But it was a relief, because I said to myself, I'm not crazy. Valerie Wolf has also wondered whether her clients were truly victims of government experimentation, but the detailed nature of their stories has alleviated her doubts. Ms. Wolf remembers Ms. Mullen saying that Dr. Cameron, who spoke with a Scottish burr, called her lassie, a nickname that baffled the southerner. Some time later, at a conference, Ms. Wolf watched a television news program featuring old footage of Dr. Cameron in which the doctor entered a room, put his hand on the shoulder of a patient and called her lassie. Little things like that convinced me.
Nobody calls anybody lassie in the deep south of the United States.
Several years before Mary's memories began to surface, she found herself expressing them in collages and a series of line drawings. The pictures feature doctors, emaciated children, babies, chambers, electronic devices, beds, helmets and wires. One drawing is of Mary, shoulders dislocated, wrapped in mummy-like bandages. In another, she sits in a chair, electrodes attached to her body. Others allude to monkeys and cages, depictions of lab settings that terrify her still.