The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome. Man Martin
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Bone recounted his two episodes of immobility—three counting the one that had occurred just outside the door—the doctor set the otoscope down, looking from Bone to Mary as if gauging whether they found this tale as astonishing as he. “That must have been terrifying. We’ve got to do something for you folks.” Limongello rubbed his jaw and said, “Okay, I want you to walk from the front of the room to the back. Nothing fancy, no heel-to-toe, just walk normally.” Bone walked as normally as possible after being told to “walk normally” while Limongello watched, after which he had Bone close his eyes and told him to bring in one hand at a time and touch a finger to his nose, standing first on one foot, then the other. Limongello sat perched forward as far as possible in a chair beside Mary, staring raptly at Bone. “So the first time, you were taking a bath?”
“He wasn’t taking a bath; he was just in the bathtub,” Mary supplied.
Limongello looked at Mary, then at Bone. “So why were you in the tub?”
“I don’t really remember,” Bone lied.
Limongello wore a satisfied-dissatisfied look, like a poker player seeing through an opponent’s ill-advised bluff. “’Zat so?” The doctor’s demeanor said he didn’t believe it was so but had decided not to pursue this line of questioning; instead he abruptly slapped his thighs twice, announcing, “I am so hungry I could eat a horse. Well, a small one. Ah-ha-ha-ha. I didn’t get anything for breakfast but coffee and some damn raisin toast. Have y’all eaten?” They hadn’t. “Wait here a sec.” He disappeared, leaving them to gape at one another, but came back a few moments later without his lab coat. “I told my assistant to fill in. What say we go to the cafeteria and talk this over?”
“What about your other patients?” Bone asked.
“Ah.” Limongello waved dismissively. “They’re in good hands. You’re now my most important case. Think you can go through?” Limongello invited Bone to go through the door, and this time Bone was able to, a fact that Limongello noted, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. Bone headed toward the waiting room, but Limongello stopped him. “No, no, no. We’ll go through the ‘Bat Cave.’” He led them through a back entrance at the end of the hall. Bone worried his condition would strike and freeze him at the door, but in the doctor’s magic presence, he went through again without trouble.
“Are you sure this is okay?” Bone asked once they were in the elevator.
“Let me tell you something,” Limongello said. A hand on Bone’s shoulder again, his faint breath on Bone’s cheek. “Your case is of real interest to me. It’s—not exactly—but very similar to certain other—very mysterious cases that’ve had me stumped some time now. I think your syndrome holds the key to something major. If we got to you in time.”
Leaving the doctor’s office felt like taking an unscheduled holiday. Limongello allowed Bone to pay for lunch after warning them off the meatloaf and recommending the fish sandwich, which was what he got himself, along with an orange soda.
They selected a corner table, and Limongello asked about Bone and Mary, learning that Mary was a church secretary and Bone a college professor. He seemed interested in Bone’s opinions on grammar and was impressed that Bone had written a book. Soon they became so comfortable that Mary asked, “What kind of name is Limongello? Italian?”
“I’m only Italian on my father’s side,” Limongello said breezily. “On my mother’s side I’m Scotch-Irish.” Although he’d said nothing funny, he laughed, and his laugh was so easygoing and natural that Mary laughed, too, and there were good feelings all around.
“So, Doctor,” Bone asked, “what’s wrong with me? Am I cracking up?” Trying to match the doctor’s breeziness (and failing). “Cuckoo crazy?” He pointed a twirling index finger at his temple, the time-honored representation of broken gear-work inside.
“In a nutshell?” Limongello said. “I think you think too much.” Mary gave Bone a sardonic I-could-have-told-you-that look, but Limongello was as unsmiling as a head on Mount Rushmore. He lifted his breaded fish off the bun and, with the delicacy and precision of a surgeon, cut a bite with his spork and chewed thoughtfully before speaking again, looking at Bone with the gaze of an art critic considering a painting by a promising but flawed talent. “I think your problem is neurological. But then, you’d expect me to say that because I’m a neurologist. A priest would say it was spiritual. An accountant would say it was financial. Ha-ha. Each of us only sees what we’re prepared to see,” Limongello said with sudden seriousness.
“So what do you think is wrong?” Mary asked.
Limongello made a sound between a tch of concern and sucking a morsel of whitefish from his teeth. He took a tennis-ball-sized rubber brain from his pants pocket and, halving it like a pecan, pointed out the curve of a pale question mark inside. “We used to think the brain was a bank where you made deposits and withdrawals. Like this neuron is the memory of Aunt Sally, and here’s the part that knows the square of the hypotenuse, and down here is why you can’t stand rutabagas. But the truth’s a lot stranger. It’s more like a highway system.
“The brain sends messages to the body, and the body sends messages to the brain, and one part of the brain sends messages to the other parts, and around and around like that. Everything’s sending messages: neurons, glands, even blood cells. But there’s no place where the messages stop or start, no origin or destination. That’s the mystery. What we got at the end of the day is all these messages running around, but what no one’s ever been able to find is the self—who’s reading the messages? Who’s directing it all? We may never find it. We can find the messages for your emotions easy enough: dopamine and oxytocin to make you feel good, and noradrenaline and calcitonin to make you feel bad—‘Good, good, you’re happy now,’ or ‘Uh-oh, uh-oh, you’re getting tense,’ but we can’t locate the you that actually reads the messages, the self that feels happy or sad or whatever. Sure, we can go in with a big old scalpel, skriiik,” with an alarmingly vivid impression of slicing meat, Limongello swiped diagonally across the rubber brain, “and chop out a lobe, and after that you won’t hate rutabagas or remember Aunt Sally, but that’s not the same thing. We’d never know if we got rid of the memory, that piece of yourself, or just ripped out the pathway the message goes through. You might blow up the highway the farmer gets to town on, but that’s not the same thing as killing the farmer. You understand?”
Limongello didn’t wait to see if they understood. “Your problem is so specific, not a general motor deficit, only a problem with doors. Maybe your brain has one tiny road—a one-laner, a dirt road, an alley—for the message about getting through doors. Just that and nothing else. When you come to a door, the message about how to walk through has to travel down that one particular road. For some reason your brain, maybe even your self, can’t get the message, so you can’t go through the door.”
“But it wasn’t a door,” Mary said. “It was a bathtub.”
“The first time, yes,” Limongello conceded. “When I say doors, I really mean thresholds; I mean transitions. At times the message about doors doesn’t go through.”
“I don’t have a problem with doors,” Bone said. “There’s one right over there.”
Limongello said, “Logically, you know what a door is. You can define door. You can draw a door. The highways for those messages aren’t blocked, just the side road of going through doors. I’m not kidding when I say your problem stems from thinking too much.” Limongello leaned back and laced his fingers across his chest, tapping his thumbs. He cocked his head, viewing Bone at a forty-five-degree angle. “It’s been proven that thought, all by itself, alters the brain’s function. For example, if you’re having a pity party, being a Gloomy Gus, and you clap your hands and say out loud, ‘I feel terrific,’ your hypothalamus will give you a little boost of dopamine and you’ll actually feel a little better. Strangely enough, though, if in the middle of feeling really, really good about something, you think to yourself—even briefly—‘This is how I feel when I’m happy,’ or even ‘I’m happy now,’ you’ll get an