by J. T. Bock
She was constantly snooping, under the guise of concern. She was trying to find out what had happened to me, so she could be ‘supportive.’
So she can have me kicked out of the practice, more likely.
Of course, I did have personal issues. And if they’d been known, I would be kicked out of the practice.
If I’d had more time, I’d have tried harder to find out what was wrong with her. But I didn’t. In the grand scheme of what I had to do with the remainder of my life, I believed Dr. Langley was supremely unimportant.
I had just given her an excuse for a partner’s meeting to exclude me from the practice. We didn’t take patients privately.
I sighed and sat behind my desk.
I found I didn’t care.
However, if I was going to take Mr. Scott’s case, even out of spite, I was going to do it professionally. That meant writing up my notes now.
I turned my computer on and plugged my special chorded keyboard in.
The device itself was small, barely visible when I held it in my palm. It had a button for each finger and a toggle for the thumb. The occasional person who even noticed it tended to think it was some kind of stress toy. I have the top of the line model, in walnut, but they all work the same. Each key on a normal keyboard is represented by a combination of buttons pressed. It’s no more difficult than learning to type, and it just works well for me.
I’d been using it remotely, so I downloaded the file for the consultation, and switched to my word processor to edit it.
The file started normally enough. The title, ‘Preliminary Consultation’, and the man’s name. Date. Time. My brief description of him. I paused and switched to access the office security system using the standard keyboard and mouse.
Everyone who comes in has their photo taken. I pulled up the image and looked at it for a moment.
Mmm. Wonder what he looks like with the jacket off. And the shirt.
Shut up woman, and concentrate! Or give it to Frances.
I pasted his image into my notes and continued.
Standard stuff. Apparently good health. No meds. Blah. Blah. I had to correct the usual mistakes, where I’d missed the right combination of buttons or my timing had been just a bit off. The amount I used this system, I’d learned all the patterns to these, and I was able to edit quickly.
Then I had to slow right down. The mistakes were increasing. There were ones there I never made.
I frowned.
The input degenerated into near gibberish, and I was forced to use my memory to recall what was said. Fortunately, I had a near perfect recall. As long as it had happened this year, that was.
Maybe the keyboard’s developing a problem?
But as I was reaching that conclusion, the ideas for follow-up questions started to appear and the quality of typing picked back up again.
Good…
Except, now there were other comments as well.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
This never, ever happened.
Oblivious to the storm, he stands on the cliff’s edge, staring out over a wild sea and searching for that one word that fits.
I frowned again. I’d been thinking of Heathcliff and romantic poets and this crap turned up in my file?
Frances could never see this. She’d jump all over it and enjoy using it to bring me down.
I zapped the line, and the next—about the wind running its fingers through his hair.
It didn’t stop there.
I had thought he looked familiar, like an actor I’d seen on television. And what came out…
I know you.
I know all of you.
My tongue has described the contours of your chest.
My lips know your subtle taste.
My hands have caressed every part of you
And I have held you in my arms the night long.
I know you. I have known you. I will always know you.
I stopped and stared at the screen. What the hell was going on?
The best I could come up with was my hand seemed to have decided on a second career of writing erotica.
I held it up in front of my face and glared at it. It was trembling, but that was something else.
I erased the lines hastily and saved the file, trembling harder all the time.
I’d thought I had them under control; it had been a couple of months since the last panic attack.
Chapter 4
I sat shivering at my desk. My mouth was dry, and the familiar gut-wrenching sensations paralyzed me.
They’d found out. I’d let something slip. They knew I was a fraud. I wasn’t the real Dr. Amanda Lloyd. Everyone out there was an enemy, just waiting for me to make a mistake. Any second now, they’d come through the door and haul me out to face their censure.
There was a quiet whisper of sound, and a folded piece of paper came under the door.
This had to be it.
The panic’s hold on me broken, I stumbled over and looked at it for a full minute before I could pick it up.
Thank you again, Dr. Lloyd. I wanted you to know, Dr. Langley is calling a practice meeting without you. I’ve handed in my notice. I have enjoyed working with you so much and I have to say I’m in awe of what you’re doing with the court case. Carrie.
I burst into tears.
They hadn’t found out, and not everyone was an enemy.
I knelt down on the floor and tried the healing breath. In. Hold. Out. Visualize all the negativity and tensions leaving with the breath.
Except it wasn’t healing me.
If I breathed ten times a minute, that was…say…fourteen thousand breaths a day. About a hundred thousand a week. That meant I had less than a million breaths left before I was going to die. I had things to do. I couldn’t afford to waste time with panic attacks and crying.
It wasn’t as if I was going to need this job anyway. I had more money than time.
I turned off the computer, grabbed my things and fled the office for the one place I could be sure would calm me down.
Rafferty’s Books snuggled in the middle of a row of cookie-cutter chain stores that could have been anywhere in the US.
