I will never forget the day I first met my doctor at his office in Chestnut Lodge, Maryland. I was deeply apprehensive, I was overwhelmed with emotion, and in fact, I was afraid. To be honest, I confess that I hated him quite passionately at the start. Wayne Fenton—my mother told me—was a good doctor and wouldn’t I just talk to him for a while? But this was the fact of it: I knew that my mother clearly understood that I was on to Dr Fenton, who was deep undercover as a high-level agent with the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and I knew that Dr Fenton was also aware that I knew this about him even before we met. Why did everyone always playact as if I didn’t know the truth when it was practically screaming in my face? I was supposed to pretend that the truth was not real and everyone else acted as if they knew nothing of it all, although I knew they did and so did they.
It was really all because they could read my mind, and I knew that Wayne Fenton, a CIA agent who was nominally in charge of a large hospital complex, would be better able to read my mind than most. And since we were playing a game in which I tried to withhold information about the logistics of war from others, I was overwhelmed with the fear that if I failed to keep national security secrets, my cover as a spy for the resistance would be blown and this new hospital would prove not a balm but a torture camp for me. For all this drama, all this fevered terror, and final relief, it grieves me to say that Chestnut Lodge is long gone now and so is the great Dr Fenton who gave me back my life. Dr Fenton who was too kind to ever corner me with my psychotic inconsistencies; Dr Fenton who cared so much about his patients that he would drop anything just to help to them; Dr Fenton who said such wicked things and then cackled with delight at taking a stab at the status quo. Wayne Fenton loved to play Eric Clapton’s Layla and would ask me what I thought about the guitar solo and what it might mean in relation to the theme of the song. How could anyone not love Wayne Fenton, as a man, as a doctor, as a researcher, and director of Chestnut Lodge?
Dr Fenton had a bit of an uphill battle when he met me. While I didn’t espouse doctrinaire nonsense out loud, I most certainly adhered to a dystopian view of the world in which all doctors were in my account enemy combatants. I wanted to fight the status quo too, but that was mostly because in my opinion the status quo meant the end of liberty and freedom for US citizens. I have to admit that I never much liked Newt Gingrich. Why do I bring this up? Because I believed that Newt Gingrich was part of the problem. Not just because he stood for a form of government that I felt didn’t represent my hope for the nation but because he was one of the leaders of the tyranny in my head. In my heart, I thought that if Wayne Fenton really knew the truth of the world (as I did), he would’ve hated the evil that he represented, the chaos for the American way of life and for our very survival as a country. If I believed (and I did) that Dr Fenton stood as the bag man for Newt Gingrich and a shadowy evil dictator, I was in deep over my head in a battle for my life and for the struggle of a country to maintain its identity. In reality, it was my struggle for sanity and identity that were at issue. Rather than a chief administrator of tyranny and part-time torturer, Dr Fenton was the one man who knew how to stand by me in the shadowy realm of mental illness. It seems to me he alone knew how to bring me back from the edge of darkness, from the cliff where I wavered on a precipice of life and death. I’m not being overly dramatic. I almost died several times. I don’t spend too much time thinking about that anymore.
Wayne Fenton cared deeply about individuals with mental illness. He impressed me even when I was most alienated from reality by demonstrating that he wanted to reach me. He spoke softly to me. He tried to reason carefully with me. Although I was so wary of him, his caring had sunk imperceptibly into my heart. Later, Dr Fenton would keep me on as a patient when I wouldn’t take my medication and when I lied about whether I was compliant or not. The greatest problem Dr Fenton faced with me in the beginning was that I wouldn’t say a thing. If I had to speak, I tried to occlude the truth as I saw it, the overwhelming battle of good and evil that played out in my head. I obfuscated, I drew a veil over my beliefs, I hid as best I could the main outlines of my delusions (which I believed to be exactly approximate to reality). At the first hospital in Los Angeles where I was admitted, no one knew what was wrong with me because I refused to answer questions. The doctors believed I might be depressed. I was given injections of Haldol, but they didn’t make any difference to the swirling cauldron of my mind. And although I was interred for over 3 weeks, no one could say what was really wrong with me. Much of my time in that hospital is a mass of blurred images, my brain fogged over under the influence of a handful of medications given to me several times a day. I do remember, however, that I was told to glue uncooked pasta to a paper plate in order to demonstrate my feelings. Even in the basement of my soul, that was too much of an indignity to take. Wayne Fenton never encouraged me to act or respond beneath my capabilities.
Finally, I was able to comeback home to Maryland and to Chestnut Lodge (which was close to my house) as an outpatient. Because he was able to particularize more than anyone else about what was wrong with me, Dr Fenton argued that I should be put on Risperdal, then the first atypical that had just recently come to market. Dr Fenton explained the usefulness of Risperdal to my parents and received their permission to change my medications. But by now, I had been readmitted to a local hospital and was in lock down in its mental health wing. I remember how Dr Fenton came to visit me although I was hardly yet his patient. He talked to me about the medications and how he wanted to work with the administering doctor to introduce a new antipsychotic to bring back a little peace back into my life. I remember in fragments these moments where he opened his heart to me in order to prompt me to help him find a cure for what ailed my mind and in conjunction my soul. I can remember so clearly sitting in a small cubicle with Wayne Fenton all alone, desperately fearing him, desperately wanting to believe him, and even more desperately hoping for some relief from my continual terror and distress. Luckily for me, Wayne Fenton was always willing to try something new. He was a proponent for new research and for better healthcare for patients with mental illness. All Wayne Fenton ever wanted was to make everyone better. In my case, to my everlasting gratitude, he succeeded.
