“You’re right,” he said. “Adam deserves better.” And so did Penny.
He was about to find out if better was possible.
At the designated hour, Eve showed up （at least, he assumed it was Eve）。 The correction officer who brought her gave Mitch a big smile along with an equally enthusiastic thumbs-up. He’d been part of that scuffle when Mitch took on three-hundred-pound John Grady, aka the Mountain Man. In a place like Edgewater, respect wasn’t given—it was earned.
“Afternoon, Doc,” the guard said. “I’ll be back in an hour to take her to her room. You need anything, just press the button or give a holler.” The button—affixed to the underside of the table in every therapy room—sounded an alarm in the event a patient became violent, though Mitch expected no such trouble from Eve today. “How’s the leg?” asked the guard.
“Couldn’t be better,” Mitch said, extending the appendage and feeling an unpleasant twinge at the side of his knee.
“Hey, we got your back here.” The CO sent a wink. “You’re all right in our book.”
Mitch decided not to tell him about the retraining seminar he was organizing at Whitmore’s suggestion. He thanked the man for his support, and as he settled into his seat for his session, Mitch began to feel better.
After gesturing to the chair across the table from him, Eve took a seat with a sullen look on her face.
“Are you talking to me today, Eve?”
He used her name, seeking acknowledgment that he had the right alter.
“Sure. Whatever,” she said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Mind if I record?”
“No, fine,” said Eve.
“I’d like to try something today, if we could,” Mitch said. “I’m going to give you a new medication.”
Mitch had carefully examined Penny’s medications and saw no risk in adding a low dose of ketamine into the mix—and lots of potential upside. At a higher dose than Mitch was using, ketamine would inhibit glutamate signaling and function more like a traditional anesthetic. But at a low dose, the drug—best known in the club scene and newly FDA approved—was actually one of the biggest breakthroughs in depression treatment in recent years. Mitch had tried it himself with positive results, which is why the idea had come to him. More and more doctors were using it in therapy to allow the mind to make free associations, even unlock blocked memories.
If administered properly in a low dose, Special K, as the club kids called it, acted like a flash mob—flooding the brain with NDMA receptors that actually ramped up glutamate signaling. The effect was to produce feelings of euphoria and reduced anxiety. It was also thought to help fire up dormant pathways in the brain, which could give Mitch access to another one of Penny’s alters, much like the crayons and drawing paper had coaxed out Chloe. The question was how to find the right corridor in the maze of his patient’s mind.
Mitch had spent much of the night thinking about Penny and her alters, what each represented. From what he understood, Penny, the primary self, subjected her needs to those of others. Ruby was like Teflon. Spoke in a British accent. Appeared one day when her father was making breakfast, around age twelve. She was free, happy, delightful, witty—in many ways the opposite of Chloe, who compensated for her worries about judgment and failure with excessive effort. And Eve—Eve was all about maintaining power and control. And why is control so important to her? Mitch had given that question careful consideration. It was Adam, of all people, who had unwittingly supplied him with a potential answer. The drugs muted Adam’s pain—like taking hits of joy, as he described it.
Hits of joy, that is, before the drug took complete control over him.
The need for control often starts off as a healthy response to anxiety before it morphs into something all-consuming, following a trajectory not unlike that of Adam’s drug use—first a little, then a lot, and then too much. If Mitch could lessen Eve’s anxiety, and therefore her need for control, he felt he might increase his odds of reaching Ruby.
The effects of ketamine were short-lived, especially in the dose Mitch would give her. He handed the small vial to Eve and explained his request, giving her a brief primer on the drug. He left his objectives intentionally vague, anticipating Eve would take countermeasures, even if subconsciously.
“I think this will be a useful tool for us to get more out of your therapy,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie.
“Whatever.”