be certain you’re able to accurately answer the background questions I mentioned earlier. That sound okay with you?”
“Okay.” Asking my permission is a lie. I’m low on coffee.
“Do you know where you are, Daniel?”
“I’m in a hospital.” I’m at Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian. Saw it on the scrubs (antifreeze blue-green, professional, calming) but don’t want to look too observant. They think your intelligence is out of bounds, they get a bigger notebook and order lunch.
“Do you know which hospital?”
I shake my head, push my hair out of my eyes.
“L.A., somewhere.”
He nods, writes shorthand annotations, HG and three x’s, circles the third x beside my abbreviated answer.
“Do you have any idea where in this hospital you are?”
“I’m on the third floor, I think. No windows in here, so it’s hard to tell anything else.” False. I know exactly where I am. Wallace walked me three hundred and thirty feet from the emergency room and took an elevator up four flights. Two right turns and three left, so I’m facing south. If there were a window in here, I’d be looking down onto Fountain Avenue.
I lean back, cross my legs and fold my hands. Mirror. Trust me.
“How do you know you’re on the third floor?” PM, three x’s and circles the third, again.
“The elevator.”
“Very good.”
The Evaluator shifts in his seat, maintaining an open posture. He’s sitting at the corner of the table adjacent to me, instead of opposite. Legs uncrossed, left elbow resting on the arm of the chair (my chair has no arms—Wallace put me here), left hand rubbing his chin or mustache. His torso is exposed to say I’m not hiding anything. The most important thing to remember is that all of the pop-psychology magazine articles about body language are wrong. Crossing one’s arms or legs can indicate comfort or honesty just as much as it can defensiveness or barriers or deception. What’s important is knowing when to change body language, and how frequently.
My file is out of reach, and he writes on his yellow pad, right-handed. Top left margin starting out at one point five inches and swelling inward as he moves down the page, a pattern that prematurely forces him to start a new sheet. He writes in cursive but keeps his letters far apart from each other.
“Do you know what day it is?” he asks.
“Tuesday, the eighteenth.”
“You’re certain.”
“Yeah.” I don’t give up more than I have to, but I can’t appear obstinate or paranoid, either.
“How is it you’re certain of the date?”
“My headache started Friday. They usually last four days and I was fine yesterday when I woke up here.” I mime with my hands, pointing to here when I say here. Hidden hands say liar.
At the mention of the previous headaches, he flips back two pages, makes a note where we’ll get back to that later and returns. He checks my file, resumes his inward creep down the legal pad. Pen poised, thumb and forefinger rubbing his moustache, he continues.
“Okay, can you tell me the month and year?”
I shift in my seat, glance to my left because I’m remembering a fact. “It’s August, 1987.” Sigh, clench my left hand, then open. I’m doing exasperated. Without words I’m saying Why are you asking me this?
His first priority is to find out if I’m oriented, achieved via basic questions about where I am and how I got here, what day of the week or what year it is or who’s president. Same as when a field medic is checking to see if you’re coherent.
His next task is to establish that I know why I’m here, which tells him I’m aware of what I’ve done. That is, what did I do? And do I know that I did it? Hopefully, he’ll link my why back to my assessment of reality.
It’s a simple equation at heart, a clean chain of logic that forms a circle and bites its own tail. Question one: Do you know where you are? If you say a hospital, they can assume, for the time being, that you are sane. If they ask you if you know how you got there, and you say I cut myself, you’ve proven that you know right from wrong and are responsible for your actions. If they ask you why you cut yourself and you say to stop the voices in my head, that blows their first conclusion and you’re gone. But close the circle equation and you’re halfway home.
“Daniel, I’d like you to count backwards from one hundred, in increments of seven, please. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“As far as you can, whenever you’re ready.”
I have to act like it’s not easy, but that I can still do it. “Ninety-three … eighty-six…” I close my eyes for effect, mime with my hands. “ … seventy-nine … seventy-two … sixty-five…”
“Thank you. That’s far enough.” They almost always stop you between five and eight numbers into a count.
Serial Sevens is a memory test, seven being the average number that can occupy one’s short-term memory. Poor short-term memory is a big indicator for depression, and I need him to rule it out.
It’s easy for me, like any other number. I can shuffle them in my head, easy as breathing. I can quantify objects and their units of measure with my eyes. Distance. Dimension. Angle. Volume. I know from looking. Measuring or counting doesn’t describe it. I just know, in a blink. Been doing it since I was a kid.
The remaining tests: Registration. Attention. Recall. Language. Copying. The Evaluator names three objects that I’ll be asked to recall later. Ball. Tree. House. Then, Follow this instruction and holds up a card: CLOSE YOUR EYES written in fat marker. I close my eyes. Good. Now open. Take this piece of paper in your right hand. Good. Fold it in half. Now place it on the floor. Good. Holds up his pencil. Can you tell me what this is? I tell him. Points to his watch, same question. It’s your watch. What were the three words I gave you earlier? Ball. Tree. House. Usually one syllable, never more than two.
The white male doctors from middle-class backgrounds always pick Dick-and-Jane nouns: cup, shoe, chair, grass, dog, cat, bird. Those with no children always pick children’s nouns: Ball, tree, house. The others, those from poor backgrounds who have struggled to get where they are, tell an abbreviated life story in single syllables: truck, street, fire, door, stairs, man, car. Female doctors wearing paisley scarves and Southwestern jewelry are more abstract: spring, fall, mom, dad, pet, sun, moon, rain. And they’re the toughest ones to fool.
The Evaluator hands me a clean sheet of paper, a felt marker—can’t hurt someone or cover any mistakes—and a card showing two intersecting pentagons.
“Now Daniel, I’d like you to copy this image exactly as you see it. Make certain you duplicate every point, and that the two objects intersect.”
There’s a lot happening here. He’s testing perception, coordination,
