Grasping at Water

Chapter 2-2

The woman leant back in the chair, indicating that her tale had concluded. Kathryn shifted uneasily.

‘An interesting tale,’ she managed. ‘So, you’re telling me that you’ve been ill? And that your mother has been caring for you. Is that correct?’

‘We are all ill in some way, at some time. And it is in the nature of mothers to care for their children. So, yes, in some ways, you are correct.’

‘Where is your mother?’ asked Kathryn.

‘Right here.’ The woman placed her hand on her heart, not taking her gaze from Kathryn’s face.

‘Oh,’ breathed Kathryn, as she felt the room beginning to spin around her.

‘You know about locking things in your heart, don’t you, Kathryn?’ whispered the woman. ‘And locking other things, other people, out.’

Kathryn was conscious of her legs beginning to tremble. ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she replied, ‘but, in any case, this is not about me.’

‘In this case, Dr Brookley, you are wrong. Talk to your husband. You will see it has everything to do with you.’

The silence that followed seemed to be choking Kathryn. She could not utter the expected doctor-to-patient words and, instead, only coughed out, ‘I think I’ll let you get some rest … We’ll talk again later.’

She managed to steady her legs just long enough to get out of the chair and stumble from the room.

Tim came across Kathryn later in the day in the staff cafeteria. He recognised her from the back as she sat at a corner table, her head rigid and her face turned to a blank wall. She didn’t seem to notice him walk up to stand behind her and she reacted with a start when he tapped her gently on the shoulder, saying her name.

‘Dr Brookley? Kathryn? Hi. I didn’t mean to startle you, just noticed you sitting here, alone. I, um, I thought you were going to let me know when you’d finished your assessment of our mystery patient. Are you okay? Should I … um, do you mind if I sit down?’ he asked.

‘Please. Yes, take a seat. Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. And I feel I owe you an apology for my bad temper earlier.’

‘No problem,’ he said, dropping onto the seat. ‘I’m thick skinned. Nerdy, and nervous, but thick skinned. And I probably deserved it.’ Tim thought he saw a flicker of a smile cross Kathryn’s mouth and, encouraged, he continued. ‘So … what did you make of our patient?’ He heard the excitement in his own voice, was aware of leaning a little too far across the table.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ Kathryn began. ‘She spoke, you know? But she didn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me anything. Well, that’s not quite true. She told me some story about an illness. Shades of Thumbelina about it. But, then again, not like it at all. Far more disturbing. And something about her mother, but not really. She’s mentally unwell, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, at this stage, make a diagnosis.’

Tim shook his head. ‘I’m not sure what you’re telling me here. I don’t know what thumbelina is.’ He felt his face redden as the awareness of his inexperience with both psychiatric illness and women struck him. He tried to read the psychiatrist’s reaction to his confession, and knew she was sneering at him when she said, ‘Thumbelina is not a disease, you know. It’s that fairy story of the teeny little girl. Didn’t your mother ever tell you any fairy tales?’

‘I didn’t have a mother. Or father,’ Tim muttered, trying not to sound pathetic.

He noticed Kathryn give a minute shake of her head before she said, ‘Oh, Tim. I’m so sorry. That was insensitive of me. Very unprofessional too.’

Tim relaxed back in the chair. ‘No, really, no need to apologise. I never knew my father. And I can’t really remember my mother. I’ve been told she died of an overdose when I was about two. After that, I was taken into institutional care before being fostered by several very nice families until I reached eighteen.’

‘That’s tough. You must have been tenacious, resilient, and smart, to get yourself to university, into medicine.’

‘Yeah, I worked hard at school. I didn’t really have much else to do. I was hopeless at sport; home life was pretty ordinary. Don’t get me wrong, though—my foster parents were good people.’

Tim thought Kathryn’s features were softening. He hoped she wasn’t going to cry. ‘So, any other thoughts on the patient?’

‘Well, there is something that’s really unsettling me about this one. I can’t put my finger on it. It almost felt as if she were attempting to diagnose me, as if she knew me, somehow. But, of course, she doesn’t. She’s clever, insightful. And I’m sure she’s manipulative. I just don’t understand her motivation yet.’

Taken into her confidence, Tim felt more confident himself and dared, ‘You know, the mention of an illness in that story of hers, and those changes in perception of body size, might mean that there’s some other pathology involved here. Maybe we should order a neurological consult.’

Tim saw Kathryn’s eyes come to life. She thumped her hands on the table. ‘Oh my God, That’s it. Well, that’s part of it. Part of what’s been niggling me all afternoon. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.’

Tim knew a silly smile had crept across his face, knew that the way he rested his elbows on the table stamped him as too eager, but he decided he didn’t care. ‘So … you know what’s going on with her?’

