The Cadaver's Ball - Hardcover
There are times when a trusted “friend” is so filled with hatred that he will do anything possible to ruin the other. Ed, Peter, and Beth had been friends through medical school. At the Cadaver’s Ball, the somewhat ghoulish-named celebration that is the closest thing to a senior prom the hardworking medical students have, Ed confidently presents Beth with an engagement ring. She reluctantly has to tell him that she has already agreed to marry Peter---and Ed’s life explodes.
From then on, Ed’s main goal is to make Beth realize she made the wrong choice---but fate intervenes. A car crash takes her life and that of the baby she and Peter had been expecting. Peter was the one driving, and the accident comes close to wrecking his own life irretrievably.
Beth’s death torches Ed’s blazing hatred of Peter and he builds a complex and terrible program to destroy Peter. Peter doesn’t suspect the cause of his growing difficulties until he becomes a suspect in the death of a patient. He must find a way to reclaim his life---if it is not already too late.
In this riveting psychological thriller, Charles Atkins demonstrates his rare skill for creating passionate characters with a range of motivations, from obsession and vengeance to self-preservation.
From then on, Ed’s main goal is to make Beth realize she made the wrong choice---but fate intervenes. A car crash takes her life and that of the baby she and Peter had been expecting. Peter was the one driving, and the accident comes close to wrecking his own life irretrievably.
Beth’s death torches Ed’s blazing hatred of Peter and he builds a complex and terrible program to destroy Peter. Peter doesn’t suspect the cause of his growing difficulties until he becomes a suspect in the death of a patient. He must find a way to reclaim his life---if it is not already too late.
In this riveting psychological thriller, Charles Atkins demonstrates his rare skill for creating passionate characters with a range of motivations, from obsession and vengeance to self-preservation.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Charles Atkins is a practicing psychiatrist and member of the Yale Clinical Faculty. His first novel, The Portrait, was published in 1998. He coauthors a weekly column for The Waterbury Republican and has published short stories and articles in a variety of publications. He lives in Connecticut.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
The Cadaver's Ball
12004AFTER A YEAR OF INTENSIVE therapy, I know this. I feel it claw at my sanity. Oh, God, make it stop!My fingers claw at smoldering steel as black smoke burns my eyes. "Come on, Beth!" I can't see. I can't breathe. The smell of gas. Help me! Somebody help me! She's not moving. Is her hair caught in the shoulder strap? I smash the window, but I can't get the door. She's not breathing. I suck in and put my head through the window, my mouth over hers, tasting her lipstick. Headlights come toward us through the fog. I stagger into the road. My hands wave. "Stop!" The whites of a man's eyes stare through the darkened glass. "Please stop." He slows and I grab for the closed window; it's cold against my blistering palm. Why isn't he stopping? I bang my hand against his window. "She's dying! Help me!" My palm print, smeared in blood, slips away; he's speeding up. I scream. A blue sparks turns to flames; it's in her hair Help me!I startled and blinked as a hand tapped my shoulder."Dr. Grainger. Peter, are you okay?"I coughed and fought back the nausea that always comes. "I'm fine," I said, not knowing where I was, wondering how long I'd been gone. Okay, Peter, pull it together. You're in an emergency room,that's what set off the flashback. I turned toward the voice and found a name to match the concerned face of the short, middle-aged black woman looking up at me. "Grace, I spaced," I told the third-shift aide in the psychiatric emergency room of University Hospital."Good thing you're not a surgeon," she quipped. "She must be someone special to drag the big boss out in the middle of the night.""Aren't they all," I answered, trying to fill in the missing pieces. I was in an emergency room, and it was late at night, which meant