Copyright2000 R.K. Orndoff
Mystery in the Clinic
Statue of Madonna
I expected to walk into total chaos as I opened the door to the examination room in the in-patient ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital's Phipps Psychiatric Clinic...instead it was a calm, dead quiet. The large room, stark white with a lofty ceiling and two tall windows that faced the early morning sun, seemed at first empty, almost vacuous.
My mind had played the usual trick it always did whenever I entered one of the sound-deadened exam rooms in my usual hurried and preoccupied state. The white walls and ceiling were bleached even whiter by sunlight and reflected like fresh snow--at first the impression was of being suddenly immersed in a glowing fog.
As soon as I fully opened the door, my eyelids squinted involuntarily and I could sense my pupils constrict. Momentarily blinded, my brain reflexively shifted its attention to the auditory input and found relative silence, one without even the faint normal echoes that make the subtle background noise we all hear and take for granted. For a few milliseconds, my unconscious brain deemed the room a great white void. It was, of course--having just been tricked by its own expectations--wrong.
There in the far corner, sitting stooped over a little desk, was Dr. Richard Bergen, a young third-year neurology resident writing clinical notes in the chart and glancing up occasionally to look at our patient--the one I had not yet met but one whom I so eagerly expected.
Dr. Bergen scribbled furiously, trying to cram in as much information as the page would permit. She stood passively next to him, clad in an over-laundered, off-white hospital gown and robe and wearing pink fuzzy slippers. Tall, thin, looking age appropriate for her nineteen years, and with a peaceful expression on her face, she was statuesque.
She was virtually motionless, and I concluded rather hastily from her calmness that she was not in distress. However, there was something unusual about her stance and it was a distinct but just perceptible sign of psychopathology. "Posturing," I thought to myself.
"Oh, good morning, Dr. Orndoff, this is Patricia." Richard closed the chart and swiveled his chair slowly around to face away from the desk and toward the young woman. "Patricia, this is Dr. Orndoff."
