PART ONE

 

What is PAST IS PROLOGUE

 

William Shakespeare

The Tempest

Act 2 scene 1

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

"I'm here to see Dr. Lefebvre."

"Oh yes!" the attractive administrative assistant bubbled, just as Dr. Thierry Duvalier was about to offer his name; adding: "She's expecting you." The pretty brunette eyed him unsubtly while ushering him with an inviting smile into a back hallway which was home to a line of offices. He noticed that the door of the last one on the right: their apparent destination, had been pushed open in anticipation of his meeting with the occupant inside.

Dr. Thierry Duvalier had arrived in Paris last night at half-past ten, on the train originating from Brussels. He had checked into the hotel, ordered a late night snack that would double as his dinner, and settled down to wait for room-service after undressing and slipping on the terrycloth robe embroidered with the Ritz Carlton logo that had been left for him hanging on the bathroom door-hook. When his food arrived, he had stretched out on the king-sized bed with the platter beside him and his lap-top on his legs, opened to the intriguing case summary authored by the mentally-afflicted subject's treating physician: Dr. Genevieve Lefebvre, the chief of psychotic disorders at L'Hôpital Universitaire Pitié-Salpêtrière Psychiatric Institute.

Dr. Lefebvre was more than just an impressive physician with an equally impressive professional title to Thierry, though. 'Gennie' (as she liked to be called) had been one of his interns fifteen years ago when he led a resident-team on the general medicine floor; and he would never forget the sweet yet bitter taste of their short-circuited romance. At the time, they were star-crossed due to Gennie's whim-like romantic obligation to another-unwavering one moment and faltering the next; but now, more than fifteen years later, he hoped for a more decisive alignment of fate's starry-eyed constellation.

He thought nostalgically about her while re-reading the medical treatise, typed out by the same fingers that had briefly entwined with his, a decade-and-a-half ago-her words on digital-paper describing the patient who called herself Susanne Bruante: a woman who claimed to be a time-traveler, allegedly stepping into a distant relative's life and living as an imposter for a full ten years, from 1886 to 1896. Thierry took a bite of the jambon-beurre corresponding with each of Gennie's many insightful talking-points: the same ones which had ultimately convinced him, after his initial review of the mini-treatise two weeks earlier, to accept the consultation job in his native city. The professional opportunity to study such an intriguing case was compelling, although his concurrent goal was to cautiously stir the simmering coals of a prematurely-arrested love-affair-this latter aspiration spurred on by the subtle encouragement he had heard in her voice when they had spoken of the potential consultation, more than once, on the phone.

Tomorrow, he would step into his role as visiting scholar-the endeavor solicited by a thoroughly perplexed Parisian psychiatric team led by a woman who had been committed amorously to someone else in their medical training days. Her faithfulness to 'Marc': her college sweetheart who was working for the Peace Corps in far-off Senegal at the time, seemed half-hearted at best-her irresolute promise of chastity bent if not completely broken in an impromptu tête-à-tête one night with Thierry while they were both staying overnight in the hospital, on call.

There was no question in his mind that their one intimate encounter had been fueled by shared passion; but the engine promising to propel them from an aborted one-night-stand into a long-lasting, meaningful relationship had been cruelly sabotaged by Gennie's one-sided guilt. From what Thierry had been able to infer from the tidbits of information offered up rarely by the woman of his dreams, Marc's true intentions were as confused as Gennie's-a circumstance that cheapened Gennie's grudging sense of accountability to a long-distance lover, making her maddening sense of allegiance seem naïve and foolhardy rather than admirable and stoic...especially in light of her conflicted but seemingly powerful feelings for Thierry.

"I wasn't supposed to fall in love with you," she had whispered in his ear that night-of-nights-the very words suggesting she had done just that. The indirect confession hung in the non-existent space between them expectantly as they lay naked together, their bodies pressed tightly against one-another on the narrow call-room bed. "I can't; I just can't," she added softly, her meaning unclear; but a moment later as she gave him clear permission to continue with an impassioned, pleading, and almost desperate kiss, it seemed obvious that she was struggling with an existential, emotional dilemma rather than a physically-restrictive one. Her eyes were closed as if not seeing...not looking at what she had started would magically erase her fervor and make the reality of the moment disappear; while from behind closed lids she offered Thierry her intimacy without a hint of equivocation-and he responded in-kind.

