Then barked.
Then neighed.
And then, bending at the waist, started whirling her torso around in rapid strenuous circles. She gasped for breath. "Oh, stop him!" she wept. stop him! It hurts! Make him stop! Make him stop! I can't breathe!"
Klein had seen enough. He fetched his medical bag to the window and quickly began to prepare an injection.
The neurologist remained beside the bed and saw Regan fall backward as if from a shove. Her eyes rolled upward into their sockets again, and rolling from side to side, she began to mutter rapidly in guttural tones. The neurologist leaned closer and tried to make it out. Then he saw Klein gently beckoning. He moved to him.
"I'm giving her Librium," Klein told him guardedly, holding the syringe to the light of the window. "But you're going to have to hold her."
The neurologist nodded. He seemed preoccupied. He inclined his head to the side as if listening to the muttering from the bed.
"What's she saying?" Klein whispered.
"I don't know. Just gibberish. Nonsense syllables." Yet his own explanation seemed to leave him unsatisfied. "She says it as if it means something, though. it's got cadence."
Klein nodded toward the bed and they approached quietly from either side. As they come, she went rigid, as if in the stiffening grip of tetany, and the doctors looked at each other significantly. Then looked again to Regan as she started to arch her body upward into an impossible position, bending it backward like a bow until the brow of her head had touched her feet. She was screaming in pain.
The doctors eyed each her with questioning surmise. Then Klein gave a signal to the neurologist. But before the consultant could seize her, Regan fell limp in a faint and wet the bed.
Klein leaned over and rolled up her eyelid. Checked her pulse. "She'll be out for a while," he murmured. "I think she convulsed. Don't you?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Well, let's take some insurance," said Klein.
Deftly he administered the injection.
"Well, what do you think?" Klein asked the consultant as he pressed a circle of sterile tape against the puncture.
"Temporal lobe. Sure, maybe schizophrenia's a possibility, Sam, but the onset's much too sudden. She hasn't any history of it, right?"
"No, she hasn't."
"Neurasthenia?"
Klein shook his head.
"Then hysteria, maybe," offered the consultant.
"I've thought of that."
"Sure. But she'd have to be a freak to get her body twisted up like she did voluntarily, now, wouldn't you say?" He shook his head. "No, I think it's pathological, Sam--- her strength; the paranoia; the hallucinations. Schizophrenia, okay; those symptoms it covers. But temporal lobe would also cover the convulsions. There's one thing that bothers me, though..." He trailed off with a puzzled frown.
"What's that?"
"Well, I'm really not sure but I thought I heard signs of dissociation: 'my pearl'... 'my child'...
'My flower'... 'the sow.' I had the feeling she was talking about herself. Was that your impression too, or am I reading something into it?"
Klein stroked his lip as he mulled the question. "Well, frankly, at the time it never occurred to me, but then now that you point it out..." He grunted thoughtfully. "Could be. Yes. Yes, it could."
Then he shrugged off the notion. "Well, I'll do an LP right now while she's out and then maybe we'll know something." The neurologist nodded.
Klein poked around in his medical bag, found a pill and tucked it in his pocket. "Can you stay?"
The neurologist checked his watch. "Maybe half an hour."
"Let's talk to the mother."
They left the room and entered the hallway.
Chris and Sharon were leaning, heads lowed, against the balustrade by the staircase. As the doctors approached them, Chris wiped her nose with a balled, moist handkerchief. Her eyes were red from crying.
"She's sleeping," Klein told her.
"Thank God," Chris sighed.
"And she's heavily sedated. She'll probably sleep right through until tomorrow."
"That's good," Chris said weakly. "Doc, I'm sorry about being such a baby."
"You're doing just fine," he assured her "It's a frightening ordeal. By the way, this is Dr.
David."
"Hello," said Chris with a bleak smile.
