“I’m suffering from what I call, for want of a better term, psychosomatic hypothermia.”
I asked her what she meant by that. Claire continued but expressed herself in increasingly vague terms. It’s a common phenomenon that psychologists can sometimes get caught up in their patients’ warped realities and she wanted to avoid giving that impression at all costs. Without much success, I have to say.
“I’m cold all the time,” she said, “no matter how warm I dress. First I thought it was a late case of summer flu, but that’s not it. I had a couple of seizures during which I just couldn’t stop shaking. Yesterday it was so bad my husband took my temperature. It was 93.4o F.”
“I don’t think that’s psychosomatic. Have you seen your GP?”
“Yes. She thinks it’s an underactive thyroid gland and prescribed hormones. But she’s wrong, Emily. I’m afraid that . . . I’m afraid that I have a slow-working variant of whatever it is that killed the victims of August 18.”
Now I couldn’t conceal my amazement. “But what makes you think that? I’m sure you know that—”
She grabbed my wrist, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t startled by how cold her hand felt. I saw blue veins running beneath her skin and her fingers were so white, they looked like there was no blood circulation at all.
“You were there that night,” she said. “You must know more. Isn’t it true that a number of the people who died had symptoms of hypothermia?”
That story was exposed by de Volkskrant: at least fourteen of the thirty-two victims were said to have succumbed to hypothermia. Naturally, it was a big issue, so the AMC was forced to confirm it. The cause is still a mystery (making it a breeding ground for conspiracy theories—the most ridiculous of which claims that liquid nitrogen had been spread through the hospital’s air filtration system). They now call it an “unknown medical anomaly,” which makes neither the hospital nor the general public happy. The bizarre thing that happened with my patient, the boy we were operating on, most certainly wasn’t hypothermia (or epilepsy, as was written on his death certificate), but at least fourteen others, as they say, “froze to death” that night.
I didn’t tell Claire that, because I didn’t want to fan the fire of what was obviously a false notion. Instead, I asked what gave her the idea there was a connection.
“Edgar was there too. He was a patient in the AMC and was recovering from his injuries.”
At first, I was under the impression that Dr. Stein thought her patient had been infected by what had happened that night and that he, in turn, infected her, but I was wrong.
She thought he had caused it.
She took my hand again, with both hands now, and said, “During the last seizure I had a hallucination, Emily. The same hallucination that Edgar showed me when he took off his bandages in my office. I found myself in an ice cave. And I wasn’t alone. The whole time it felt like there was someone right next to me, but I was so overcome by the cold that I couldn’t find out who it was. The cold had descended into me, all the way into my bones. I just knew it was someone bad.”
I carefully withdrew my hand, because I started to feel uncomfortable. “The crevasse, the cold—it must surely be obvious to you too where these associations come from, Claire. It’s your patient’s story. And you said it yourself. You were hallucinating. Have you considered undergoing more neurological tests? A CT scan maybe, to rule out a few possibilities?”
But she shook her head. “Don’t you have any symptoms since that night?”
I hesitated only very briefly before I said no. Claire looked at me inquisitively, but I had collected myself again, and my reply was adamant. And I had no symptoms. Not the kind Dr. Stein was talking about.
I advised her to make an appointment with Neurology and gave her my card, in case she felt the need to talk again. But Claire was visibly disappointed, and after that, she never contacted me again.
If only she had!
If only I had acted on it. The truth is that I almost did, three days later. The day before she died. I was about to walk to PMU and track her down. And yet I listened to the voice of reason, which was telling me I was chasing ghosts.
What haunted me was the last thing Dr. Stein had said before we said good-bye. That she was experiencing her hallucinations as if they were lasting forever and never stopped.
“That was the worst,” she said. “When I woke up from my own screaming and realized that my husband was soothing me, I was convinced I hadn’t seen him in years.”
Four days later, she drove into the Amsterdam–Rhine Canal.
The same forensic pathologist who told me about the high concentration of Rohypnol in her blood let it slip that when they hauled her out of the canal, she had been practically naked. She had taken off her cardigan and blouse and was in the process of removing her trousers and panties when the car plunged off the overpass. He thought it was a sexual thing, but I don’t believe that. “Paradoxical undressing” is a phenomenon when just before victims of hypothermia lose consciousness, their subcutaneous veins suddenly dilate, causing a sensation of intense heat. Sometimes, people who get lost in the snow and have severe hypothermia will tear off all their clothes. Because they are so very hot as they are freezing to death.
Am I chasing ghosts?
I lied to Claire when I denied having any symptoms, since the tragedy of August 18. The first couple of weeks, I did suffer from posttraumatic flashbacks. But by the time Claire had spoken with me, I was convinced that I was rid of it. Yes, you could call the similarities with Dr. Stein’s description of her experiencing infinity remarkable, but I wasn’t prepared to indulge in such fallacies. I didn’t want to put myself on a slippery slope.
But I was wrong. It hasn’t gone away. Thinking back on the past few weeks, I can see now it was always there, dormant in the background. This morning, in the funeral home, it came back in full force. A seizure, just like that night in the AMC.
I also have a hallucination. Not that I freeze, but that I’m falling. It happens again and again. And it never ends.
Infinity is just a word, a concept without significance. But once you have experienced it, its meaning is abhorrent.
This has nothing to do with psychology. I’ve been carrying something inside me since that night in August. Something that has been eating into me like a parasite. Is it the same thing that has sent Claire Stein to her death? If so, what am I supposed to do?
Imagine I have a seizure with the children around. Or during an operation! I can’t control it. The best I can do is isolate myself when I feel it coming on—if I feel it coming on. But what if a day comes when that is impossible?
I can’t stop thinking about what Claire said about her patient.
The young man with his face covered in bandages.