Before he knew it they had repositioned themselves head-to-toe and toe-to-head in a smooth choreography-hands replaced by lips and tongues, mutually executing the most primal of pleasurably drawn-out dances, the wild performance ultimately climaxing with the feminine half of their reciprocity exultantly satisfied. The masculine, however, remained patiently unfulfilled, but stood firm-hopeful and ready. May I? he had asked with soundless action, lying expectantly now on top, his hips pressed tentatively against hers in preparation for full consummation should she give him leave.

The moment of uncertainty hung in the air with the heady, sweet aroma of 'her' that wafted into his very being with every insinuating breath. She would say 'yes'...of course she would-after coming this far, to the very brink of dual gratification promising to bind their destinies together, forever. But, no...her answer was 'no'-the shock of her unexpected rebuttal reinforced when she gently pushed him away with two palms on his chest.

He rolled away to give her space, dumbfounded by her rejection and feeling embarrassed by presumption-but really, could anyone blame him for assuming? She sat on the edge of the bed, her expression hard to read in the muted light but seeming to reflect a chaotic mixture of regret, sadness, and determination. "I can't," she repeated dully, even though what had already transpired almost certainly counted as 'you already did.' There could have been more...should have been more-but there wasn't; and Thierry's quiet, personal tragedy was reinforced as Gennie dressed in awkward silence, slipping into her hospital scrubs and closing the door with finality behind her. So it was that she left him, that night and forever (he thought)-to sleep in the adjoining call room while he lay awake, nursing a perplexed and injured sorrow.

He didn't push it, since it was stingingly clear that her mind was made up. He put on a brave face, for sure-outwardly smoothing things over, even going so far as to praise her decision as morally correct, while on the inside he nurtured a profound disappointment that she hadn't 'picked' him but rather, chose someone else. When the rotation ended they went their separate ways, saying a stilted, 'friendly' goodbye-she to a psychiatry residency, and he to neurology; and 'that was that'...until now.

To say he was surprised when she phoned him out of the blue, fifteen years later, would be an understatement. She needed his help, on the surface; but below-decks, the tenor of her voice implied that she might be interested, in a parallel agenda, in revisiting their unfinished past. The unsolicited reunion with Gennie and all of the potential for life-changing repercussions aside, Thierry was equally curious about the 'other' woman: the mysterious patient who called herself Susanne Bruante-the key, perhaps, to unlocking and proving a career-making scientific theory. Tomorrow he would have a chance to hear the 'subject' of his trip to Paris recount, in her own words, the far-fetched accounting of her delusional albeit 'memory-based' (Thierry theorized) experience.

Indeed, Gennie's unwillingly-committed convalescent alleged that she had originally become a time-traveler slightly-less-than ten years earlier, in 2011, when she had intentionally 'hijacked' a portal opened by another chronologic-journeyer: a misplaced relative from 1876 named Nicole Bruante. This family-member's confabulated genetics had enabled her to transform Gustave Courbet's erotic painting The Origin of the World into some kind of a 'Time-Tunnel' that she referred to as a Virtual-Hole. The fascinating mental-patient asserted with distinct psychotic zeal that she had subsequently been conveyed back to present-day 2021 precisely a decade later (time passing here and there at the same second-by-second speed) by some type of science-fiction-like trickery executed by an entirely different meddling ancestor named Elle Bruante, on the 'other side' of the connection between 'today' and 'yesterday'.

Of particular interest to Thierry's medical specialty, and the specific reason he had agreed to function as a consultant in the case, was the often-times true-to-history nature of the patient's descriptive experience that seemed to validate her 'memories'-which, he postulated, were actually the recollections of her long-deceased relatives. The proposed triad of paranoid schizophrenia, a probable mixture of more than one personality disorder, and a suspected memory 'ailment' made the case unique, and particularly relevant to Thierry's career-long research-focus, striking a chord in his training as both a neurologist and a psychologist.

