by C. J. Zahner
Minnie: (Silence.)
Dr. Kerr: Minnie, you called me frantic about your sister, please help me here. Did you and Mary both draw up wills?
Minnie: Well, yes.
Dr. Kerr: Why? What inspired it?
Minnie: Mary said we should.
Dr. Kerr: So, you are telling me it was Mary’s idea. Not yours?
Minnie: Definitely her idea. She said Matt was asking too much about her stuff—you know, her jewelry. She said she doesn’t want him getting anything of hers if she croaks. And I don’t want him getting anything of mine either, so I drew up a will, too.
Dr. Kerr: It is always good to have a will; however, I’m concerned because the drawing up of the will coincided with Mary giving her ring away.
Minnie: That’s why Mel and I were so frantic! But I’m hoping she’s just worried about Matt. He’s been coming around lately. I think that may be why she won’t admit giving me the ring. She doesn’t want him to know.
Dr. Kerr: (Pause.) Let me ask another question. Does Mary have access to your work schedule?
Minnie: I’m sure she does. She’s in the computer department. She has access to everything at work.
Dr. Kerr: What about Matt? Does he have access?
Minnie: Oh, dear Jesus, I hope not.
Dr. Kerr: Who accesses your work schedule and then sets up your appointments with me? You, Mel, Mary, or Matt?
Minnie: No one accesses my schedule. Mel picks a date.
Dr. Kerr: You told me Matt tells Mel what to do.
Minnie: That’s true. He likes to throw his weight around, tell all of us what to do. Mel included.
Dr. Kerr: Well, I was under the impression Matt accessed your work schedule and gave it to Mel.
Minnie: (Pause.) Oh, dear God, who told you that? Mary?
Dr. Kerr: I’m asking you. Who does the scheduling, and why, after six months of you and Mary coming on the same day, did you schedule your appointment on a different day than Mary’s?
Minnie: Mary’s not coming in today? Did she reschedule?
Dr. Kerr: No, she came in on Monday.
****
Minnie looked off-kilter, confused, her concentration gone for the remainder of the session. Emma could drag nothing more from her.
She pulled Matt’s file up on the screen:
Patient: Matt McKinney
Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2015 4 p.m.
****
Matt: I would prefer not to talk about my grandmother again.
Dr. Kerr: Matt, you insinuated, before you left last time, that your grandmother was responsible for both her sister and the baby’s death.
Matt: Responsibility is relative.
Dr. Kerr: What is that supposed to mean?
Matt: You’ll figure it out.
Dr. Kerr: (Pause.) I want to remind you that you assured me you never lied to me.
Matt: That’s correct. I haven’t and have no intention of lying to you—ever. But I’d prefer to talk about my siblings and not my grandmother.
Dr. Kerr: One more question about that last session.
Matt: (Pause.) Fine. One and one alone. About the last session. Choose carefully.
Dr. Kerr: Were you saying your grandmother killed your sister, Melissa?
Matt: No, I did not say my grandmother killed her, and that is the last I will speak of it.
****
She had asked the wrong question. This counseling is a game to him. She hurried down through the dialogue.
****
Dr. Kerr: I get the impression the twins are easily swayed.
Matt: You’re absolutely right, Emma. You can talk those twins into anything. They are vulnerable despite their brilliance.
Dr. Kerr: (Silence.)
Matt: Minnie is falling apart. Last week it was Mary. They flip-flop. I’m fairly certain you understand by now. They’re daft.
Dr. Kerr: (Silence.)
Matt: One word out of place in a sentence, or a single word alone in a sentence, and one of my sisters catapults into a world of delusion. Or even back into reality.
****
Matt’s smile and mien was as clear and vivid in her mind as if he still sat across from her: his cheekbones rose, profound eyes sparkled, heart-shaped mole pivoted slightly, and lanky body leaned sluggishly in his chair. He enunciated “one word” with game-show host emphasis, like he dangled a prize in front of her.
And, he’d called her by her first name. Was that one word Emma? Careful. Wednesday Child.
****
Dr. Kerr: Matt, do you make your sisters’ appointments?
