Theophobia
Over the years, Lionel Penn, a psychiatrist well-known to colleagues in the medical profession for his success in treating phobias, heard many a fantastic tale and provided therapy to more than a few unusual patients. He had also personally experienced several strange events throughout his life that seemed to have no rational explanation. As Lionel entered the sanctuary of his Puritan Falls office one morning, he had no idea that he was about to encounter an individual who, by contrast, made his most bizarre cases seem mundane.
"Good morning, boss," his assistant, Judy Stanfield, said with a smile.
"Good morning," he replied as he headed toward the coffeemaker.
"No time for coffee now, Lion. Dr. Sutton phoned a few minutes ago. He wants you to meet him at the emergency room at St. Timothy's in Essex Green. There's a patient there he would like you to see."
"Hugh Sutton is the best psychiatrist I know. Why does he want to see me?"
"Comic relief?"
"Another crack like that young lady and you're fired," Lionel teased, as he took his phone messages and headed toward the door.
"You can't fire slaves; we have to be sold."
Once again Judy had the final word.
When Lionel walked into St. Timothy's Hospital half an hour later, he noticed that many of the emergency room personnel were huddled together in small groups, deep in discussion. Lionel assumed that either something out of the ordinary had occurred or else the ER staff was planning a strike.
"Excuse me," he said to one of the nursing sisters. "I'm Dr. Penn. I believe Dr. Sutton is waiting for me."
Every pair of eyes in the room turned in his direction.
"They're in there," the nun replied, pointing toward a closed door across the hall.
Lionel knocked, and moments later Hugh Sutton unlocked the door to let him inside. A white male, roughly forty to forty-five years old was resting on a gurney.
"Is he violent?" Lionel asked, noticing the restraints.
"Yes. We had to sedate him."
"Well, Hugh, it looks as though you've got everything under control. Why did you want to see me?"
"Because you're the expert on people with extreme, unreasonable fears."
"After writing a book and several dozen articles on the subject of various phobias, people who are afraid of everything from vegetables to vaccinations have come to me for help, but I hardly think that makes me an expert."
"You're the closest thing to one I know. Our patient here," Hugh explained, nodding his head toward the recumbent figure, "seems to be afraid of religion. He apparently had a mild heart attack while walking down Jefferson Street. The ambulance brought him here. When he came to and saw where he was, he went berserk and attacked a nun. Then before the orderlies could restrain him, he started knocking the religious statues and paintings off the walls."
"Is the sister okay?"
"Yes, she was just shaken up. He seemed more interested in destroying the symbols of her faith than in hurting the woman herself. Have you ever had a case similar to this, Lionel?"
"Not personally, but I've read about people who suffer from theophobia."
"Theophobia? I'm afraid I don't know that condition."
"It's the fear of gods or religion."
"Since you're familiar with this phobia, perhaps you wouldn't mind talking to him when the sedative wears off."
Lionel did not look too eager to take on Dr. Sutton's case. He did, after all, have appointments scheduled with his own patients.
"I know you must be busy," Hugh coaxed, "but I'd consider it a personal favor if you help me out here."
"Okay. Just let me call my assistant and have her reschedule my morning."
While waiting for the patient to come to, Lionel removed a crucifix from the wall and hid it in the bottom of a metal cabinet. If the patient was, in fact, suffering from theophobia, it would be best to remove any and all symbols of religion from his view.
With the examining room now effectively "God-proofed," Lionel started reading the man's medical chart. He noticed that the patient was classified as a John Doe.
"Where am I?" the unknown man asked in a faint voice.
"You're at the hospital."
For obvious reasons, Lionel thought it best to eliminate the reference to St. Timothy.
"You blacked out over on Jefferson Street, near the fire station. The medics assumed you were having a heart attack, and they brought you here to the emergency room."
"A heart attack? Me? That's impossible!" the man firmly insisted, dismissing Lionel's explanation as pure nonsense. "There's not a damned thing wrong with my heart."
"After reading your chart, I agree with you. But something caused you to pass out. Do you have a history of fainting spells?"
"No. Now I've got a question for you, Doctor. Do you keep all your cardiac patients strapped down?"
"You don't remember what happened when they brought you in, then?"
The man shook his head.
"You attacked a nurse," Lionel explained.
The patient suddenly seemed interested in his surroundings. He looked around, taking particular notice of the institutional green hospital walls and the nail on which the crucifix had recently hung.
"This is a Catholic hospital, isn't it?"
The John Doe appeared to be curious, not angry or fearful.
"Yes, it is. It's St. Timothy's. Do you have a problem with Catholicism?"