His plan was to conduct a lengthy conversational interview with the afflicted subject, beginning immediately after his debriefing first thing in the morning with Gennie; and, if his evaluation led to the preliminary impression that he fully expected, he would arrange the patient's transfer to his facility in Belgium for intensive therapy under his care-an endeavor that would be well worth the administrative hassle if the subject under scrutiny eventually yielded the proof he needed to validate his neuropsychiatric research.

Before agreeing to take the consulting job, Thierry had thoroughly reviewed the at-first perplexing medical records accompanying Gennie's professional plea for his involvement, which he ultimately felt certain he understood when viewed in the context of the unique variant of an uncommon psycho-neurologic syndrome that he had formulated as a preliminary diagnosis. After drawing his tentative conclusions a few weeks ago, he had confirmed in a lengthy telephone conversation with Gennie that the patient's ailment did indeed appear to fall under his area of expertise-if his hypothesis was confirmed.

So, after the high speed train trip from Brussels to Paris and an impromptu hotel-room dinner enjoyed with his ex-(not-quite)-girlfriend's mini-dissertation opened on his lap, he fell into a fitful sleep filled with dreams of a prior call-room encounter confused with museum exhibit-room time-traveling escapades transpiring 'in the buff'. In the morning, bleary eyed from a not-so-restful sleep, Thierry had taken a taxi in early morning traffic to Pitié-Salpêtrière and found himself following the pretty brunette administrative assistant down the hallway, his heart thrumming wildly in his throat. She led him through the half-open door to the last office on the right, to an exciting but uncertain professional and personal destiny.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

The door closed behind him with a finality that clearly stated there was no going back now; but when he saw her he thought: why would I ever want to?

Of course he had searched her hospital profile-the marketing persona created by the health-systems public relations team consisting of a photographic image of her top-half clothed in a crisp white lab coat, accompanied by an impressive bio that thoroughly described her achievements and expertise; but the PR piece hardly did justice to the real-life woman standing up from her desk chair to greet him. Fifteen years had passed but she didn't look a day older. She was something so much more than beautiful, now even more than then: her face a chiseled sculpture of classic lines and her body's gently-exaggerated curves nothing less than idyllic. Her hair was still a wind-blown field of Nordic winter-wheat, and her eyes as crystal-blue as a clear, crisp glacier-fed lake. His heart cried: I have missed you so as she made her way around the desk, hesitating for just a moment before taking the few steps necessary to bring them face-to-face.

She met his eyes, and he-hers. "Hello, Thierry," she said softly, waiting for him to make the next move. Her hands were folded in front of her, a perfect invitation for him to take them in his...which he did, since this form of greeting represented a fitting display of just the right amount of subdued affection.

"You look well," she commented, pressing her palms fondly in his. Her smile was warm and sincere, but also tentative...as if she wasn't quite sure if he held a grudge for what had happened between them years ago, and if so to what extent.

"You too, Gennie," he replied, which was really an understatement, since she looked nothing less than phenomenal.

"We should talk...about 'us'," she stated quietly, disengaging their hands gently as if discussing their 'broken' past required breaking the bond of touch between them as well. "I was so confused, back then..." she began to explain, looking away. He needed to put her at ease or else the awkwardness would sabotage everything professional and personal between them for the rest of the day...and potentially well beyond.

"I agree, for sure; but how about we save it for over dinner-business first, then pleasure? There's a nice restaurant at my hotel-my treat, of course."

Her demeanor eased to less tense, almost immediately. "Oh, that would be lovely! Shall we call it a 'date', then?"

"That goes without saying! It will be so very nice to catch up with you, Gennie."

As he noticed her breathe a visible sigh of relief, he knew that his warm and genuine offer, completely devoid of resentment or anger, had produced its desired effect. Apprehensions allayed, she offered him a seat and positioned herself directly across from him-her shapely legs crossed. A few minutes later, after ringing for beverages, she expertly balanced a cup of café au lait on her delightfully-exposed thigh, while Thierry assumed the same pose seated in a matching upholstered chair, but sipping a black double espresso instead.