Old Josiah Rafferty himself was long gone, but the little Rafferties, as they called themselves, kept the shop going despite the drop in business. They’d never had the money to upgrade and I was conflicted enough to wish they never did. A new look might revive the business, but I would be denied one of my few remaining pleasures.
I floated along the narrow corridor between shelves eight feet high, fingers brushing the spines of my friends. Their smell filtered down into my nose and I closed my eyes in ecstasy.
I let my hands pick a book, not caring what it was or even which aisle I was in. I always bought a book when I visited Rafferty’s, always. As Liam Rafferty had said to me, a few dozen more of me and he could’ve afforded a shop assistant.
At the desk I paid for the book and a double mocha.
“Oh, lit-er-at-ure, Dr. Lloyd,” laughed Liam, looking at the book before waving me to the comfy seats they’d insisted on keeping for patrons. “Enjoy.”
I sat down and took a sip of the coffee. That was better.
What had I bought? I looked at the cover: English Romantic Poets of the Nineteenth Century.
I snorted, closed my eyes and sat back.
The important thing in my remaining time was the court case, nothing else.
A year before, after I’d stopped shaking and shivering uselessly, I’d dressed warmly and gone out into the cold. A wind was coming off the lakes that had people hurrying into their houses, but I ignored it.
I’d walked downtown Detroit and I knew it—not like it was my hometown, but like I’d been there a long time. The urban decay, foreclosures and empty stores seemed achingly familiar. Sometimes a café or a shop or a street would feel different, special, like closing your eyes and putting on a favorite jacket.
Rafferty’s was closed that day. The prac
tice was closed, too. Both so familiar, yet strange.
I wouldn’t have had the courage to go in either place, but when I got home to the apartment I knew I was the person called Amanda Lloyd, whoever she was, and the way to find myself was to be her, to act out her life.
So on Monday, I showed up at work, claiming a cold and a concussion from a fall, speaking to as few people as possible.
Surprisingly, work itself was the easiest. After greeting the first patient, I picked up the chorded keyboard and started typing as we spoke. I made comments and suggestions that just came into my mind in response to what the patient had said.
I wasn’t faking it. The body was on automatic, but the mind was working hard at something that it was good at.
That was such a relief, I threw myself into my work.
Whenever I wasn’t working, I was terrified of my colleagues asking me about anything, but a temporary solution to that arrived unexpectedly.
The practice was contacted by the prosecutor’s office. They requested a psychiatric evaluation of a man coming up for trial, a Mr. Harmon Zedous. It would require a visit to the prison at Ionia, a couple of hours away. None of the others wanted it, not because of the inconvenience, but because they knew better. Even though I realized that, I knew it would take me out of the practice for a while, so I volunteered. How bad could it be?
I had been so naive, I’d driven all the way out to Ionia and checked into a motel, ready for an early start the next day, before I opened the file and learned about Harmon Zedous.
Beneath the bright, shiny surface of civilization, there’s a profound darkness. Humanity has to name things, and religious texts call the darkness ‘hell’ and its substance ‘evil.’ Philosophical texts say that one cannot exist without the other. Even some psychologists agree, though they use other terms.
Zedous was steeped in that darkness. You could see it behind his eyes—a drifting miasma of evil.
There’s a hidden trade that spans the whole world. It has its claws in every part, America included. It’s a trade in people. Ten thousand women and girls feed sexual slavery in America every year. It’s as if there’s some obscene circulatory system in the shadows, pumping victims from state to state, city to city.
Some of those arteries crossed in Detroit, and Zedous was there, like some gross heart, throbbing with evil.
I didn’t know all that when I first walked in to interview him, but I’m good at my job.
Later, when I drove away after the last interview, I was trembling with anger at what I’d found. I pulled over and took a long look at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility, its low gray buildings wrapped in spotlights, razor wire and guard towers. That was where Zedous belonged. There was no way I’d allow him to wriggle out through any manipulation of psychiatric evidence, if it was the last thing I did.
The results from Dr. Henderson showed it would, indeed, be the last thing I did.
That was acceptable.
Rafferty’s couch sank as someone sat down next to me. “That’s a fierce expression,” Scott said. “What are you thinking about?”
I should have been surprised to see him, but somehow I wasn’t. It was as if part of me had been expecting him.
“The Bellamy over in Ionia,” I said.
“Not for me, I hope.”
“They don’t put stalkers in the Bellamy, Mr. Scott.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I was just browsing the books and saw you.” He cleared his throat. “I understand we’re to meet privately rather than at the practice, according to your front desk.”
“Hmm. I’m not at all sure I should take you on.”
“Carrie was convinced—”
“Carrie was convinced she didn’t want one of the other partners to take you on,” I said. “And also, no doubt, convinced she’d need to give you her personal number. In case you ever needed to contact her directly.”
That just sort of slipped out, but I had excuses for myself today.
