Thank God for the long weekend! I have some time on my hands...he he...
When He Wakes…
Part Nine
Rated: R
As the days passed, the secret language of MacGyver’s mental illness grew more cryptic as he stopped talking, stopped resisting the restraints, and stopped moving altogether. His body became rigid and immobile, and he stared for hours seemingly without blinking, his eyes glassy. It was almost as if he was completely paralyzed.
“Come on, Mac, snap out of this! I know you can hear me! Please…” Nikki said, sobbing, grabbing his chin and staring directly into the dark, vacant voids that were his eyes.
“MacGyver, it’s Pete. Can you hear me?” Pete asked, taking his hand and finding it stiff and heavy, as if every muscle and joint in his body was contracted.
“What’s wrong with him?” Nikki asked, sniffing and directing her red, bleary eyes at Dr. Ladd.
He gestured for both of them to get closer to him. “He seems to have fallen into a catatonic stupor,” he said quietly, glancing occasionally at his frozen, withdrawn patient who was unaware of their presence, still staring blankly. “He is unresponsive to external stimuli and has moved little in days and hasn’t spoken at all.”
“Well…w-what could have caused this?” Pete asked, beginning to feel that he was losing all control he had over the situation, no matter how minimal, tears in his eyes.
Both he and Nikki found themselves wishing to see an active MacGyver again, even if it was painful to watch him struggle against the restraints. At least they knew he was still aware, not completely lost to them. Now, he was little more than a body, an empty shell—breathing, but not truly alive, the mind and soul absent. Neither of them thought he would deteriorate to such a state.
“It’s complicated,” Dr. Ladd said. “Many factors could have contributed to it—his severe case of post traumatic stress disorder, depression…the problem is that we’ve been treating it using the usual medications aimed at easing the motionless, apathetic state, but none of them have been effective at managing it.”
“So…what are you saying? His condition is permanent?” Pete asked.
Dr. Ladd held up his hand to calm him. “There are other methods at our disposal,” he said. “We have more recourse for treatment than you may think—beyond medication.”
“Such as what? What do you mean?” Nikki asked.
Dr. Ladd studied their haggard, mournful expressions, reading the despair and desperation in their eyes. Confronting families of the mentally afflicted always seemed worse than confronting families whose relatives have died. He had a surgeon friend who disagreed with him, telling him that death was more final and therefore bleaker, but Dr. Ladd always felt that mental illness was a kind of death—brain death, the catatonic state one of the worst forms of it. He knew they wanted to hear about any available options that might cure MacGyver’s current state, wanting him back more than anything, but he wasn’t sure they were prepared to accept what he was going to suggest. Most families of patients he offered the treatment to recoiled in horror at the very notion, finding the treatment repulsive and barbaric, adamantly refusing to subject their loved ones to something they considered cruel, savage, and inhumane, something that had no place in the modern psychiatric profession, something that should have disappeared along with laughing at inmates and using them as a form of entertainment. They had seen the movies where the treatment was employed. They knew its destructive power. For that very reason, many of them feared committing their relatives, even if they had no choice, unable to manage them any longer and wishing them to receive the best treatment rather than ending up homeless on the streets, howling at buildings. If they could afford treatment for their mentally ill relative, they would do it—but most of the time, they would never consent to that one most misunderstood, most controversial, and most reviled of treatments.
“Electroconvulsive therapy,” he said, muttering it under his breath as if he were in church and accidentally happened to say a profane word, hoping God would not overhear his blasphemy.
Pete and Nikki looked at each other, each reacting with horror as he knew they would.
“Are you suggesting that we shock him?” Pete asked, raising his voice angrily. “Do you know what that could do to him?”
“I didn’t even know they still used it,” Nikki said. “I…I thought they discovered it was too damaging to the brain.”
Dr. Ladd was used to such comments, hearing them often, and as always, he had to counteract their objections with statistics and research. “I assure you, the technology has progressed since it was first used,” he said. “It has a high success rate at treating all kinds of psychiatric disorders, including catatonia, and studies have indicated its impact on the brain is minimal. I can furnish you with the research if you’d like, so you can make a more informed decision. Remember, I cannot recommend or administer this form of treatment on MacGyver if I do not have your consent to do so. There are many prickly legal and ethical issues to consider, and I assure you, this treatment is rarely used unless absolutely necessary. Given MacGyver’s current condition, he is barely able to function, making it difficult for us to feed him or give him enough fluids. It’s an emergency situation, some might say life-threatening. The electrical pulses they use in the therapy are not. Normally, I would also have to get MacGyver’s consent to perform the treatment as well, but since he cannot respond, we would have to get a legal petition for involuntary treatment, stating he cannot eat or drink due to his catatonic state and his life is in danger.”
His explanation seemed to calm Pete’s outrage and Nikki’s initial shock.
“What are the potential risks?” Pete asked quietly, staring at the floor. MacGyver’s brain was already adversely affected—he did not want to make it worse, especially if there was a chance he could return to sanity.
Dr. Ladd sighed. “I won’t tell you that there aren’t some side effects,” he said. “Usually, the patient remains in a state of confusion for awhile, but it doesn’t last long. More serious effects could include some memory loss.”
“Oh God,” Nikki said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “No, we can’t do this to Mac. Absolutely not.”
