified to chair the session. Paul shook his head. Placing his cup down he hit an intercom switch which beeped impersonally.
“Yeah,” came back a deep male voice.
“Steve, can you get the patients jacketed up? It’s time for the electric shock treatment,” said Doctor Paul.
“Sure thing,” replied Steve. Seconds later, Steve and a whole host of beefed-up nursing staff entered the room advising the patients that it was time for the electro convulsive therapy. Greg began to rock back and forth and laugh. 'Doctor' Robert’s face became ashen.
“Greg, tell them I’m a Doctor, Greg,” began 'Doctor' Robert as he backed away from the nurses in fear.
“It doesn’t even hurt,” whispered Greg.
“Tell them I’m a Doctor, Greg!” continued 'Doctor' Robert, his tone more frantic now as the two nurses managed to get hold of his arms.
“It doesn’t even hurt,” chuckled Greg as the nurses got his strait Jacket on with little trouble.
“TELL THEM I’M A DOCTOR, GREG!” screamed 'Doctor' Robert, as he fought the nurses with the strength of a demon.
“It doesn’t even hurt,” laughed Greg, as they led him effortlessly out.
The end.
Michael also tells me there are clues in the story as to other actors he imagined playing both the third fake Doctor and the real Doctor. Did you spot them?
