Denial by Keith Ablow Page A

really, absolutely need this..."
    I nodded.
    He picked up the phone and dialed.  "Rusty, Cliff.  I hope you can help me.  I need to pull whatever records you've got on George LaFountaine, capital L-a , capital F-o .  First admission to 13B, December 3, 1970.  Social Security number 010-16-3024.  I'm gonna send down a shrink — Doctor Clevenger... No... No release...  He's doing a study on benefit payments for psychiatric disabilities.  I forgot to get him a clearance."  He winked at me.  "Thanks, Rusty.  I owe you one.."  He hung up.
    "I appreciate it."
    "Forget it.  Rusty should have it for you in about ten minutes.  Basement level."
    "It was good seeing you."
    He nodded.  "You, too, Spin.  Try to be careful out there, will ya?"
    "You bet."
     
    *            *            *
     
    I found Rusty, who turned out to be a thin, jittery woman about fifty, eating a brown bag lunch deep in the three thousand square feet of wall-to-wall records that comprised Patient Information Retrieval.  She was sitting Indian-style on the floor, leaning against one of the floor-to-ceiling files.  "You can't take that with you," she said, struggling to hand an eight-inch-thick folder up to me.  She turned away, bit off the top of a carrot stick and swallowed it without chewing.
    " Can't take it with you ," I kidded.  "That's catchy.  You should write it down."
    "Sure, everything's a joke — until something gets lost.  Then somebody comes down looking for that something, and, suddenly, it's not funny anymore."  She looked very serious.  "It's the end of the world."
    "Yeah.  Well, sorry."  I sat down against the file opposite her.
    She kept staring at me.
    "Am I OK here?" I asked.
    "If you don't watch me eat."
    You can figure out a lot about people's minds by the way they feel about putting things in their mouths.  I had to remind myself that I didn't have the time to get into it with her.  "No problem," I said.  I flipped open the chart.  There was a black-and-white photograph of George LaFountaine glued to the inside cover.  He was handsome, even with a crew cut.  His smile was full and confident.  I focused on his eyes, looking for Westmoreland in him.  They gave away nothing.  I fanned the pages of the chart and stopped at a color photograph, marked 1985.  I shook my head in disbelief.
    LaFountaine had become Westmoreland.  His cheeks had hollowed, and his smile had contorted into a fierce showing of teeth.  His hair had grown into a tangle of snakes.  Terror had taken over his eyes.  I felt like a burglar walking through another man's home.  Or was I digging up a grave?  Westmoreland had wanted to bury LaFountaine, and I had unearthed him.  The moral thing to do may have been to put the chart back on the shelf, to leave undisturbed in that tomb of records what Westmoreland had intended to.  Wasn't I justifying his paranoia by violating his confidentiality?
    Perhaps it was my own morbid curiosity that convinced me in that moment that there was a reason I had his chart in my hands — that it was not by chance he had let slip enough of his name to unlock the door to his past.
    I went back to the beginning of the chart and read the cover sheet.  It listed Westmoreland's date of discharge from the service and his date of admission to the hospital.  His family address was recorded as 12 Warren Avenue in Charlestown, a tough, blue-collar neighborhood on the north edge of Boston.  Next of kin was his father, John LaFountaine.  I turned the page to the first of two hand-written sheets labeled ‘Initial Psychiatric History’:
     
George LaFountaine is a 22-year-old white man medically discharged from the Army due to the onset, following military action, of paranoia and auditory hallucinations.  These psychotic symptoms were believed to be responsible for Mr. LaFountaine's recent bizarre behavior, which resulted in a court-martial.  All charges have been dismissed, as the patient is