"Dr. David's a neurologist."
"What do you think?" she asked them both.
"Well, we still think it's temporal lobe," Klein answered, "and---"
"Jesus, what in the hell are you talking about!" Chris erupted. "She's been acting like a psycho, like a split personality! What do you---"
Abruptly she pulled herself together and lowered her forehead into a hand.
"Guess I'm all up-tight." She exhaled wearily. "I'm sorry." She lifted a haggard look to Klein
"You were saying?"
It was David who responded. "There haven't been more than a hundred authenticated cases of split personality, Mrs. MacNeil. It's a rare condition. Now I know the temptation is to leap to psychiatry, but any responsible psychiatrist would exhaust the somatic possibilities first.
That's the safest procedure."
"Okay, so what's next?" Chris sighed.
"A Lumbar tap," answered David.
"A spinal?"
He nodded. "What we missed in the X-rays and the EEG could turn up there. At the least, it would exhaust certain other possibilities. I'd like to do it now, right here, while she's sleeping.
I'll give her a local, of course, but it's movement I'm trying to eliminate."
"How could she jump off the bed like that?" Chris asked, her face squinting up in anxiety.
"Well, I think we discussed that before," said Klein. "Pathological states can induce abnormal strength and accelerated motor performance." "But you don't know why," said Chris.
"Well, it seems to have something to do with motivation," commented David. "But that's all we know."
"Well, now, what about the spinal?" Klein asked Chris. "May we?" She exhaled, sagging, staring at the floor.
"Go ahead," she murmured. "Do whatever you have to. Just make her well."
"We'll try," said Klein. "May I use your phone?"
"Sure, come on. In the study."
"Oh, incidentally," said Klein as she turned to lead them, "she needs to have her bedding changed."
"I'll do it," said Sharon. She moved toward Regan's bedroom.
"Can I make you some coffee?" asked Chris as the doctors followed down the stairs. "I gave the housekeepers the afternoon off, so it'll have to be instant." They declined.
"I see you haven't fixed that window yet," noted Klein.
"No, we called," Chris told him. "They're coming out tomorrow with shutters you can lock."
He nodded approval.
They entered the study, where Klein called his office and instructed an assistant to deliver the necessary equipment and medication to the house.
"And set up the lab for a spinal workout," Klein instructed. "I'll run it myself right after the tap."
When he'd finished the call, he turned to Chris and asked what had happened since last he saw Regan.
"Well, Tuesday"--- Chris pondered--- "there was nothing at all. She went straight up to bed and slept right through until late the next morning, then---"
"Oh, no, no, wait," she amended. "No, she didn't. That's right. Willie mentioned that she'd heard her in the kitchen awfully early. I remember feeling glad that she'd gotten her appetite back.
But she went back to bed then, I guess, because she stayed there the rest of the day." "She was sleeping?" Klein asked her.
"No, I think she was reading," Chris answered. "Well, I started feeling a little better about it all. I mean, it looked as if the Librium was just what she needed. She was sort of far away, I noticed, and that bothered me a little, but still it was a pretty big improvement. Well, last night, again, nothing," Chris continued. "Then this morning it started." She inhaled deeply.
"Boy, did it start!" She shook her head.
She'd been sitting in the kitchen, Chris told the doctors, when Regan ran screaming down the stairs and to her mother, cowering defensively behind her chair as she clutched Chris's arms and explained in a terrified voice that Captain Howdy was chasing her; had been pinching her; punching her; shoving her; mouthing obscenities; threatening to kill her. "There he is!" she had shrieked at last, pointing to the kitchen door. Then she'd fallen to the floor, her body jerking in spasms as she gasped and wept that Howdy was kicking her. Then suddenly, Chris recounted, Regan had stood in the middle of the kitchen with arms extended and had begun to spin rapidly
"like a top," continuing the movements for several minutes, until she had fallen to the floor in exhaustion.
"And then all of a sudden," Chris finished distressfully, "I saw there was... hate in her eyes, this hate, and she told me..."
She was choking up.
"She called me a... Oh, Jesus!"
