Stewart is Lost

The car slithered into the parking lot like a particularly aggressive species of beetle: all angles and sharp corners, its hooded headlights gazing angrily forward, daring anybody to tell the car’s owner that the car wasn’t worth the obscene amount of money that its owner had payed for it. The concrete was a dismal gray and reflected the dismal gray sky, which occasionally sent down a desultory rain drop to keep the concrete unpleasantly damp. The car parked. Its driver’s side door opened, and out stepped a man who, if possible, looked even more like an aggressive beetle than the car he stepped out of.

He looked up at the gray office building that rose out of the parking lot and embedded itself in the gray concrete sky. Its windows reflected the clouds. He walked towards the building like a man heading to his own execution: he always dreaded these appointments with the psychiatrist. The man’s clothes were gray, as were his eyes, face, and hair. Except for the red lights on the backs of the cars rushing past on their way from nowhere to nowhere, everything in sight was gray.

He reached the front door, which stubbornly refused to open automatically for him. He was reduced to pushing the “open” button, like a savage. The glass doors slid apart, and he entered into the gray lobby of the gray building. A gray receptionist asked him whom he had come to see; the man told them the name of his doctor. They (the receptionist) pointed him towards a bank of elevators on the left side of the lobby and told him which floor to go to. He walked over to the elevators and pushed the call button.

The elevator deposited him on the 27th floor with a smart ding. For a change of pace, this floor was a putrid shade of brown. He stepped out into the hallway and hesitated before picking a direction at random. He reached the end of the hallway without finding the door he was looking for, so he leisurely strolled back down the other way: he was in no rush and didn’t mind being late. Finally, he reached the door he was looking for; he took a deep breath in and out before opening it. He stepped in.

The waiting room had a few chairs, and a capsule coffee machine and water dispenser stood in the corner. A side table hold out-of-date gossip magazines. Yet another receptionist peered out at him through a window in the wall.

“I have an appointment for this afternoon,” he told her, “my name’s Stewart.” She smiled.

“The doctor will see you shortly,” she informed him. “Please have a seat while you wait.” He sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs and simmered for a moment. He stood up to make himself a coffee from the machine, but thought better of it. He poured himself a cup of water from the dispenser instead.

“Stewart?” He turned to see the psychiatrist waiting for him. “Come on back,” the little doctor said. Stewart followed the doctor back through a maze of hallways until they reached the doctor’s consultation room. The room was decorated, if you could call it that, with a jumble of not-quite-completely-tasteless fabrics: the couch was large diamonds, and the throw pillows boasted interlocking circles. Squares and crosses chased each other through the pictures hanging on the walls. The psychiatrist sat at the desk and opened his laptop; he gestured to the couch, on which Stewart obligingly sat.

“Just a second, let me pull up your file.” Stewart wondered whether this was the same psychiatrist he had seen last time. The face looked familiar, but you could never tell these days: it was even odds that the face had been ordered from a catalog rather than produced the old-fashioned way. Perhaps it was convenient for all psychiatrists to have matching faces: it certainly made Stewart feel crazy, which was all the better for the psychiatrists.

“So I see you’re taking 40 mgs of Exonall,” began the doctor. “Is that right?”

“No, I take 60 mgs of Tyroxol,” replied Stewart.

“Of course you do,” said the doctor, “and how is that?” Stewart never knew how to answer this question. The medicine had stopped the aching panic that gnawed at his solar plexus and sucked his lungs out of his anus, but it had stopped everything else, too.

“I can’t complain,” he finally replied.

“Hmm, very good,” said the doctor, who then spent several minutes typing notes into the computer. “And your sleep?” Stewart thought. He supposed that his did lie down at night, close his eyes, and open them again when it was morning. Did that count?

“I guess that’s alright, too,” he said.

“Terrific!” said the doctor, after several more minutes of note taking. “Is there anything in particular I can help you with today?” the doctor finally asked. The gears of Stewart’s mind turned. He longed to say…what, exactly? There was something he had to tell someone, and he didn’t know what it was. His chest ached.