"Not particularly. One religion is pretty much the same as another to me. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans ... in the long run, faith is faith."
The man's smile was warm and pleasant. It was hard to imagine that he had been violent only a short while ago.
"To tell you the truth, Doctor, I'm not a religious man."
"Why is that?"
"You're not a cardiologist, are you?"
"No. I'm Dr. Lionel Penn, a psychiatrist."
"Ah! I thought so."
"The doctor in charge of your case asked me to talk to you. Do you mind?"
"I suppose not. What harm could it possibly do for us to have a simple conversation?"
Lionel pulled the visitor's chair up next to the bed and sat down.
"Dr. Penn, before you begin to pick my brain to see what makes me tick, do you mind loosening these things?" the patient asked, nodding toward the restraints.
"You're not going to become violent again, are you?" Lionel laughed.
"I promise I'll be on my best behavior. Scout's honor."
After unfastening the straps, the psychiatrist resumed his seat and took a pad and pen out of his jacket pocket.
"Now then, you said you don't consider yourself a 'religious man'? Does that mean you are an atheist?"
"Oh no, not at all. It's not a question of doubt. I know for a fact God exists."
"But you don't believe in any of the established world religions. Is that it? Why exactly is that? Do you disagree with all the dogma and trappings or the seemingly hypocritical teachings?"
John Doe took several minutes to think about Lionel's question and consider his answer.
"I think my aversion to religion is the result of my relationship with my father," he finally replied.
Lionel was not surprised by the man's claim. Most of his patients blamed their problems on one or both of their parents.
"Was your father a religious man? A minister, perhaps?"
John Doe broke out in peals of laughter.
"Sorry," he quickly apologized. "It's a private joke. Yes, you could say my father was a deeply religious man."
"Sometimes very religious people tend to be stricter with their children than those less devout." Lionel pointed out. "That doesn't mean they love their children any less."
"My father didn't seem to have any difficulty loving his sons, or rather one of his sons."
"I take it you feel he favored your brother over you?"
"The word favored is an understatement, Dr. Penn."
"Why don't you tell me about it?"
"This may take some time," John Doe said with a smile.
"I've got all morning," Lionel replied, loosening his tie.
"My father is a very powerful man who rules over a vast empire. He had three sons, the last much younger than the other two. I was the first-born, soon followed by my brother, Adam. At first, my father declared that the two of us were equal in his eyes and that we would have an equal share in his empire. But my father's definition of equal was quite different from mine. Tell me, Doctor; if you had two apples—one good and one rotten—would you consider it equal to give one son the good apple and the other the rotten one?"
"No. That wouldn't be fair."
"Yet that's exactly what happened. My younger brother was given the Garden of Eden, and I got Hell."
Lionel noted the patient's use of the religious analogy on his pad.
"And how did this affect your relationship with your brother? Did you resent him for his good fortune?"
"I confess I was a little jealous, but then something happened, and my brother fell from favor. I had hoped my father's disappointment in him would lead to a closer relationship between my father and me."
"It didn't?"
"No. I was still very much an outcast as far as he was concerned, even after Adam's fall from grace and his eventual death. For years I tried to win my father's approval, but it was to no avail. Then his youngest son was born, and I was all but forgotten. The young child became the center of my father's world, his greatest hope for the future."
"And how was your relationship with this new brother?"
"We weren't close at all. For one thing, he wasn't really my brother; he was more of a half-brother. Also, he was so much younger than I was."
"I see. Anything else?"
John Doe was quiet, and his face took on a pained expression. Lionel assumed he was struggling with a matter of conscience. Finally, the patient continued.
"I neglected to mention the fact that when my brother Adam fell from grace, I admittedly had a hand in his downfall. I thought I could do the same thing with my younger brother, but I had no luck with him."
"What was it you tried to do?"
"I thought if I could get him to disobey our father, he, like Adam, would incur the parental wrath. What I didn't realize at the time was that my youngest brother was much stronger than I had suspected. Try as I might, I couldn't turn him against our father. I only made matters worse for myself in the long run. My brother came across as a dutiful and loving son, and I was seen as the villain, the black sheep of the family."
"Have you ever gone to your father and told him how you feel?"
"I tried, but he wanted nothing to do with me. I was persona non grata, disowned and disgraced—period. When my youngest brother died, he was inconsolable. The last person he wanted to see was me."
Lionel made several more notes on his pad and then said, "I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. You said you and your father's youngest son were half-brothers. What happened to your mother?"
"Adam and I had no mother."
"You were adopted?"
