She knew that her father wanted to be the only titan in the family, but he was going to be challenged. Robert was on the verge of a breakthrough; Ruth was sure of it. The only question was when.
Chapter Ten
Ruth and Robert had fallen into an easy routine. During the week, they ate at the tulip bistro table in their small breakfast nook overlooking the garden and then traveled to the hospital together. Typically, they worked much longer hours than the majority of the staff—the evenings, with patients finally asleep, were the best time for Robert to work on his research. Since they married, they didn’t frequent the El Morocco or Stork Club often, but Robert still adored a night on the town and, truth be told, Ruth had come to love the evenings of dinner and dancing almost as much as he did. So, occasionally, when Benny Goodman or one of the other big band orchestras played, they would treat themselves to a break from work and indulge in an evening out.
On the weekends, they retreated to Magnolia Bluff. The summer season hadn’t yet begun, so they didn’t have to worry about her parents. On these quiet weekends, Ruth would bundle up and go for long walks while Robert worked.
On a blustery spring day, she returned to find Robert pacing the length of the main hallway. His hair was unruly, which only happened when he ran his hands through it, deep in thought. Papers were strewn in piles all around the leather wingback by the fire. His shirt was wrinkled and untucked, and his suspenders hung down against his thighs.
“This is it! This is it, Ruthie. I am certain.” Robert kept pacing and looked up at her, shaking the thick journal in his hand. “Moniz has done it. Remember the chimpanzees? Moniz has used human subjects. Twenty patients. Twenty!”
“Robert, what on earth?”
“What? Here is what: Moniz has performed a surgery on the brains of twenty patients. I told you at the congress last year that he was planning something. I could just tell. And as I suspected, it is what I’ve been circling around. He has proven it!”
“Proven what, exactly?”
“The frontal lobe connection. He’s figured it out!”
Ruth walked the length of the large oriental rug and stood squarely in Robert’s path to stop his perpetual motion. “Can we sit? So I can warm up and you can slow down and explain?” She grabbed his hand and led him back to the study, where she poured them each a snifter of brandy to sip by the fire. “Now what, exactly, has Dr. Moniz done?”
“Remember the presentation we attended in London? Fulton and Jacobsen’s chimpanzees?” Ruth nodded. Of course she did. “Well, Moniz has performed his own procedure—a leucotomy, he called it—on twenty patients with varying degrees of psychosis and agitated depression, and not only did every one of them survive, their conditions all improved—less violent, more placid, happy even. This is it, Ruth. The answer is surgical. We have to do brain coring. Emeraldine Hospital can be the place to bring leucotomy to the States and I the one to do it!”
“Do you really think?” Ruth’s pulse quickened. Robert’s enthusiasm was contagious and she couldn’t help but begin to get excited.
“I don’t just think, Ruth, I know!” Robert stood up abruptly, shattering the snifter he had placed on the floor.
Ruth looked down at the shards of splintered crystal in a pool of deepening crimson, as the remaining brandy soaked into the rug. The last time broken glass had littered the front of this fireplace was Harry’s final visit to Magnolia Bluff. He was so angry when Bernard told him he had to go to Payne Whitney for treatment that he had thrown his glass at the hearth. Ruth hadn’t ever seen him snap at their father before. She wondered now, if this leucotomy had been a possibility for Harry, would the whole course of her life have been different? Would he still be here with her today? She shook off the thought as Robert continued on, oblivious to her momentary lapse into melancholy.
“We need to hire a neurosurgeon . . . as soon as possible. And I think I know just the man for the job. While I understand and can likely navigate every corner of the brain, I’m not equipped to open the cranium of living people on my own. Oh, but once we have this surgeon . . .” Robert turned to Ruth and grabbed her in a hearty embrace. “This is it, my darling! I can feel it in my bones.”