Marcie Monatella's Medical Phobia

Marcie Monatella's Medical Phobia is a sudden, disabling fear of doctors, hospitals, and medical procedures that surfaces as though it carries its own hidden history. Its force is measured not only in Marcie's insistence that doctors hurt her, but in her body's escalating responses: flight, violence, loss of bladder control, and near-catatonic withdrawal. Yet the account leaves the source of the fear unresolved. Marcie describes being restrained and stuck with needles; Jorja knows of no hospitalization or serious illness that could explain the memory. The phobia then unexpectedly recedes after Marcie spends several days in the very setting she fears.

First Signs and an Unexplained History

At a family meal, Marcie initially eats a morsel and observes that nothing has happened. Her grandfather, Pete, turns the possibility of a hospital visit into a teasing threat, imagining that she might swell up and need to be carried there. Marcie's answer is adamant: “No hospital.” When Jorja tries to reassure her that Pete is only joking, Marcie says hospital staff will hurt her as they did before. Jorja is baffled; she says Marcie has never been in a hospital.

Marcie insists otherwise, recalling that she was tied to a bed and stuck with needles while frightened. The certainty of her protest clashes with her mother's knowledge, but the distress itself is unmistakable. She throws her fork, retreats from the table, and says she will grow up to be her own doctor so that nobody can put needles in her. Her fear is not an abstract dislike: she raises her hands as if to ward off an attack and looks past Jorja, who is trying to reach her, toward an unseen threat.

The episode takes a physical toll. Marcie backs into a corner, shuddering, and wets her jeans; she tries to scream but cannot. Afterward, Jorja recalls that the Christmas-day panic included screaming, scratching, and kicking as she tried to clean her daughter. Marcie eventually submitted to a bath, then became slack-faced and empty-eyed for nearly an hour, as if the terror had drained her strength and responsiveness. Her return to speech is gradual: she answers Mary and Pete in flat, one-word replies, sucks her thumb after having stopped for at least two years, and plays with new toys without visible pleasure. Jorja is relieved that Marcie shows no further interest in a Little Ms. Doctor kit, but remains alarmed by the change in her daughter.

Fear Repeats Beyond the Table

That night, Jorja brings Marcie into her own bed rather than leave her alone. Marcie repeatedly kicks and twists at the sheets as if trying to escape restraining hands, and talks in her sleep about doctors and needles. The bedrooms are separated by back-to-back closets and hanging clothes, which may have muffled the child's quiet sleep-talk on earlier nights. Jorja wonders how long Marcie has been suffering without her knowledge. She plans to find a doctor in the morning: Marcie's fear makes the visit daunting, but the prospect of not seeking help frightens her more.

The next day, Jorja takes Marcie to Dr. Louis Besancourt. In the waiting room, Marcie screams and weeps that doctors will hurt her. A slap, which Jorja says would ordinarily be enough to correct rare misbehavior, makes the distress worse. An understanding nurse helps bring the child into the examination room. Besancourt's manner cannot calm her: when he approaches, Marcie pulls away, strikes, and kicks, until Jorja and the nurse have to hold her down. The sight and touch of medical staff turn the visit into another crisis rather than a reassuring examination.

When Besancourt uses an ophthalmoscope to examine her eyes, Marcie's terror peaks and she loses control of her bladder, recalling the Christmas-day episode. Her behavior then changes abruptly. She becomes silent and sullen, pale and constantly shivering, with a detached expression that makes Jorja fear that something more serious may be wrong. Besancourt cannot offer an immediate diagnosis and raises neurological, brain, and psychological disorders as possibilities. He recommends that Marcie enter Sunrise Hospital for several days of tests.

Hospital Exposure and a Sudden Reversal

The hospital intensifies the pattern. The sight of doctors and nurses repeatedly sends Marcie into panic, which escalates into hysteria before exhaustion leaves her in a semicatatonic trance. Jorja takes a week of sick leave from the casino and spends four days at Sunrise, sleeping on a rollaway bed in Marcie's room. Even under medication, Marcie twitches, kicks, whimpers, and cries out in her dreams about the moon. By Sunday, December 29, the strain has left Jorja exhausted and close to needing medical attention herself.

On Monday morning, Marcie's extreme terror simply disappears. She still wants to go home and remains nervous and watchful around doctors and nurses, but she no longer recoils in horror or strikes when touched. Her appetite returns, and she eats everything on her breakfast tray. The improvement is a striking reversal: the sustained presence of the feared people and place has not only produced repeated crises; it has also preceded a sudden easing of the panic.

The completed tests provide no physical explanation. Besancourt tells Jorja that they found no brain tumors, cerebral lesions, or neurological dysfunction. He plans to refer Marcie to Ted Coverly, a child psychologist, to investigate the cause and any anxiety that remains. The negative results narrow the immediate medical possibilities without resolving why Marcie spoke as if she remembered earlier treatment. Jorja's understanding of Marcie's history and Marcie's own insistence remain in tension.

Besancourt's Explanation and Its Limits

Looking back, Besancourt recognizes what he considers the signs of a phobia: irrational fear and panic attacks directed at medical care. He proposes that the hospital stay may have inadvertently treated it through flooding, a method that exposes a phobic patient to the feared object for an extended period in the hope that the phobia's power will break. In Marcie's case, the exposure was not planned as therapy: it followed frightening episodes and was undertaken to investigate possible illness. Besancourt nevertheless wonders whether the four days at Sunrise have disrupted the fear.

Neither the cause nor the durability of the improvement is settled. Jorja asks where the phobia could have come from, noting that Marcie has never had a bad experience with doctors and has never been seriously ill. Besancourt says the cause of a phobia may be unknown and warns that residual apprehension could remain for Coverly to identify. The state therefore ends in partial relief, not an explanation: Marcie's acute panic has abated, medical tests are negative, and psychological follow-up is proposed, while the apparent memory of restraint and needles remains unexplained.

Narrative Significance

The phobia is presented first through Marcie's embodied reactions, before anyone can supply a cause for them. Her defensive hands, shuddering retreat, incontinence, and later withdrawal give her fear a reality that the adults' uncertainty cannot dismiss. At the same time, the gap between her account and Jorja's knowledge prevents the episode from confirming a specific medical trauma. The narrative preserves that contradiction rather than resolving it with a diagnosis.

The hospital also produces a reversal without erasing the cost of the process. Marcie's exposure brings repeated panic and hours-long withdrawal, yet it is followed by the sudden return of appetite and a less violent response to care. Besancourt's flooding hypothesis gives the change a possible clinical framework, but not certainty about either its mechanism or its staying power. Marcie's fear is thus both a crisis in the present and a question about an inaccessible past—one whose bodily effects appear before its history can be understood.