This chapter is a bit longer. Have fun while reading.
*****
"Dr. Mercer. I should ask you if you already have the consent." Suddenly a voice came out of the background.
"Not now, Nick." Tried Dr. Mercer stifled an incoming clerk and wanted to make it clear that this was not the right moment.
"But Dr. Garner wants to know if he can start with his preparations around Mister Barlows ...!" The nurse remained obstinate, so he didn't know what was happening in the background and when he discovered Howard and Jason, he immediately interrupted himself.
When this nurse talked about some sort of preparations, mentioning Gary's name, Howard and Jason reigned and released Gary from an intimate and warm hug. With a huge question mark over their heads, the two of them saw each other alternately to the doctor and this almost rattled nurse. Preparations? For what? What should that mean again? What adventurous measure did they want to have Gary subjected to?
"What preparations? What on earth are you going to do with Gary?" Jason wanted to know what it was about.
Dr. Mercer glanced at the two friends and then turned to Gary, who was still motionless in his corner. Somehow the doctor seemed to be wrestling with the words. Not knowing where to start. It was obviously unpleasant for him to take their measure. How likely was it that this was not quite the typical healing process and could have a considerable aftertaste? The suspicion grew increasingly as the doctor once breathed a sigh of relief and tried to clarify the approach.
"As there are no signs of improvement and he doesn't even respond to our treatment in any way, we've no choice but to take a drastic measure."
Howard and Jason looked at each other to confirm their assumption and got a bad feeling at the same time. While Jason was still kneeling on Gary's side, Howard immediately went to his two legs and took a step forward until he stood between his little friend and the doctor.
"You will do nothing of the sort. No matter what it may be, you will not get too close to him or even twinkle's a tiny hair." Howard, without much thought, let out his protective instinct.
"Listen. I can well understand that you want to protect a friend who needs help and also your friendship in all honors, but you shouldn't question my work. We want only the best for him. If he is to find a way back to life, please let me do my work." The doctor Howard tried to make clear that they all had the same goal and that one should let him do his work.
Howard gave him an embittered look, and went back to Gary's side, defeated and somewhat reluctantly. That he couldn't protect his friend and was so damned to watch, as Gary was helpless to the doctors, he just couldn't look. Slowly, a deep emptiness rose in him, where he felt he was in an airless room.
"And how is your measure to look?" Jason tried to find something to frighten him.
"Have you ever heard of Honoré de Balzac?" He asked back.
"Do you mean the French writer? What does he have to do with Gary now?" Jason could start with the name after all and was thus a concept, but did not understand what Dr. Mercer wanted."
Actually nothing, but he had once said something, which is the key to our success. ...The memories embellish life, but forgetting alone makes it bearable." Tried Dr. Mercer to him by means of an old and wise saying, the further proceeding cautiously communicates.
"You ...you're serious about wanting to take his memories? You can not be serious about it?" Jason had a dark foreboding, what the doctor wanted to tell them.
"I'm sorry. But this is the only way to get him back on the right track. There is no other alternative. ...This is the only chance for him to build a new life." Nodded Mercer confessed to him, pointing out that he saw Gary's future otherwise black when they didn't take his memories of him.
"No. No. You cann't do it to him. ...When you take all the memories of Gaz, you also take his life at the same time. What you're up to is beyond torture." Howard couldn't allow that.
To begin with, the food was beaten in Gary was a thing, but now he wanted to take his memories. No. This was clearly too far for him. In this way, Gary not only lost his identity, but he could become a completely different person as well. Howard liked his friend the way he was. Even his little quirks, which he now missed something like this. In the worst case, he wouldn't want to be friends with him afterwards. What was like a nightmare for Howard. He wanted to keep him in his own memories as he had been, and not as a Gary, whom he did not even know.
"What kind of life should we take from him? He is only vegetating, that one can no longer call life. ...I admit openly that the process looks like torture, but it allows him to build a new and better life with his children. ...It can ultimately prove to be an advantage for him." The doctor tried to explain to him that it was only for Gary.
