Doctor Donald Awaits You

Dee Burton

Dr. Donald was an imitation of a person. Not insincere, phony or psychopathic—although there was that about him also—but a genuine imitation of a person, like one might expect to find in the twenty-second century, or on another planet, or in an old Bradbury novel. When you met Dr. Donald, you knew right away the man must have been conceived in a test tube.

Aside from being a person-impersonator, Dr. Donald was a renowned psychiatrist. He’d attained recognition when his voluminous thesis on the etiology of folie à deux was popularized as a self-help book, titled “I’m Bizarre, You’re Bizarre.” This early acclaim prompted Dr. Donald towards increasingly audacious writings and the bolder his assertions, the greater the number of his followers.

In the inner world of neo-Freudian analysis Dr. Donald was known as a shrink’s shrink. Almost all of his patients were shrinks: practicing shrinks, budding shrinks, has-been shrinks, would-havebeen shrinks. Stanley was an exception.

Stanley was just an ordinary guy, who, like most ordinary guys, had heard of Dr. Donald, had seen in print the name, “Donald B. Donald, M.D.” He had sought out Dr. Donald for help in his relationship with Beth. Theirs was a quality marriage, but lately Stanley had been finding it difficult to keep up his end of the quality. He’d come to feel, not overwhelmed, but perplexed, dismayed, and fatigued by his wife. As he put it to Beth: “I want Dr. Donald to help me be a better husband to you.”

Beth herself was mildly disparaging of the idea. “Fish-head,” she said. “Only a fish-head would go for marriage counseling by himself.” In the end, though, Dr. Donald’s prestigious reputation won out.

“Donald B. Donald, M.D.:” here it was again, this time engraved on a gold plaque next to the impressive mahogany door. Stanley felt a chill: he was going to see the best! There was no telling what mysteries might appear and then unravel, what rare insights might pop into his mind, what new depth of experiencing he might attain, with the assistance of the wisdom of Dr. Donald.

“Donald B. Donald, M.D., Donald B. Donald, M.D.,” Stanley whispered to himself as he pulled open the heavy door and stepped into the waiting room.

A thin woman with a white dress and red hair sat in back of a plexiglass desk, watching miniature television on her watch. She turned down the volume and rose as Stanley approached.

Stanley stood up straight and spoke in a full-volume voice. “I’m Stanley Block and I have a six o’clock appointment with Dr. Donald,” he said.

The receptionist gave him an exasperated look. “Do you have PTV?” she asked.

“Uh—I don’t think so,” Stanley said. “I haven’t been diagnosed, but—“

“No, no, no, no, no!” the receptionist exclaimed, wagging the index finger of her right hand once for each of the no’s (though subsequent to, rather than in accompaniment with the words).

“PTV is Psychiatry Television,” she explained. “An interactive network. Do you have it?”

“I must—we get them all,” Stanley answered proudly. “Then hurry on home!” she scolded. “Dr. Donald awaits you.”

Stanley tore into his home and turned on the tube just as his telephone rang. He grabbed the receiver. A recorded voice instructed him to turn down the volume to his video and turn up that of his speaker phone. Stanley adjusted his reception just in time to hear a man’s melodic voice say: “Good evening, Stanley.”

Stanley scooted up to within inches of the screen. An orangehaired man with dull grey eyes and a charcoal suit sat stiffly in a large brown leather chair.

“Good evening, Dr. Donald,” Stanley said.

“We’re quite informal here at PTV,” Dr. Donald said. “That is to say, we’re rather casual. You may call me Dr. Donald.”

“Of course, Dr. Donald,” Stanley said, beaming.

“Tell me, Stanley, how is it I may help you? That is to say, what can I do for you?”

“I hardly know where to start,” Stanley said. “I guess you could say I have a kind of marital problem.”

“You…say…marital problem,” Dr. Donald said slowly. “Is it a woman with whom you are engaged in a relationship?”

“Exactly,” Stanley said, pleased that their communication was getting off to such a four-star beginning.

