Dr. Knox (35 page)

FIVE MONTHS LATER

Antipsychotics were Ashe's friends. As long as he kept up and got regular blood work, he did okay—no voices, no visions, no sudden bursts of violence. Then all he had to worry about was living in a cardboard box meant originally for a refrigerator, and whether junkies in the alley would steal the plastic bags that contained his earthly possessions, and whether the police would come again with a fire hose, to scour his world from the sidewalk. But maintaining a grip on the day of the week was often more than Ashe could manage, and asking him to keep up with dosages, refills, and blood tests was like asking him to organize the Manhattan Project. Which was why, at five o'clock on Friday afternoon, he was in my exam room, whispering to himself, his big shoulders hunched and twitching, his white count too low, his triglycerides way too high, and the knuckles on both his hands scabbed and swollen from recent blows. It was this last thing that had prompted his friend Cammy to drag him in that day. I'd called her into the exam room after I'd dressed his hands, in the hope she might convince Ashe to make the trip to County, but neither of them was buying it.

Ashe slumped like a punched-out heavyweight on the exam table, and Cammy stood before him, one hand on his shoulder and another on his brown, scarred head. She squinted at me, her eyes like flecks of mica in her ravaged face.

“We'll think hard on it, doc,” she said. “I'll take himself over to the mission for sandwiches, and we'll think really hard. He likes the lunch meat.”

I sighed and shook my head. “Sandwiches won't do it, Cammy. He needs his meds adjusted, more liver function tests, and his hands are infected. We're going to close up soon. Lucho can run you to the hospital.”

Lucho sagged in the doorway, but managed something like an encouraging look. “I can do it now. Muriel can wrap up.”

I nodded, and Cammy and Ashe exchanged suspicious glances. Finally, Cammy nodded too, and she and Ashe shambled, arm in arm, down the hall after Lucho. I took a deep breath and washed my hands and face in the sink.

Ashe was it for the day—for the week, in fact. We were closed that weekend, for painting—exterior work this time. The inside had been done two weekends before, and the new-paint smell still lingered in the stairwell and halls. Painting was the last item on a list of repairs and upgrades that we'd been working on for several months. Painting, wiring, plumbing, new security cameras, new chairs and flooring in the waiting room, new tile and a new toilet to make the bathroom less terrifying, and a half-dozen pieces of new medical equipment—all thanks to a donation that had arrived in a black nylon duffel, three weeks to the day after I'd tended to Kyle Bray's gunshot wound and treated him and his father for shock.

Conti had delivered it to my apartment. He'd opened the duffel to show me the banded packs of cash, and taken a beer from my refrigerator and a seat at my kitchen table. He took a long pull on his beer.

“Mandy said to tell you one of her lawyers will be in touch about transferring title on this palace here.”

I nodded. “She lets you call her Mandy now?”

“We're still working things out.”

“I can imagine.”

“She's not bad—even if I don't understand half the shit she talks about. She's smart, and she does what she says. And she knows how to win. She cleaned the Captain's clock damn good, that's for sure. With your help.” He raised his beer bottle in mocking toast. “You see the news?”

I nodded. Bray Consolidated's announcement of Harris Bray's retirement, and of his decision to hand the reins to his niece, had filled three slow news days in the business press the week before, and spawned a lot of inane chatter about torches passed and glass ceilings shattered.

“I might've believed it,” I said, “if I hadn't known better.”

Conti drank some more and showed me the shark teeth. “Told you—she's pretty good.” He wiped his hand over his mouth. “You hear anything from crazy Elena?” he asked.

“Do you think I'd say if I had?”

Conti shrugged. “Just asking.”

“Haven't heard. Didn't ask. Don't know.”

It hadn't been a lie back then, and now, months later, it still wasn't. The last I'd seen or heard of Elena and Alex was in the Bray Consolidated hangar at Van Nuys Airport. It was ten days after Kyle's shooting, and they were waiting in a glass-walled office that smelled of kerosene while one of the Bray jets was prepped for a flight to Vancouver. Elena wore a white blouse, a navy skirt, and black flats, and her hair was in a ponytail. Alex wore jeans and a green polo shirt and very white sneakers.