Matt: You know Mel does.
Dr. Kerr: Yes, but you tell her which dates are good for the twins.
Matt: I do. It saves her time. She’s busy with the kids.
Dr. Kerr: You give her dates, and she schedules times.
Matt: Correct.
Dr. Kerr: You have from the beginning.
Matt: Yep. I wasn’t too thrilled about it at the start. But she asked, and I obliged.
Dr. Kerr: No, you weren’t thrilled with anything at the start.
Matt: True, but again. (Pause.) I grew to like it here.
Dr. Kerr: Yes, you’ve opened up since then. You almost seem to enjoy coming now.
Matt: (Pause.) Guilty as charged.
Dr. Kerr: So, Matt, I have to ask you something.
Matt: (Silence.)
Dr. Kerr: Is this your last appointment?
Matt: (Pause.) Bingo.
****
Bingo. One word. A game.
A chill overtook her, and the hairs on her arm stood. She peered out the window. Was someone staring at her? Nothing, no one. She stood and glanced around the room fully expecting someone else there this late, but only shadows rebounded back at her.
She lowered herself onto the couch cushion, like a game piece on a game board, and reread his words: “One word out of place in a sentence, or a single word alone in a sentence, and one of my sisters catapults into a world of delusion. Or even back into reality.”
Think.
Was she his sister? I can’t be. Was he flirting with her? He can’t be.
“He likes you,” Sharon told her yesterday. They argued the notion. “He’s going to stop coming in because he wants you to go out with him. Today is his last appointment.”
“You are out of your mind,” she had replied.
“Emma, can’t you see he’s flirting with you?” Sharon had actually yelled.
No, she couldn’t see him flirting. But then she had asked, hadn’t she? If it was his last appointment.
She heard a noise outside and practically jumped out of her skin. Her face darted toward the window. A Toyota sped by, just a neighbor late for his night shift. Her head turned back and forth, but no other shadows lingered in the dark.
She hit the little “x” on the upper right hand corner of her computer screen, flicked her cell’s flashlight on to guide her, and brusquely packed and secured everything away for the night. She walked through the house behind the dim light, picking up clutter, clumsily dumping her coffee mug into the kitchen sink, and closing up the trash to take it outside. She decided to do that in the morning, and instead snatched her purse—no sense leaving a temptation in full view for some peeping-Tom kid—and moved toward the stairs. She took them in twos and threes. When she got to her bedroom, she spoke out loud.
“I missed something,” she said. I have tomorrow and the weekend to figure it out, she thought.
But she didn’t.
Chapter 31
Monday, May 11, 2015
Three days.
Her cell buzzed, and she picked it up. Ally’s name flashed on the screen. Emma didn’t answer. She set the phone back on the nightstand beside the bed and laid her head in the crook of Giff’s arm. She had absolutely no intention of allowing Ally to ruin the last precious moments of her weekend. It rang again.
“Who is it?” Giff asked after she ignored the second
buzz.
“Ally,” Emma said, and the phone rang a third time.
“You better answer. You know how she is. She won’t give up.”
“It’s only 6:05!” Emma contested, and her phone vibrated. “Now she’s texting.”
She propped herself up on one elbow and tilted her head slightly to watch the one-liners crawl up her cell’s screen. Each message promptly replaced another. She fell back against Giff.
He tucked a shoulder under her head, stretched an arm down her side, and rested a hand on her hip. “What’s the urgency?”
“I have no idea.”
“What’s the text say?”
“The first one or the fifth one?” Emma groaned and didn’t move to look at her phone again. “I think they were: ‘Call me,’ ‘Right now,’ ‘Emma, I have to talk to you,’ and a ‘Now’ with seven exclamation points.”
“That’s only four. What was the last one?”
Emma let her arm fall to the little table on the side of the bed, and she felt for her cell phone, eyes closed. When she found it, she brought it up in the air above her, over her eyes. She blinked her eyelids open and cleared her vision. When she saw the words, she sat up and screamed. Giff jumped up beside her.
The fifth text said, “Mary McKinney is dead.”
Part III - After the Death
Chapter 32
Friday May 15, 2015
The Team.
