Case No: 126545

French, Simon. Case no: 126545

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 10/5.

Catatonic Schizophrenia.

That is my initial diagnosis. Perhaps a neurological disorder. I will
not sit here now throwing labels at the page, perhaps a description of
his condition is more apt.. He does not move?at all. I have watched him
now for two hours and he simply sits, slightly twisted, his long thin
fingers are rigid and outstretched but he points at nothing?.or
everything. He does not stare, for that implies that he is staring at
something but there is no life in the eyes, no recognition of anything,
just a cornea and a lens and a pupil and no humour in the vitreous. If
the eyes are the windows to the soul these windows need cleaning.

I hope you can forgive the informality of my writings. I am aware that
as a doctor my diagnosis should be rigid in its definitions and
descriptions but that is not the way I operate. I have always been
creative and find it difficult to write in the staid repetitive fashion
of my peers. No doubt you, the reader, whether you be a doctor or a
student or, heaven forbid, a patient will enjoy the freshness of my
work.

Essentially this is a doctors journal meant for my own inspection as
well as anyone elses. Though I have worked at this hospital for a
number of years now I have only just started writing it and I hope it
will help me, and others, to come to a better understanding of the
mentally ill with an aim to hopefully, one day, rid the mind of its
susceptibility to the hideous and debilitating diseases that can
inflict it. A bold aim I know but to aim any lower is to cheat
ourselves; we must not accept that some illnesses are incurable and
simply tend to them, making them bearable, but aim to stop them
outright in their tracks!

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 11/5.

Perhaps some background on myself for I believe it's just as important
to know the doctors as the patients, after all aren't we all in the
same place, albeit on opposite sides of the spectrum; different sides
of the glass. What separates us? One man screams on the street one day,
finally pushed to breaking point, he attacks a woman in a fit of rage
and is incarcerated in a mental institution. Another screams on a
football field and assaults an opposition player or talks to himself in
the comfort of his own home and is not even considered. Location,
location, location.

I have been a psychiatrist for some time now and am glad of it, for I
have always been fascinated with people and what props up their varying
facades, what motivates and inhibits them, what force twists and crawls
and sticks its insidious fingers into thoughts and dreams. In case the
walls that read over your shoulder are not the same as the pale white
structures that surround me now, the hospital I work in is called St.
Mary's Hospital for the Mentally Ill, or is it mentally insane, or just
plain crazy? I have a problem with labels. They do nothing as far as I
can tell except reinforce the illness, something like smacking a dog
for wrecking the furniture and then training him to do just that.
Something like that anyway.

They're a motley bunch these patients. Sam, manic-depressive I think,
sits all day and flicks from channel to channel on the television. His
face is always pale and sunken as if the sun had not had opportune to
invigorate his melanin for some time and his mouth is permanently open
so that he looks almost in a constant state of apathetic shock.
Christian is completely silent except for the occasional and very load
cry of "I am Napolean!" Clearly he is not, surely he must know this.
Unless perhaps Napoleon has been reborn and is trapped within his body,
desperate to escape and vanquish the English but frustrated in the slow
and feeble body of an unmotivated mental patient. Some kind of karmic
punishment perhaps. But no that is foolish. He seems quite sure of
himself in any case and he yells it with such force, always five times
in a row, that sometimes you believe him. Other than this he is silent
and simply shuffles around the wards looking nothing like a mighty
military genius. They all shuffle here, none of the graceful gait of
the modern woman nor military stride of the modern day man, just a slow
weary shuffle, hands hung down the side, knuckles nearly dragging as if
mental illness were a regression to a more primitive mindscape.

Then there's Rudy. I've failed to come up with an adequate diagnosis
for her as yet. She seems, to all incense and porpoises, relatively
normal. Although it goes against all procedure I have found myself in a
relationship that one would almost call friendship with this rather
homely, short, but attractive woman. Certainly if we were too meet in a
bar or a club or through friends rather than in the stringent
relational confines of a mental hospital we would undoubtedly "get on".
In all honesty (and I say this purely as a professional warning to
young medical students so eager to believe the transference romance as
a genuine expression of awe and devotion on behalf of the patient) I
find myself quite attracted to her both physically and emotionally as,
I can tell, she is towards me.. I will, of course, do nothing about it
and accept that it is purely a symptom of circumstance and, perhaps, a
mutual loneliness, for that morose emotion is not bound only to the
mentally infirm but too all walks of life in a universe so horribly big
and empty.

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 13/5.

I'm doing the rounds today, speaking to the patients; most are
unresponsive, many refusing to believe that I'm a doctor who just wants
to help them through their illness. No sign of Rudy, which, I must
admit, leaves me somewhat disappointed. I really thought we were making
progress. That's progress of a professional kind. This puts me in a
sour mood and I find it hard to control my disgust at the chaotic
ramble of human waste I see before me. Most will never be cured, never
function in society, so what is the point of reinforcing their
disjointed ego's with drugs and conversation? They put animals down
don't they; if they cant fulfil their purpose? They have no point,
scraping along the floorboards, emotionless; essentially dead. You are
all dead.

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 14/5.

