Chapter 20

Tilly went to see Dr Jarman again the following morning. This time she was determined to ask him before he got distracted.

He was sitting behind his desk, looking a little calmer that he had the day before. He stood up and shook Tilly's hand vigorously.

"Well done, Mrs - Tilly. You've passed all the tests with flying colours."

"Yes, but I wanted to ask-"

"In fact, you've come out higher than anyone else. Higher than most of the staff, for that matter,"

"But, surely," said Tilly, "you gave me the wrong tests. They were far too easy."

"Not at all. Not at all. Standard memory and IQ tests. Have you any idea what your IQ was before the Alzheimer's?"

Tilly shook her head. "The last exams I did were for my nursing qualifications. I didn't have any trouble with those. But that was a long time ago."

"You were a nurse?"

"Yes, I was a nurse for years. During the war. And then afterwards I was a practice nurse in Little Morpeth for, let me see ..." she counted on her fingers. "On and off for ten years. I only left because we had to move to Manchester. And after that I did some nursing on a volunteer basis at the local clinic. I like to be busy."

Dr Jarman grinned at her. "That will come in useful for caring for Mr Thompson."

"That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about, doctor. I want to know what I can do to help."

"Oh, you need to see Dr Horton. He's dealing with Mr Thompson."

"Oh, of course. Sorry. You just deal with Alzheimer's, don't you? But there is something I want to ask you. Has it worked, your experiment, for everybody?"

The doctor paused for a moment. "We don't know yet. We had twelve subjects; eight have woken up so far. I haven't finished testing, but six, certainly, have recovered all their memory up to the point of contracting Alzheimer's. We intend to continue to run the experiment for another week, to see if we get any more."

"And there are no side effects?"

Dr Jarman shrugged. "None that we can tell so far."

"So, you don't think we'll just reach the same stage, whatever it was when we first got the disease, and then it will happen all over again?"

The doctor looked very seriously at her for a moment. "I can't tell you that, Tilly. I don't know. Nobody knows. It's never been done before."

"So it could all be for nothing?" Tilly was crestfallen.

"It's not for nothing, Tilly. We may not know yet whether it's a permanent improvement, but any improvement is better than nothing, surely?"

Tilly shook her head.

"I'm not sure about that, Doctor. Johnny told me what it was like for him, looking after me once my mind had gone. I wouldn't want to put him through that again. He would be devastated if he lost me again now."

The doctor gave her a helpless look.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Tilly. I don't know what will happen. I can't change whatever is going to happen. But, don't you think," he leaned forward and took her hand between both of his, "don't you think Mr Thompson is the only one who can decide what he is prepared to do. Shouldn't you discuss it with him rather than me?"

Tilly stood up. She was trembling slightly.

"You're right, of course, Doctor. Is there anything else you need to talk to me about?"

"No, no. Not yet. We'll do more tests on Monday - and, Tilly?"

She turned round just as she had reached the door. "If my opinion is worth anything, I think it is permanent."

She gave him such a beautiful smile, that he saw, for a moment, what she must have been like as a young woman. But after she had left the room, he continued to stare at the closed door with troubled eyes. He had lied to her. He had no idea whether it was permanent. What he had said was wishful thinking, and a desire to keep a patient happy and optimistic.

****

Dr Horton was more like Tilly's idea of what a doctor should look like. He was comfortably round, with white hair and bushy eyebrows. Not unlike, in fact, her own dear Dr Pollock. She smiled at the recollection of the man who had been her friend and employer for so many years. She found herself liking Dr Horton for no other reason than for that resemblance.

"Do sit down, Mrs Thompson." He waved her into the vacant chair opposite his desk. "Dr Jarman tells me you used to be a nurse. Would you like some tea?"

Tilly was beginning to think they were obsessed with tea in this establishment. No bad thing.

The preliminaries out of the way, he went on, "Did you have much to do with treatment for stroke when you were nursing?"

Tilly shook her head. "A couple in Morpeth. None at the hospital. I worked mainly with children. There's not much you can do for it anyway, is there?"

"On the contrary, we used to think that, but now we know better."

Tilly sat up straight in her chair.

"It seems that whether you recover, how quickly and how completely, depends on how much you believe you can do it. We first realised when we noticed that a child who had had a stroke, having lost all movement on the right, first started using her left hand for everything and then began to use the right again. No-one had told her, you see, that she couldn't do it. So she just did."

"Like the bumble bee," Tilly murmured.

"Pardon?"

"The bumble bee. I am told that it is aerodynamically impossible for the bumble bee to fly. Its body is too large and heavy to be supported by its tiny wings." She smiled. "But nobody has told the bumble bee."

Dr Horton smiled back. "What a very nice analogy."

He sat back and steepled his hands over his chest.

"We know that brain cells destroyed in a stroke do not regenerate. But what can happen is that the brain finds a different route, circumventing the damaged cells. And we think that the way it happens is that the patient keeps trying to use the affected limbs, sending the signals to the brain and the brain seeks a new route. But to keep trying, you have to believe in it. Mind over matter."

"Incredible," Tilly said. "That's more or less the same as Dr Jarman's approach to Alzheimer's. Persuade the brain to believe it is in an earlier time. It seems everything these days can be cured by a sort of faith healing."

"Not quite faith healing ? although that comes into it. It is more that the mind and the body are more closely-linked than we could ever have imagined. Of course, Chinese medicine has always worked on that assumption."

"So all I have to do," Tilly went on, "is persuade him that he can do it. That is such good news. So nice to think one can do something useful."