There were more new clothes in their new suitcases, and new Romanian passports in Elena's new Coach bag. There was cash in there too: U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, and euros, and debit cards besides. There was more money still—much, much more—in the several bank accounts and trusts that Mandy's lawyers had established, in accordance with Anne Crane's instructions and under her supervision. Neither Elena nor Alex would want for anything again, except perhaps for a night of untroubled sleep.

We hadn't talked much at the airport. Alex had stared at the plane with huge eyes, and behind her dark glasses Elena had stared at him, and never let him get beyond arm's length. They were restless and self-conscious standing together, like a couple on a first date, and my presence was a relief to them—an antidote to their awkwardness. They glanced back at me occasionally, and nodded.

The flight attendant had smiled and beckoned when it was time, and I'd walked them out to the plane. Alex had looked up at me for a while, hugged me briefly, and run up the steps. Elena looked after him anxiously and then took off her dark glasses. Her eyes were damp.

She laughed through her sniffles. “You finally get rid of us, yes?”

I nodded. “I'll have to figure out what to do with all my extra time.”

Elena smiled. “And I got to figure out how to be…a mother again.”

“You were always a mother.”

“But now…it's just the two of us.”

“You'll be fine. Spend time together. Hang out. Do things with him. Or do nothing together. He's a really nice kid.”

She nodded. “Tough kid. Like his mother.”

I nodded back. “You are that,” I said. “Both of you. But remember what you promised about getting help, about therapy. You've both been through…too much.”

“I remember, doctor,” Elena said. “And I keep my word.” Then she smiled wider, and reached up and took my face in her hands. She kissed me, and her lips were warm and soft on mine.

“You tough too, Dr. Knox,” she whispered. “And also crazy. Maybe you need some therapy.” She went up the stairs then, and the cabin door closed behind her, and they were gone.

I sighed, shut off the light in the exam room, and went down the hall. I saw Lucho heading out the door with Ashe and Cammy in tow, and heard Muriel buzzing through the exam rooms, the file room, the supply closet, leaving order in her wake. My pristine desktop and the new calendar on my wall were testimony to her organizing will, and still took me by surprise whenever I stepped into my office.

My desk wasn't entirely clean today. There was a postcard on it, from Nora Roby—the third she'd sent in the month she'd been away. Bright fish and a coral reef this time.
On Espiritu Santo now. Bad coffee, bad weather, bad hours—the most fun since residency.
She was in Vanuatu, helping to set up pediatric clinics in Port Vila and Luganville, and even if her Internet access had been more reliable, she would still, I thought, have opted for this old-school messaging. The brisk, one-way communiqués suited the current state of our relationship: distant, cool, and wary. Still, I told myself, she'd taken the time to write.

Nora had been surprised when I appeared at her door with a bottle of Merlot the day after Kyle's shooting. She'd squinted at me, looked around nervously, and finally invited me inside. I opened the wine and we drank, and then I told her about Elena and Alex, about the deal I'd made with Amanda Danzig, and all that had transpired in Harris Bray's office.

She was pale when I finished, and quiet. The wine was gone by then, but she'd found another bottle and opened it before she spoke. “Jesus,” she said. “Those fucking bastards.”

“That's unfair to bastards.”

“What they did—he and Kyle—and they got away with it.”

“Not entirely.”

“They had people killed; they kidnapped that boy; the old man is a rapist, for chrissakes. And neither of them is facing justice.”

“Elena and Alex are together, and they'll be taken care of—so that's a good outcome. As for justice…” I shrugged. “Harris is losing his company, which is probably the most important thing in the world to him. And Kyle has to live with it all—what he's done, what his father did—all of it. On top of which, I doubt he'll ever walk quite right again. None of which is justice, I know—not for what they did. But it's the closest I could come.”

She shook her head, looked at me. “And you—you were goddamn lucky. Things could've played out very differently. Very badly.”

