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SITCHAIN II
I didn't fall in love with you overnight.
It was the last thing I'd planned to do!
No, none of it was pity.
I'd seen your eyes before.
They were the eyes of orphans
Of men I was treating from Viet Nam.
And the men before them, from Korea, and The Great War to End
all Wars...
(And of course, the war that followed that one)
I'd grown up seeing those eyes.
Confusion at being the one to live when others died...
Anger at being alone.
Sorrow at being forced to accept something that was so wrong
their very bones cried out against it.
What little joy was there was fierce; fought for and often
stolen.
I'd seen your kind before. There was nothing different--hm?
Um, actually, I have had patients bodily threaten me before.
That was nothing new there, either.
Why didn't I turn you in?
I'm surprised you never asked that before.
Well, you see, the world of medicine and the world of law are not
very compatible.
Insanity is a legal term. It doesn't...really exist in my world.
We're more fine-tuned than to invoke blanket definitions.
Your best hope would be they would declare you mentally unfit, and
then ship you off to an institution, where they would cure you,
and then put you back on trial.
That's if you were human.
Look, you don't want to know what they would--could--have done to you if
the real truth had let out.
You wouldn't have been the first patient to have been privately
treated by a physciian under confidential circumstances.
Thank God, they haven't tampered with that law too much yet!
Look, I'm getting back to the original subject.
Like I said, I hadn't planned to fall in love with you.
I don't, as a rule, like people who think they're as stubborn as
I am.
It was the little things you showed when you weren't looking.
When you didn't think a watcher was around.
You moved for the simple joy of movement; you knew freedom that
none of us has any comprehension of.
You could sit in the garden and watch the moon all night long,
never moving, lost in the beauty of it.
You were gentle with Liz; always calling her Elizabeth. You always
think of your mother when you look at her.
Roger, you look on him with a rare understanding.
I think hereminds you of your father, only your father without so
much of the darkness in him.
You honestly enjoy his company.
Few in his family do.
Carolyn's actions said she wanted a father-figure. You were happy
to comply in that.
And as much as David could irritate you...well, I have suspicions
about your own childhood!
I remember when you met Amy at Wyndcliffe.
She had your eyes.
The two of you were inseparable the whole time. And I think you did
more for her than her own physician.
You had an easy grace most people don't, and a poise that is out of
this time. You could say what was on your heart in plain
language, and yet be elegant about it too.
Even when you were angry, I could glimpse the pieces of you that
were underneath.
I wanted to see the entire you come out.
Not easy.
You only believed in a physical cure--here I was trying to cure
your heart too, without your knowing it!
Most of it was just loneliness.
Any of us would have gone mad too. No one's immune.
I'm borderline claustrophobic myself. I would have said goodbye to
reason a looong time before you did!
No...there was no one particualr time when I fell in love with you.
It happened without my really being aware of it.
Now, when I DID realize what was happening...
I wasn't too happy with myself, actually. Said the name of God in
vain a few times and pounded my desk--
--yes I'm serious--
anyway, when you know what's happening, its usually too late by then.
Wasn't anything I could do about it.
Well, I could have left, true,
But I'd be deserting a patient, wouldn't I?
That's not a wicked grin.
You're just overly imaginative.
It was your eyes, Barnabas.
When you didn't know you were being watched,
That was when I could see you for what you really were.
And that
Was the man
I fell in love with.
That's all.
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