I had to be here to evaluate someone. "What do you know about her?""Same old, same old," Grace said, leading me into the Plexiglas nurses' station that separated the six patients' cubicles from the staff. "Name's Ann Walsh, twenty-two-year-old sophomore medical student, took a razor to her wrists.""How bad?" I asked."Seen worse, a few sutures on each side, and if she really wanted to kill herself you'd think she'd know to go with the arteries and not against the grain.""You're a sick woman, Grace. Any idea why?""Not that she's telling, but it boils down to a few basic plots.""Okay ... and they are?""Oh, please." The thirty-year veteran of the emergency room, who knew me when I was a resident, explained. "You've got Romeo and Juliet--young love gone bad. Ophelia--depressed and suicidal. Lady Macbeth--couldn't handle the guilt. And, of course, Lady Ann--'lay one hand on my frilly white under things and I'll kill myself.' Shakespeare covered the bases.""Which is she?" I asked, remembering that Grace worked the graveyard shift so that she could spend her days pursuing a career as a comic actress."Don't know, but I do know she wants out.""Which will it be? Keep her or let her go?""You want me to do your whole job for you?""I know you could.""You know that's right," she answered. "This is how I see it--if they want to go, you need to keep them. If they want to stay, you should kick them out.""It's a little perverse.""Am I wrong?" She grinned."No." I took the clipboard with Ann Walsh's documentation and leafed through it. She'd arrived before eleven. She'd been drinking. Her alcohol level wasn't that high, but it was just high enough to do something stupid, like cut her wrists. Her roommate had found her and called 911. The questions to be answered were simple--why did she do it? And did she intend to do it again?Easy stuff, the kind of thing a resident could handle. Why I--the recently appointed medical director for the university's mental health clinic--was here, had to do with a phone call from Ed, my oldest friend and the dean of the medical school. "Peter," he'd said, "I've got a situation with a student that I'd like you to handle ... personally."That's why I was here, and that was a big, albeit unstated, part of my job--buffer the students from the real world and keep bad publicity away from the university. Ann Walsh was a problem that needed to be fixed.I walked the few yards that separated them--the patients--from us--the staff. She was in cubicle five, and as I knocked on the wall and pulled back the curtain, I had to fight to stay present. ERs and certain other situations, such as crash sites, have a way of setting my brain twitching. But as that curtain slid back, it wasn't just my own memories of lying in one of these cubicles, huddled in a ball and wanting to die, it was something unexpected, and it hit hard. In the filtered light that spilled from the common areainto Ann Walsh's cubicle I saw my wife, Beth. She turned and the illusion shattered, just a trick of the light that gave her hair the same coppery gold glimmer, and the way her head tilted on a long slender neck. Her eyes were different, the shape of her chin, her mouth--all different. Beautiful, but different."Ann," I said, trying to shake off an irrational bad feeling. "I'm Peter Grainger, Dr. Grainger.""I'm not crazy," she stated, sizing me up through large blue eyes set in a face that could have been on the cover of Vogue."So what happened?" I sat on the hard-plastic chair bolted next to the bed."Everyone keeps asking me that. Like, why should anyone give two shits?""Did you tell anyone why you did it?""No." She cracked a smile and tucked a strand of wispy hair behind her ear."If you did, we'd stop asking. So yes, you've got to tell me.""Or what?""Or you get trundled up to the psych unit until you're safe to go.""I'm not going to do anything," she stated. "This was stupid, I was angry, I'd been drinking. You have no idea how much I regret this. Do you know what they've put me through? I could kill her.""Who?""My roommate, Shana. I've been trying to get a private room, but ...""What?""There's one way you can get a private room.""Yes, I'm aware of the 'psycho singles,'" I said, sensing