“I’ll try the medications on him again,” Dr. Ladd said. “However, if I cannot get him to respond to them, we may have no other alternative. He will continue to remain motionless, slowly starving himself to death from neglect of his own body if we do not do something to help him.”
“I understand, Doctor,” Pete said, looking at MacGyver, hoping for some sudden, miraculous transformation, but he remained still, staring. “I’d like to read the research you have on the treatment. Provide Nikki with a copy, as well.”
Nikki’s eyes widened. “You’re not seriously considering doing this to him, are you?” She asked.
“I don’t know, Nikki,” he said. “I do know that we have to use whatever means necessary to get MacGyver well. His condition is becoming far more serious than any of us ever thought it would. Maybe if we read more of the background and studies conducted on the therapy, we’ll be better educated about its uses and make a clearer, rational, and better decision for him.”
Nikki sighed, looking back sadly at MacGyver’s stiff body and staring eyes. “I just can’t imagine…” she said. “He would never want us to do it.”
Her lower lip trembled as she once again remembered her grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease, slowly dying painfully, her family debating whether or not to end her misery. She had never signed a living will, a “do not resuscitate” order, or anything that would have helped guide them into making the best decision that was compatible with her wishes. They didn’t know what her wishes were. She never made them known. MacGyver was similar that way, a man who could despite his affability and charm be so reticent, so private that there was always something slightly enigmatic about him.
“Maybe not,” Pete said, “but I do know he would at least want us to check out the facts and review all angles before we made any rash emotional decisions either way.”
Nikki looked back at him, smiling slightly. Another contradiction in MacGyver’s personality presented itself to her in Pete’s words. Always improvisational and creative out in the field, MacGyver nevertheless did his research. A skeptical man, he wanted to know all the details and facts before jumping into anything, not quite as spontaneous as he sometimes seemed on the surface.
“You’re probably right,” she said.
“I’ll send you all the literature I can on the subject,” Dr. Ladd said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Pete said. “We appreciate it.”
***
Nikki and Pete spent many late nights in his office, pouring over the documents from medical journals on studies of electroconvulsive therapy, its benefits, its success rates, its risks. Investigation into the bridge explosion had not become irrelevant, but because MacGyver’s situation seemed more urgent, it was reassigned to other Phoenix officials for the time being, freeing up Nikki’s and Pete’s time to consider therapy options for their sick friend. Meanwhile, Dr. Ladd continued his exhaustive, almost Herculean efforts to get MacGyver to respond to drug therapy, with little to no success. He remained locked in his catatonic stupor, losing weight, slowly withering away, the hospital staff unable to do much for him. Pete finished one more discouraging phone call with the psychiatrist when he at last made up his mind.
“I think we should do it,” he said.
“Are you serious?” Nikki asked.
“Look, you’ve read all the same studies I have. The majority of them say that the treatment is effective and the risk is minimal. If this is what it will take to bring MacGyver out of his trance, then we should do it.”
“I still don’t know…”
“Nikki, he could be dying. Dr. Ladd tells me he’s still not responding to medication. He’s already lost some weight from not eating. We can’t afford to wait much longer.”
Nikki nodded solemnly, knowing he was right. She still wondered what MacGyver would decide if he was capable of doing so. She remembered sitting with him in the padded room when he told her he had wanted to die when he was in captivity under El Diablo, and how she had told him he didn’t really mean that. He was a fighter who had somehow amazingly survived one of the worst accounts of torture she had ever read about, and now he had another hurdle to overcome. If it meant that he had to endure electroconvulsive therapy to do it, then…she could only hope it would work, that they weren’t once again wasting their time with another therapy that would prove ineffective or make him worse.
“All right,” she said quietly, staring at the journal articles. “Let’s make the necessary legal arrangements.”
***
Dr. Ladd performed the treatment on his patient, supervising every step of it carefully to make sure no errors were made and that all went smoothly. MacGyver was given anesthetics and muscle relaxants which made him close his constantly staring, expressionless eyes. He now looked like he was sleeping, even though his body was still slightly rigid. Electrodes were placed on either side of his head.
“Are we ready?” He asked the nurses in the room with him, prepared to monitor MacGyver once the electrically induced seizure began, insuring that he would not hurt himself.
“We’re ready, Doctor,” the head nurse said.
Dr. Ladd looked briefly down at his patient, hoping he was doing the right thing, knowing that Pete and Nikki felt the same way. “Begin the procedure,” he said, sighing.
The electric pulses began, sending MacGyver’s body into convulsions where it before had been still and inactive for many days. The spasms sent him flopping around on the bed like a fish deprived of water. His back arched as he pulled away from the bed, his body jerking, his limbs tightening. The seizure was brief, and when it was over, MacGyver collapsed back onto the bed, limp and unconscious.
“Take him back to his room and try to make him comfortable,” Dr. Ladd said. “I’ll inform his friends of the situation and let them know that they can come visit him within the hour. In the meantime, monitor his condition and let me know if anything changes.”
“Yes, Doctor,” the head nurse said.
Dr. Ladd watched as they removed the electrodes from MacGyver’s head and prepared to wheel his gurney back to his room. He didn’t know what outcome to expect, not knowing whether the treatment would help revive him from his catatonic stupor or make him worse. He didn’t want them to take MacGyver back to the room with restraints, but he didn’t know if his patient would once again become violent and unpredictable should the therapy successfully unlock him from his catatonia. As of that moment, all he could do, and all Nikki and Pete could do, was wait.
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
