Precious

I met Frodo Baggins for the first time in the emergency department waiting room. I was there to pick-up my wife Sarah at the end of her shift. He was there, I presumed, because of his arm in a sling. He was much taller than I imagined a Frodo would be. His pointed ears were the clip-on type and his gray cloak and leaf of Lorien brooch were nice movie replicas, if a little grungy. The dirt and hair on his bare feet however, were completely genuine. In one hand he held a ham sandwich, in the other a gold ring. 

I sat next to him because there were no other available seats and did my best to send out “don’t talk to me” vibes. Frodo didn’t pick up on them.

“Excuse me,” he said through a mouthful of ham sandwich, “are you Gollum?” 

“Umm, no.” I didn’t look up from my phone.

“I thought not,” Frodo sighed. “I don’t suppose you are Sam either?” 

I shook my head.

“Well, that’s alright. You can only be who you are. I have to carry the ring to Mordor, I just need someone to show me the way.”

I grunted and kept scrolling.

Frodo took another bite of sandwich, chewing with his mouth open, still staring at me.

“My quest will save the world, you know,” he said, spewing out a few crumbs. 

“That’s great. I hope it works out for you.”

“Oh it will. No worries there. I’ll toss the ring in directly once I arrive at the Cracks of Doom and then everything will be better for everybody!”

This Frodo sounded considerably more upbeat about his task than the Elijah Wood version. 

“That’s great,” I said again.

“It is a heavy load, but I can bear it.” Frodo shoved the last of his sandwich into his mouth, looking proud.

I bobbed my head. 

Frodo swallowed noisily, then said “Which quest are you then?”

“No quest, just chauffeuring.”

Frodo looked me up and down, then leaned in and said, “Well, I have already taken the ring quest, but you could try and save Gondor or maybe defend Helm’s Deep. I think riling up the Ents is still available too, so you have options.”

He cocked his head, waiting for me to make a choice. I was saved by a nurse pushing through the double doors.

“Frodo Baggins?” she read from her clipboard.   

“Ah, Lady Arwen!” Frodo popped up from his seat, “she’ll get this little bit of Morgul Blade all taken care of, though I do prefer Lord Glorfindel when I have the choice.” He turned to me with a flourish of his cloak and said, rather too loudly “Don’t worry about not having your own quest yet. It’s true there’s only one ring to rule them all, but that doesn’t mean whatever you’re doing isn’t worthwhile too! May the grace of the Valar protect you!” 

***

In the car, I told Sarah about Frodo.

“Oh yeah,” she laughed, “he’s a regular. Comes in asking for Lembas bread at least once a week. We give him a sandwich and that seems to satisfy him.”

“Does he actually have something wrong with his arm?”

“Nope. He uses a marker to draw a puncture wound on his shoulder.”

“Is his legal name really Frodo?”

“No, but if you call him by the name on his medical record he just ignores you.”

“So he’s completely psychotic?”

“Meh. Not too bad really. I mean yes, he is clinically diagnosed with delusional disorder, but I get people in here with psychoses all the time. Usually they think they’re Jesus Christ or something. I’ll take a hobbit over one of them any day.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I look like Gollum?” I asked.

Sarah laughed, “Is that who he thought you were? He calls me Galadriel.” 

“Isn’t there anything you can do for him?”

“Not from an emergency medicine standpoint. I’ve sent psych referrals for him, but I don’t think he’s ever gone to an appointment. Overall he seems to be enjoying his psychosis, so personally I kind of feel like letting him be as long as he’s happy.

***

After that,  I started noticing Frodo all over town. I guess he’d always been around, but now he stood out to me from among the other homeless people on the streets. The more I saw him, the more I realized Sarah was right. He always looked happy. I could tell he slept outside, never bathed and I had no idea where he got food (besides Lembas at the ER) because he was never panhandling.

Instead, wherever I saw him, he was always questing through some scene from middle-earth. I started tracking his progress, though he didn’t seem to follow events in any particular order.

 At the city park, I saw him huddled under the roots of a tree, struggling against the temptation to slip his ring on. The Shire, I thought, hiding from the Black Rider. 

In the Safeway parking lot, I saw him sitting inside a grocery cart pushing himself along with a stick like he was paddling a boat, before slowing and staring up in awe at the tall marquee sign. The Falls of Rauros, taking in the impossible heights of the Argonath. 

In the public library, I watched him gather a circle of reading chairs, place the ring on a stack of books in the center and declare “I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” 

I found myself annoyed that despite being psychotically obsessed with Tolkein, Frodo couldn’t act the event in the correct order, but then I realized that is what really made his delusion powerful. Timelines weren’t important, nor any interruptions. By not caring about the order of events, Frodo could adjust his delusion on the fly to any interruption.

