Free He Wanted the Moon by Mimi Baird, Eve Claxton Page B

thickness of the skin. There was a smaller puncture wound over the sensitive flexor surface of the wrist on itswide portion next to the bone. Blood also poured lavishly from this small opening. Many drops had been splashed on windowpanes untouched by my fist and the floor was mildly stained. After a rather long interval, several attendants collected outside my door and came in together, expecting trouble. The night supervisor bandaged my wrist. Healing took place rapidly at the site of the larger laceration but seemed slow in reference to the puncture wound. Several times, without any injury or other provocation, the puncture wound began to bleed spontaneously and required a compression bandage.

    This strange, dreaming state may have lasted for only a few days. The thought delusions were realistic, convincing, horrible, but they gradually passed away. It would be impossible to recall all details of these agonizing days.
    One night I woke up and found myself in bed, the straightjacket gone. Two letters were there. Attendants came in and asked me if I wanted a shower or a bath. I took my letters with me, holding them as I took my shower. They were ruined by the soap and water. After the shower, I began to feel better and I managed, in a matter of a week or so, to make a rapid recovery from this strange mental state.
    When I first began to walk, the soles of my feet were so sensitive that I could hardly bear to stand up on them. Peter F. Perry was around most of the time to let me lean on him, my arm around his neck. I would tiptoe along in this way and gradually gained confidence, losing that extreme generalized hyperesthesia.
    Easter had come and gone. I made more and morefriends among the patients. I thought about God, Christ and many spiritual values, as I had never done before. I recall seeing four airplanes flying across the sky, in the shape of a cross. I felt close to God, but did not feel happy. I wondered whether God would give me some special job to do, whether my sufferings might come to have some meaning, lead to some spiritual goal, some great destiny.
    MY next visitor came in the evening: Captain Charles I. Johnson of the U.S. Navy. I was never so glad to see anyone, as I was to see my very good friend, Charlie Johnson. I shook hands with him at once. I shook hands with him again. We sat and talked continuously for two hours or more. Charlie questioned me about the history of my case and he delved into possible precipitating factors: marital unhappiness, disappointment over not being in the service, and so forth. After our long talk he said, “I think we’re getting somewhere now.”
    As he left, Charlie promised to see Dr. Harry Solomon, chief psychiatrist at Baldpate, a private hospital, to try to arrange my transfer to there. I knew Charlie would do everything possible to help.

CHAPTER NINE

    LATE one afternoon about ten days after his first visit, Charlie Johnson returned, bringing Harry Solomon with him. Charlie was hoping to persuade Harry to permit my transfer to Baldpate hospital.
    “Would you be willing to go to your family in Texas for a year after your illness is over?” Charlie asked.
    “Yes but I’d like to think that my own vote about such a step would be reckoned among the others,” I replied.
    Charlie then said: “During your illness, you have the reputation of being a pathologic liar.”
    The words fell hard upon my ears. I have a passion for truthfulness and I will never tell a lie if there is any way of evading the question, ignoring the question provoking the lie, or if there would be any way of checking up. I recognize that, about once a year, one may get into a difficult situation wherein something of the nature of a lie may be the best way out—and a thoroughly justifiable way out—but I pride myself upon being able to deal with such situations without deviating from the actual truth. It is true that I may tell a “tall story” once in a while, building up a good adventure tale