“How can I help you?” Maria asks. She is excited at the idea that she could help Dr. Cousins who had been treating her like a threat since her arrival at the institute.
“What?” Cousins asks.
“You said when you came that you needed my help. What can I help you with?”
“Oh, right. I need you to keep this a secret. Moss can’t know about any of this.”
“Why? You don’t trust her?”
“She’s keeping something from me.” Cousins whispers. “I just know it. It’s strange that none of this is strange to her. I mean, sure, we’ve made some unbelievable discoveries down here, but you showing up and having a connection to Alia is just bizarre. Moss isn’t the same person that she was when we first came here. She’s discounting the things that Alia was saying about you as crazy ramblings. Before we came here, she was much more compassionate. It’s makes no sense that she’d be dismissing this out hand, especially with you here.”
“So you believe it? That I was abducted?”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Tell me about it. What happened to you?”
Maria tells the story that has been a defining one for much of her life. “It was pleasant. They were nice to me. And I saw things that are just impossible to describe. It’s no wonder that my mother thought I was crazy. I don’t blame her for wanting to get me help. But you can’t imagine what it’s like for people to tell you that your own memories are wrong. It makes you question everything.”
“Did you ever doubt yourself.” Cousin asks.
“No. I mean, I wanted to reject it, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to separate myself from it to make my mom happy, and eventually I just lied so that I could get back to a normal life. But there was never a time that I didn’t believe what I knew to be the truth.”
Cousins feels sorry for Maria. He has been working with patients with mental illness for all of his career and Maria’s story sounded familiar, people struggling against their own concept of reality and trying to make it conform to a reality that did not come naturally to them.
“Moss thinks that I’ve been jumping to conclusions lately.” Cousins says. “Maybe she’s right, maybe I’ve been filling in blanks with my imagination, or maybe the truth is just starting to click for me.” Cousins takes a deep breath. “You convinced me that Alia’s ‘delusions’ about aliens are more than that. They might be the truth. And I know that Moss would be on the same page with me, normally she would have convinced me of this. But she’s throwing me off of this. She knows something that she’s not telling me.”
“You trust me?” Maria ask. “The mind controller.”
Cousins looks desperate. “I’m worried that this basement isn’t living up to its mission. I’m worried that we’re not putting the best interests of our patients, your best interests, above our scientific curiosities. And I learned that after you showed up. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe Nebuchad was right. Maybe you’re the savior of the patients down here.”
So, dissociative identity disorder is a real thing; I mentioned it before. The manifestation of two or more distinct personalities in a person and their inability to control the emergence of those personalities. Triggers are an important component of this disorder and reveal the major impact that seemingly small external stimuli can have on the brain. Smells can trigger an identity switch, sounds, feelings or sensations. Think about that; the smell of roses or chocolate can change a person’s identity completely. If our senses have the potential to have such a major impact on the function of our brains, maybe we should be more careful about the inputs. We should police the smells in our cities, we should carefully choose the colors in our homes. This is a huge deal people.
When Moss and Cousins were working under the impression that Nebuchad was suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Dr. Eakran had a patient transferred to the basement so that team could test possible solutions to eliminate switches between personalities. The experiment is ongoing despite the objections of Cousins who, from the start, thought the experiment amounted to cruelty. Moss convinced him that it was a good idea to continue the work because they had obtained consent from a relative with medical power of attorney, and it could lead to a breakthrough for sufferers of the disorder. The ongoing experiment involves a patient named Pat, a middle aged man who has lived with the disorder for many years, who has essentially been sitting in solitary confinement for a little over a year.
“If we remove all external stimuli, maybe his brain will forget the triggers and reset.” Moss reasoned when Cousins objected.
“How long could that possibly take?” Cousins asked incredulously.
“It’s not indefinite internment, Rick. We’re just measuring the effects until it becomes unhealthy.”
Cousins shook his head in disbelief. “Do you hear yourself? I get your eagerness to find solutions, and working with Eakran has yielded some awe inspiring results, but you care about patients, Donna. That’s why you do this right? We’re gonna run this experiment until the patient can’t take it? What happened to us? If we want him to forget the effects of simple stimuli, why don’t we just lobotomize him? Is that an option?”
“Rick, don’t wuss out.” Moss said firmly. “Eakran is quite simply a genius and I would follow him into fire if he asked. I trust him because he gets shit done. He has never let me down, and he hasn’t let his patients down.”
“Tell that to Tommy, Donna. That soldier who would probably be alive today if Eakran hadn’t put so much stress on his body. Tell that to his family.”
“Tommy was happy to stand on two feet again, Rick, and you know that.” Moss was speaking very sternly in her defense of Eakran. “He died happy that he could feel that again. Eakran gave him that. We have to be all in here or we won’t help anyone. We need you Rick.”
Cousins’s dedication to the mission of the IBF basement vacillates every time he thinks about Pat sitting alone in a dark room, hoping to forget.
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