“Umm…” was all he could manage. The doctor raised an eyebrow; nothing else in the room moved. Stewart was certain that he could hear the hair on his head growing as the silence lengthened between them. A lesser psychiatrist might have filled the painful silence with empty words, but the University of St John faculty of medicine had taught this psychiatrist better than that, as the diploma on the wall proclaimed. Stewart dragged his eyes down from the diploma to his psychiatrist, who hadn’t stopped staring at him. “I guess…” Stewart began. No, he thought, that’s not right; try again: “I feel…”

“You feel…” prompted the psychiatrist. Stewart longed to say “I feel nothing at all and everything at once,” but he was worried about looking crazy in front of the doctor. He settled for “I feel fine.” Technically, he did feel fine, as evidenced by how finely his life was going. He was a competent, though not outrageously terrific, employee/colleague/spouse/whatever. He couldn’t remember much about his life outside this building, but he was sure that he had no problems doing it acceptably well.

“That’s good to hear,” said the psychiatrist (type type type), “it sounds like your mood’s improved since we last spoke.” What mood? thought Stewart.

Out loud, he said, “feels that way.” The psychiatrist beamed.

“Then I’m happy to continue your treatment plan unchanged,” said the doctor. “That sound good to you?” Stewart said it sounded fine. “Is there anything else?” the doctor asked. Distantly, in the dim recesses of Stewart’s brain, a hundred thousand hominids were screaming and beating themselves as if they were on fire, though the fire was in their nerves and bodies and not where anyone else could see. Stewart’s face smiled placidly as his heart began to assault his rib cage.

“No, that’s everything,” he said through the smile that had taken up residence on his face. The hominids screamed and wailed their inhuman cries of agony within him. “Thank you, doctor.” He stood and began to leave. The doctor finished his last burst of note taking and smiled at him as he left.

“You can find your own way out?” the doctor said.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” replied Stewart. The doctor’s door closed behind him, and he was alone in the hallway. He picked a direction at random and began to walk. The hallway continued on a ways, then it turned to the right. Stewart turned with it. The hallway around the corner looked exactly like the hallway he had come down: putrid brown carpet, stale cream walls, and regularly spaced frosted-glass doors. He walked on. Behind one of the doors he passed, he heard sobbing.

“There, there,” came an awkward voice, “remember your skills.” The sobbing climbed several decibels and was joined by furious typing. Stewart cringed and moved on. After a seemingly infinite length, he reached another turn in the hallway, this time to the left. He hesitated. He felt as if the waiting room wasn’t this far from the doctor’s office, but he wasn’t sure. Behind him he heard the pattering of tiny feet, and then they were next to him and careening around the corner as the child they carried sprinted by him. He stepped around the corner to see where the child was going, but the child was gone. Must have gone into an office, Stewart thought. He shrugged to himself and decided to continue the way he was going. You’ve got to stick to something in life, even if that something is a random direction down a hallway. Stewart wasn’t sure he could think of anything else he had stuck to in his life. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he could remember anything about his life before he entered this building. The psychiatrist seemed to think he was doing fine, though, so he decided not to worry about it. The hundred thousand hominids in his head did his worrying for him.

This hallway carried straight on for what seemed like an impossible distance: looking behind him, Steward could no longer see the corner around which he had come. The hallway stretched on endlessly in brown, cream, and frosted glass. The building must come to an end somewhere, he reasoned to himself. If I keep going in a straight line, I’m bound to hit the end of it sooner or later. He peered down the hallway ahead of him, which seemed to extend endlessly into the distance. He decided that it must be his eyes playing tricks on him. Maybe this was another of the psychiatrist’s nasty pranks to make him feel crazier than he already felt.

He wanted to stop and ask for directions but didn’t know which of the infinitely many doors to knock on. He picked one and leaned against it to listen: “this office has 8 light bulbs in it, and the waiting room has 16,” he heard. No good: it wouldn’t do to interrupt a session in progress. He wandered on for a while before stopping at another door. “That’s alright, too,” he heard in a voice that was very familiar. He backed away from the door slowly: apparently his struggles weren’t so unique.