that she was flirting."Wouldn't this count--a trip to the emergency room?""You sure you want to play this up?""Good point," she said, wrapping her sheet tight. "So, how do I get out of here?""Tell me what happened.""Jesus, you're persistent. There's no other way?""Nope.""Where will this go?""What do you mean?""What I tell you ... who's going to know? And don't tell me that everything is confidential, because I know that's not how this works.""You're right, it's not that clean. You tried to hurt yourself, maybe to kill yourself; it's in your hospital record. The reasons you did it are inside your head; I need to know what they are. I probably won't have to get into the specifics with anyone else, but ...""There's always a 'but,' isn't there?""Right. If you were to tell me that you were thinking of leaving here and stabbing Shana in cold-blooded revenge, I couldn't keep that to myself.""What if I threatened to mix up her hair scrunchies and nail polish?""I'd take it to the grave.""You know she color codes them?""Her nail polish?""Everything. That girl needs a shrink. If you so much as touch one of the bottles, she'll know. Plus, she's got bulimia, which--hey live and let live--but our bathroom reeks of puke and Pine-Sol. It's gross.""Are you trying to tell me you did this to get away from your roommate?""Would that work?""Nah.""Why are you so cheerful?" she asked.Her question caught me off guard; over the past year "cheerful" is not a word I'd have used to describe myself. "Does it bother you?""No, I kind of like it, and you don't look much like a shrink.""Are you trying to get off the subject?"She sighed and pulled the sheet tightly around her shoulders, looking more like she should be at a spa than a downtown emergency room. "That sounded like a shrink. I suppose I'd better just get this over with."I waited."Long or short version?" she asked."Start short; it's late.""God, you're direct. Okay, it was my father. I was mad at my father.""What about?" I asked and watched a tear form in the corner of her eye."I sometimes wonder why I even bother; it's always the same. You'd think by now I could have figured something out. I'm not a stupid person. I made it into medical school. I should know not to call him, but I had to.""Because?""Because the bursar sent a registered letter telling me that I have two weeks to come up with tuition or I can pack my bags. He'd told me that he'd sent the check.""He hadn't?""He never does, but sometimes I feel like believing him--that maybe he'll act like a normal father. I think I get that from my mom; she was quite the optimist." Ann looked up and I was struck by her expression, so young, so vulnerable, so beautiful."She's not around anymore?" I asked, clearing my throat."Dead. Berry aneurysm. Do you know what that is?"I nodded, knowing from personal experience how having your mother die when you're a child changes everything."I was ten," she said. "I remember being told that my mother had died from a berry aneurysm. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how a blueberry or a strawberry could get inside her like that."As she talked, I made dozens of observations, noting the shifts in her mood, the veneer of defensive humor over a sadness whose depth I could only guess. I glimpsed the ten-year-old she had been as she wrapped herself in a cocoon of hospital linen. I thought of my own mother's traumatic death when I was five. "Are you an only child?""There's three of us, and if I don't do something to get them away from him, it's ... it's not good.""How old are they?""Jen is fourteen. Jason's a year younger than me.""Does he abuse them?""He abuses everything, but not in a way that'll send a social worker to get Jen out of there.""So what happened on the phone?""That's the kicker, because it wasn't any worse than dozens of other times. He'd been drinking--a lot. I'd been drinking a little, which didn't help. I asked him what happened to my tuition. He called me a slut. I told him to fuck off. There was some general screaming, and at some point I slammed the receiver.""And this is how it goes with your dad?""Pretty much.""So why cut your wrists?""You want logic? You're not going to get it, at least not with my dad. This isn't