When the librarian approached Frodo and told him other people needed to use the chairs, He did not get upset. He asked the librarian if he were Boromir. When the librarian said “no, I’m still not Boromir,” Frodo said that was fine, but that he was still breaking up the fellowship now.  When the bus pulled up to The Prancing Pony, Frodo jumped off the bench and began bidding farewell to everyone, declaring that he was “boarding the bus to the undying lands.” When sprinklers came on unexpectedly and forced Frodo to flee from his tree root hiding place, he was immediately in the dead marshes, picking his way carefully across the damp terrain. 

Every time I saw Frodo act out a new scene, I told Sarah about it, and she kept me updated whenever he made a trip to the ER. In some ways, I became a little envious of him. He was absolutely focused. Nothing that happened in the world around him could dislodge his sense of purpose. I could not say the same about myself.

Every time I glanced at the news and saw what the real Dark Lords of the world were up to, I wished I felt a little bit more like Frodo, who, with the ring in his possession, had leverage against the big people. Even though I slept in a warm bed every night and always knew where my next meal was coming from, sometimes I wondered if Frodo was getting more out of his life, convinced that he was embarked on something that would make the world better for everyone. 

After several months, I’d seen quite a lot of Frodo’s story. I’d seen him staring into a drinking fountain, and had found it easy to imagine the trees of Lothlorien around him, the voice of Galadriel in his ear. I had watched him wrap himself in newspaper, then lie very still, and I knew that Shelob had just stung him. I saw him wandering around inside the bowls and ramps of a skate park, and knew he was lost in the Emyn Muil. But the one thing I never saw was Frodo actually at the Cracks of Doom, ready to dispose of the ring. I wondered what would happen to his delusion if he ever made it there and finished his quest.

I thought about creating a scenario that might prompt Frodo to see himself arriving at Orodruin, just as a sort of experiment. I mentioned the thought to Sarah, and she made it clear in no uncertain terms that if I did any such thing to poor, happy Frodo, I would be made the next hobbit living on the streets. 

Unfortunately, a rainy evening came when I found myself, against my will, creating that very scenario. I was navigating my way home through the downpour, when the car in front of me slammed on its brakes. I heard a scream and a thump, then the car swerved into other lane and tore away. A gray form lay in the street. 

Frodo was still conscious when I reached him. His forehead was gashed open and his legs bent unnaturally. His eyes were wide and scared. The ring hung out of his shirt on a chain.

“Frodo,” I said and there was  a part of me that wanted to laugh out loud hearing myself say the name, that weird part of a person that seems to be watching from the outside when something too tragic to accept as reality is happening, “Frodo, I got an ambulance coming.”

I knelt next to him in the road. 

His eyes searched around as if they were seeing things I could not see, but when they finally settled on my face he said, “Are you Gollum?”

That same part of me that didn’t want to believe this was happening became outraged. Gollum again? Why not Aragorn? Or Legolas? Why was I Gollum?

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll be Gollum.”

“I thought so.” He croaked, “How much further to Mordor? The ring is getting heavy.”

“Not much,” I said.  I thought it would be ok to play along with him, to keep him calm. But it was the wrong thing to do. When the ambulance arrived and the EMTs lifted him away from me, he began to scream and thrash. “No, I must follow Gollum, only he knows the way into Mordor. I must follow Gollum.”

“Is he talking about you?” one of the EMTs asked.

I nodded.

“Get in the ambulance and see if it calms him down.”

 I did, and Frodo immediately calmed, and then fell unconscious. 

I called Sarah and she was waiting for us when we arrived at the ER. She wheeled Frodo away on the gurney as I spoke with a police officer about what I had seen happen, and then went to the waiting room. 

Sarah found me after a few minutes.

“We need to get him an MRI,” she said, her voice urgent, “but he woke up when we tried to take the ring from around his neck, and he won’t let anyone touch it. He keeps shouting that he is claiming the ring for himself. Can you think of anything that might make him give it up so we can get him in the machine?”

Of course I could. I was Gollum. This was Mount Doom.

I followed Sarah back. Frodo was in obvious pain, writhing on the gurney. I wondered what I should do. Pretend to bite his finger?

The delusion didn’t require that. 

“Are you Gollum?” He asked.

“Yes.” I said, and the look of relief that came across his face was almost startling. His hand uncurled, and though he did not give it to me, I knew he meant for me to take the ring, because that was what happened now.

I lifted it from his palm, but then he closed his hand around the chain, looking at me expectantly.

“Precious.” I whispered.

Frodo nodded and closed his eyes, letting go of the ring. As they wheeled him away, I knew he was seeing towers fall and mountains crumble and that he was glad to be at the end of all things.

Frodo didn’t die that night. But he was never on the streets again. I visited him once in the convalescent home. He did not ask me if I was Gollum, and introduced himself by the name that was on his medical record. He seemed content. When I offered him the ring back, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

So, I still have it. I am not sure what to do with it. I hung it from my rearview mirror for a while. When Sarah noticed it, she told me there would be no Lembas for me at her ER if I came in claiming to be Gollum. Oddly, everytime I try to just throw it away, I think about how happy Frodo was with his delusion and instead I just slip it back in my pocket and wonder what it would be like to really carry the fate of the world in my hands, to be on a real quest.