The Group
Doctor Manfred Hearne, the hospital director, was about to retire after devoting his life to his profession. Just days away from walking out the front door for the last time and heading south to warmer climes, he was about to meet the woman who would replace him, Dr. Consuela Morales, a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who came highly recommended because of her progressive ideas.
Good luck to her, Manfred thought somewhat cynically. She'll need it!
The director had been young once, too, and he had progressive ideas for his time, ideas that eventually fell by the wayside as the years marched on. Now, he shared George Orwell's opinion on progress: it is slow and invariably disappointing.
When Consuela arrived at the hospital for her first day on the job, she and the director spoke in his office for twenty minutes over coffee. Then he gave her a guided tour of the facilities, explaining the long-established hospital routines as they went along. No doubt there were several procedures the progressive new doctor would want to change.
"Ah, here's something you might find interesting," Dr. Hearne announced as they passed one of the multipurpose rooms where five patients were aimlessly milling about.
"What is it?" his colleague asked.
"A group session is about to begin. I wonder where Owen is."
A few minutes later, a man wearing a slightly outdated but obviously expensive suit, hurried down the hall toward them.
"Sorry I'm late," he apologized to the director.
Then, noticing the young woman beside him, he introduced himself.
"I'm Dr. Owen MacFadden. I'm just about to conduct a group session. Care to sit in on it?"
"I'd love to," Consuela replied, looking toward Manfred as though seeking his permission.
"We'll both observe," he told Owen. Then as they entered the room, he whispered to his replacement, "You're gonna like this."
Dr. Morales was put off by the elderly psychiatrist's amused attitude. There was certainly nothing humorous about mental health issues.
"Hello, everyone!" Owen called loudly, immediately getting the attention of the five patients in the room. "We have guests today. Dr. Hearne and Dr. Morales, the psychiatrist who will take his place when he leaves us, will be observing our session. Now, I don't want their presence to hinder our efforts in any way, so just pretend they're not in the room. Remember, we're here to speak our minds, so be straightforward and honest. And don't hold anything back."
The five patients expressed their agreement, some with words, others with a nod of the head.
"Good. Let's begin. Who wants to go first?" Dr. MacFadden asked.
"I will," a middle-aged woman who, except for her hospital-issued clothing, would not have looked out of place in the board room of a Fortune 500 company. "My name is Astrid, and I'm an addict."
Consuela was reminded of the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings she had observed during her Harvard days. As yet unfamiliar with the patients and their histories, she wondered whether the woman's problem was substance abuse. Her guess, if she were forced to make one, would be opioid addiction, a growing problem in America.
"Will you share your journey down the path of addiction with us, Astrid?" Dr. MacFadden asked.
"It began innocently enough."
"All addictions do, honey," Olivia Zellis, a sweet-looking, white-haired woman who could pass for Mrs. Claus, piped in.
"I suppose so. Anyway, like I said, it began innocently enough," Astrid Colville continued. "My husband was out of the country on a business trip—as usual."
Maybe it was alcohol, Consuela thought, revising her previous assumption. Lonely wife. Obviously has some money. Starts with a glass of wine at dinner, and then when her husband is away, the drinking escalates.
Thankfully, the psychiatrist was not called upon to give a diagnosis because she was dead wrong. The patient's addiction was to neither opioids nor alcohol. In fact, her illness could not technically be called substance abuse at all.
"I had finished reading my book and turned on the television," Astrid explained. "It's funny, but before then I never really watched it that much. I was a graduate of Radcliff; I sought more cultural forms of entertainment. My husband was the one who wanted it. He liked to catch up on the news before he went to bed. Anyway, I had nothing to do, so I turned the TV on. I scanned through the channels and found All About Eve with Bette Davis."
"Oh, I love that movie!" exclaimed Trisha Norcross, a thirty-two-year-old woman who Dr. Morales pegged to be a former high school cheerleader before becoming a soccer mom.
