Screenland (Jan–Jun 1948)

was really on the way to getting well now. That is, she did until the episode about the doll happened. The doll was such a tiny one to cause all that trouble. Another patient had made it out of her handkerchief and sold it to Virginia for two cigarettes and then had wanted it back again. Miss Davis had tried to take it away and Virginia had gotten so hysterical they had sent for Dr. Kik. He questioned her, but she didn't mind his questions. She told him she thought the handkerchief doll meant so much to her because her father had given her a tiny doll once when she was a child, a boy doll. And she had loved it so much until one day her father had taken her mother's side against her. That was because her mother was going to have a baby, she knew afterwards. He felt he had to humor her. But Virginia had been so upset she had jumped on the doll, hoping it would break to pieces so they'd bury it and she'd never have to see it again. A short time after that her father had died, and at the funeral she had felt she wanted to die too, holding the mangled, broken doll so tenderly in her arms. "Wishes sometimes seem to come true, don't they?" Dr. Kik said, and as she stared at him, he went on almost casually, "What did your father die of?" "Uremia," Virginia said in a muffled voice. "Oh," Dr. Kik said and his voice was so reassuring. "That's a very serious illness which usually takes many years to develop." She hadn't known that before. It made her feel so much better that she didn't even want the doll when she went back to One again. There was the typewriter instead, the one Dr. Kik had ordered that she have. Oh, she was really getting better now! Miss Davis had never seemed to like her but she became even more unpleasant after the typewriter came. She was always nagging Virginia to go on with her novel, as if the words would come just like that. Suddenly Virginia knew why. It was because Dr. Kik paid so much attention to her. That was why. "You're in love with Dr. Kik," she found herself saying without meaning to at all. "That's why you hate me." She had struck fire. Miss Davis really looked as if she hated her as she started tow ^.rd her, and Virginia fled to the washroom, locking herself in. Everyone begged her to come out, but it wasn't until they told her Robert was there that she obeyed. It was when she saw the two attendants waiting with the straightjacket that she knew they had lied to her. She tried to fight but it was useless. She felt herself going down, down. down. Robert was really there when she woke up. He had been crying, and as she looked up at him she wanted to comfort him. But she couldn't move her arms. They were still tied to her sides. Only after he had gone did she know that they had sent for him because she had called for him. She was in Ward 33 now, which was next to the worst one of all. Dr. Kik had been away when the scene with Miss Davis had happened, that was why she had been taken there. But when he came back he didn't have her moved. He told her Dr. Terry was her doctor now. The women were really bad in 33. There were some who screamed all the time and some who danced and some who sang and some who just stood against the walls wringing their hands, and they were the worst of all. And it was strange how looking at them, Virginia felt for the first time that she wasn't like them. It was as if she were looking at them from some place far away. The whole place looked like a deep hole and the people in it like snakes and she'd been thrown into it. She remembered then reading once that long ago the insane had been put in snake pits because it was thought that something which might drive a normal person insane, might shock an insane person back into sanity. Afterwards she was to know that Dr. Kik had figured it almost that same way, that he had allowed her to be kept there because he felt it would give her confidence to see people who were so much worse off than she was. But then she only knew that for the first time she was beginning to feel normal. For the first time she knew she could help someone else. Then one day she saw the inmates of 33A being taken through a tunnel completely covered with wire. These were the dangerous cases, the hopeless cases, who she heard fought like wildcats. That was why they all had to wear straightjackets. Camisoles they called them in the hospital, but that didn't make them look any different. Virginia's heart was filled with pity for those women even before she saw Grace. She couldn't believe it was Grace at first, the girl who was always so much better than she was. The girl who had been almost ready to go home. Her blonde hair was matted and she looked like an old woman and she snarled at Virginia when she called to her through the wire. After that she had to help the ones in 33 more than ever, so they wouldn't get worse, so they wouldn't be like Grace. And she knew that even after she left, she would come back to visit them, to help_ them. For she knew she would be leaving now. She wasn't afraid for herself any more, now that she knew what had been wrong. It was only that she had loved her father so much she was afraid to grow up because she couldn't let go of the love she felt for him. That was why she had been drawn to Gordon, because he was like a father to his sister. That was why she had been afraid to accept Robert because she hadn't wanted to substitute a husband for her father. She told that to Dr. Kik when she saw him again. It was at one of the dances they gave for the patients sometimes in the hospital and he had come over to ask her to dance. "Now that you know, you don't ever have to worry again," he told her. "Before it was like being in a dark room, not knowing where the light switch was. But now that you know how to turn on the light you never have to be afraid of the dark again." '"There's another reason I know I'm getting well again," she said then. "It's that I'm not in love with you any more." "You never really were," he smiled. "\ou just thought so. You see, a psychiatrist is a special kind of person in a patient's life. All the people she's been emotionally involved with, all the patterns of her life are transferred to the doctor. Then when she is getting better we have to break the relationship and guide her feeling back to a real object." "I know," Virginia smiled tremulously. "To Robert. That's why you stopped seeing me, isn't it?" He didn't answer directly. "I have news for you." he said instead. "You're going to Staff." There wasn't fear now. Only that singing happiness. And after the meeting was over and she was dressed in the gray suit again, the suit that fitted her again now that her figure had filled out to its former soft curves, and she walked through the door to Robert who was waiting to meet her out there in the sunlight, she didn't draw back when he held his arms out to her. Instead she ran to meet him, holding to him, clinging to him, her tears coming in happiness now as they had once come in despair. Bob Hope and wife Dolores, Alexis Smith and husband Craig Stevens wreathed in smiles on arrival at London's Waterloo Station tor Command Performance. Screen land 57