Saw Rudy today and I'm concerned with her condition. She seems to be
under the delusion that she is a doctor of some description and that I
am her patient. She even tried to administer me an anti-psychotic drug.
I refused of course but she kept insisting. Because I love her I
eventually pretended to take the drug by placing it in the corner of my
mouth and regurgitating it later. I know I shouldn't humour her but I'm
afraid my emotions got the better of me. It seemed to have the desired
effect in any case as she became much nicer to me and we talked for
some time. I have decided to consult with the other doctors and request
permission for her to be allowed into the general hospital population
permanently, rather than the two hours she is currently allotted.
Perhaps this sounds a clinically na?ve move to the reader but I believe
the isolation, and particularly the separation from a respected
authority figure like myself is causing her to take that authority on
herself; that is to invent herself as a doctor in order to feel more
secure. I myself have decided to live within the hospital, temporarily
of course, in order to gather a more rounded view of the patients. I
have taken Rudy on as my special project if you will and plan to offer
her my complete attention. The others deserve nothing.

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 15/5.
Fools. My request has been declined. I haven't seen Rudy today but I
feel as if they're conspiring to take her away from me. Professional
jealousy, which is just regular jealousy formalised, is rife in the
psychological fraternity. I have not seen Rudy today, which seems to
confirm my suspicions. I'm in a rage today and it's all I can do not to
vent my fury onto one of the patients. I will counsel no one today but
myself, and try and control my wicked tempers.

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 18/5
I have not seen Rudy in two days. They are keeping her from me. All
eyes shift whenever I appear. The doctors are as paranoid as the
patients. They are jealous of our love. I will request one last meeting
with her and then I will end this. She is a bitch whore. No. It is
them. I must not blame her. She is unstable. They, with their white
coats and beepers and shiny shoes and clipboards and glasses. They
distance themselves. They learn but they don't understand. Still I must
not succumb just yet to my passions, must not sink to their level. I
still need them for the final scene. I will ask for one final session
with my love, my patient patient, and then free us both from these
walls. Who are they to say she is crazy? That I am not? Despite myself
I find myself hating them. They are the ones who should be in here not
these pathetic but harmless creatures shuffling around the wards. We
need to sedate their sadism and tranquillise their treachery. I feel
almost on the brink of a revolution and found myself cheering when
Christian yelled his usual pronouncement. The other doctors looked on
in amusement, smiling behind their professional frowns but that's what
separates me, what makes me a better doctor; I can relate to the
patients, I see things on their level. They are nothing but human text
books; walking on footnotes; they are a null hypothesis.

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 19/5.

I feel better today. The other doctors have agreed to let me have one
last session with Rudy. Of course anyone reading this knows it will not
have been our last session, at least not in the way expected. Perhaps I
was too harsh on my colleagues. We meet tomorrow and I have it all
planned in my head. It will be Rudy's final catharsis. The end of her
treatment and a stunning success that will finally give me the
recognition I deserve.
It is so peaceful in here today. There is hope in the dusty light that
breaks through the pain, marking a bright window template on the marble
floor. There is hope in the whistle of the cleaner, in the laughter on
the television; someone somewhere is happy and so it seems might we be.
We may yet be liberated. That's all of us I mean. Not just Dean the
paranoid or Marge the delusional, Fred the catatonic or Ned the
neurotic. We may be freed from our technological traps, our Gucci
handcuffs, our allowed addictions, our 24 hour sentences with 8 hours
off for good behaviour, free from constant dissonance, from wanting
what you cannot have, from having what you cannot want, from friends
who are enemies, from lovers that you hate, from pleasures that are
painful, from potential never stagnant always avoiding clutching
fingers, from the constant stream of people, from loving her completely
so it hurts when she is different, from knowing you will never see her
again, from memories, from the chain around your neck; millions of
years of evolution, from religion, from atheism, from yourself.

DAILY REPORT OF DOCTOR SIMON FRENCH. 1/1.

I feel empowered today and with a searching insight I can see into the
minds of men. This kind of insight has eluded me my entire professional
career and perhaps now comes too late. It's as if everyone in front of
me has become opaque; every movement they make betrays them.

And what of the crazy people, with their delusions and confusions and
revisions and indecisions. Dare to be different. I dare you to be
different. Different doesn't work unless you can make others different
too and then you're no longer different. Too much information going in,
not enough is going out. Does not compute. You see something and then
you perceive it, and that's were it goes wrong and your perceptions
become your thoughts and you see your thoughts and then you start
perceiving before you see and then all you do is perceive and never see
and perceive what you have already seen except its gone stale and
twisted inside your head and your all inside yourself and nobody can
get near. If it could stop at the perceiving before you see perhaps
true prophecy is born but it never does. You can't see the forest for
the trees.

It's nearly time now for our final session and I feel alive. Two
security guards stand behind me in this small white room, arms crossed
in front of their genitals. I tell the other doctors she is not
dangerous but they insist. For my own safety they say. Stupid smart
simple men, they have no idea who is dangerous. The doctors are the
patients and the patients are the doctors. Power is never with who you
think it is; true power is invisible, hidden, lurks in the background,
waiting to be known.

They have just tried to take my pen but I have convinced them of its
need. They do not know its true need. I will cure my Rudy with this pen
and so I too will be cured.

I can hear her coming now and I am tense and. I will focus I'm not
ready This is it she will breath no more pain hel