"I can't say I was actually hooked at that moment. I could have picked up the remote control at the end of the film, turned the TV off and gone to bed. But instead I stayed up to watch A Streetcar Named Desire."
"What a classic!" Trisha interrupted again. "I can still see Brando screaming up to Kim Hunter, 'Stella!'"
"Before I knew it, I was up all night watching Turner Classic Movies. On the Waterfront followed by The Maltese Falcon. I had a few hours' sleep, and then it started again. The Manchurian Candidate, Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life, The Grapes of Wrath. Suddenly, I couldn't get enough. Days went by, and my life revolved around TCM's schedule. I never left the house. I ate in front of the television, and showered or went to the bathroom only during the breaks between movies.
"At the end of the week, my husband came home. He found me sitting in the living room watching To Kill a Mockingbird. He immediately began complaining about the unmade bed, the dirty dishes in the sink and the unwashed laundry that was piled up in the bathroom. He demanded to know what I had been doing while he was in Tokyo. Naturally, I told him the truth: I was watching television."
"I'll bet he hit the roof when he heard that," the grandmotherly Olivia Zellis surmised.
"Oddly enough, he wasn't that angry—not then, anyway. But I could no longer control my habit; it was controlling me. I made the bed, did the dishes and washed and dried the laundry, but only between watching Casablanca, Angels with Dirty Faces, Lost Horizon, In Old Chicago and The Miracle Worker. Dinner that night was frozen pizza. After all, I didn't have time to prepare anything else before The Hunchback of Notre Dame started. It was the lack of homecooked meals that finally got to my husband.
"To his credit, he tried to talk some sense into me first. He even suggested I get help for my problem. Naturally, I denied having a problem. But, as all of you know, it's impossible to hide such an addiction. I mean we're not like alcoholics or pill-poppers who can keep a secret stash of contraband hidden from their loved ones."
"I tried to," Kyle Epperson, a young man barely out of his teens said. "I tried watching TV on my computer and then my iPhone, but people got wise to what I was doing."
"Eventually," Astrid continued, "his patience wore thin. He said he couldn't take it anymore and gave me an ultimatum. If I didn't turn off the television, he would leave me. I'm ashamed to admit, it wasn't an easy choice. On one hand, there was the man I was married to for more than ten years. On the other, James Cagney, Tyrone Power, Laurence Olivier, Marlon Brando, Humphry Bogart .... How was I ever to choose between being a homemaker and watching Wuthering Heights?
"In the end, it was a matter of survival. Despite my fancy education, I never worked a day in my life, nor was I eager to join the workforce this late in life. Besides, if I did go to work, I wouldn't be able to watch television anyway. I had to kick the habit. I tried doing it cold turkey, but I didn't have any luck. So, here I am."
"Thank you, Astrid," Dr. MacFadden said. "Who else would like to share with us? Anyone?"
* * *
The young man volunteered to go next by raising his hand as though he were in school.
"Good," Owen said. "Whenever you're ready."
"My name is Kyle, and I'm an addict. I hate sounding like one of those losers who blame their parents for the way their lives turned out, but the purpose of this session is to be honest. I was raised by two women: a single, working mom and a grandmother. Before I was old enough to go to school, my mother used to drop me off at her mother's house when she went to work. My grandmother's idea of babysitting was to put me in front of the television with an assortment of snacks. When my mother picked me up in the evening, she took me home and did the same.
"Don't get me wrong. I don't blame her for being a bad parent. She worked all day, and when she came home, she had to cook and clean. She didn't have time to take me to the park or to read to me. My earliest childhood memories were not of family outings but of watching Barney and Sesame Street. I never spent time with kids my own age until I went to kindergarten. Unfortunately, by that time I was overweight from eating junk food and lack of exercise, and the other kids picked on me because of my size."
"You're not overweight now," Trisha, the soccer mom type, noted.
"No. I started slimming down in middle school. That's when I became involved in sports."
"So, you were no longer a TVaholic then?"
