Kate Gompert on the psych ward
Gompert, Katherine A., 21, Newton MA. Data-clerical in a Wellesley Hills real estate office. Fourth hospitalization in three years, all clinical depression, unipolar. One series of electro-convulsive treatments out at Newton-Wellesley Hospital two years back. On Prozac for a short time, then Zoloft, most recently Parnate with a lithium kicker. Two previous suicide attempts, the second just this past summer. […] The attempt had been serious, a real attempt. This girl had not been futzing around. […] Her voice was oddly lit-up for one who lay fetal, dead-eyed, w/o facial affect.
Context
The chart recital: the theme's clinical apparatus in miniature — unipolar depression, the med ladder, ECT, the attempt-history — plus the scene's affect-signature: animated voice over a dead face, the disjunction every later Kate scene trades on.