“I want to make one thing clear from the start, though,” Stanley quickly added. “Beth is a remarkable woman.”

“Aren’t they all, though,” Dr. Donald said, and seemed to give a little snort afterwards, although he could have just been clearing his nasal passages. “Go on, Stanley,” he said.

As well as he could, Stanley described some of the situations that troubled him: the incident with Beth and the Kellogg ad exec, for example, and the one with her and the podiatrist. Stanley took his time and freely associated.

“Beth and I have a quality relationship, Dr. Donald,” Stanley concluded. “But lately—I’m ashamed as hell to admit this—but it’s almost as though I’m angry at her. I’m a sick man, Dr. Donald. Help me, please.”

“Hmm,” Dr. Donald said, and there was a deceptive appearance of warmth in his smile. “For sure, for sure I can help you. Why did you marry Beth?”

“I didn’t want an illicit symbiosis!” Stanley declared. Dr. Donald stared in stony unappreciation as Stanley shrank back from the TV screen, red-faced at his own silliness. Just when Stanley’s embarrassment was nearing an unbearable level, Dr. Donald smiled suddenly. Stanley, relieved, took a deep breath; his tension dissipated until he was back to being just his usual anxious self. It occurred to him fleetingly that it was odd that Dr. Donald didn’t open his mouth when he smiled.

“The problem with your relationship,” Dr. Donald said, now quickly and authoritatively, “is too much intimacy.”

“Too much intimacy?”

“For sure, and not enough distance. When one of you speaks, the other automatically gets sucked in.”

“I get drawn in—“ Stanley began.

“Sucked in!” Dr. Donald corrected him, sharply. “Sucked in! Don’t be afraid of the word!”

“Sucked in, I get sucked in,” Stanley repeated dutifully.

“For sure,” Dr. Donald said, and as though in reward, flashed Stanley another tight-lipped smile. “We can begin work immediately,” he went on, “with two infallible techniques.”

“Two,” Stanley repeated, with mounting anxiety. “Technique One is white bread,” Dr. Donald stated. “White bread?”

“Do you remember when you were a child, Stanley,” Dr. Donald began, with exaggerated patience. “That is to say, do you recall when you were a boy, that white bread—processed white bread—was eaten?”

“Ah, white bread: Wonder’s enriched white bread!” Stanley answered with enthusiasm.

“Correct. Now, whenever Beth is about to suck you in, you must quickly think ‘white bread’.”

Stanley waited for Dr. Donald to elaborate. But “Technique Two” were the next words out of Dr. Donald’s mouth. “Technique Two is a secret.”

“You won’t tell me what Technique Two is?” Stanley, wounded, asked.

“Technique Two is your secret!” Dr. Donald snapped, obviously annoyed by Stanley’s therapeutic naiveté. “It is vital that you have a secret from Beth. And your secret shall be the content of our sessions.”

“Ah,” Stanley said, timidly adding: “But how can Beth and I decrease our intimacy and increase our distance if I’m the only one who knows we’re doing it?”

Once more Dr. Donald smiled, but this time more fully and with considerably greater satisfaction. “It is characteristic of the female mind,” he said, with precise enunciation, “to follow the lead of the male mind.”

“Good God,” Stanley thought. But then, “Donald B. Donald, M.D.”

Stanley sped down the street as though on skates, eager to get home and try out his new techniques with Beth. Remembering he had been at home, he turned around and sped back.

Beth was in the kitchen making dinner. She stood behind a round oak table gently kneading a mound of dough on a marble slab. She wore a pink gingham dress with big puffed sleeves and a sweetheart neckline that revealed, across her left shoulder, a satiny bra strap, also pink. Her fine blond hair formed ringlets that fell gracefully all the

way to her waist. Her face was rosy with the pleasure she derived from her domestic chores. She smiled at Stanley.