"Yes and no. During the school year, the only time I watched cartoons was on Saturday mornings. But when summer came along and I was home during the day, I was right back to watching them on a daily basis. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became my heroes—Cowabunga, Dude! That was Michelangelo's favorite expression, if you didn't already know."
"Michelangelo? The painter?" Astrid, the Radcliff grad, asked with surprise.
"No, the turtle," Kyle laughed. "All of them were named after famous artists. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo."
"Funny names for turtles."
"I suppose my addiction really took hold during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. My mom had gotten a new job by then and was making a lot more money. One of the first things she did was sign up for Netflix. The second thing she did was buy a Roku streaming device."
The eyes of the other members of the group lit up at the word streaming. It was a concept they all knew and loved. Streaming was to them what mainlining was to a junkie.
"Suddenly, I could watch cartoons whenever I wanted. Even better, they were commercial free! I soon lost interest in sports. And, no, I didn't gain the weight back because I also lost interest in eating. I ate just enough to keep me alive. Between watching DVDs and streaming, I pretty much lived in front of my TV. I binged South Park, The Simpsons and Family Guy all summer long. Then came September, and the trouble started.
"I don't know if any of you are familiar with the group Green Day, but they have a song that goes, 'Summer has come and passed. The innocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends.' That pretty much summed up my existence. The summer was over, and my life sucked! I never really minded going to school before but now I did. I hated sitting in class studying algebra and chemistry when all I really wanted to do was watch cartoons."
Although none of the other patients had a fondness for animation, they could all relate to the problem of having real life interfere with their watching television.
"I began cutting school. Soon my grades dropped, and the guidance counsellor called in my mother. She threatened to get rid of the Roku and cancel the Netflix account. I had no choice but to put my nose to that old grindstone. I was restricted to watching only one hour of television a night. One hour! That's only two episodes of most cartoons. Even when you take out the commercials, you can barely squeeze in a third.
"My efforts paid off, however. My grades did go up. But then came December and Christmas break. I was right back to bingeing. My reprieve lasted only a week. When school started again in January, it was harder to break the habit. I started taking my cell phone to school and sneaking peeks at clips of my favorite cartoons on YouTube. But like I said before, people got wise to what I was doing. All hell broke loose! I was hauled down to the principal's office and suspended. My mother kept her word; she got rid of Roku and Netflix. I reacted by threatening to kill myself, and ... here I am—stuck in this place and put on suicide watch."
"Thank you, Kyle," Dr. MacFadden said. "I'm sure that wasn't easy for you."
* * *
"I'll go next and get it over with," volunteered a man who bore a striking resemblance to actor Paul Giamatti. "My name is Cleavon, and, like the rest of you, I'm an addict. There was nothing extraordinary about my life before I became addicted. Up until then I rarely watched 'the boob tube' or 'the idiot box.' I was happily married with two kids, both of whom were out of college and living on their own. I think the only TV programs I ever watched were Patriots football and an occasional Red Sox game.
"Then I had a head-on collision with a drunk driver on I-95 that put me in the hospital for two months. Talk about your hell on earth! Being forced to lie in a bed day in and day out with nothing to do but watch TV. Yeah, I know. Most of you would love to be in that position, but not me—not then. I quickly grew tired of reading and doing crossword puzzles. With few options, I was forced to turn to television.
"The hospital's limited number of stations offered little in terms of daytime programming. Talk shows, cartoons—sorry, kid, but they're not my cup of tea—and game shows. I decided watching The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal were preferable to The View and The Talk. What finally hooked me, though, were the evening shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. They were shows I could play along with.
"At the end of two months, I was released from the hospital. However, I was still bedbound. At least at home, I had cable TV and my savior—or was it my demon?—the Game Show Network. Now I could watch reruns of The Match Game and Family Feud as well. My period of convalescence was when my dependency really began. The remote control was always within reach because I frequently surfed through more than a hundred channels until I found a game show. Deal or No Deal, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Hollywood Squares and Weakest Link: I watched them all faithfully.