After an indeterminate amount of walking, he picked another door at random to listen to. He leaned against it and heard nothing, Timidly, he knocked. Still nothing. He eased the door open. Sunlight streamed out into the hallway, and Stewart was looking at rolling green hills, delicately filigreed with the gold of afternoon sun. He slammed the door in shock. When he finally worked up the courage to open it again, he found himself looking into an empty office decorated exactly like the one he had been in with the doctor. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head; the hominids screamed within him.

He carefully closed the door to the empty office and stood in the middle of the hallway. It extended endlessly off in both directions, an infinite series of identical doors. He began to feel the grip of anxiety tightening around his throat. He took a deep breath in…and out. Ah, that’s better. With a firm grip on himself and a deaf ear to the screaming hominids, he strode on down the hallway. A child sprinted past him.

“Wait!” he shouted, “where are you…” but the child was already out of sight. Some trick of perspective, he rationalized; these doctor’s offices seem as if they’re purpose built to drive you crazy. Given the exorbitant fees the psychiatrists charged for going crazy, he reflected that it was quite possibly true that they wanted him to feel a bit loopy. Another deep breath and he was off again. He chose to ignore his shaking hands.

As he continued down the hallway, which showed no signs of coming to an end, he began to think about his meeting with the doctor. Why had he said nothing, when he should have said something? Or perhaps: why did he say what he said, when he should have said what was inside him? He thought back to the last time he had told the truth to a psychiatrist (he wasn’t sure whether it was the same one): “doctor, I feel like my guts are trying to strangle me and my heart is playing xylophone on my rib cage.”

“Hmm,” said the doctor, who began to type furiously. Minutes later, he said, “I think we should increase your dose by 20 mgs.” Stewart tried to remember how long ago that was, but time was all jumbled up in his head. The increased dose had reduced his guts’ homicidal tendencies but did nothing to soothe the hominids he kept locked away in his brain. Them, he could live with. He always had.

Another child sprinted past, almost knocking Stewart over. “Hey!” Stewart yelled. The child ran on; Stewart ran after them. “Hey you, wait!” The child showed no sign of acknowledgment, except perhaps to run faster. Stewart clenched his jaw and picked up the pace. Their feet pounded the carpet: the child’s light, Stewart’s heavy. “Come back!” gasped Stewart, out of breath. The child ran on easily into the distance and was gone. Stewart stumbled to a halt and leaned against the wall, panting. He hadn’t run since…in fact, Stewart couldn’t remember the last time he had really run. He never seemed to need to in the life he couldn’t quite remember but which the psychiatrist assured him was going fine.

When his heart rate had returned to resting, Stewart tried another door at random and found himself looking into a movie theater. From the back of the house, he could see that all the seats were full. He stepped down the aisle, hopeful that one of these people would be able to give him directions.

“Oh, darling!” said one of the giant faces on screen.

“On my dear one!” replied the other. Their enormous lips collided with one another, and Stewart’s bowels quaked as the score rose to a booming climax. He peered down into the face of one of the audience members and was astonished to see a face that looked a lot like his psychiatrist’s; this face’s eyes were fixed on the movie.

“Excuse me,” whispered Stewart. No reply. He coughed awkwardly. “Excuse me,” he tried again, a little louder. Still nothing. He reached out to tap the person who might have been his psychiatrist on the shoulder.

“Stewart!” He started. The faces on screen were looking directly at him. “Please don’t disturb the audience,” they said in unison.

“Sorry,” he muttered and retreated back up the aisle. The on-screen couple resumed their kiss, each wet smack delivered in throbbing surround sound. He stepped back into the hallway and was almost crushed by a stampede of children.

He ran with them: wherever they were going, he wanted to go there too. And under his feet the brown carpet dissolved into brown dirt, and the hallway dissolved into the school yard, and the gray man and the gray building and the gray life that the psychiatrists assured him was going fine were gone, and he was 12—no, 10!—again and running a race with his friends in the delicate afternoon sunlight that crowned the green hills behind the school yard with gold. And there was no more life he couldn’t quite remember, and he ran and ran and ran as the cries and shouts of a hundred thousand children coursed through him as they rejoiced in freedom and in their lives as fresh and new as the green leaves that bud in spring.