The Birthday

Henry Letham sits next to a car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, he gets up and leaves. Psychiatrist Sam Foster and his fiancée Lila meet up before work. Sam's new patient, Henry, is a college student and aspiring artist whom he describes as depressed and paranoid, with feelings of guilt and remorse. During Sam's first meeting with Henry, Henry mentions that he sometimes hears voices, and seems able to predict future events. Henry is also suspicious of Sam because his regular psychiatrist, Beth Levy, has suddenly taken leave. Sam meets with Henry after playing chess with a blind friend. When he introduces his friend, Leon, Henry is upset, because he says the man is his dead father. Not recognizing Henry, Leon leaves the room. That night Sam attempts to call Beth, to no avail. The next day, Henry hints to Sam of his plans to kill himself that Saturday at midnight. Lila, who survived a past suicide attempt, offers to help to dissuade Henry from killing himself. Henry disappears that night. Sam investigates Henry's circumstances and, after attempting to reach Dr. Levy, comes to her apartment and finds her disoriented and lethargic. Henry, who earlier claimed his parents were dead, has his account contradicted by Sam when he finds Henry's mother and her dog living in a bare house, confused about Sam's identity and refusing to respond to questions. Henry's mother's head starts bleeding and when Sam attempts to help her, her dog bites him. At the clinic, while having his dog-bitten arm treated, Sam discusses the visit with a police officer who is curious as to why he would visit that house. Sam explains what happened, but the police officer tells him that he had attended the funeral of the woman who lived there several months ago. This seems to send Sam into a fugue in which the same scene and dialogue is repeated several times. Later, Sam contacts Athena, a waitress with whom Henry has mentioned that he had fallen in love. She is an aspiring actress and he meets her at a script reading where she is reading lines from Hamlet with another man. She agrees to take him to Henry, but after a long trip down winding staircases he loses her. When he gets back to the rehearsal room, she is there reading the same lines as when he first encountered her. The search continues until 11:33 pm on Saturday, less than half an hour before Henry plans to kill himself. At a bookshop known to have been frequented by Henry, Sam finds a painting that Henry painted and bartered for books about Henry's favorite artist, Tristan Reveur. The artist killed himself on the Brooklyn Bridge on his 21st birthday. Henry's twenty-first birthday is Sunday, and Sam realizes that Henry plans to commit suicide on the Brooklyn Bridge, imitating the artist. Sam finds Henry on that bridge in a physical atmosphere that is increasingly unraveling. Sam admits to Henry that he does not know what is real anymore. Henry tells Sam that he now knows the world is a dream, and shoots himself with his gun. The car crash of the first scene is then reprised. Henry was fatally wounded in the crash but, in his last moments, is suffering survivor guilt, thus spending his final moment in the dream in which the story occurred. Each of the characters introduced earlier was actually a random spectator at the site of the crash, including doctor Sam and nurse Lila, who treat Henry in an attempt to save him. They fail to rescue Henry, and Henry dies, but not before seeing Lila as Athena and proposing to her, which Lila accepts out of sympathy. Sam asks Lila out for coffee, saying he cannot sleep after what happened.