"I can't tell you how pleased I am that you agreed to this consultation, Thierry. She's been here since early March, and despite state-of-the-art psychiatric management for schizophrenia, she still firmly believes that her delusions are true."

The psychiatric patient in question had been discovered by a security guard in the famous Musée d'Orsay art gallery after hours about four months ago, having set off the alarms by violently removing Courbet's erotic masterpiece The Origin of the World from its wall-display and physically accosting it before collapsing on the floor-delirious and semi-conscious, in what appeared to be a classic psychotic break. Leading up to her bizarre emotional outburst, she had presumably hidden somewhere with stealthy premeditation prior to the museum's hour of closing-perhaps holed-up in a utility closet waiting for the opportune moment in the middle of the night to execute her bizarre and mentally-unstable plan. She had been rushed by ambulance through a driving pre-spring rain to the nearest medical facility, followed by her prompt transfer to Pitié-Salpêtrière where Gennie had been waiting expectantly to accept the perplexing case.

When her delirium and amnesia eventually cleared, the patient swore up and down that her name was Susanne Bruante, asserting that her twenty-first century identity had been stolen by an imposter-Nicole Bruante: her great-great-great grandmother, of all people, who had been inadvertently transported from 1876 to the year 2011 by hallucinogen and genetically-induced time-travel. 'Susanne' alleged that Nicole had inherited a specific double mutation-pairing in an X-linked gene coding for a hormone called chronotonin, whereas Gennie's patient had inherited only one. Both mutations were apparently required to open a Time-Tunnel, rendering herself: a single-mutation carrier, incapable of doing so. However, by latching onto someone with two instead of one DNA alterations, Susanne had managed to subvert (or be subverted to) the time-traveling process not once, but twice.

The first time the 'hijacking' was intentional when, in 2011, Susanne had schemed to have Nicole open up a Virtual-Hole leading from 'here to there' that Susanne subsequently appropriated, passing through alone after pushing her relative aside at the last moment. The second time, occurring just a few months earlier in the here-and-now, had been unintentional, when Susanne had been tricked into riding along as a passenger with another conniving relative named Noëlle (abbreviated 'Elle') Bruante: her great-great-great-great grandmother. This time the journey had occurred from 'there to here' rather than from 'here to there'-a very tall-tale representing Susanne's ludicrous explanation for a delusion-shrouded arrival in present day Paris in the early morning hours of 1 March, 2021. Thierry literally couldn't wait to hear the entire far-fetched story culminating with the details of exactly how Susanne had been hoodwinked by Nicole Bruante's mother-straight from the horse's mouth, when his interview with the woman he believed to be suffering from a unique triple-malady would shortly begin.

Susanne had quoted a bizarre set of time-travel 'rules' that supposedly predicted her return to the same present-day Time-Shell (as she referred to it) from which she had previously exited in 2011, but at a parallel point in the forward march of time: exactly nine years, eight months and two weeks later. Applying this axiom to her make-believe journey accounted for just short of a full decade of time's passing, both there (1886 to 1896) and here (2011 to 2021)-an entirely crazy postulate that only someone crazy could create; so naturally she was duly committed and remained under a 'house arrest' of sorts in the mental facility where she was still being treated. Her confinement had been justified in part because she had no confirmable identity and thus could not be released to any responsible party's care, but also due to an unspoken concern that she might be a danger to herself or others.

Thierry had been told that not only had their soon-to-be-mutual patient 'confessed' to murder of a relative by poisoning (according to her bizarre time-traveler's pretension), but that she had also demonstrated real-life non-fictional violent tendencies illustrated in her act of defiling and damaging a priceless national treasure. She had zealously created a torn and crescent-shaped defect in The Origin of the World canvas with her fist and boot-heels in the exact location of the anonymous model's explicitly depicted genitals, almost as if she had been fulfilling a personal vendetta against the erotic poseur; and if she had not pleaded innocent on the basis of insanity for the desecration of a priceless piece of artwork, Susanne would have faced criminal charges and potentially even prison-time rather than indefinite treatment in a psychiatric facility.

