The guards at the lodge of the clinic put an end to this, and the driver returned to London with the remaining three bottles. “A month,” mused the tipsy neurosurgeon as he walked like a captive between the porters. A month indeed.
The male inmates of the clinic were boarded in groups of six. Their routines were continuous, and supervised either by a member of staff or each other. The first couple of weeks were a nightmare for the Rose. He sulked in silence. Finally, one of his circle got on his case.
“I don’t know why you’re not joining in—anyone would think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.” The Rose didn’t respond.
“Come on, junkie, share your shit with us.”
“I’m not a junkie, I’m an impaired practitioner,” the Rose snapped.
Everyone in the circle laughed, except a serious-faced individual who may very well have signed the Hippocratic oath himself at one time. In the silence that followed he smiled at the Rose and said, “Just because you don’t buy your junk, Doc, doesn’t make you any different. You shoot up the same as the rest of us.”
That afternoon the result of his brain scan arrived, and he viewed it with the MD in residence. His brain had begun to be affected by the abuse. However, his metabolism, in its wisdom, had allowed the least-used part to be sacrificed first: the Rose saw that the section of his brain which had absorbed the most damage was responsible for abstract thought.
“It has only been affected recently,” said the doctor, sensing his patient’s distress. “It might not be irreversible. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the theory of Vis Medicatrix to you.”
The Rose didn’t respond. But that was the moment when he knew he wouldn’t be able to indulge again.
He committed himself to his routines, doing his share of the cleaning and tidying of the group quarters, and enjoying it. He had never done day-to-day tasks, and manual labour was a mystery to him (unless eight-hour stretches in the operating theatre could be termed manual), yet he found the purely physical jobs refreshing. In his journal he talked of ‘getting myself back into my body’ and by the third week he was ‘less morose and sleeping astonishingly well’.
He was allowed visitors, provided they submitted to a body search and agreed to leave all alcohol and banned substances in their cars—but the Rose didn’t want any reminders of his past life anyway. His intellectual stimulation came from the weekly sessions with the psychoanalyst, which generally opened with:
“And what shall we talk about this week?”
“Why don’t we talk about you, Doctor Plante?”
“Perhaps when I know you better. Cup of herbal tea, while it’s hot?”
“No chance of a proper cuppa?”
“Anything that is a mood-altering substance increases your risk of slipping. Try to get used to life without caffeine, sugar, tobacco. All craving has the same root. You are an addict, but you’re not stupid.”