"By the time I was able to go back to work, I no longer wanted to leave the house. My wife pleaded with me to get back on my feet, both literally and figuratively. When I refused, my son stepped in and arranged for a family intervention. Two paramedics came into my house and brought me here.
"That's my story—short and sweet. Now, who wants to go next?"
* * *
The woman Dr. Morales believed to be a soccer mom reluctantly spoke up.
"My name is Trisha, and I'm an addict—at least that's what my doctor says."
She's in denial, the new hospital director thought.
"Unlike Astrid and Kyle, I can't put the blame for my excessive TV watching on someone else, nor did I have any family or friends arrange an intervention like Cleavon did. I'm thirty-three years old. I've never been married or engaged, and I don't have any friends. My world revolved around my job, which wouldn't have been too bad if it was a good job. But it wasn't. I was a secretary working for an insurance company. You can't much worse than that. My hobbies were not exactly exciting either. I spent my evenings reading romance novels and doing jigsaw puzzles.
"There came a time when I wanted to try something new, so I took up needlework. As I was crocheting myself a scarf one evening, I turned on the television. It was meant to be background noise only, but it didn't work out that way. The Bachelor was on, and I soon put down my crochet hook to watch it. I enjoyed it so much that I tuned in the following week, and the next, and the next until the end of the season.
"That series opened the door to other reality TV shows for me. Survivor, The Bachelorette, The Biggest Loser, The Apprentice. It seemed just about every network and cable station was jumping on the bandwagon. And celebrities got their own reality shows: Ozzy Osbourne, Hulk Hogan, Gene Simmons, the Kardashians ...."
"Oh, please!" Astrid exclaimed with disgust. "If I had to watch the Kardashians, I'd blow up my television."
"Excuse me, but not all of us went to Radcliff," Trisha said defensively.
"Now, now," Dr. MacFadden warned. "Let's not be judgmental, ladies."
"I began watching more and more television. Shows like The Real Housewives spawned spin-offs. It's funny that real life was getting in the way of reality TV, so I began taking time off from work. I quickly went through my two weeks' vacation and five personal days, so I took the occasional sick day off. They only amounted to three or four a year, but then it became six or seven and then one a month, two a month.
"Due to my poor attendance, I was put on 'marginal' status. That was a warning that meant if unless I shaped up, I would be shipped out. I tried to do better—I really did. It was just too hard. If I had a family or friends to give me the emotional support to make the break with TV, maybe things might have been different."
"No, they wouldn't," the Paul Giamatti lookalike declared.
"To make a long story short, I lost my job, was evicted from my apartment and wound up on the street. What bothered me most was having to sell my television so that I could buy food. When that money was gone, I didn't eat. The police found me asleep on a park bench, malnourished, dehydrated and on the point of death. I was taken to city hospital where the doctors restored my physical health. Then they sent me here to deal with my mental issues.
"And that concludes my story."
When Dr. MacFadden attempted to thank her, she interrupted him.
"Hey, wouldn't the five of us being forced to live in this place make a great reality show?
* * *
"I guess that leaves me," the elderly woman said with a smile that seemed to light up her face and brighten the room. "My name is Olivia, and I'm an addict."
Of the five patients participating in the group, the sweet-dispositioned senior citizen was the one for whom Dr. Morales felt the most compassion—but then she had always had a soft spot in her heart for the aged.
"My story has a lot in common with yours, my dear," the old lady told Trisha. "I had no family and friends either. Like you, my job was my life, but unlike you I found it immensely satisfying. I was a nurse, which I had always believed was one of the noblest professions."
"A nurse, huh?" Astrid said. "Then you must feel right at home in a hospital environment."
"Not really. Although I did work in a hospital while I was training, I spent a good portion of my career at sea."
"Were you in the Navy?" Cleavon asked.
"Good heavens, no! For nine months out of the year, I was employed as a nurse by a cruise ship line."
"Really?" Trisha cried. "That sounds like a lot of fun!"