He smiled and looked down at his cappuccino. I sighed. When the patient is more discreet than the therapist, there’s a problem.
He picked up the book and drew his breath in sharply. I suppressed a spurt of irritation; I could have done without the amateur dramatics.
“What prompted this?” he said.
I waved a hand. “If I don’t have something I’m coming in specifically for, I just pick at random. The hands know.”
“Indeed they do.” His hands brushed the cover gently. “Will you read it?”
“Oh yes. I’m a great believer in serendipity.”
“Yes, you are.” He opened the book about a third of the way through, as if he knew it well. For a few seconds, he half-smiled at something there, his eyes losing their focus. Then he took a card out of his pocket, slipped it into the book and closed it.
“My contact information,” he said briskly.
“Should I decide…”
He nodded. “I’d better leave you. I look forward to your call.”
He stood and picked up his fedora.
“Mr. Scott, why did you come to the practice and ask for me specifically?”
He gave that odd smile again. Sad and secret. He ran his fingers across the wide brim of his hat and turned it around in his hands, his eyes fixed on it.
“Because I…know you,” he said eventually, stumbling a little over the words and lifting his eyes to mine, “even though you’ve forgotten me.”
He put his hat on and walked out.
Hell.
Stop, just stop.
This was no place for a panic attack.
Who was he?
Did he really know who I was? Could he tell me about my life before?
Wait a minute…what if he was the cause of my memory loss?
An escalating blizzard of questions threatened to overwhelm me.
Stop. No. Be rational.
This man had nothing to do with my own personal problems. He was delusional. The only thing that had changed was that he’d now included me in his delusion.
I felt calmer when I realized that.
This complicated the case enormously and I couldn’t possibly do any good in the time I had.
I’d have to turn him down and send him back to Frances. There was no other way.
Carrie had no doubt emailed me his information, but I didn’t have to wait until I got home; he’d left me his card as a bookmark. I could message him from my cell.
I opened the book. It was the sort of poetry book that was light on the poetry and heavy on background. His card was there, marking an old photograph that drew my eye as if I recognized it from somewhere.
A photograph purporting to record the meeting of Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and other poets at the village of Cologny, Lake Geneva, Switzerland, in 1816.
This was impossible.
Cologny. 1816. My password. One of the most private things about me.
What the hell was going on? Was I seeing things?
It was a photo from the infancy of the science, sepia-toned, blurred in bits and scattered with flecks. Three men and four women were self-consciously arrayed in a line on a hill in front of a lake.
Between the well-known faces of Shelley and Byron, a man stared out at me. His hair curled like a dark wave breaking over his forehead, but it was the lips that made him so recognizable. No. No, it was the eyes.
My God, the eyes.
Even across the gulf of two hundred years, Scott’s eyes were unmistakable.
I shut the book and fled.
Chapter 5
“The inner leg! The hind one, dammit! At the back of the damned horse. Yes, that’s behind you at the moment. Sitting on the inner hind leg! Keep her head still. Still! I don’t want to see her shake her damned head. That’s my job.”
A couple of days had passed and I was in the indoor arena at the riding school; it was too cold and snowy to ride outside. I’d deliberately come late. I wanted to ride alone this time.
Mrs
. Hanson was the owner of the riding stables; she always stood in the middle of the schooling arena and criticized everything everyone did. Today, that was just me.
Hanson looked as if she was completely unconcerned by her appearance, and yet she always wore lipstick. The same peach lipstick, every day I’d been there. The same long, wavy, no-fuss hairstyle, casually held back with a plastic clip. She always wore faded jodhpurs and old black riding boots. A green T was tucked in underneath an oversize man’s plaid shirt that’d seen the inside of a washing machine too many times.
“If you can’t get your head straight, I’ll have you riding a bicycle around this arena until you can,” she threatened me. She did actually have a bicycle leaning against the door, but I’d never seen anyone riding it.
The problems were all my fault. Clipper was a wonderful horse, but she was very sensitive to commands, and I was getting them all wrong today.
“If you can’t manage to handle posting, try passage on the diagonal across the arena.”
We tried. Passage is a high-stepping trot and the rider is supposed to just flow with the horse.
I could hear her sigh as Clipper and I bounced chirpily past her. I was neither posting nor sitting exactly, more sort of doing my own thing.
I loved it. It was amazing, including the instruction, and over far too soon.
This had been my therapy, my very best therapy, for the whole year of my truncated life.
I’d known, the way I found I knew these things, that I hadn’t ever ridden a horse before. Here was something I could do that had no link back to the previous Amanda Lloyd. Or Jane Flanagan, whoever she was, if she even existed. I decided I would have to become a rider.
Looking for riding instructors on the internet turned out to be a bad idea; my head was burned with images that my inconvenient memory wouldn’t ever be able to erase. So, I’d climbed in the car and gone looking. I’d found Mrs. Hanson’s stables just outside of Ann Arbor and signed up the same day.
