Everyone at the Institute referred to them as “schizophrenic” because that was the official diagnosis, carried forward on their charts over a seven-year period.  But in fact their illnesses bore almost no resemblance to classic schizophrenia or any other recognized form of mental disturbance.  Whatever they had, it was unrecognizable, unique, defying classification.  This troubled me because it went against all my training and experience up to that time.  Patients, I’d been taught, can always be diagnosed—that is, categorized—because they’re not like you and me. They are not normal, healthy individuals with unique personalities that can express themselves in an infinite number of ways.  They have illnesses with certain symptoms; there are only a limited number of possibilities.  In other words, even if the rest of us are unique, mental patients are not.  But here were Hunter and Antonia, who defied medical classification.  The lexicon of modern medicine was useless in the face of their individuality.  The only thing you could say about them was that they were crazy.  Mad.  That’s what they were, I told myself privately: Mad.