“How is my favourite patient this morning?” Dr. Drake asked Miss Petal Rose.
“Better than yesterday,” said the young woman in the bed. “I think.”
“Mental confusion, disorientation, amnesia… These are normal symptoms following a prolonged state of delusion,” said Dr. Drake. “Give it time.”
Dr. Drake told all his patients that they were his favourite, but Petal really was his favourite. Not only because of her compassionate and sensitive nature but also because her case was so fascinating. Until the autumn of three years ago, she’d been a happy, active, independent woman, living in New York. Born into a rich family, she didn’t need to work for a living, so was free to dedicate herself to helping others, which she did by volunteering for various organisations. It was after she missed an appointment with a local help group for undocumented immigrants that one of her friends alerted the authorities, who found her in her apartment in a state of apparent delusion, muttering about the decline of humanity. Her family had sent her to Dr. Drake’s psychiatric facility, which was considered the best in the country, and he had been monitoring her for almost three years — until last week, when she’d finally awoken.
“Let’s discuss again your most recent memories,” said Dr. Drake. He really wanted to know what had caused Petal’s delusions; such a prolonged state was normally caused by a shock or traumatic incident, but the police had found her sitting up in her bed with her TV on and nothing amiss.
Petal talked about her family; she adored her father in particular, a popular senator known for his liberal policies. And she talked with passion about the work she was doing in New York, the people she was helping, the changes she was making… But then she transitioned into the fantasy world she’d been living in for the past three years.
“I know now it wasn’t real,” she said, “but while I was immersed in it, it seemed as real as this world. Eventually, I realized that some things didn’t make sense; they were too unreal, too improbable, too fantastical…”
Dr. Drake nodded. “Eventually, the brain identifies something about the world it’s engaged in that is illogical, so it rejects it, and it’s this rejection that ends the illusion.”
“Exactly. It’s like the reality I was in had become unacceptable to me. It was an unacceptable reality. I just had to say the words aloud. Well, in my head that is. I said, ‘This isn’t reality,’ and I woke up.”
Dr. Drake left his morning session with Petal feeling optimistic. She was definitely making progress, but, as he told her family that evening, she was still in a very delicate state.
“It’s imperative that we convince her that this reality is real, because if she thinks for a moment that it’s another fantasy, she’ll slip back into a deluded state,” he said. “Seeing family and friends will help to ground her, but it’s important that she learns of new events gradually, so they don’t come as too much of a shock to her.”
She was happy to hear about her sister’s new baby and her father’s early retirement, which he told her was to work on his memoir but really was so he could visit her more often. Dr. Drake encouraged them to bring her personal possessions, to solidify her connection with her old life.
“Oh, my diary,” she said, which was decorated with stickers from some of the organisations she worked with, as well as causes she supported: ‘Green is good’, ‘Save the oceans’, ‘Hillary for President’… She opened it to November 9th, where she had written the details of her appointment with the local help group, the appointment she’d missed. “I wonder what happened?”
“We may never know,” said Dr. Drake, “and that’s okay. It’s important to concentrate on the present and not the past, as you prepare to return to your old life.”
Dr. Drake was visiting another patient when a nurse burst into the room. “It’s Miss Rose,” she said, “she’s having some type of episode.”
Dr. Drake found Petal at a computer in the library.
“I almost believed it this time,” she said, “that this world was real. But it’s just as illogical as any fantasy. A US president who uses Twitter to name-call other world leaders, who wants to build a wall between here and Mexico, who lies repeatedly... This isn’t real. This isn’t reality,” she said, and with that, she was gone. Gone from the real world and returned to a deluded state.