Lincoln's Dreams

I had taken her out to Arlington three days ago. She couldn’t have been on the drug more than two and a half days, so there couldn’t be that much in her system, but what kind of dose had Richard given her? Any dose was too much.

“Annie, listen, let me call the hospital. They’ll know what to do. We’ve got to get this stuff out of your system.”

“Jeff, tell me what happened to the horse,” she said quietly. “The gray horse I saw in my dream. It didn’t fall forward on its knees, did it?” I looked at her hands, expecting them to be gripping the arms of the chair, but they were lying quietly in her lap. “Please tell me.”

I knelt down in front of her and took hold of her hands. “Annie, the dream’s not important. What’s important is that you’ve got a dangerous drug in your system. I don’t know what symptoms it can cause, but we’ve got to find out. There might be withdrawal symptoms of some kind. We’ve got to get you to a hospital. They’ll know what to do.”

“No,” she said, still quietly. “They’ll give me something to stop the dreams.”

“No, they won’t. They’ll try to get the Thorazine out of your system, and they’ll run tests so we’ll know exactly how much Richard’s been giving you and for how long. What if he’s been giving you drugs for weeks? What if Thorazine isn’t the only thing he’s been giving you?”

“You don’t understand. They’ll put me on medication.”

“They can’t give you anything without your consent.”

“Richard did. I can’t go to a hospital. The dreams are important. They’re the most important thing.”

“Annie …”

“No, you have to listen, Jeff. I figured out he was giving me something when you called me. When I got up to answer the phone I was so dizzy, and then when you asked me if Richard was giving me anything, I knew that must be it. But I didn’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I asked gently.

“Because it stopped the dreams.” Her hands were ice cold. I chafed them gently between my hands. “When you’d called I’d been asleep all afternoon, and I hadn’t had any dreams at all. Then you called and told me about Special Order 191 and I didn’t even want to listen. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to sleep forever.”

“That was the Thorazine,” I said.

“I wanted to sleep forever, but I couldn’t. Even under the Thorazine, even when I was asleep, I knew the dreams mattered, and that I had to have them. That’s why I came here. Because I knew you could help me. I knew you could tell me what the dreams meant.”

“Annie, listen.” I looked anxiously into her blue-gray eyes, trying to see if they were dilated. They weren’t. They looked clear and alert. Maybe she had only been on the Thorazine for a couple of days. “Will you at least let me call Broun’s doctor? He’s not a psychiatrist or anything. He’s just a G.P.”

“He’ll call Richard.”

“No, he won’t,” I said, and wished I could be sure of that. If I told him that Richard had given Thorazine to one of his patients without her knowledge, he would immediately think she was a mental patient. He would call Richard, and Richard would tell him that she was highly unstable, that she suffered from delusions of persecution. He would use his Good Shrink voice and Broun’s doctor would believe him. And then what? Would he take Annie back to the Sleep Institute, or would he have Richard come and get her?

“At least let me make you some coffee,” I said, patting her hands. “We need to get that junk out of your system.”

She wrapped her fingers around mine. “Tell me about the horse. Please.”

“It was D. H. Hill’s horse. It was shot out from under him.” I held on to her hands as if I expected her to pull away from me. “Its front legs were shot off.”

“Did Lee see it happen?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I didn’t want to believe it when you told me about Tom Tita and Hill’s red shirt and the lost order,” she said, and her voice was still calm, but her grip tightened. “But I knew it was true, even under the Thorazine. I knew what the dreams were that night at the reception as soon as you told me about the house at Arlington, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

She bent her head so that it almost touched our hands. “That poor man!” she said. “The Thorazine made me sleep all the time, and even when I was awake it was as if I were asleep. It was wonderful. I hadn’t been able to sleep before because I was so afraid I’d dream about the soldier in the orchard, and now I slept and slept and didn’t dream anything. It was wonderful. I was so glad Richard had given it to me.”

She looked up at me. “But even when I was asleep I kept thinking how terrible it was that they didn’t have Thorazine in those days, that there wasn’t anything to stop those awful dreams. He had to keep dreaming them over and over again till he was afraid to go to sleep, too.” She was holding my hands so tightly they hurt. “That’s why I have to have the dreams, that’s why I came to you. You have to help me have the dreams. So he can get some sleep.”

“Who?” I said, but I already knew the answer.