Loving Time

His eyes moved from the closed folder to the bandage. Either somebody was harassing Clara or she was setting him up for a very big fall. He shook his head, unsure of what to think. Would Clara do these terrible things to destroy him?

Harold couldn’t imagine it. All their adult lives he and Clara had lived among the mentally ill, trying to understand and help them. Would Clara, this gifted, dedicated woman, this superb administrator—his darling of so many years—coldheartedly use their environment to ruin him?

“This is very serious,” he said softly.

“Yes.”

No, not even Clara/Carmen could do this to him. Harold made a leap of faith and decided to believe Clara was innocent, that she was being harassed and was in real peril.

“This is very dangerous, Clara. How long have these incidents been going on?”

Clara took an impatient breath. “Harold, don’t play games with me. I know what you’ve been doing. And you haven’t hurt me. You haven’t scared me. You’ve only hurt yourself.”

Again the wave of shock. “How could you suggest such a thing? I couldn’t do anything like this. Stab you, humiliate you? I’ve always been on your side—even when you’re wrong, I support you. I support you now.”

Clara’s eyes flickered. “Wrong? When was I wrong?”

“You’re often wrong. You’re wrong now. You’re delusional if you think I am capable of doing something like this—” He pointed to the closed folder, sputtering in his anger.

“Don’t start that,” Clara warned.

“For what possible reason would I want to hurt you?”

“I don’t wish to get into it, Hal. Our relationship has changed. My position has changed. It’s time for you to retire.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I don’t want to get into that I don’t want to point fingers. I don’t want to debate. I have to catch a plane.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

She looked down at the folder. “I don’t want to hear this anymore. I’m having this … thing tested. Hal, I’m warning you. Don’t make me hang you.”

His heart pounded, his head, too. Hang him? Hang him? For what? For loving her, for protecting her, for wanting to be close to her?

His body felt broken, but his voice was firm when he spoke. “Clara, you’re in too much trouble to hang anybody right now. You’ve been threatened with a malpractice suit that will swallow you whole, muddy you so badly and suck you down so deep you won’t see sky for a long, long time. And it looks like you have someone else, someone right here in the Centre who can put anything he wants into your private spaces. That’s a pretty fearsome thought. If I were you I’d think about those things. I’d prepare for a legal battle. I’d want to find the right culprit.”

“You’re threatening me. Everything you say makes it worse.”

He shook his head, his face as gray as that of a dead man. “You’re making a big mistake here. Somebody wants you in trouble, honey, but it isn’t me.”

“Who then? You tell me, who? Who has access to my office, my desk?—” She stopped talking. Her lips closed. She would tell him no more.

“Give me that thing. I’ll find out who put it there. And when I do, you’ll have to apologize to me, Clara. This place is full of paranoid, psychotic, unstable people. Have you even bothered to question the staff? The night staff, the cleaning people, the security people? Have you checked them out? One of them has a grudge against you. You’ve been very, very bad to think it’s me. I don’t take this kind of abuse from anybody. I will not take abuse.” He repeated the last sentence, holding his hand over his heart as if reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

But Clara didn’t give the folder to him. She turned her back on him, stared out of the window at the Hudson River and stayed that way until he left. Somehow he got to his office, where the pain refused to ease. Instead it settled in, a steady agonizing pressure that began to alert him to the possibility of a real problem. He was a doctor, though, had to go about his business and shrug the pain off. He couldn’t afford a life-threatening event right now.

Clara was stubborn and foolish; she was not dealing correctly with any of her problems. Her secrecy about the harassment incidents was particularly worrying. How could someone do these things without getting caught? Harold sat in his office, trying to pull himself together to form a plan of action. He could not allow himself to have a heart attack. Clara was surrounded by idiots—Ben Hartley, Max Goodrich, the entire board of directors. They would skin her alive to avoid controversy. Harold was overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, terrified that if he didn’t deal with Clara’s problems, if something happened to him, Clara would have no one to protect her. He went down to the third floor to see Gunn Tram.

twenty-eight

“Hi, Jason, it’s Friday around three-thirty. April Woo returning your call. Long time no see, huh? I’ll bet you called about the case at your shop, Cowles—or has something else come up? I’m here for a half an hour or so. Saturday I’m working four to one. Sunday I’m off.”

That was your last message. Doodle oodle oo.

Jason hung up and glanced at the brass bull with the clock on its back on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, between a glass paperweight in the shape of an apple and a stack of JAPA journals. Jason knew the clock was at least two minutes slow. That made it three-forty-seven. He’d had back-to-back patients since the meeting at the Centre that morning. At the best of times it was exhausting having to figure out what was going on with each patient every moment so he wouldn’t slip up and make a fatal mistake about what he or she might really be saying. At the worst of times—when he had more than the needs of his patients on his mind—he felt overwhelmed.

Today, he had wanted to think only of his patients and getting some groceries in the house so that when Emma returned tomorrow from her six-month absence, she wouldn’t have to indict him for domestic incompetence. Instead, Clara Treadwell had cleverly maneuvered him into the seething cauldron of hospital politics where he’d never, ever wanted to go. He had to hand it to her. Two days ago Clara had gotten him to agree to review the Cowles case. Now, as a result of this morning’s highly unpleasant meeting, he was suddenly chair of an “ad hoc Quality Assurance Committee” with the responsibility of investigating the Director of the Centre, the person who claimed to want to be his mentor.

Jason snorted at the thought He was supervisor, and maybe mentor, to several residents every year; but he’d never actually had a mentor himself. He hadn’t wanted to be constrained in his thinking and loyalties, so he’d trudged along, with no advice or support, his parents telling him he was crazy to go into psychiatry instead of becoming a heart or brain surgeon where the money was.

Jason glanced at his watch. The second hand advanced painstakingly around its face, reminding him of himself, trudging along all those years, listening to his own counsel every step along the way, making his own choices and his own mistakes. He had to laugh at Clara Treadwell’s arrogance. It was too late to mold him. He was already formed; she could worry and disturb him, but she couldn’t influence his findings.

The clocks ticked, and time was passing. Jason wanted to try April before his next patient arrived. He heard the door to his waiting room open and close. After a cooling-off period in his waiting room, his last patient was finally leaving. Jeannie had sobbed nonstop for forty-five minutes, apologizing the whole time. “I’m so sorry. I just can’t stop. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Jason knew what was wrong. The poor woman’s husband was selfish and no longer loved her. He’d told her he needed time to relax and was insisting on the freedom to do his thing. Jeannie had long ago given up her career and earning power to care for the two tiny children her husband had wanted and now expected her to care for. She felt heavily burdened with the responsibility for everything since her husband was the kind of man who thought his time was too precious for any kind of domestic endeavor. She starved herself in her misery and apologized for her anguish as if only she were at fault for her loneliness and pain. Twice a week when Jason met with her, he appeared solid as a rock, unemotional and calm. She had no idea that every muscle in his body ached from the tension of restraining his impulse to hug her.