"No. We were directly created by my father. There was no woman involved."
"Created? Were you and Adam the result of genetic research?"
Although genetics was a relatively new field, Lionel knew test tube babies and asexual reproduction were not unheard of at the time John Doe must have been born.
"Adam and I were created on the eighth day," the patient explained.
"I'm sorry, I don't follow you," Lionel said. "The eighth day of what?"
"Father created the world and all that was in it in just six days. On the seventh day, he rested. Adam and I were created the following day—the eighth day."
A look of disbelief appeared on the psychiatrist's face.
"Are you telling me that your brother is the Adam, as in the biblical Adam and Eve?" Lionel asked, remembering John Doe's previous reference to Paradise.
"Yes."
"So, not only was Adam your brother, but your father was ...."
John Doe completed Lionel's sentence.
"God. That's correct. His youngest son was the Christ child, Jesus. Unlike Adam and me, he had a human mother."
Lionel closed his pad and put it back into his jacket pocket. This patient, he believed, was not suffering from a mere phobia. He was in need of serious psychiatric care.
John Doe's mouth curled up into a smile and his soft brown eyes sparkled with humor.
"Let me guess, Doctor. Your recommendation will be that I be placed in a straitjacket and locked in a padded room."
"It's not my place to suggest any treatment. You're not my patient. I'm only a consultant called in by Dr. Sutton."
"That's a cop-out if ever I heard one."
"I do have one more question for you," Lionel said, sliding the visitor's chair back against the wall. "Of course, it's more a matter of my own curiosity—if you don't mind."
"Go ahead and ask."
"Your chart has you listed as John Doe. Do you have a name?"
"I've had many over the past few millennia, but you may call me Lucifer. I always preferred that one over Satan."
* * *
The senior intern on duty at St. Timothy's emergency room directed Dr. Penn to Hugh Sutton's office.
"Lionel, are you done questioning the patient already?"
"Yes. Tell me, Hugh. Why all this concern over a John Doe? When he turned violent and attacked that nun, why didn't you simply shoot him up with Thorazine and ship him off to the state hospital? That's standard operating procedure, isn't it?"
"Because our John Doe was no indigent vagrant. He was wearing a tailored suit that must have cost more than you and I make in a year. He was also wearing a Rolex and a diamond tie clip. In his pockets, he had about seventy thousand dollars in cash, a gold cigarette case and a set of car keys for a Lamborghini."
"So why did you list him as a John Doe on his medical chart?"
"Because he didn't have one shred of I.D. on him."
"What about the car? Couldn't you trace it through Motor Vehicles?"
"We haven't been able to find the car. And don't think we didn't try to figure out who the man is. Neither the EMTs nor I had any luck in ascertaining his identity. Every time one of us would ask him who he was, the man just started quoting scripture."
"What did he say?"
"He repeatedly misquoted the Lord's Prayer, saying the same thing over and over."
"What was it, exactly?"
"'My father art in heaven.' Even I know the correct wording is 'my father who art in heaven.'"
"That was his way of telling you who he is, or rather who he believes he is. Your John Doe in there thinks he's Lucifer. Furthermore, he claims that both Adam and Christ were his brothers and that God, his father, favored Christ over his other two sons."
"Oh boy," Hugh laughed. "I guess I'll hold him in a private room for a few days until somebody comes forward to claim him. A wealthy man is sure to be missed sooner or later. If not by a family member, then by a business associate."
Hugh Sutton thanked Lionel for his time and trouble and walked him out through the emergency room to the main lobby. The two psychiatrists were discussing the Red Sox's chances of winning the pennant that year when suddenly Lionel stopped speaking midsentence.
"Hugh, isn't that our John Doe?" he asked.
An extremely well-dressed man with a pronounced limp was heading toward the exit. Lionel called out for him to stop, but the man kept walking. He and Hugh started to run after him.
"Wait!" Lionel shouted.
John Doe turned around and said, "Farewell, Dr. Penn. Dr. Sutton."
When the man nodded in his direction, Lionel noticed the bone-like protrusions on each side of his head, just above the temples. The psychiatrist's eyes then traveled down the length of the devil's body and focused on his feet. John Doe's pronounced limp was the result of his misshapen left foot, one that, oddly enough, resembled an animal's hoof.
"Hugh, do you see...?"
Before Lionel could finish his question, Lucifer walked out the door and into the driver's seat of a Lamborghini Diablo. He smiled at the two doctors, started the car, and drove off in a cloud of smoke and a blaze of fire.
Salem, what are you going to do with a Diablo? You can't even drive.
