December 1966Īrthur Seligson stepped out of the IRT station on Bleeker and Lafayette streets, convinced he’d done the right thing by leaving the apartment. He closed his notebook and nodded, all the while marveling at the most extraordinary case of repression he’d ever seen. The patient smiled and heaved a sigh of relief.Ībrams sat back in the chair and dumped the burned tobacco from his pipe into the wastepaper basket. I want to ask you some questions, he said. Within seconds, the patient was lucid.Ībrams gave the patient some coffee. Then, concluding the session, he broke the trance. Satisfied, Abrams probed deeper, quickly compiling a dozen pages of impressions. Then I turned off her support machines and went to school. She said that if I loved her, I would help her to die. One morning her nurse was sick and couldn’t come in, and Mother was in more pain than ever. The patient looked wildly around the room. The patient rambled on, then stopped, sweating.Ībrams relit his pipe and clenched his teeth tightly on the stem. Hesitating, the patient described the woman and their relationship.Ībrams nodded. Then: I want to talk about your mother, Abrams said. How do you feel? he asked, constricting his heavy brown eyebrows.įeel? the patient responded blankly, deep in the well of a trance.Ībrams noted the patient’s discomfort. Martin Abrams carefully packed his handmade pipe, lit the tobacco, and glanced into the file on the right side of his desk. Then she screamed, her lungs seared by a blast of hot air, her skin shriveled on her body. She fumbled for the light switch and flicked it on. She jiggled the knob and opened the door it was black inside. But could she? Someone was certainly hurt, possibly caught in the compactor. It was blood-a trickle coming from under the door. There was a dark blotch in front of the garbage compactor room. She walked down the corridor and stopped. Her legs seemed incapable of feeling, paralyzed. Hello, she said, as she moved slowly past the janitor’s dressing room. Or was it her imagination? No more trying to beat the rush to the machines. She moved to the basement, telling herself to remain calm.

The guardian jeffrey konvitz