Dr Fenton was able to work with the presiding doctor on the mental health wing where I believed I waited only for the medical experiments and torture to begin. I understand that it’s rare for a consulting doctor to be able to influence the medication regime determined by the hospital staff. It was my good fortune that my parents found Wayne Fenton who was such a proponent for the health of his patients. Thanks to him, my antipsychotic was changed to Risperdal, and it was as if the hand of God delivered a miracle to me. Within 3 days of the change of medications, my delusions broke and my sanity began its slow climb up to that great plateau of normality again. On the third day of taking Risperdal, I woke up from a deep sleep in my room with the comfy beds and dorm-like atmosphere. I had a momentary insight into my condition that came like a revelation out of the blue. As I lay sleepily on the pillow, it suddenly dawned on me that something was deeply wrong. For just a moment, I could see that my tenets about the war, that I believed was playing out in secret across the halls and in shadowy rooms of America, were inexpressibly faulty. I suddenly realized that there was no such thing as an evil dictator bent on bending the country to his tyranny. Indeed, I realized that I was insane and that Newt Gingrich was not! Although it was a great relief to me to understand that a war of worlds didn’t really threaten my country, me, or my friends and loved ones, at first, this thought was only a quick flash of recognition. However, the moment played a crucial role in my return to sanity. When the veil was laid heavily again over my sense of reason, I didn’t forget the realization that had beckoned me toward health. And because Wayne Fenton had been so careful, so gentle with me, I was able to give in and to yield trust to the man I recently thought would threaten my soul and everlasting wellbeing if I let down my guard and told him the truth (which of course I thought he knew already).
In our next visit in the cubicle, I broke down and told him about the war, about its effect on the citizens of the United States; in fact, I made a conscious decision to trust Wayne Fenton despite my terrible fears and knowledge that if I was wrong to do so, the spilling of my secrets would rebound with terrible consequences. But Dr Fenton encouraged trust. He waited patiently. He spoke delicately. He treated me as if I was amenable to reason and sanity. Wayne Fenton behaved as if I just needed a small push toward the light, and that was the real light that helped me believe in him and break my silence about my fears and the break in the world that tormented me. From that moment on, it was clear to the doctors what was wrong with me, and they treated me with Risperdal and corresponding medications for psychosis, a disease that would later be diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder. Within 2 weeks, I had lost my belief in and fear of the evil dictator and his minions, and I was discharged from the hospital. I now knew that the world wasn’t black and white but was indeed colorful and full of people who loved me. My mother was indeed my mother, and not a fake plant issued to keep a watchful eye on me. My sister hadn’t wanted to sell me to the Saudis as a medical anomaly at all and my father hadn’t committed any illegal activities in pursuit of wealth and fame. You can’t imagine the relief that flooded my heart in coming to the conclusion that the terror and horror that beset my days were merely illogical, irrational delusions.
Although I didn’t know it yet, my career and days in graduate school were destroyed, but more importantly to me the world was going to be alright. Wayne Fenton assured me of this and he took the time to listen to the crazed intricacies of my delusions. Time and again, he offered alternative points of view to the insanity that embraced me so dreadfully in its extreme, perverse renderings of reality. In 2 weeks on Risperdal, I was able to hear the logic Dr Fenton espoused, and in the coming months of treatment, I was able to return to real life and to the knowledge that war might indeed come to the United States, but it wouldn’t be because of the secret machinations of an evil dictator who threatened the lives of innocent civilians. Evil was soundly defeated in my mind and in my heart. Because Wayne Fenton believed in and offered the bounty of sanity to me, I was able to make the leap from insanity to rationality in my mind. I would have many years of struggle to come, but Dr Fenton stood by me through all of them with his well-defined knowledge and large heart as I sought to redefine my position in life bereft of the career I had longed for and so long sought.
Aprés moi, le déluge, a reigning king once said; but aprés Wayne Fenton the abundant horn, the cornucopia of plenty and sanity. Is the name of a cynical king more fully remembered than the name of the doctors (workers in the gloom) like Dr Fenton, who leave strength and care in their wake instead of chaos? Gratitude prompts me to thankfulness in response to Dr Fenton’s passionately offered skills and long experience. Thankfulness for his kindnesses, his dedication, and generous heart bring me round to gratitude again. So, it is an endless circle of appreciation for mercies rendered. Without my doctor, it would have been le déluge indeed. But with him the bounties of love, cherished family and friends, and the joys of unimpaired sensory perception that real life has to offer. Wayne Fenton was the knight for me who slayed the dragon of paranoia and irrationality. And in Wayne Fenton’s heart, he stood watch over his charges and never let them go.