Kathryn took her time before saying, ‘Not really, but you’ve triggered my memory of a possible link. Quite some years ago, I was a young doctor at the Royal East Sydney Hospital. One morning in the staff room, Dr Anderson, a consultant neurologist, was telling the story of how the renowned psychiatrist, Dr J J T Smith, had enlisted his help on a case at Harbourside. It involved him conducting a series of neurological tests on a young woman who was found, alive and well, in Sydney Harbour, but who seemed to have no memory, no clue, of who she was or how she got there.’

‘Great,’ said Tim. ‘This is probably the same woman, at it again. Let’s speak to Doctors Anderson and Smith.’

‘That’s the problem. Both Dr Anderson and Dr Smith are dead. I’m now forty-five years old so it’s about twenty years since this incident. And the case Dr Anderson was speaking of was another twenty years before that. So … sometime in the 1970s. What I’m trying to say is, there’ll be no help for us from the “originals”. But, in reality, what help could they be anyway? You see, it doesn’t fit. If that woman was still alive she’d be at least forty years older than the woman we’re dealing with today. Our patient looks about thirty at the most, not seventy or more.’

Tim’s eyes widened. ‘Hmm, what are we talking here? Extreme facelift? Or, it could be some weird syndrome. Maybe we should do a search for that earlier case. It might give us some clues in dealing with our current mystery woman. Do you want me to go to Medical Records in my break?’

Kathryn shook her head. ‘No. They don’t hold records that go back that far. But …’ She didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she sprang up. ‘Dorothy, Dr Smith’s secretary. She’s still there, working for the group of psychiatrists who took over his practice. She’s been there forever.’

When Dr Brookley had called to inquire about records or information on a mysterious woman who had been pulled from the harbour decades before, Dorothy knew exactly what was being asked of her. She knew where the file was kept, and she knew what it contained. Every day for the past forty years she had thought about the woman who was the subject of that file. Oh, how willing she had been then to be judge and jury. Now, very often, she wondered what her life would have been like if she had been courageous enough, all those years ago, to agree with her employer, Dr Smith. She suspected that she would have ended up like Margery. But would that have been so bad? Was her own lonely, tedious life any better than that of the deranged but happy and outrageously wealthy old nun?

This office had been the centre of Dorothy’s life for forty-five years. Now, at seventy-seven years of age, she was well past retirement but, as she had nothing and no one else to fill her days, and as she was still competent and had been willing to keep up with the technology that modern offices required, she’d kept working. On many winter mornings her bones ached as she set out from her little one-bedroom apartment, but the aches of loneliness, guilt, and regret were more acute and propelled her onto the crowded train and into the office that had once been her joy but was now her penance.

And now this. All these years later. Would it be the end, or was it another chance, a very late, last minute chance? Yes, it’s said that there are some things that happen in life that offer us the possibility of change, present us with an opportunity to completely renew our way of being in the world. There are some individuals who come into our lives and make an impact so startling that we can, if we choose, go into the future seeing ourselves and others in an astoundingly different way. Dorothy knew this, but she also knew that many people miss or reject the opportunity when it’s presented. People like her. They respond with fear; they put up their walls and retreat to live behind them, denying that they have ever glimpsed what’s on the other side. They move in comfortable and familiar patterns. They choose the delusion of security and surround themselves with friends who share the same delusion. Dorothy had often wondered if such delusion-sharing was the definition of sanity or of madness. She had concluded, at different times and depending on her mood, that it was neither—and both.

Dorothy made her first decision. She would give Dr Brookley the whole file. She would take more time with the second decision. Perhaps, when the moment came, she would answer all the questions; and, perhaps, if given the opportunity, she would see this young woman from the water. But not today. For today it was enough to hand over the file.

From the back of the top drawer of her desk, Dorothy took out a single key attached to a souvenir keyring of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She used the key to try to open the middle drawer of the old filing cabinet in the corner. She was not surprised when the lock resisted the key’s entry—it was at least twenty years since this drawer had been opened. Dorothy trudged back to her desk and picked up a tube of lotion that she used throughout the day on her dry, wrinkly hands. She squeezed a few drops of the lotion onto the key and, on returning it to the lock, was pleased to find that it did the trick.

The drawer contained only one item. She took out the slim, yellowing manila folder and then placed it into a larger plastic document satchel, tied a string tightly around the satchel and wrote in black permanent marker across the front and back surfaces the word ‘Confidential’. Picking up the satchel she walked out of her office, not bothering to close the door behind her. She gave the satchel to the receptionist, Mrs James, with instructions to respect the ‘Confidential’ nature of the material and to hand it directly to Dr Kathryn Brookley, and no one else.

‘Thank you, Mrs James. And please inform my employers that I am retiring as of today,’ she said. Dorothy left without looking back.