the first time I've seen a shrink about him.""The other times, was it because you were thinking of killing yourself?""Why does it always have to come down to that? It's a pretty big leap from cutting my wrist to saying that I tried to kill myself.""Good point.""In fact, if I'd wanted to kill myself, I know what to do.""Then what were you trying to do?""Okay, but you have to promise not to lock me up.""Sorry" I shook my head.She shrugged. "I wanted to feel pain. I had no intention of killing myself.""It's not the first time you've done this?""No." She stared at the floor. "I don't do it often, and I don't know what possessed me for the all-out drama fest. I don't usually break the skin; I just bite the inside of my mouth or pinch myself really hard, but after five minutes on the phone with Carter Walsh I needed something to pull me back."The name instantly registered. "Your father is Carter Walsh, the writer?""Used-to-be writer. Now he's just a drunk.""He knows you're here?""I sure didn't tell him, but he'd love to see me locked up. That way everyone would know that I was the fucked-up one and he could play the ministering angel."I glanced up and saw Grace's outline on the other side of the curtain; it was after four on a Sunday morning. As my dad--a a shrink like me--would say, "Time to fish or cut bait." The fishing was almost over. "Ann, let's recap. You cut yourself after a blowup with your dad, you had no intention of killing yourself, and if I let you out of here, you're not going to do anything like that again, at least not tonight.""You're going to let me out?" She sat up, and the sheet slid back, revealing soft shoulders and, through the gaping straps of a blue paper gown, the tops of perfect breasts. "I swear I'm not going to do anything."I tore my gaze from her nakedness. "There's one condition.""Name it.""Follow up. I want to meet with you after you go home and get some sleep. Do you know where the school's mental health clinic is?""Yeah. I went there last year; it didn't work out.""You know what? This is more information than we need now. We'll get into that tomorrow, or rather, later today. Do you have any questions?"I could see she was going to ask me something, but didn't. "So I'll see you at the clinic. Say, ten?""Four?" She shot back."Noon.""Two?""Deal. Then on Monday we'll hook you up with a therapist."She was all smiles as she rearranged her gown, as if she knew that she'd nearly exposed herself. "I don't want to tell you your business, but me and therapy hasn't worked out real well.""Let's not make that decision now; let's keep the options open, okay?""You bet."I left her cubicle. Grace was waiting. "Does she stay or does she go?""She goes, with an appointment to see me at the clinic." I filled out the ER intake form and completed the narrative with a couple lines of cover-your-ass legalese. Patient consistently and repeatedly denied any thoughts of wanting to harm herself and was not deemed gravely disabled.As I walked to the security door, I glanced at Ann's cubicle. The curtain was drawn. I felt a stab of doubt. What if she wasn't okay? Why didn't I ask her more about what happened last year at the clinic? Something in my gut wasn't sitting right. The problem was, I couldn't tell if it had to do with Ann or with me. Glimpsingher bare feet under the curtain, I reran the interview and reminded myself that she was low risk for suicide. Yeah Peter, but what didn't she tell you? I felt doubt, paralyzing and irrational. Fish or cut bait."Grace, I'm out of here. I hope the rest of your night is quiet.""You too." she unlocked the door. "And get some sleep."
OUTSIDE, IT WAS FACE-NUMBING COLD. Fall had slipped into an early winter and New York had been blasted with an ice storm and six inches of powdery white snow earlier in the week. It had all turned to a frozen mush that made every step an exercise in balance.I cut through Washington Square Park, where the bare branches painted a black-lace veil against the sky. I was glad for my fur-lined bomber jacket and for the ski cap and gloves I'd tucked in the pockets before heading out. Even so, as I turned east, the wind burned my cheeks. I thought of Ann and how she just wanted to feel the pa...