“Listen for fate’s song,” Catholic teachers had preached, “for your life’s purpose. His Holiness will show you the way.”
Now Emma knew the truth. Her life was a series of lies linked together, chain by all-pervasive DNA chain. She wasn’t a successful counselor because some omnipotent mass sitting in the clouds wanted her to be. She succeeded because those DNA links predisposed her to depression and influenced her thoughts and actions—all day, every day. She understood her patients.
But she’d messed up.
Mood, psychosis, and personality disorders increase the risk of suicide. Why was I so sure Mary was not suicidal?
Her office was noisy. She fought hard to expunge grim speculation, to get out of her head and back into the room. But the concept she might be alone in this crazy world—no Divine Being to swoop down and protect her from the McKinneys—terrified her.
“Emma, come back to me,” Giff said, his hand against her arm so light she wasn’t sure he’d touched her. When her eyes met his, she did come back because, yes, she still had Giff.
She nodded. He winked.
“What should I say if they call?” Sharon asked, eyes wide and eyebrows raised, as if she was certain the call would come.
“Tell them Doctor Kerr is unavailable,” Giff said, his hand recoiling, and his deliberation returning to the topic. “Emma, are your thoughts on them suing still the same?”
“They’ll sue,” she said, blurting out a laugh mangled with a long sigh like she heard a bad joke. “Minnie is close to her aunt Carol, and her aunt is known for suing. It’s how she survived all these years—initiating lawsuits and charging in between settlements. Matt confided.”
Ally barged through the front door. “Lawsuit? Are they suing? Already?”
It was early morning, and their posse was in place, Emma thought, mounting their horses and heading toward the showdown. She felt like taking roll: Sheriff Johnson, here; straight-shooter Ally, present; scout Sharon, always at your side; outlaw Emma?
Delirious.
She worked hard to repress deranged laughter and avert a slip into hysteria. She distracted herself by remembering one med school professor’s words, “Plenty of good psychiatrists get sued. Document. Document. Document.” Had she paid attention?
They spent the week calling and waiting for callbacks from people who might know what happened to Mary McKinney. In between, Emma ambled forward with the unsteady gait of a zombie. She continued seeing clients, visited her mother, and helped pull the McKinney files. Sharon managed the rest.
They left messages for Father Mike, Mary’s family physician, the St. Luke’s receptionist, and Rose Kendall—the eighty-year-old best friend of Ally’s grandmother. She lived down the street from Mary and Minnie McKinney and still walked her dog at night to catch glimpses of her neighbors watching the eleven o’clock news through their windows. Sunday night she happened upon a commotion at Mary’s duplex and was barely able to hold off until five a.m. to call her best friend. She hadn’t known the cause, only knew police, coroner, and mortician vehicles remained in Mary’s driveway, and a neighbor, who lived three doors down, confirmed Mary was dead.
Even before Father Mike returned Emma’s call Tuesday morning, she knew he’d confirm the suicide rumors. He asked her to keep what happened quiet and then confided: Mary had washed down a handful of Valium with vodka, slipped into the tub for a hot bath, and slithered slowly down into the water. She slit her wrists, too. For good measure. Like her mother. Then the colors came.
“No, we’re speculating,” Sharon answered Ally, popping a mint into her mouth to camouflage her smoky breath. Emma knew she had restarted her nasty habit Monday afternoon. “Preparing for the worst.”
“Wait,” Giff said, raising and lowering his arms, palms flat and fingers spread as if patting down an invisible elephant. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Everyone take a deep breath. They just buried her yesterday. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they won’t sue.”
Scattered across Sharon’s desk, every piece of paper that might clear Emma’s name sat waiting for battle. Sharon straightened a few piles as she strolled past and took a seat behind her brand-new desk. She briskly shut its center drawer, which was two screws short of proper installment and constantly wafting forward, exposing her cigarettes. When she slammed it shut, its contents clanged loudly. Her feet went on tippy toes, knees against drawer, to still the clanging. But the damage was done. The jingle made Emma curse silently for ordering new furniture. Making their patients’ walk-in experience warmer had seemed so important last month after Doctor Waite moved in.