"It was. When I was on duty, most of my patients had minor ailments—usually caused by too much alcohol. And when the ships were in port, my time was my own. I think I visited every island in the Caribbean at least once. Often, during the other three months of the year, I took assignments as a private nurse. My patients, for the most part, had a great deal of money, which enabled me to live in rather comfortable surroundings."
"Lucky you," Astrid said, with a hint of envy in her voice. "With such a fantastic life, what made you become an addict?"
"Retirement. After an active life, I just couldn't adjust to being idle. During the warmer months, I did a lot of volunteer work at the hospital, but come winter I stayed home. In retrospect, I suppose I ought to have left New England and headed for Florida like the rest of the snowbirds, but I didn't know how to drive and was not about to learn at my age. So, I stayed and suffered through the snow, the ice storms and the freezing temperatures.
"That's when I started watching CSI, the original one with William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger. It was on at six o'clock every morning, but I wanted more. I bought the complete series in a boxed set: fifteen seasons, three hundred thirty-five episodes on ninety-three DVDs. I was in heaven! I watched it morning, noon and night. I went from William Petersen to Laurence Fishburne to Ted Danson."
Cleavon Worley, who, after watching so many game shows, was an expert on trivia, asked, "Who was the only actor to appear on all three hundred and thirty-five episodes?" Without waiting for a reply, he gave the answer. "George Eads."
"I went through the entire series in about three weeks' time," Olivia Zellis continued. "From there, it was all ten seasons of CSI: Miami and nine seasons of CSI: NY. What had been meant to be only a means of passing the time during the winter began to consume my life. Even though spring was fast approaching, I no longer looked forward to the warmer weather. Instead, I began watching Law & Order."
"That must have taken you some time," Kyle suggested. "That show was on forever!"
"Actually, averaging about eighteen episodes a day, it took me just under a month. Now, Law & Order: SVU is another story. It seems that show will last forever."
"What about Criminal Intent?" Cleavon asked.
"I watched all of those episodes, too, although I must admit I prefer Goren and Eames to Nichols and Stevens. Needless to say, I never returned to my volunteer work."
"How did you wind up here then?" Astrid asked. "Without a family or a job to put demands on your time, surely you could spend the whole day watching your police dramas."
"Which is exactly what I did. Unfortunately, that kind of sedentary lifestyle leads to health problems. I was sent to what is euphemistically called an assisted living community. Of course, it was just another old age home. It wasn't too bad though. I had a nice, clean room; three meals a day; the staff took good care of me. There was one problem, however. The home had only one television, which was located in the common room."
"Did they put any restrictions on how long you could watch it?" Trisha asked.
"No, but I had to share it with the other patients."
"What was so bad about that?"
"They all wanted to watch something else. I had to sit through soap operas, basketball games, news programs, talent competitions and cooking shows. And I was just getting into Blue Bloods, too."
"That still doesn't answer my question," Astrid said. "Why were you sent here?"
"Because I attacked a fellow patient to get control of the remote," Olivia replied matter-of-factly as though people behaved that way all the time. "It was all so silly! The staff at the home felt I was a danger to the other patients. Me! A seventy-eight-year-old woman, barely five feet tall and one hundred pounds, a danger to people. Have you ever heard anything so absurd?"
"Yes, I have," Cleavon answered, although the question was meant to be rhetorical. "I read that a five-year-old kindergartener was suspended for sexual harassment because he kissed one of his classmates on the cheek!"
"That's our educational system, for you!" Kyle exclaimed. "And then they wonder why kids are so screwed up."
Dr. Hearne looked at his watch—a gift from the hospital's board of directors for all his years of service—and decided to bring the session to an end.
"That's it for today," he announced, rising from his chair at the back of the room. "It's time you all go back to your rooms. The nurses will be making their rounds with your medications."
The soon-to-be former director followed the five addicts down the hall. As each entered his or her room, the doctor pressed a toggle switch on the wall.