"First of all, he already had the perfect life and besides, I meant more like that for me personally is like a torture and I bet that Mark and Robbie wouldn't do it differently. ...But thank you for the picture, now I feel very badly." Howard was initially more interested in the whole thing on himself.
"I think you are overdramatised this now. How do you come up with the insane idea, that personally? You should help him so that he can find himself again in this world." Mercer, Howard took the whole thing too close and personal.
"That's exactly the point. Do you think it will be easy for us to have a look at how Gary is wandering around without any memory and no longer recognizing his entire world? He'll feel like an alien being kidnapped by his home planet and exposed to another." Howard let him know how he saw it and what Gary could feel.
"I have to agree with him. Gary's entire world always consisted of music and his family. I can imagine how it goes when he meets his children again. At the latest from this point onwards he would ask himself what the mother from the three had become. To take the memory of him doesn't bring too much. ...Apart from that, you forget that he has now moved up to England in a national sanctuary. What do you think about how he will react to the many fans out of there? If I were him, I would either hide or run away at all times. ...In my opinion, there is the danger that Gary could fall back into old patterns." Jason tried to explain to the doctor with arguments that this should be different.
"I admit that there is a certain residual risk. But we've to do something and that is the better option for your friend than to let him be vegetated in this institution all his life. ...I can hardly imagine that you really want that." The doctor knew about Jason's concerns and showed him the picture, if they did nothing at all and left Gary in this condition.
On the last sentence, Jason looked up at the doctor and admitted that he was right in the one point. He definitely didn't want to see how Gary had to spend the rest of his life here and eventually died in a miserable state. No. The image was clearly disgusting to him. So something had to happen. But did they have to go so radically and delete the memories? Was there no other option? ...According to Dr. Mercer does not.
"And how ...how do you want to do that?" Jason asked, in a tone of voice, as he wanted to take Gary's memories forever.
"With an electric shock therapy!" The doctor finally said after a dramatic silence.
"You ...you want to shock him? What kind of bunk is that? Dr. Frankenstein's cave?" Howard thought he had been interrogated and tried to cover his disrespect, as good as he could, but he did not really succeed.
"Yes. Is there no other option? I mean, we don't live in the year nineteenhundredforty. Can not be solved with antidepressants?" Jason also found this method quite questionable.
"Unfortunately, no. He already has antidepressants and since there has been no improvement, we have no choice but to go on the radical tour. ...I'm sorry." Apologized Dr. Mercer went on to make sure that it was no different and betrayed by the way, as they had to imagine, "The goal of the therapy will be the anterior cingulate cortex, where his emotional memory of experience sits. By means of bilateral electrodes and a high-frequency sinusoidal wave stimulation, we will shock him with a regulator turned up to the top and thus interrupt the protein synthesis. This changes his neurotransmitter system and the end result is that he no longer has memories. ...Everyday functions such as walking, talking or shoemaking are not affected at all."
Howard and Jason looked at each other indifferently and didn't know rightly whether they should go to this daring proposal or not. In addition, they couldn't make any decision, since it was not without Gary's mother and her consent. Although she trusted Jason, she had given him something like a partial power. Only with consultation, he could also be approved for emergency and even only in exceptional cases. The question was there only whether Marjorie agreed firstly in this therapy and secondly, whether it was already enough for him with a blessed partial power that could possibly sign it. On the other hand, she would also definitely want to be there, if it should come at all. There he was sure.
"If we were to agree, when would they want to do it?" Although Jason had in his background that there were already preparations, he asked immediately, how quickly Dr. Mercer wanted to bring this thing across the table.
"Well. To be honest and if it goes after me, still today. ...I would also unlike to wait a long time." He said.
"Still today? Why so fast?" Howard understood not even the slightest, which is why they urged them to hurry and could imagine where the reason was, "Are you afraid that Gary today's still showing an improvement and he told some secret practices?"