“I know that.”

She shook her head. “The things Bray threatened to do—to you and Lydia, to Lucho and Artie—you never said anything about those. Not a word.”

“You weren't returning my calls at the time.”

Nora nodded slowly. “If you had told me, and I knew you still hadn't called the police, I would've thought…I'm not sure what I would've thought.”

“That I was crazy. Crazier.”

She smiled ruefully. “I think that now. To do the things you did, the risks you took…Jesus, simply not reporting Kyle's gunshot wound—that alone could've cost your license. And the danger you put Arthur and Lucho and Lydia in: Why was their well-being less important than Elena's? Why weren't they your first priority? I don't know what to make of that kind of judgment.”

I swallowed hard and nodded and said nothing.

Nora shook her head some more. “We've got…things to work out, Adam. We wandered into this without much thought or discussion—because it was so easy, I guess. But I'm too old for that, and maybe you are too. We need to figure out what we've got here, and what, if anything, we want it to be.”

Which is what we'd been doing since that night. Figuring out
what, if anything.
Seeing each other less, but still seeing each other. Seeing other people too, sometimes. Distant, cool, wary. Still, she'd taken the time to write.

I put the postcard alongside the others from Nora, on the bulletin board behind my desk—another of Muriel's improvements. She came in as I was pinning it up, and smiled her approval. Her cheeks were round and brown and shining.

“You need anything before I lock up, doctor?” she asked. She was from New Orleans, and the city was strong in her voice.

I shook my head. “I'm good, Muriel.”

“And you remember about the painters tomorrow, yeah?”

“I remember.”

She smiled and nodded. “Okay, doctor, then we see you soon.” She disappeared from the doorway, only to reappear in an instant. “And you remember the alarm, yeah?”

“Got it.” She smiled again and waved.

Arthur had found her in the office of another of his clients—a Botox clinic in the Valley. She was looking for a shorter commute, and something more challenging than paralyzing middle-aged faces all day, and we offered both. She'd started three months back and was working out just fine—better than fine. But I was still getting used to the fact that she wasn't Lydia.

Lydia had quit—moved with Junie to his cabin in the desert. She'd tendered her resignation the night of Kyle's shooting, when I called to tell her that it was over: that the phony lawsuits against us, the threat to Artie, the eviction actions were all gone, that we were safe again. She'd been quiet afterward, and then she asked about Elena and Alex.

“They're fine, Lyd,” I'd answered. “Both of them. They're together, and they're going to stay together. They'll be able to go wherever they want to.”

There'd been more quiet, and then a sigh. “That's good, doctor,” she said softly. “I'm glad of it.”

“You and me both. Now we can get back to business as usual. Better than usual, actually. I'm going to be getting the title on the clinic, so we won't have to worry about being homeless anymore, and we'll have some money to spend, to fix the place up.”

The silence after that was endless. When Lydia finally broke it, it was to tell me she was quitting. I hadn't believed it at first, had sputtered and stumbled, and finally managed to ask why.

“You need to ask, doctor? After everything that happened? You tell me it's all okay now, that you waved some magic wand and all the danger is gone, and we're going to live happily ever after, and I'm supposed to say
okay
? I'm just supposed to forget what you got us into? The danger you put us in? I'm supposed to pretend it didn't happen?”

“Lyd—”

“I
told
you I want a quiet life. I
told
you we had it good here, and not to mess with that. But that didn't matter to you.
We
didn't matter.”

“It mattered, Lyd—you matter.”

“Not enough, doctor—not as much as what
you
wanted. It was selfish, doctor. You were selfish.”

She'd come in the next day to clear out her things. I had no idea how she was faring out in the heat and sand. I could've asked Lucho, but so far I hadn't.

I set the alarm and went upstairs and took a Stella from the fridge. I drank half of it before I got in the shower. When I'd dried off and wrapped the towel around my waist, I reached for the other half. I'd taken barely a sip when my cell burred. I checked the number. Mandy.