I know he did it. The evidence was there, in the mess he left me to clean up. Binders ripped at the spine, overturned drawers, the restraining order that Linda’s son applied for—all jumbled together in the middle of the floor. If he would have let me, I could have explained.
It’s simple. Linda and I were friends, and she liked having me around. It was that meathead son of hers, making things out to be something they weren’t, suggesting something untoward in our relationship. I knew from day one that he didn’t like me—calling me Nurse Nightingale, which I didn’t understand until I looked it up. But it didn’t matter what he thought, because I wasn’t hired to take care of Hank. I was hired to take care of his mother from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. four nights a week. Linda Pennypiece, the kindest person in the world.
She’d had a stroke three months earlier, at the age of eighty-nine. She couldn’t speak, but I could see in her eyes how much she enjoyed our time together. On the nights she couldn’t sleep, we’d stay up late, watching reruns of Mary Tyler Moore. I’d feed her the individual-sized boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes the agency gave everyone who worked the overnight shift. She’d stare silently at the television, but I could sense the joy it brought her. Until Hank showed up and ruined everything. I swallow back the disgust, remembering the sight of him walking into the kitchen as I stood at the stove in Linda’s robe, scrambling eggs. I was fired within the hour.
See, Sam, I’d say. I told you there was a good explanation for that. Just like there’s a good explanation for the other big question I imagine is on your mind. How did I come to fill a binder full of facts about you? One word: fate.
The moment fate intervened on our behalf: A one-item list
The Bakery, just before lunch, the first Tuesday in April. I was inside the stall at the men’s room, wondering if I should complain that the tea I’d just finished wasn’t hot enough, and you were at the sink outside, talking on the phone about your fading dream of the perfect office space. I listened to the whole thing—the place you’d come from smelled of marijuana, and the realtor didn’t have anything else to show you. You said you were off to visit your mother, and I had no idea until I opened the door that it was you—Dr. Sam Statler, the brilliant therapist from the “Twenty Questions” profile I’d come across in the local paper, whose work I’d been obsessively reading. I didn’t have anything else to do, and so I decided to follow you in my car, up the mountain to Rushing Waters. I circled the parking lot while you sat in your luxury automobile, and that’s when the idea came to me, in a moment of divinity: I could give you the perfect office space.
Why would I do that? you ask. Because I’m a nice guy. Because I care about people, Sam, and I appreciated the work you did, helping others understand the trauma of their childhoods. So much so that I went home and made a flyer. It took me no more than thirty minutes to find your car parked behind the bank, where I stuck the flyer under your windshield. Lo and behold you called just minutes later.
And I did everything you wanted, Sam. Professional lighting. A self-flushing toilet. Organic paint. I even did the one thing you couldn’t do: I visited your mother. (Anyone with two eyes and a pair of binoculars could see that you stopped going inside soon after you moved to town.) There’s a volunteer application available at their website, and bingo! It sounded fun. I know they don’t like me there. I see the way people look at me, ignoring the suggestions I leave in the suggestion box, but I don’t care, Sam. Because I wasn’t taking your mother to bingo twice a week to please them. I was doing it to help you.
But I can’t tell Sam any of this, because the last time I saw him was yesterday, when I dragged his lifeless body into the closet as the first journalist appeared, afraid he’d wake up and start yelling and someone would hear him. I’m so ridden with guilt over what I did that I still can’t bring myself to go down there.
I know, a warm bath will relax me. I search for Agatha Lawrence’s bath salts, which I remember seeing in the closet, when I hear a humming noise coming from somewhere in the house. It’s not in the bedroom, or the hallway; as I ease down the stairs, the sound grows louder the closer I get to the kitchen. Finally I make my way to the hallway, to Sam’s room.
“Good, you’re home.” Sam’s voice from inside is surprisingly firm. “Come in. I need something from you.” Hesitant, I return to the kitchen for the key, and return to his door. He’s in his chair when I peek my head inside, writing in his notebook. “Come in,” he says, waving me forward and then reaching to silence the clock on the table beside him.
“What is it you need?” I ask nervously.
“Your help.” I’m filled with shame when he glances up at me and I see the laceration in his lip, the swollen malar bone in his left cheek. “With a patient.”
“A patient?” I say, confused. “I don’t understand—”
“I’ll explain later.” He returns to his writing. “This feels somewhat urgent. Here—” He rips the page from his notebook and holds it out to me. “Take a look.”