By the Time You Read This

39

DOROTHY BELL WENT TO the hairdresser in the morning and in the afternoon spent a tranquil hour raking leaves and bagging them for recycling. She was back inside, watering the houseplants, when she heard a patient leaving, and then the connecting door opened and Frederick came in.

“What a nice surprise,” he said, and kissed the top of her head. “I thought you were going downtown.”

“I’ve been downtown. I’m back.”

“Gosh, only four o’clock and I’m starving. Those sandwiches at the hospital are so skimpy. A person could starve up there and no one would know.”

He was rooting around in the cupboard.

“What are you looking for?”

“Biscuits, my dear! Biscuits! My kingdom for a biscuit!”

“They’re in the other cupboard. Red tin.”

“Hiding them again,” he said cheerfully. “Keeping them from me.”

“That Dorn boy,” she said. “The one that shot himself in the laundromat. He was one of your patients, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was. Poor fellow.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t more upset about it.”

“I was upset about it.”

“You didn’t mention it.”

“I didn’t want to worry you, that’s all.”

“Why would it worry me?”

“I don’t know. You’re worried now, it would seem.”

“I just wonder why you didn’t mention it. It’s a pretty dramatic way to lose a patient, after all. And it was in the papers.”

“Oddly enough, Dorothy, I see it as my job to worry about my patient, not yours. Some young men want to kill themselves, it’s a fact of life. Lots of them come to me when either it’s too late to do anything for them or when they don’t really want to change. That is to say, they really, really want to kill themselves. And so they do.”

“And that’s fine with you.”

“Darling, what’s got into you?”

“I just find it appalling that you can have a patient go into a public place and blow his head off and you say not one word about it.”

“I talk to people all day, I listen to people all day. Sometimes I don’t feel like talking at home. No doubt there are doctors who drag their entire caseload home with them and worry their families with it day and night. I’m not one of them. End of story.” He put the milk back into the fridge and picked up his glass and plate. “I don’t have another patient until five. Until then I’m going to be writing up some notes.”

He closed the door after himself, and Dorothy listened to his footsteps recede.

Dr. Bell set his milk and cookies on the coffee table and inserted a DVD into the player. He had had to leave the kitchen immediately, all but overwhelmed by the urge to strike his wife, something he had never done—or even wished to do—in his life. Her accusations rattled him. Dorn’s departure, it was now obvious, had been too flamboyant to be considered a hundred percent optimal outcome.

Bell used to have endless patience; he could allow his flock to move at their own pace. But he was losing that now, and it unnerved him. He had dealt with enough obsessives to know that they rarely remained stable, they got worse and worse until their lives spun horribly out of control and they ended up in hospital, doped to stupefaction. He yearned to be back the way he was, before everything had begun to slip from his fingers.

“Leonard Keswick,” he said aloud, to clear his head. “Further adventures of.”

Keswick would cheer him up. He fast-forwarded to the good bits. Onscreen, Kleenexes were snatched up and used. Keswick’s hands covered his face then flew away in a jerky peekaboo. Then Bell hit Play.

“It’s my worst nightmare,” Keswick says onscreen. His voice is fogged with tears, hushed with shame. “You know what my wife did when she found out?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell us,” Bell said, and bit off a piece of cookie. Peanut butter. Not his favourite.

“She spit on me,” Keswick says. “She actually spit on me. In my face. My own wife.”

The Dr. Bell on the TV is all therapeutic patience and understanding. The one in the office made masturbating motions in the air.

“How did the police find out?” Keswick wails. “How could they have known?”

“Didn’t they tell you? Surely they have to give you some idea of the evidence?”

“Evidence? The evidence was on my computer! It was full of pictures of thirteen-year-old girls!”

“Boys, too,” Bell said over a mouthful of cookie. “Let’s not forget the boys, you old ponce.”

“All they would say was they were ‘acting on information received.’”

“What do you suppose they mean by that?” Dr. Bell says.

“I don’t know. Maybe something to do with the Internet portal or provider or whatever they call it. Not that it matters. I’m going to lose my job, I’m probably going to lose my family. And I’m in hell, Doctor, that’s the truth. It’s like I’ve already died and gone to hell, and I just don’t know what to do.”

Dr. Bell gulped the last of his milk and wiped cookie crumbs from his lap. “Oh, I think you know what to do, Lenny. I think you know exactly what to do.”

The phone rang, and then he heard the voice of Gillian McRae, a receptionist at the hospital.

“Doctor, it’s Gillian. Have you not gotten back to Melanie Greene? She’s called twice this afternoon. She sounds really distraught, and I think you should talk to her first chance you get.”

“Absolutely, Gillian,” Bell said without picking up. “I’ll get right on it.”