12004AFTER A YEAR OF INTENSIVE therapy, I know this. I feel it claw at my sanity. Oh, God, make it stop!My fingers claw at smoldering steel as black smoke burns my eyes. "Come on, Beth!" I can't see. I can't breathe. The smell of gas. Help me! Somebody help me! She's not moving. Is her hair caught in the shoulder strap? I smash the window, but I can't get the door. She's not breathing. I suck in and put my head through the window, my mouth over hers, tasting her lipstick. Headlights come toward us through the fog. I stagger into the road. My hands wave. "Stop!" The whites of a man's eyes stare through the darkened glass. "Please stop." He slows and I grab for the closed window; it's cold against my blistering palm. Why isn't he stopping? I bang my hand against his window. "She's dying! Help me!" My palm print, smeared in blood, slips away; he's speeding up. I scream. A blue sparks turns to flames; it's in her hair Help me!I startled and blinked as a hand tapped my shoulder."Dr. Grainger. Peter, are you okay?"I coughed and fought back the nausea that always comes. "I'm fine," I said, not knowing where I was, wondering how long I'd been gone. Okay, Peter, pull it together. You're in an emergency room,that's what set off the flashback. I turned toward the voice and found a name to match the concerned face of the short, middle-aged black woman looking up at me. "Grace, I spaced," I told the third-shift aide in the psychiatric emergency room of University Hospital."Good thing you're not a surgeon," she quipped. "She must be someone special to drag the big boss out in the middle of the night.""Aren't they all," I answered, trying to fill in the missing pieces. I was in an emergency room, and it was late at night, which meant I had to be here to evaluate someone. "What do you know about her?""Same old, same old," Grace said, leading me into the Plexiglas nurses' station that separated the six patients' cubicles from the staff. "Name's Ann Walsh, twenty-two-year-old sophomore medical student, took a razor to her wrists.""How bad?" I asked."Seen worse, a few sutures on each side, and if she really wanted to kill herself you'd think she'd know to go with the arteries and not against the grain.""You're a sick woman, Grace. Any idea why?""Not that she's telling, but it boils down to a few basic plots.""Okay ... and they are?""Oh, please." The thirty-year veteran of the emergency room, who knew me when I was a resident, explained. "You've got Romeo and Juliet--young love gone bad. Ophelia--depressed and suicidal. Lady Macbeth--couldn't handle the guilt. And, of course, Lady Ann--'lay one hand on my frilly white under things and I'll kill myself.' Shakespeare covered the bases.""Which is she?" I asked, remembering that Grace worked the graveyard shift so that she could spend her days pursuing a career as a comic actress."Don't know, but I do know she wants out.""Which will it be? Keep her or let her go?""You want me to do your whole job for you?""I know you could.""You know that's right," she answered. "This is how I see it--if they want to go, you need to keep them. If they want to stay, you should kick them out.""It's a little perverse.""Am I wrong?" She grinned."No." I took the clipboard with Ann Walsh's documentation and leafed through it. She'd arrived before eleven. She'd been drinking. Her alcohol level wasn't that high, but it was just high enough to do something stupid, like cut her wrists. Her roommate had found her and called 911. The questions to be answered were simple--why did she do it? And did she intend to do it again?Easy stuff, the kind of thing a resident could handle. Why I--the recently appointed medical director for the university's mental health clinic--was here, had to do with a phone call from Ed, my oldest friend and the dean of the medical school. "Peter," he'd said, "I've got a situation with a student that I'd like you to handle ... personally."That's why I was here, and that was a big, albeit unstated, part of my job--buffer the students from the real world and keep bad publicity away from the university. Ann Walsh was a problem that needed to be fixed.I walked the few yards that separated them--the patients--from us--the staff. She was in cubicle five, and as I knocked on the wall and pulled back the curtain, I had to fight to stay present. ERs and certain other situations, such as crash sites, have a way of setting my brain twitching. But as that curtain slid back, it wasn't just my own memories of lying in one of these cubicles, huddled in a ball and wanting to die, it was something unexpected, and it hit hard. In the filtered light that spilled from the common areainto Ann Walsh's cubicle I saw my wife, Beth. She turned and the illusion shattered, just a trick of the light that gave her hair the same coppery gold glimmer, and the way her head tilted on a long slender neck. Her eyes were different, the shape of her chin, her mouth--all different. Beautiful, but