“Perhaps you are tired today. Maybe we should stop playing and go for a stroll. Or do you want to take a rest?”
“NO!” Penelope yelled. “JUST GO!”
“You want me to leave?” Ruth recoiled slightly.
“No!” Penelope started picking the chessmen off the board and throwing them at Ruth. “I”—she threw a pawn, which bounced off Ruth’s chest—“meant”—the knight hit Ruth’s shoulder—“make your move! But you ruined it!” Rook, queen, and king all came at Ruth’s face rapid-fire, clipping her cheek, and two orderlies ran over, forcefully grabbing Penelope to immobilize her.
“It’s all right, I’m okay.” Ruth stood, holding her cheek, where one of the pieces had made a small gash. “Penny.” She looked sharply at the woman. “You need to go have a rest.” Turning to the orderlies, she said quietly, “Please be sure someone stays with her. I will send the doctor shortly.”
“I spent three hours this afternoon reading diagnostic profiles for Penelope’s condition, and I am still not sure what is causing her to decompensate this way,” Ruth lamented to Robert and Edward over dinner in the small garden behind their townhouse. “She’s becoming angrier and more self-destructive. Her obsessive and manic episodes continue to intensify, in spite of adding fever chambers and metrazol-induced shock to her treatment regimen. How can none of this be helping her condition to improve?”
“Ruth, you need to temper your emotional attachments to every patient. Your oversized heart is part of what makes you so beloved with them, of course, but it is your oversized brain that makes you good at your job. You know patients like her are easily triggered. And, the unfortunate fact is that often, once deterioration begins, there is almost no known treatment to reverse the effects. Well, no treatment as yet, right, Eddie?” Robert looked at Edward, the corners of his mustache turning up in a tentative smile.
“Robert? What are you suggesting?”
“We have seen in Moniz’s latest work that his greatest successes have been treating obsessive tendencies and agitated depression. So, we have been thinking that perhaps Miss Connor is the one for us.”
“Edward?” Ruth looked to him for confirmation. “Do you think Penelope should be your first subject? Are you ready?”
“The primate experiments we’ve conducted in Yale’s lab have had even better results than Drs. Fulton and Jacobsen.”
“Don’t let them hear you say that,” Robert chided playfully.
“True.” Edward smiled. “But, if we can perform this procedure on a flailing ape, I do feel confident that we are ready for live subjects.”
“I can’t believe the two of you are just telling me this now. You didn’t say as much when you returned from New Haven!” Ruth looked accusingly at both men, slightly hurt to have been left out.
“Calm down, dear. We needed to wait for the longer-term results, and they just came in a few days ago. Meanwhile we have been discussing various patients at Emeraldine while we work, so we would have a good list of candidates when we felt ready.”
“And you both feel ready? Really?” Ruth looked more at Robert than Edward.
“We do,” Robert said emphatically.
Ruth took a deep breath. “Oh my, this is exciting. Unimaginable. And Penelope! If this worked, she could have a chance at a real and full life.” She paused, considering the true implications of this conversation—imagining, for a moment, how the course of her life might have shifted if this had been available to Harry in his darkest days. She shook away the fantasy. Dwelling on the past was useless. “But I thought you wanted to begin with a more extreme case?”
Edward jumped in. “Ruth, I know much less about the nuances of the clinical psychology in this case. But I do know that Miss Connor fits the profile identified by Moniz almost exactly, and from what I’ve heard about her assessments, leucotomy could significantly improve her quality of life.”