"No," I replied. "I don't seem to be anything that makes sense medically, legally or morally. I need help."
So I told him the whole story from beginning to end, and added the advice I had already received from Dr. McGregor and Rabbi Da Silva.
Father Flanagan heard me out and then considered carefully.
"I've heard some strange things in Confession," he stated at last, "but they never taught us at Notre Dame how to deal with a problem like yours. I'd rather like to consult the Bishop before I undertook to advise you. Do you mind?"
"Yes, I do," I told the priest. "It's no disrespect for your bishop. It's just that I feel that this problem must be solved on a low level rather than by the higher echelons. In the Navy, we soon learned that the best way to get a problem loused up was to refer it to CINCPAC. What is your own reaction to my story?"
Father Flanagan pursed his lips and pondered for a moment. "Speaking as a man," he said, "and not as a priest, it looks to me as though you were sitting pretty, Mr. Tompkins. Naturally, I have no explanation for it and the psychiatrists seem to have given you a clean bill of health, so maybe you're not crazy. I have a vague idea that there's reference to something like your experience in the Patristic writings which I read when I was studying for the priesthood. It's all mixed up with the Gnostics and necromancy but it's hard to tell how much you can accept literally in that material. Pagan literature is full of it, such as Apuleius' 'The Golden Ass', in which a witch turns a man into a donkey, but that's admittedly fancy. As I say, you seem to be sitting pretty. By your own account, Commander Jacklin's life was pretty much of a failure and Tompkins was not exactly what you could call a huge moral success. Yet you, as Jacklin, seem to be doing a pretty good job with Tompkins' life. Why don't you let it go at that?"
"I can't, Father," I told him. "I've got to find out what Tompkins was doing just before Easter. Even if it's only for that one week, I've got to know."
"And you say that so far nobody has been able to help you?"
"Nobody," I replied. "The doctors call it trauma and say that my memory may come back to me at any time, but I can't wait."
He smiled. "'Can't' is a big and human word. Have you tried hypnotism? Or scopolamine? They aren't exactly liturgical and my Bishop would have a fit if he heard me mention them—he considers them on a par with mediums and spiritualism—but they have some value in restoring memory."