“What are we doing here week after week? What are we doing here?” she demanded.
“At least he came,” the nurse said, reaching for a cigarette from the doctor’s pack. He nodded his permission.
“Yes,” he said to Debbie, “Jane is right. At least he felt he could come here.”
“So what? He’s high. He’s on drugs,” she protested. “He couldn’t even wait an hour. You couldn’t even wait,” she cried to Terry.
“I knew it!” he shouted, jumping to his feet. “I didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t even have to come here.” He stomped out of the room.
The doctor went after him.
“Don’t you see what’s wrong here?” Debbie begged of the two women in the room. “We are coming here to get better. This is the one place we are supposed to come and try to get better so we can leave. And he comes in here on drugs. Don’t you see how crazy that is? Don’t you?”
“Terry will be in in a second,” the doctor said as he came back into the room. “He is outside trying to calm down.” He glared at Debbie, his face blotched red.
“This is terribly hard for him,” he told her. “We asked him to be honest with us. He’s doing his best and we aren’t making it any easier for him.”
Pure terror suddenly enveloped her. He was telling her she was wrong, all of her feelings were wrong. They were all telling her that. But, no, she wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t be wrong.
“I think we should ask him to come back in now,” said the doctor. “And I think we should be gentle with him. He was in trouble and he came to us. Okay?”
Debbie felt the bile moving high in her throat.
“Terry, come on in. Terry?” the doctor called.
He walked in, head lowered, and sat back on the couch. He folded his arms across his chest.
“I will never forgive you for what you said,” he told Debbie in a cold voice. “And, I’m never going to forget it.”
“Terry,” the doctor warned.
“No. At least I came here. I didn’t have to.”
“That’s right,” agreed the older woman thoughtfully.
Debbie was taking short, fast breaths. She put one hand to her forehead.
“I don’t think this is right, any of this,” she said as though speaking to herself. “This isn’t why we are here. We are here to get better, not to stay the same way forever.”
“I don’t know why we are here. I never really have,” the older woman sighed.
Debbie looked to the tiny slit of a window. It couldn’t be much longer now.
*
Brown caught Jason as he was leaving the station.
“What’s this I hear about Debbie getting sick?” he asked.
“Ah, you know. It was hot. She hadn’t eaten much. She got sick. End of story.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
“I am really worried about that girl, fella,” Brown said as they walked to the parking lot. “I am really worried about her.”
“Ah, she’s okay,” Jason told him.
“Something has been wrong with that girl for a couple of months now,” Brown said. “I can’t figure it out what it is.”
He watched Jason’s face as he added, “Maybe she needs to talk to a therapist or something?”
“Oh come on, Jim. It’s only the job. You know how it can get to you. It gets to everybody once in a while.”
“Yes, it can,” Brown agreed. “But I get the feeling there is something else going on. You have any idea what it could be?”
Jason shook his head.
“Yeah, something else. We really have to help her,” Brown pronounced solemnly.
*
She rocked on the couch, arms pulling her legs tight to her chest, swaying back and forth as the television sent soundless pictures back to her. Outside Clifford waited, staring at the peephole. He rang the bell once, twice.
“Hey, Debbie,” he called. “Debbie, you in there? It’s me, Clifford. Debbie?”
The bell rang again.
She waited and believed she heard a soft sigh as he moved away from the door.
40
She answered the phone on the first ring.
“Ellen, it’s me, Clifford,” his voice was blurred by background noise.
“Where are you?”
“Some bar. Hey, listen. I went by Debbie’s and she’s not answering the door. Could you give her a call or something?”
“Why don’t you call her?”
“I tried, but she didn’t answer the phone and I know she’s there. I know it and I heard she got sick up at the prison today. She was throwing up or something.”
“What?”
“Somebody said she had the flu or something, but I’m worried.”
“She’s probably unplugged the phone so she can get some rest. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“And George told me I had to take the next few days off.”
“Why?”
“He said I was too high in overtime and I needed to give it a break. I was supposed to work this weekend and he told me to forget it. You believe that?”
“I believe everything.”
“Can you meet me for a pizza or something?”
“Clifford, it’s eleven o’clock. No way I’m leaving here. Tell me what else George said.”
“Hell with it. I’m tired of this shit. I’ll talk to you later.”
He went back to his seat at the bar. On either side of him, two stools away, sat a white man.
He sipped his scotch.
“Doing okay?” the bartender asked with a tight-lipped smile.
Clifford wondered if he got the word to keep the blacks down at the bar. You didn’t want too many, did you, not on the busy nights. A few were okay on the slow nights but not on Friday and Saturday nights. Too many blacks sent the young white businessmen with the money someplace else. He bet this bartender knew how to make it rough on blacks on weekends.
“Hey,” Clifford asked, “can I get something to eat?”
“Too late. Kitchen’s closed. Sorry.”
Yeah, thought Clifford, sure.
“That’s okay,” he said. He was tired and he was lonely. He hadn’t had a date in months. The couple of clubs he went to were filled with brothers wearing button-down white shirts and talking about how it was at the old