"Slowly it's enough for me with your wild fantasies and false accusations. I can understand that outsiders see this as a place of horror and feel it as quite questionable, but we also do our work and that every day. All the many patients who want to help under difficult conditions it's not always easy. Sometimes you have to go through a bit harder to achieve an improvement at all, but we make sure that no inhuman activities occur. I assure you that no serious damage has been inflicted on your friend." Dr. Mercer wouldn't let himself be taken by Howard any more, and after he had brought him close to the everyday difficulties that occured at times, he wanted to know from him whether he had understood that, "Have you that understood?"
Before Howard somehow responded to it or even could say something, he was again couched by Jason coarsely by the arm and then entered shortly afterwards with the words, "Please excuse us briefly. We need to make a very urgent call.", out into the corridor.
After the two friends had gone out of the room, Jason Howard grabbed his wide shoulders and while he looked at him with a firm look, he wanted to know what was wrong with him: "Doug. What in God's Name is only going with you? So I've never seen you before. Can you please tell me why you are doing so? You behave like the proverbial ax in the forest ...and don't say that it is still about Gaz alone."
Howard looked shortly thereafter in Jason's deep blue eyes, then looked down at the ground, where he stammered something before him and didn't know what to say to him. The other problem was that he himself had no idea why he was so.
"I ...I don't know it for myself. ...All this is just terrible and now I think I would've stayed better at home. ...How did I get to the silly idea of escorting you? Mark and Rob were absolutely right. I was already aware that it wouldn't be easy to see Gaz here in such a place like this, but I didn't expect it to be so hard. ...Gaz is a very good friend of mine and as I do it with you, Mark and Rob, I still hang on him. I can't just look like this, how "Dr. Frankenstein" takes the memories by one of my best friends. ...What... what kind of brain-burnt suggestion is that? I ask myself how one can call something like therapy at all. I don't know how you see it, but for me it almost equals like a ...like a murder." Howard finally brought tear-struck and felt this therapy more than just a murderous act.
"Like a murder?" Jason repeated Howard's comparison, which he still did not quite understand why.
"You know that Gaz has a rational and profound fear of dying. If you take him any remembrance now, he might lose that fear and is be more suicidal than usual. ...I don't want to wake up one morning and someone told me that Gaz is dead." Howard tried to bring this aspect closer to him.
"Doug. ...Please don't take the devil to the wall. I admit that this point shouldn't be disregarded ...but as I know you, there is more behind it. Come on, what are you really about?" Jason had to give him right in one point and urged his friend to answer.
"What ... what if he does not want to be friends with us at all? I only want to restore my old Gary, is that asking too much? What we have to five is very important to me and Gaz is an important part of it. If someone takes his memories of our time together, he takes it to me. ...It's like a betrayal of ourselves." Howard finally expressed his fears and could not prevent a single tear from fleeing from his corner of his eye.
"Simply said, you're scared. Fear of losing more than a friend! ...Our time together." Jason understood why Howard behaved so untypical.
More precisely, it wasn't Howard himself who gave this behavior. It was his fear that caused him to do so. An anxiety, that Jason could understand too well. So he had to admit that he had also imagined it differently and he didn't want this therapy Gary to the slightest. Gary had definitely deserved better than letting any strangers take his memories. ...First of all, their common times.
Howard nodded at him sniffling and trying to swallow the hot tears. Shortly after, he found himself in a friendly embrace with Jason, who betrayed him by the way, that he had similar fears. But they had to face their own fears, even if it was difficult. As it looked, there was no way around it.
After they had loosened from their embrace, Jason reached for his phone and tried to reach Gary's Mum. To tell her how Gary was doing and that the doctors didn't see any future for him. At least not so long until all the memories was eradicated him and thus a new beginning in prospect.
*****
If you want to get rid of any comments, praise or criticism, then you can do it with pleasure. I'm open to everything.
😊