different."Ann," I said, trying to shake off an irrational bad feeling. "I'm Peter Grainger, Dr. Grainger.""I'm not crazy," she stated, sizing me up through large blue eyes set in a face that could have been on the cover of Vogue."So what happened?" I sat on the hard-plastic chair bolted next to the bed."Everyone keeps asking me that. Like, why should anyone give two shits?""Did you tell anyone why you did it?""No." She cracked a smile and tucked a strand of wispy hair behind her ear."If you did, we'd stop asking. So yes, you've got to tell me.""Or what?""Or you get trundled up to the psych unit until you're safe to go.""I'm not going to do anything," she stated. "This was stupid, I was angry, I'd been drinking. You have no idea how much I regret this. Do you know what they've put me through? I could kill her.""Who?""My roommate, Shana. I've been trying to get a private room, but ...""What?""There's one way you can get a private room.""Yes, I'm aware of the 'psycho singles,'" I said, sensing that she was flirting."Wouldn't this count--a trip to the emergency room?""You sure you want to play this up?""Good point," she said, wrapping her sheet tight. "So, how do I get out of here?""Tell me what happened.""Jesus, you're persistent. There's no other way?""Nope.""Where will this go?""What do you mean?""What I tell you ... who's going to know? And don't tell me that everything is confidential, because I know that's not how this works.""You're right, it's not that clean. You tried to hurt yourself, maybe to kill yourself; it's in your hospital record. The reasons you did it are inside your head; I need to know what they are. I probably won't have to get into the specifics with anyone else, but ...""There's always a 'but,' isn't there?""Right. If you were to tell me that you were thinking of leaving here and stabbing Shana in cold-blooded revenge, I couldn't keep that to myself.""What if I threatened to mix up her hair scrunchies and nail polish?""I'd take it to the grave.""You know she color codes them?""Her nail polish?""Everything. That girl needs a shrink. If you so much as touch one of the bottles, she'll know. Plus, she's got bulimia, which--hey live and let live--but our bathroom reeks of puke and Pine-Sol. It's gross.""Are you trying to tell me you did this to get away from your roommate?""Would that work?""Nah.""Why are you so cheerful?" she asked.Her question caught me off guard; over the past year "cheerful" is not a word I'd have used to describe myself. "Does it bother you?""No, I kind of like it, and you don't look much like a shrink.""Are you trying to get off the subject?"She sighed and pulled the sheet tightly around her shoulders, looking more like she should be at a spa than a downtown emergency room. "That sounded like a shrink. I suppose I'd better just get this over with."I waited."Long or short version?" she asked."Start short; it's late.""God, you're direct. Okay, it was my father. I was mad at my father.""What about?" I asked and watched a tear form in the corner of her eye."I sometimes wonder why I even bother; it's always the same. You'd think by now I could have figured something out. I'm not a stupid person. I made it into medical school. I should know not to call him, but I had to.""Because?""Because the bursar sent a registered letter telling me that I have two weeks to come up with tuition or I can pack my bags. He'd told me that he'd sent the check.""He hadn't?""He never does, but sometimes I feel like believing him--that maybe he'll act like a normal father. I think I get that from my mom; she was quite the optimist." Ann looked up and I was struck by her expression, so young, so vulnerable, so beautiful."She's not around anymore?" I asked, clearing my throat."Dead. Berry aneurysm. Do you know what that is?"I nodded, knowing from personal experience how having your mother die when you're a child changes everything."I was ten," she said. "I remember being told that my mother had died from a berry aneurysm. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how a blueberry or a strawberry could get inside her like that."As she talked, I made dozens of observations, noting the shifts in her mood, the veneer of defensive humor over a sadness whose depth I could only guess. I glimpsed the ten-year-old she had been as she wrapped herself in a cocoon of hospital linen. I thought of my own mother's traumatic death when I was five. "Are you an only child?""There's three of us, and if I don't do something to get them away from him, it's ... it's not good.""How old are they?""Jen is fourteen. Jason's a year younger than me.""Does he abuse them?""He abuses everything, but not in a way that'll send a social worker to get Jen out of there.""So what happened on the phone?""That's the kicker, because it wasn't any worse than dozens of other times. He'd been drinking--a lot. I'd been drinking a little, which didn't help. I asked him what happened to my tuition. He