Everything had been going well. Even Doctor Waite’s impeccable credentials and exemplary recommendations downplayed her skill. She was the quintessential partner. The definition of hard working. Her office entrance behind Sharon’s desk—Emma’s gaze shot toward it—emanated the clean, crisp decor of a perfectionist, which may have been the unsung reason for Sharon’s new nest. Emma prayed Rebekka Waite stayed.
“Don’t worry about Rebekka. We’re good. She’ll be back in town tomorrow, but she saw the obituary,” Sharon said. Emma didn’t know she was speaking to her until she turned away from Rebecca’s office and found Sharon staring back at her. “She said a lot of psychiatrists get sued. Especially those working with suicidal patients.”
Loyal Bekka the kid, Emma thought, posse complete. Again, she staved off laughter and then scolded herself to snap out of delirium.
“Sharon, can you pull all of my clients’ diagnoses and prescription information?” she asked. “Ally, can you look them over?”
She couldn’t take chances—with any patients. She flipped through their names in her mind. Had she diagnosed everyone accurately, medicated them properly? Practically all had prescriptions. Clozapine for schizophrenia, Quetiapine for bipolar depression, SRIs for compulsion, antidepressant and anti-anxiety meds for agoraphobic-turned-psychotic Charlie Brown, and nothing for the McKinneys—not one of them. Even Mel wouldn’t fill her Zoloft prescription for mild depression.
“Sure,” Ally answered, giving a good-idea nod.
“Do we have the signed statements that the twins refused medication?” Emma turned toward Sharon.
“Yes, they’re here in this mess somewhere. I’ll find them.”
“Thank you,” Emma uttered, her tone lost in relief.
“We have signed statements from both twins and the family’s notification—Mel’s and Matt’s.” Sharon turned toward Giff, pointing downward. “Prior doctors’ files, family history, transcripts, past illnesses, and a review of any medicati
ons they have ever been on since the day they were born, which isn’t much. Hence my shock about the Valium. We didn’t prescribe it.”
“The Valium is hearsay.” Giff rested flat palms on Sharon’s desk, scanned the documents, located and lifted Mary’s transcript file. “It will be five or six weeks, maybe more, before the autopsy report is in.”
“Father Mike said they found an empty prescription bottle on the floor.” Emma raised her eyebrows to Giff.
“Hearsay.” He was in legal mode. He paged through Mary’s file without looking up.
“Well, regardless,” Sharon said, shuffling the folders on her desk, “we have everything. I’ll organize and label it.”
Emma reached over and laid her palm on the back of Sharon’s cold hand. She couldn’t thank her again. She’d cry.
“So, we wait.” Giff closed Mary’s file and laid it on top of the others. “We don’t say a word to anyone. We get their documentation ready, and we wait and we hope and we pray and if they sue, we fight.”
Wait was a foreign word to Emma. She had never been good at waiting. An anxious child, she had opened presents on Christmas Eve while her parents slept and then rewrapped and replaced them under the tree before morning. She hounded teachers for grades if they weren’t posted when the syllabus said they would be, rescheduled doctor appointments if the doctor was ten minutes late, left groceries in baskets when checkout lines were too long.
The first time she fired up the internet on her iPhone she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Knowing she had something to read at her fingertips, while in any line, at any waiting room, or even on hold, elated her. Reading psychiatric journals or fingering through the news while she waited became the norm. It pacified her. She never listened to a clock tick again. Not for Ally, the dentist, the gynecologist, or her accountant, Cyndi Krahe, who stacked tax appointments on top of one another like Jenga pieces. Her iPhone did for her what ESPN did for jocks, kept her off the sidelines and in the game. As long as she could keep her mind engaged, she could play.
And to her, everything was about staying in the game. She peered upward toward the newly-installed wall mount in her waiting area. It held a forty-inch television complete with wireless headphones. The purchase had dented her savings ravenously. Across from the money sucker, magazine racks abutted furniture, and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf hugged the wall. No idle moments for her patients. She understood their need to keep busy, because she herself had to keep her mind moving.