Awakenings Page #5

His eyes blink open. Not at a noise. At a thought.

36. INT. EXAMINATION ROOM -BAINBRIDGE -LATER -NIGHT 36.

A night janitor with a pail-on-wheels and a mop moves past

darkened offices. He pauses at one, the file room, light under

itsdoor, andopensit. . -. . *

JANITOR:

I'm sorry, doctor. I thought

someone left the lights on.

REV.,12/5/89 (BLUE) Pg.2

36'.CONT. 36.

Glancing up from files strewn across the table, Sayer shares a

discovery with the janitor

SAYER:

They all survived encephalitis

years before they came here. In

the 1920's.

He taps a finger at the files -the patients' medical histories

prior to admission -forms listing childhood diseases and

ailments. The janitor, having no idea of course what he means,

retreats with his pail and mop, closing the door.

36A. EXT. MEDICAL LIBRARY, NEW YORK -ESTABLISH -DAY 36A.

37. INT. MEDICAL LIBRARY, NEW YORK -DAY 37.

Sayer displays what he has written on the back of his hand to

an assistant librarian: NEJM 4-6-35. *

SAYER:

The New England Journal of

Medicine, April 6th, 1935. *

38. INT. MEDICAL LIBRARY -LATER -DAY . 38.

A microfilm machine. Sayer manipulating its levers and

eventually finding what he's after, an article titled:

ENCEPHALITIS LETHARGICA, TEN YEARS LATER.

Accompanying the text are grainy black and white photographs

taken in an old operating theatre. An anatomical skeleton, a

doctor in a white coat, subjects— men, women and children

with haunting eyes.

39. EXT. RESIDENTIAL GARDEN, NEW YORK -DAY 39.

Close on the doctor from the photographs -ancient and ill.

OLD DOCTOR:

(philosophically

detached)

Pus and pain, that's the final *

reward. Pus and pain and

obscurity.

He's in a small unkept rose garden. With Sayer. *

Note:
To get clearance from the New England Journal of *

Medicine, we must indicate that it is a weekly publication, *

which is why the "6th" has been added. *

OLD DOCTOR LD DOCTOR .

I believe you when you say some

still live. But I can assure you

they're medically irrelevant. As

they were thirty years ago when I

fought to get my work published.

He smiles at a thought, at once wistful and bitter.

OLD DOCTOR:

That's the problem with a unique

disease. Once it no longer rages,

I'm telling you, it becomes very

unfashionable. .

He buries his face into his mask, manages to get some deep

breaths into his lungs and shakes his head at Sayer.

OLD DOCTOR:

What would I be without this

thing? A man with a1 shred of

dignity le_ft.

SAYER:

Should I get your nurse?

OLD DOCTOR:

God forbid, no.

He lights a cigarette, coughs and puts it out.

OLD DOCTOR:

How many have you found there?

SAYER:

Five. So far. I think there may

be more.

The old doctor nods. He has the torn look of someone reminded

of an unfaithful lover just when he'd managed to forget about

her. He wants and doesn't want to know how they're doing.

Finally —

OLD DOCTOR:

How are they?

SAYER:

As you described them. As they

were back then. As "insubstantial

as ghosts." Only I guess most of

them were children then.

OLD DOCTOR:

Yes. Children who fell asleep.

o

o

40. INT. OLD DOCTOR'S STUDY -DAY 40

Boxes of ancient history have been dragged out of storage, the

emphysema-plagued doctor's post-encephalitic research, files

and photographs and cans of 16mm film.

OLD DOCTOR:

Most died during the acute stage

of the illness, during a sleep so

deep they couldn't be roused. A

sleep that in most cases lasted

several months.

The doctors, in the dark, watch forty year old footage

projected onto a screen by a pre-World War II Bell & Howell a

motionless man in a chair, his head thrust back, mouth gaping

open, arms suspended out from an emaciated torso as if from

invisible strings.

OLD DOCTOR:

Those who survived, who awoke,

seemed fine, as though nothing had

happened. Years went by -five,

ten, fifteen -before anyone

suspected they were not well. .

They were not.

A doctor, this doctor decades younger, appears beside the

subject on the screen and lowers the man's arms.

OLD DOCTOR:

I began to see them in the early

1930's -old people brought in by

their children, young people

brought in by their parents -all

of them complaining they weren't

"themselves" anymore. They'd

grown distant, aloof, anti-social,

they daydreamed at the dinner

table. I referred them to

psychiatrists.

The man on the screen disappears and is replaced by a seal-

shaped woman in whom a hundred strange diseases seem to reside.

They conspire against her, torment and harass her, force her to

perform incessant and meaningless actions with her hands, to

paw her chin, to flutter, to adjust glasses that aren't there.

REV.12/5/89 (BLUE) Pg.24

40.CONT. 0I|

v

Does he ever speak to you?

Leonard's mother, a woman of seventy or so, is combing her

son's hair, being careful to get the part straight.

REV. 10/13/89 p.27

MRS. LOWE

Of course not. Not in words.

SAYER:

He speaks to you in other ways.

How do you mean?

MRS. LOWE i

You don't have children.

SAYER:

No.,

MRS. LOWE

If you did you'd know.

Finished with his hair, she wheels him from the sleeping ward *

and into the

43A. INT. LEONARD'S DAYROOM -CONTINUOUS -DAY 43A

Sayer, trailing after Mrs. Lowe and her sonr becomes

momentarily distracted by Lucy, the most recently arrived post-

encephalitic, the one he tried unsuccessfully to coax to the

drinking fountain. She is there again, "stuck" at the same

point, angled toward the fountain but unable to reach it.

Sayer brings her a cup of water and rejoins Mrs. Lowe.

SAYER:

I'd like to examine him again-if

that's all right with you.

MRS. LOWE ,

He did well.

SAYER:

In a sense.

MRS. LOWE

He's very clever. Aren't you,

Leonard. .

Sayer shows her the perception test "drawing** Leonard made.

SAYER:

Does this mean anything to you?

MRS. LOWE .

(more to Leonard) ;•

It's very good. '.•

She glances back to Sayer who nods uncertainly. She recognizes.

the look on his face; she's seen it before on the faces of more

doctors than she cares to remember. ' f

REV. 10/13/89 p.28

MRS. LOWE

(becoming impatient

with him)

Well it's abstract, isn't it.

Sayer can't bring himself to agree with her.

MRS. LOWE

That's the problem with all you

doctors, you have no imagination.

Everything has to be real to you.

No longer having any use for him, she pointedly ignores him.

Taking the hint, Sayer's wanders off, past Lucy, looking like a *

statue, holding the paper cup he brought her.

43B. EXT. APARTMENT BUILDING (MRS. LOWE'S) -ESTABLISH -NIGHT 43B.

44. INT. MRS. LOWE'S APARTMENT -NIGHT

The door opens from the inside revealing Sayer in street

clothes. Judging from the look on Mrs. Lowe's face, he has

arrived unannounced.

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