“But unfusing isn’t the answer, Billy.”

“I know. I’ve seen myself struggling day to day, trying to achieve more and more and more. I try to do all the things every one of my personalities did, and it’s very tiring. I’ll be here painting a picture, and as soon as I finish it and put it away and wipe my hands off, I’ll pull down a book, turn my chair around and take notes, read for a few hours. Then I’ll stop and get up and start working on this radiotelephone thing.”

“You’re pushing yourself too hard. It doesn’t have to be done all at once.”

“But I’ve got such a drive to do it. I’ve got so many years to make up for, and so little time. I just feel I’ve got to push.” He got up and looked out the window. “Another thing: I’ve got to confront my mother eventually. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. I can’t act the same as I did before. Everything’s different now. The parole board, my upcoming sanity hearing, and now reading my father’s suicide letter—it’s very hard to stay in one piece. It tore me apart.”

On February 28, Billy called his attorney and told him he didn’t want his mother present at his commitment review hearing the next morning.

Chapter Twenty-One

(1)

After his March 1, 1979, review hearing, Billy Milligan was recommitted to the Athens Mental Health Center for another six months. All those working with him were aware of the threat hanging over him. He knew that as soon as he was cured and discharged, he would be arrested by the Adult Parole Authority of Fairfield County as a parole violator and returned to prison to serve the remaining three years of his two- to five-year term for the Gray Drug Store robbery. He might also be declared a probation violator and then be forced to serve a consecutive six- to twenty-five-year sentence on the roadside-rest assaults.

L. Alan Goldsberry and Steve Thompson, his Athens attorneys, filed motions in Fairfield County court to have his pleas of guilty dismissed. They argued that in 1975, unknown to the court, he had been a multiple personality, and because he had been insane and unable to assist in his own defense at that time, there had been “manifest justice.”

Goldsberry and Thompson held out the hope that if the judge in Lancaster would vacate the guilty plea, Billy would be a free man after he was cured.

He lived on that hope.

At about the same time, Billy was delighted to learn that Kathy and her longtime sweetheart, Rob Baumgardt, had decided to marry in the fall. Billy liked Rob, and he began to plan for the wedding.

As he walked the hospital grounds and saw the signs of spring, he began to feel the bad times had passed. He was getting better. On weekend leave, staying at Kathys house, he started painting a mural on her wall.