Disinhibition(Barry) The police arrived first. Hurrying up the stairs to the second floor landing, the officer in front drew a hickory nightstick from a leather sheaf but there was no need for violence. Peter Pepper was lying on the floor curled up in a fetal position, whimpering unintelligible gibberish.

“On your feet!” the officer commanded.” The stocky man rose.

“Hands behind your back!” Peter meekly slid both hands to the rear, was handcuffed and led into the hallway. As they descended the medics arrived. “Victim’s in the office at the far end of the hall,” the officer who was no longer brandishing his nightstick announced. “He’s a bit of a mess.”

The medics found Dr. Elliot Morton lying face down on the oak floor in a semi-conscious daze. They gently rolled the man onto his back. He was a short and rather obese with a Van Dyke beard. A pair of gold, wire-framed glasses lay smashed and crumpled in the far corner of the room. “Dr. Morton,” the medic spoke, leaning over the prostrate psychologist, “can you hear me?”

“Where am I,” he groaned. “What the hell happened?”

“One of your patients got a bit feisty… beat you up,” the medic explained, “but we’re gonna take good care of you.” Transferring the therapist onto a portable stretcher, they secured the torso with leather straps and prepared to transport the patient to the local hospital.

* * * * *

“All appointments have been canceled for the rest of the day,” Camilla, the office receptionist, announced as she sipped her coffee cup.

“Figured as much.” Joel watched as a steady stream of social workers and psychologists fled the scene of the crime, everyone demoralized, numb with shock.

“I don’t get it,” Camilla muttered. She was sitting glumly with her coat on, Etienne Aegner handbag perched on the mahogany desk. The commotion had left the woman badly frazzled. “Of all the therapists, Dr. Morton was the most confident… fearless with troublesome patients.”

“Troublesome patients,” Joel mused. There were level-three sex offenders, pyromaniacs, burglars, wife beaters, porn-obsessed pedophiles - and that was just the tip of the psychopathic ice berg.

“Didn’t Dr. Morton attend some fancy-schmancy, Ivey League college?”

“Columbia… graduated top of his class, summa cum laude.”

“A lot of good the pricey education did him.”

“Go home,” Joel insisted. “I’ll lock up.”

“You don’t mind?”

He shook his head. “Not in the least.”


Ten minutes later the community mental center was empty, the building engulfed in a wooly, unbroken silence. Joel checked to make sure the coffee machine in the staff lounge was off and lights shut. Descending the stairs from the upper landing, he heard someone pounding persistently on the front door.

“Whoda heck locked da damn door?” Hattie Mae Jackson, the cleaning woman was standing outside on the threshold.

Joel ushered the woman into the lobby and explained what happened.

“Figures,” Hattie Mae grumbled. A black woman of no clearly definable age, Hattie Mae Jackson could have been forty or a hundred-and-forty. She sometimes dressed like a bag lady favoring an odd collection of mismatched, hand-me-down clothes. Short and compact with a mashed in nose and rheumy hazel eyes she went about her business cleaning the office in an efficient, taciturn manner. “I tried to warn that fool,” Hattie Mae noted in a gravelly voice, “but he wouldn’t listen to reason… least not that of a black, cleaning lady with a tenth grade education.”

Hattie Mae had run into Dr. Morton when she was cleaning the staff lounge several weeks earlier. “That patient… da one just left your office give me the heebie-jeebies,” she observed.

Dr. Morton gawked at the cleaning woman. “Mr. Pepper frightens you?”

“The eyes… they like the eyes of a wild animal.” Hattie Mae pursed her wrinkled lips. “How come he here?”

The inappropriateness of her comments left the psychologist unsettled. He felt uncomfortable discussing a patient’s concerns with the staff cleaning lady. “I don’t follow you.”

“Dat guy wouldn’t never come here of his own choosin’.”

“Well, yes that’s true. Mr. Peters was sent here by the courts.”

“Why’s dat?”

“He was involved in a barroom fight where things got quite ugly. The judge gave him the option of counseling or jail time.” “The patient,” Dr. Morton had assumed a stilted, more clinical demeanor “suffers from a frontal lobe seizure disorder with the tendency to disinhibition.”

“Disinawhat?”

“Disinhibition,” he realized immediately that he should have either ignored or, at best, humored, the cantankerous woman. “It’s when a patient tends to lose control and lets anger get the upper hand.”

“And that don’t frighten you?”

Dr. Morton chuckled in a mildly condescending fashion. “No, not in the least!” He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and polished the lenses clean with a handkerchief. “As a therapist, you can never communicate fear.”

Hattie Mae, who had been emptying the trash basket, looked up. “Tell that to the chickens, when the fox, who ain’t had nuttin’ to eat all day stops by the coop for friendly chitchat in the late afternoon.”

Dr. Morton scowled. He fixed himself a cup of coffee without bothering to empty the grounds from the pot and made a motion to rush off to his next appointment.

“My uncle Elmo sends his regards,” Hattie Mare blurted in a guttural voice, bring the psychologist to an abrupt halt at the doorway. “Wanted you know he might be coming back for annudder crack at counselin’.”

“Refresh my memory why don’t you.” Dr. Morton was struggling to control his irritation with the elderly chatterbox.

“Elmo Brannigan… he come for counselin’ wid you for three solid years.” Hattie Mae scratched a stubborn itch on the side of her nose. “Was a lush… happy drunk but you cured him of that.”

“Oh, yes. Of course!” Dr. Morton’s face brightened noticeably. “What’s Elmo’s problem now?”

“Well, you see,” Hattie Mare retrieved a bucket and mop from the utility closet and prepared to wash the floor, “when he stopped drinkin’ and switched over to teatotalering, he took a turn for the worst… begun talking nasty and beating up on my Aunt Flo. Week ago Tuesday, she had enough of the nonsense, packed her bags and went to live with her sister, Myra.”

“People occasionally replace one symptom with something even more disturbing.”

“Flo,” Hattie Mae rushed on, ignoring the psychologist’s remarks, “she says that bellyaching bully can rot in hell fo’ she’d take him back. Good riddance!”

Yes, well…” Dr. Morton rushed out of the staff lounge as though his pants were engulfed in a multiple engine, three-alarm fire.

When he was gone, Hattie Mae began scrubbing the linoleum tile floor. “What da heck was that twenty-five cent, wackadoodle word?” She spoke absent-mindedly, directly her remarks to no one in particular since the clinic was empty. “Disinfagration… disnotification... disinfestations… disintegration…”

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