"What are you doing?" Consuela asked after Kyle Epperson, the last of them, was in his room.
"I'm turning on the TV."
"I can see that. But why? These people are trying to stop watching television. Isn't this like handing a junkie a fix of heroin?"
"You do realize where you are, don't you? This isn't the Betty Ford Clinic where celebrities come for rehab. This is a psychiatric hospital, and this particular ward is reserved for the criminally insane."
"I'm aware of that."
"What you just heard in that group session was mostly fantasy. Hardly any of it was true. Next time they meet, they'll all invent a different story. Those patients weren't sent here to battle an addiction, they're here because their lawyers got them off a murder charge by pleading insanity. Each and every one of them is dangerous. Years ago, we would have controlled them with Thorazine, but nowadays such drugs are frowned upon. The do-gooders say it isn't humane to keep people doped up with antipsychotic drugs. So, I devised another way to calm them down. I stick them in front of a TV set. Basically, watching too much television has the same effect on a patient's brain as the drugs did, and no one has complained about its use."
"I ... don't know what to say," Consuela declared, her mind in a daze from her predecessor's revelations. "Those seemingly normal people ... are all ... all ...."
"Killers. Astrid Colville is our black widow. She murdered three husbands after taking out large insurance policies on them. Young Kyle Epperson brought an automatic rifle to school one day and shot twelve of his classmates, killing four of them. Cleavon Worley was a full-time fireman and part-time pyromaniac. He set a fire at a historic inn that resulted in the death of six people. Trisha Norcross murdered her supervisor after she lost her job due to the company's downsizing. It was a clear case of killing the messenger."
"What about Olivia Zellis? Surely she never ...."
"Don't let that sweet little old lady act fool you. Although she never worked on a cruise ship, she was a nurse. It's estimated she was responsible for the deaths of more than ten of the patients in her care."
"It's all so hard to believe," Dr. Morales said.
"Don't worry. You'll get used to it."
"Ah, there you are," Dr. Hearne called when he spied Owen MacFadden in the doorway of the common room, with a cone-shaped paper cup in his hand. "I was wondering what happened to you."
"I was thirsty."
"Now that you've had a drink of water, it's time to go to your room."
Stunned, Dr. Morales could only stare, speechless, at the director.
"Did you think Owen was a real doctor?" Manfred asked, with a chuckle of amusement. "I'm afraid he never went to medical school, although he does look the part. No, he was a long-haul truck driver. He killed his wife and her lover in a jealous rage. Then he put the bodies through a woodchipper."
When the trio arrived at the end of the hall, the patient shook Consuela's hand and said, "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Doctor. I look forward to working with you."
After Owen was in his room, Manfred turned on the television which was programmed to begin streaming Grey's Anatomy followed by episodes of House and ER.
"Doctor shows?" Consuela asked.
"They're his favorite."
The two psychiatrists walked back to the director's office. It was communal territory. One of them would soon be vacating it; the other would be moving in.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" the current director asked.
"No, thank you. If it's all the same with you, I'd like to go home now," his replacement answered. "It's been quite a day for me. You've given me so much to think about, so many future changes to consider."
"I quite understand."
When the idealistic young psychiatrist left his office, Manfred Hearne sat at his desk in front of his computer.
I give her a year or two in this place, and the rose-tinted glasses will be off, he thought.
Then he clicked on the Netflix app on his computer's desktop and continued watching Star Trek. Although Gene Roddenberry's classic science fiction series was his favorite television program of all time, he had never had the opportunity to watch any of the sequels it spawned. Once he was finally free of his obligation to the hospital, he could settle back in his recliner and binge The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise.
And after that?
Who knows? Thanks to cable TV and streaming services, there seems to be no end to available programming!
"Wake Me Up When September Ends" written by Michael Pritchard, Frank E. Wright III and Billie Joe Armstrong. © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Image below is of Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock in a scene from Star Trek.
Salem's favorite TV show? Star Trek. He insists that's why cats have pointed ears: they're part Vulcan.
