Lincoln's Dreams

“I did sign up,” Annie said. “That day we went to Shenandoah. I realized then that I couldn’t leave him, that I had to stay and help him have the dreams.”

“That day we went to Shenandoah you didn’t know you had angina!”

“Yes, I did.” She put the gloves down on her lap. “I figured it out that morning in the library. My wrist hurt, and I thought maybe it was a side effect of the drugs I’d been taking, so I looked it up. It said Elavil was contraindicated for patients with heart conditions.”

“Elavil?” I said stupidly.

“A year ago when I went to my doctor for the insomnia, he told me I had a minor heart condition.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have taken you to a doctor.”

“I couldn’t go to a doctor.” She looked at me. “The dreams are a symptom. If you cure the disease, the symptoms go away. And I can’t leave him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said again.

She didn’t say anything. She sat with her hands in her lap.

“Because I would have tried to stop the dreams,” I said for her. Like I was doing now.

The doorbell rang. Broun put his hands on the arms of the chair and made a motion to get up, then sat down again watching Annie. She stood up. Her gloves fell to the floor, unnoticed. “You promised,” she said.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” I said, and opened the door to Richard.

He didn’t have a coat on. His sweater and jeans were wet clear through. His hair was wet, too, and he looked tired and worried, the way he had the night of the reception when he was still my old roommate, still my friend.

“Where is she?” he said, and swept past me into the solarium.

Annie had backed into the table holding the African violets and was standing there, her hands at her sides. She had knocked one of the violets over, and muddy water dripped off the edge of the table onto the floor.

“Thank God you’re all right!” he said, and took hold of her wrist. “I’ve called the hospital, and they’ll have a room ready when we get there. Are you feeling any pain?”

“Yes,” she said, and looked across the room at me. Broun stood up.

“Where? In your arm?”

“No,” she said, still looking at me. “Not in my arm.”

“Well, where then? Back, jaw, where? This is important!” he said angrily, but he didn’t wait for her answer. He turned to look at Broun, and as he did he pulled Annie with him, her arm coming up smartly, like a corpse’s.

“Call an ambulance,” he said.

“No,” Annie said, to Broun, not to me. “Please.”

I had thought I could do it. She had already lived through that other surrender. I had not thought this one would be so bad. But that surrender had been different. Lincoln had told Grant to “let ’em up easy,” and Grant had. He hadn’t taken Lee prisoner at Appomattox. He hadn’t even demanded Lee’s sword. He had arranged for rations to be distributed to the men and for the officers to keep their horses, and then he had let Lee go.

I looked at Broun standing there in his black overcoat, his arms hanging at his sides as if he were overcome with fatigue or sorrow, and then back at Richard. I could have surrendered to Lincoln, I thought. I could have surrendered to Grant. But not to Longstreet. Not to Longstreet.

“Let go of her,” I said. Richard turned and looked at me. “There’s no need for an ambulance. We’ve already been to see a doctor. In Fredericksburg. Dr. Barton.”

“What did he say? Why didn’t he have her admitted to a hospital?”

“He did. He took her in and did an EKG on her and ran blood tests. He asked her if she’d been taking any drugs, and she told him Elavil.” I waited to see what effect that had on him.

“You didn’t say anything about this on the phone.”

“Doctor Barton wanted to know why somebody had prescribed Elavil for a heart condition.”

Annie and Broun stood perfectly still, watching him. The room was so quiet I could hear the water from the African violet dripping onto the floor.

“A mild sedative was indicated for the patient’s insomnia,” he said in his Good Shrink voice. “The record from Annie’s family doctor indicated nothing more than a functional heart murmur, and her EKG confirmed that. There were no symptoms of heart disease, and Elavil is only contraindicated in cases of maximum and long-term dosage. I prescribed a mild dose, monitored the patient carefully, and removed her from the drug immediately when it failed to have any effect on her symptoms.”

“Her symptoms,” I said. “You mean the dreams?”

“Yes,” he said. He still didn’t let go of Annie’s wrist.

“I asked Dr. Barton about the dreams,” I said. “He said he didn’t know what was causing them until he saw her blood tests this morning. They showed traces of Thorazine. He said the Thorazine was probably causing the dreams. He asked Annie who’d prescribed Thorazine for her, and she said nobody. She said she didn’t know what he was talking about, that she’d never taken any Thorazine.”

“Thorazine was indicated,” he said. “It’s routinely prescribed in cases of sleep disorders.”

“Dr. Barton said that Thorazine is prescribed for institutionalized mental patients, not for people with bad dreams.”