Stanley exhaled deeply. The sight of Beth, as always, made him momentarily forget everything else. He looked around the kitchen. A box of newly ripened strawberries sat on a counter top and next to it, a bowl of freshly whipped cream. On the far side of the room, a log fire burned, reminding Stanley how nice it would be if they had a fireplace. A pot of stew cooked slowly over a low flame, the aroma of fine herbs sweetening the air. The red ceramic tea pot whistled softly, as though to itself. The cat, Matilda, was in the corner, having kittens.

The scene of bubbling domesticity inspired by Beth was all the more impressive in that Stanley had only been gone two minutes. The thing about Beth, though, was that she set a spell, and then she broke it. Tonight was no exception.

“Our new super turns me on,” Beth said.

Stanley’s mind raced feverishly. Turns you on? he thought. What are you—a robot? a Barbie doll? an iPhone? But he didn’t speak; he bent his lips inward and pressed them together tightly in imitation of Dr. Donald.

“He makes me feel warm inside,” Beth continued, emphatically adding: “I mean warm as in hot.”

Think white bread! Think white bread! Stanley instructed himself desperately. Turns you on? Your switch is jammed like—No, no. White bread! Stanley thought. Thin-sliced, diet-sized, enriched white bread; nutritious; Wonder’s is the best; well-balanced; your children will love it.

“I’d like to sleep with him,” Beth said louder, appearing to be frustrated by Stanley’s silence.

“Hmm,” Stanley said, tight-lipped, forcing his mind to focus on visions of Wonder Bread: cold loaves, freshly wrapped—he could see them now—sliding down a chute onto a conveyor belt.

“He reminds me of that man in the porno flick we saw,” Beth went on. “You remember, Stanley—in ‘The Naughty Victorians’—you remember: the white guy with the black—“

“White bread!” Stanley bellowed, flailing his arms and running from the room.

Life got easier for Stanley with each session with Dr. Donald. At the end of each meeting he felt a little more of the self-control that the distinguished psychiatrist himself manifested so well. And each day, Stanley’s life with Beth had a little less in it than the day before. His trust was divided these days. But whenever that started to trouble him, Stanley reminded himself of the progress he was making with the white-bread technique.

The thrill of his relationship with Dr. Donald made Stanley ache deeply in a manner unfamiliar to him. He’d tried to describe it to Beth, but her resistance to understanding had been immediately apparent.

“Dr. Donald makes me feel like a boy again,” Stanley, hunched over in the loft bed, had explained. But Beth had developed, of late, a strange habit of making little comments under her breath about Dr. Donald. Just this morning, for instance, Stanley had overheard her mutter that the famous psychiatrist waddled when he walked. Still, Stanley was confident that the joke had been made with fondness and an appropriate reverence for the doctor. In fact, as the image of

Dr. Donald waddling across his office at the end of a session passed through Stanley’s mind, he, too, had to laugh, keeping his mouth respectfully shut, of course. And now, as he walked nervously around the room, awaiting his therapy session, Stanley turned his toes outward slightly and bent his knees a little more than usual. “For slim men like myself and Dr. Donald,” Stanley thought, “waddling is actually a rather attractive gait.”

The telephone rang and the image of Dr. Donald appeared in Stanley’s living room.

“It is apparent that you have made significant progress, Stanley,” Dr. Donald began. “That is to say, it is clear that you have improved considerably.”

Stanley glowed. “And you are now at a crossroad,” the psychiatrist concluded. Stanley shivered. “A crossroad?”

“For sure,” Dr. Donald said. “It is important now for us to see just how far you’ve gone, that is to say, come. If you’ve come as far as I think you have, you have made a complete transformation; your relationship with Beth will never be as it was before.”

Stanley trembled. He didn’t grasp all that Dr. Donald was saying, but he knew he was on the brink of an extraordinary experience.

“Have you had any problems with Beth this week?” Dr. Donald asked.

“Nothing I couldn’t control!” Stanley answered proudly. As an afterthought, he added: “She has expressed some concerns—you know, just little worries—about what goes on in my therapy. Of course, I haven’t revealed anything—”

“What’s it been saying about me, Stanley,” Dr. Donald interrupted. His chin and shoulders twitched slightly and, to Stanley’s surprise, he even seemed to fidget in his chair.

