Dead Echo

by C.G. Banks

  *

  Beverly Evans stepped quietly down the hallway and stood before Carolyn Skate’s closed door. She leaned in close and listened. Even though the appointment had ended fifteen minutes before and the patient left, Beverly knew better than to go barging in unannounced. She’d been working for Skate for almost two years now and knew the routine. The doctor liked to take time after each patient, considering what had been said and taking notes. She usually did this into an old-fashioned tape recorder she said had once belonged to her father. Beverly didn’t hear anything through the door. She straightened up and knocked lightly. “Yes?” she heard.

  She reached down and turned the knob, opened the door and entered. Skate was seated behind her desk, a scatter of papers before her. “What is it, Beverly?” she asked, leaning back in the chair.

  Beverly looked down at the notepad in her hand, cleared her throat. “Something I thought you should be aware of,” she said.

  Skate placed her hands on the desktop, one over the other. “Okay.”

  “A phone call I just received. A woman named Standish. Patsy Standish.” The name caused the doctor to lean forward. She took note and continued.

  “I don’t know but something didn’t seem right.” She cleared her throat again. “I checked the computer and—“

  “Yes, yes, okay,” and Skate was standing now, rounding off the corner of her desk, coming toward her. “What did she want?”

  “Well, she wanted to see you. I told her you were in with a patient and she asked for an appointment.” She swallowed. “She didn’t sound well.” Then, “I asked her if it was an emergency and she said no. I think she must have hung up on me…”

  By this time Skate was standing in front of her with her right hand on Beverly’s sleeve. Beverly handed her the note and searched her eyes while Skate looked it over. Below the appointment date Beverly had scratched down the home phone number. The same one Skate remembered. “Didn’t seem right?” Skate repeated, looking up from the note. “What didn’t seem right?”

  “I don’t know. She just sounded…bad. Like she’d been crying or was about to. Like I said, she hung up pretty quick.”

  Skate pursed her lips and nodded. Scratched at an area below her right eye. “Okay,” she said. “Anything else I oughta know?”

  Beverly shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “Not that I can think of.”

  “Okay, well I’ll handle it,” Skate said and turned back to her desk.

  Beverly turned away and left the office, closing the door behind her. Skate stood motionless staring at the scrap of paper in her hand. A bell was going off loud and clear in her head. The conversation she’d had with James (one that was never far away at any time) now came back full force. She held no truck with superstition of any kind (religion included) but he’d felt the same thing that had been worrying her. There was no denying simple human instinct. It had developed over eons of time and experience and for that fact alone was, indeed, something any rational person should take into account. Still…she turned the scrap over as if looking for instructions on the other side. Shook her head and breathed out deeply. Tried to picture the woman in her mind’s eye but the only thing that surfaced were the notes she’d written afterward. There was a slight image in her head but Skate didn’t like to trust such ephemeral footprints. She walked back over to her desk, sat down, and placed the scrap of paper in front of her. Coincidence, she thought. Because it was as if the woman had known she’d been discussed; let’s face it, she’d largely disappeared from Skate’s consciousness up until the meeting with James. She saw too many disturbed individuals to go chasing at straws like this one, but…

  There was something else. Professionalism demanded that she, at least, be true to herself. Standish had been at the back of her mind, hell, ever since their only meeting. She couldn’t deny the fact that it’d been her who called James in the first place, not the other way around. And why had she done that? She felt peculiar about this woman. In a nutshell that was it, had from the start. As ironic as that sounded to her trained mind, it was the truth. She smiled grimly and looked around the office. She licked her lips and picked up the note.

  Then she reached for the phone. Heard the bells get louder in her head as she dialed.