Exactly this had happened to a man named Andrew Shannon, who had been sentenced to six years in prison after he walked into the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin in 2012 and punched a hole in Argenteuil Basin by Claude Monet (1874)-a painting worth £8 million. In Susanne's case, her violent outburst and the resulting adulteration of not only Courbet's erotic masterpiece but also three Degas nude sculptures that had been chipped and cracked when overturned, had become the focal point of an international repair project led by a team of acclaimed art restorers.

"As you know, our working diagnosis at first was paranoid schizophrenia-the inherent variety favored over drug-induced, since her 'tox-screen' was negative." It was well known that certain hallucinogenic drugs, most notably PCP, could not only cause acute psychosis when ingested in excess, but could also bring about permanent chemical changes in the brain with repeated use that occasionally led to the equivalent of chronic schizophrenia. If Susanne's blood and urine toxicology testing had failed to detect any of these illicit substances on the day in question, that suggested but didn't prove a constitutional malady. Thierry knew as well as Gennie did that one negative test did not necessarily mean that Susanne was not a 'user', and that the psychiatric consequences of ingesting mind-altering pharmaceuticals related more to the 'build-up' of these chemicals in the brain rather than from acute intoxication. "But when her delusions persisted despite a variety of medications appropriate for this diagnosis," Gennie continued, "it became quite clear that we were focusing on the incorrect disorder."

"Are you medicating her now?"

Gennie responded by shaking her drop-dead gorgeous head 'no' while placing her now empty cup on a small circular coffee table positioned slightly off-center between them, drawing attention to carefully manicured nails on long and delicate fingers. Thierry carefully suppressed his elation when he noticed that she wasn't wearing an engagement or wedding ring, leading him to hope that she hadn't married Marc; or if she had, the union had ended in separation or divorce. "We ultimately discontinued all of her anti-psychotics since they made no difference whatsoever in her mentation, which seems normal now except for some interesting and often abrupt fluctuations in temperament, demeanor and mood. She claims to have been the nude model for a variety of artists, including-can you believe it-my great-great-great grandfather, Jules Joseph Lefebvre."

"That's an uncanny coincidence."

"No kidding. You see, she also claims to be a direct descendant of Gustave Courbet. He and my great-great-great grandfather were artistic rivals: something very akin to enemies; so, the delusional happenstances just keep coming."

"But there's no way she could have known that you would end up being her treating psychiatrist!"

Gennie shrugged. "Who knows. I'm a prominent name in the Parisian medical community, so it's not inconceivable that a repressed desire for my help led her to subliminally plan the psychotic break in a way that would ensure my involvement. It would have been easy enough for her to call the hospital operator posing as one of my patients to inquire about the on-call schedule. But regardless, she describes other unlikely and unethical brushes with artistic greatness centered around alleged family members that only serve to further illustrate the depth and scope of her mental disorder."

"For instance?"

"For one, she affirms that she had an incestuous sexual relationship with her great-great grandfather: Martial Caillebotte, and posed for him as the model for an ultra-erotic set of photographs that she calls the 'bodyscape' series. She says she became his insincere lover, manipulating him with seduction into unwittingly betraying his very own brother, Gustave Caillebotte: whom she actually admits, in her fantasy, to killing with lethal-if-ingested film-developer painted onto the back of his collectible, 'lick-able' postage-stamps. Her goal in all this, allegedly, was to gain early access to a hefty inheritance. These boasts are only figments of her imagination, of course; but they show she has no sense of right or wrong."

Thierry seconded Gennie's diagnostic thoughts. "These are hallmarks of a sociopath, for sure. There's no question in my mind that she has that particular personality disorder...as well as others."

Gennie's interest was definitely piqued-his intention of course, since this was a woman that he was almost desperate to impress, this time around more than before. "Go on," the most beautiful woman in the world implored; and he was ever so anxious to oblige.