My mother had been over her illness for some time, and as I waited in the corridor, I determined to outdo myself in tenderness and to tell her, if she was in despair, that she was to be moved soon to a house that she would like. One by one the visitors were summoned to the doctors’ cells and I saw them then going off to the reception room, their hands full of flowers or fruit or magazines. And presently I was quite alone save for the tireless, ethereal voice warbling for Dr. Finkelstein and Dr. Short. A doctor crossed the hall and seeing me, said, “You aren’t Miss Marburg, are you? Well, then, will you just step this way a moment?” We went into “my” doctor’s office and my escort put his arm about my shoulder in a paternal affability. Another doctor besides mine was sitting on the window-ledge.

“Miss Marburg,” said Dr. Tudor, “Dr. Burns, who spoke to you last winter about your mother, has presented his findings to us and we have been going over the case.” He cleared his throat and said something in an undertone to his colleague at the window who then went to a filing case and brought back a bulging manila folder. “As you know, psychiatry is not a definitive science any more than medicine is. And diseased minds are as liable to relapse as are diseased bodies. And, if anything, they are more difficult to diagnose accurately. Now let us say we have concluded that a man with pulmonary trouble has fibrosis. His symptoms, blood-tests, x-rays corroborate our opinion. He is kept in bed sufficiently long to remedy the trouble and we let him get up. But his fever rises, he begins to cough blood. We put him through another examination and find that he has tuberculosis of the lungs. We were probably not wrong in the first place. He did have fibrosis, but the tubercula bacilli, present in everyone, were working under our very noses, so slyly that none of our tests registered their progress. And now we must change our offensive, go back to a point near the starting line and begin again. Sometimes this happens in diseases of the mind. Originally we called your mother a ‘manic depressive’ and we had hopes of her complete recovery by simple treatment. But recently, particularly since her last attack of bronchitis, she has at times revealed symptoms of another disease, that is, katatonia.”

The doctors all were watching me, and I had the feeling that they were taking note of everything, that they saw, and afterwards would discuss, the slight tic that began at the corner of my right eye.