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Meeting Dr. Lamb Ben Ashby
I wasn’t sure what to make of Dr. Lamb when we first met. He had a
clunky face and a tall, jerky frame. His deep brown eyes obscured his pupils, pinpoints behind small wire-frame glasses that clung to his nose. His thick black hair fell into messy sideburns that travelled just a bit too far down his cheeks. Dr. Lamb greeted me with a big wave and slow, lisp-filled speech. He laughed at his own corny jokes with a sort of high-pitched shout. I saw a leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet hanging from the wall. A golden plaque on his door read “Jackson Lamb, D.O., Psychiatrist”. I decided that Dr. Lamb was a work of compensation, a man retelling his life after having finally made it somewhere. I was unimpressed, and it showed. My normally timid, deferring clinical demeanor became loud and confident. I found myself trying to finish his sentences early, and often being right.
I sat along the wall and watched Dr. Lamb conduct his first interview
of the morning. The girl was in all black and angry. She was hurting herself, regularly skipping school, and trying a lot of drugs. Her mom was getting desperate; they fought all the time. I imagined myself as the psychiatrist, finding a medicine to tone down the child’s behaviors and giving clever parenting tips to her mom. I would be cordial, but firm. Instead, Dr. Lamb was energetic and friendly, in an awkward sort of way. He nodded enthusiastically to their every answer. He seemed to completely ignore the family dynamic and push forward with unearned optimism. About twenty minutes into the interview, the girl smiled. By the end of the appointment, she had said thank you to her mom. They left with a plan, medicine, and confidence. On the way out, the girl turned and asked, “Do you have a motorcycle?” Dr. Lamb chuckled, “Oh no, it’s a moped! Better for the environment, and still quite zippy if you’re going downhill. My wife and I share it; purple wasn’t necessarily the color I would have picked.” The family laughed again and left.
The next girl we saw had tried to commit suicide the day before. She
lay curled on the couch, hardly talking. I felt sadness push its way into every