“N-nothing, really, Dr. Donald,” Stanley said. “She just has some doubts—I mean, nothing bad—there’s just a couple of things—”

“Say what it said! Say it! Say it! Say it!” Dr. Donald almost screamed. He grasped both sides of his brown leather chair and made stamping movements with his feet, which did not quite reach the floor.

“N-nothing bad—I mean, well, two things—that’s all—just— just—“ Stanley, tongue-tied, searched for words. Finally, in compliance with the psychiatrist’s request, he used Beth’s own words. “Your competence and your integrity,” Stanley blurted out. “That’s all, Beth doubts your competence and your integrity.”

Dr. Donald’s whole body, even his brown leather chair, began to tremble. His eyeballs spun round and round like the silver bells in the little clown’s head Stanley had had as a child. The trembling turned into vibration, so rapid that now Stanley could not even focus on the psychiatrist.

Dr. Donald!” Stanley called out. “Dr. Donald!” But it was too late. Stanley’s telephone went suddenly silent, and the words “Please Stand By” appeared on his television screen.

“Forgive me, Dr. Donald!” Stanley cried. “Forgive me, I didn’t know what I was saying.”

Amazingly, within a flash, regular programming was resumed. Inexplicably, a flag of the United States of America had been hastily rolled in as a backdrop. Dr. Donald, for no apparent reason, now stood behind a podium, onto which something resembling the Presidential Seal had been slapped. Holding on to the podium, Dr. Donald weaved slightly back and forth. He had a look on his face that on another man might have seemed dopey.

Dr. Donald appeared in close-up now. He looked Stanley straight in the camera. His voice was reproachful, confident, assertive.

“Stanley,” Dr. Donald said. “Your shrink is not a quack.” “I never doubted you!” Stanley cried out.

Stanley paced up and down the kitchen, waiting for Beth to get home. He alternately tore his hair, bit his nails and slammed his fists against the refrigerator. He was ashamed of his thoughtlessness at blurting out Beth’s foolish ideas, and he was enraged at Beth for leading him to hurt Dr. Donald. Trying to calm himself, he went back into the living room and turned on the television.

The news was halfway over. Still pacing, Stanley did not hear a word, until the following caught his attention: “…shocked by the death only moments ago of the renowned psychiatrist, Donald B. Donald.”

According to the news broadcast, there had been a shoot-out following a liquor store hold-up on the street where Dr. Donald lived. A police officer, attempting to protect innocent bystanders from getting caught in the cross-fire, had yelled: “Duck! Duck!”

“Don’t be a wiseguy,” Dr. Donald had said, wheeling around and receiving a bullet straight through the heart.

Stanley lay curled up in a corner by the sofa, both hands clutching the tassles of a toss cushion, stuffing them into his mouth. He chewed the tassles slowly, methodically. He had no idea how long he’d been there, when he felt Beth’s hands on his shoulders and became suddenly aware of her voice.

“Oh Stanley, I heard,” she said. “Are you all right?” Stanley was silent. “Everything will be okay,” she said. “You’ll get over this —you’ll see.”

“We’ll get you a new shrink,” Beth added. She put her arms all the way around Stanley’s neck. “And I’ll be faithful! Just tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Stanley said, and scooted up to a sitting position. Gingerly he pushed Beth’s hands away from his neck.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Beth asked.

Stanley paused a considerable time before answering. “I’m sure,” he said finally. Then, with a surge of confidence, he added: “That is to say, I’m certain.”

As he spoke, Stanley’s face took on an unfamiliar expression. His eyes manifested a dull, though not glazed look; an empty, but still conscious look: an expression that Beth, weeks later in the first session of her own therapy with a Lenovo Noir, would describe as “the look of an imitation of a person.”

Dee Burton is an American psychologist and writer living in Paris. Her books include I Dream of Woody (Wm Morrow), and her plays include Deep in the Soul of Disco (Aah! Capella Theatre, North Hollywood). Her first book, The Joy of Quitting, received a New York Public Library Award for youth books.