called me a slut. I told him to fuck off. There was some general screaming, and at some point I slammed the receiver.""And this is how it goes with your dad?""Pretty much.""So why cut your wrists?""You want logic? You're not going to get it, at least not with my dad. This isn't the first time I've seen a shrink about him.""The other times, was it because you were thinking of killing yourself?""Why does it always have to come down to that? It's a pretty big leap from cutting my wrist to saying that I tried to kill myself.""Good point.""In fact, if I'd wanted to kill myself, I know what to do.""Then what were you trying to do?""Okay, but you have to promise not to lock me up.""Sorry" I shook my head.She shrugged. "I wanted to feel pain. I had no intention of killing myself.""It's not the first time you've done this?""No." She stared at the floor. "I don't do it often, and I don't know what possessed me for the all-out drama fest. I don't usually break the skin; I just bite the inside of my mouth or pinch myself really hard, but after five minutes on the phone with Carter Walsh I needed something to pull me back."The name instantly registered. "Your father is Carter Walsh, the writer?""Used-to-be writer. Now he's just a drunk.""He knows you're here?""I sure didn't tell him, but he'd love to see me locked up. That way everyone would know that I was the fucked-up one and he could play the ministering angel."I glanced up and saw Grace's outline on the other side of the curtain; it was after four on a Sunday morning. As my dad--a a shrink like me--would say, "Time to fish or cut bait." The fishing was almost over. "Ann, let's recap. You cut yourself after a blowup with your dad, you had no intention of killing yourself, and if I let you out of here, you're not going to do anything like that again, at least not tonight.""You're going to let me out?" She sat up, and the sheet slid back, revealing soft shoulders and, through the gaping straps of a blue paper gown, the tops of perfect breasts. "I swear I'm not going to do anything."I tore my gaze from her nakedness. "There's one condition.""Name it.""Follow up. I want to meet with you after you go home and get some sleep. Do you know where the school's mental health clinic is?""Yeah. I went there last year; it didn't work out.""You know what? This is more information than we need now. We'll get into that tomorrow, or rather, later today. Do you have any questions?"I could see she was going to ask me something, but didn't. "So I'll see you at the clinic. Say, ten?""Four?" She shot back."Noon.""Two?""Deal. Then on Monday we'll hook you up with a therapist."She was all smiles as she rearranged her gown, as if she knew that she'd nearly exposed herself. "I don't want to tell you your business, but me and therapy hasn't worked out real well.""Let's not make that decision now; let's keep the options open, okay?""You bet."I left her cubicle. Grace was waiting. "Does she stay or does she go?""She goes, with an appointment to see me at the clinic." I filled out the ER intake form and completed the narrative with a couple lines of cover-your-ass legalese. Patient consistently and repeatedly denied any thoughts of wanting to harm herself and was not deemed gravely disabled.As I walked to the security door, I glanced at Ann's cubicle. The curtain was drawn. I felt a stab of doubt. What if she wasn't okay? Why didn't I ask her more about what happened last year at the clinic? Something in my gut wasn't sitting right. The problem was, I couldn't tell if it had to do with Ann or with me. Glimpsingher bare feet under the curtain, I reran the interview and reminded myself that she was low risk for suicide. Yeah Peter, but what didn't she tell you? I felt doubt, paralyzing and irrational. Fish or cut bait."Grace, I'm out of here. I hope the rest of your night is quiet.""You too." she unlocked the door. "And get some sleep."
OUTSIDE, IT WAS FACE-NUMBING COLD. Fall had slipped into an early winter and New York had been blasted with an ice storm and six inches of powdery white snow earlier in the week. It had all turned to a frozen mush that made every step an exercise in balance.I cut through Washington Square Park, where the bare branches painted a black-lace veil against the sky. I was glad for my fur-lined bomber jacket and for the ski cap and gloves I'd tucked in the pockets before heading out. Even so, as I turned east, the wind burned my cheeks. I thought of Ann and how she just wanted to feel the pa...
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- PublisherMinotaur Books
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0312342047
- ISBN 13 9780312342043
- BindingHardcover
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- Number of pages352
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The Cadaver's Ball
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ISBN 10: 0312342047
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