I wondered about that as the afternoon crept by, and then my mind went numb from jet lag and the general wash of misery and I let my body take over. I scrubbed out empty jars and test tubes with Clorox, labelled and filed the full ones on the racks that lined the walls, stood at Fred’s elbow and watched as he squeezed drops of urine onto strips of litmus paper and made notations in a ledger. My white lab coat got progressively dirtier. Every once in a while I’d come to and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sinks, the mad scientist exposed, the baby-killer, the rinser of test tubes and secreter of urine, and have an ironic little laugh at my own expense. And then it started to get dark, Fred vanished, and I was introduced to mop and squeegee. It was around then, when I just happened to be taking a cigarette break by the only window in the room, that I caught a glimpse of one of our last tardy patients of the day hurrying up the sidewalk elbow to elbow with a grim middle-aged woman whose face screamed I am her mother!
The girl was sixteen, seventeen maybe, a pale face, pale as a bulb, and nothing showing on her, at least not with the big white doughboy parka she was wearing. She looked scared, her little mouth clamped tight, her eyes fixed on her feet. She was wearing black leggings that seemed to sprout from the folds of the parka and a pair of furry white ankle boots that were like house slippers. I watched her glide through the dead world on the flowing stalks of her legs, a spoiled pouty chalk-cheeked sweetness to her face, and it moved something in me, something long buried beneath a mountain of grainy little yellow-white rocks. Maybe she was just coming in for an examination, I thought, maybe that was it. Or she’d just become sexually active — or was thinking of it — and her mother was one step ahead of her. Either way, that was what I wanted to believe. With this girl, with her quick fluid step and downcast eyes and all the hope and misery they implied, I didn’t want to think of “procedures.”
They’d almost reached the building when the zombies began to stir. From where I was standing I couldn’t see the front of the building, and the Jesus-thumpers had already begun to fade out of my consciousness, dim as it was. But they came crashing back into the picture now, right there at the corner of the building, shoulders and heads and placards, and one in particular. A shadow that separated itself from the mass and was instantly transformed into a hulking bearded zealot with snapping teeth and eyes like hardboiled eggs. He came right up to the girl and her mother, rushing at them like a torpedo, and you could see how they shied away from him and how his head raged back on his shoulders, and then they ducked past the corner of the building and out of my line of sight.
I was stunned. This wasn’t right, I was thinking, and I didn’t want to get angry or depressed or emotional — keep on an even keel, that’s what they tell you in rehab — but I couldn’t help snuffing the cigarette and stepping quietly out into the hallway that ran the length of the building and gave me an unobstructed view of the front door. I moved forward almost against my will, my feet like toy cars on a track, and I hadn’t got halfway down the hall before the door opened on the dwindling day and the dead sticks of the trees, and suddenly there she was, pale in a pale coat and her face two shades paler. We exchanged a look. I don’t know what she saw in my eyes — weakness, hunger, fear — but I know what I saw in hers, and it was so poignant and so everlastingly sad I knew I’d never have another moment’s rest till I took hold of it.
In the car on the way home Philip was so relaxed I wondered if he wasn’t prescribing something for himself. Here was the antithesis of the ice man who’d picked me up at the airport, watched me eat pork chops, read to his children, and brush my teeth in the guest bathroom, and then thrown me to the wolves at the clinic. “Sorry about all that commotion this morning,” he said, glancing at me in the glowing cubicle of the car. “I would have warned you, but you can never tell when they’re going to pull something like that.”
“So it gets better, is that what you’re saying?”
“Not much,” he said. “There’s always a couple of them out there, the real hard-core nuts. But the whole crew of the walking dead like you saw today, that’s maybe only once a week. Unless they go on one of their campaigns, and I can’t figure out what provokes them — the weather, the tides in the lake, the phases of the moon — but then they go all out, theater in the street, schoolchildren, the works. They throw themselves under the wheels, handcuff themselves to the front door — it’s a real zoo.”
“But what about the cops? Can’t you get a restraining order or something?”
He shrugged, fiddled with the tape player — opera, he was listening to opera, a thin screech of it in the night — and turned to me again, his gloved hands rigid on the wheel. “The cops are a bunch of pro-lifers, and they have no objection to those people out there harassing my patients and abridging their civil rights, and even the women just coming in for an exam have to walk the gauntlet. It’s hell on business, believe me. And it’s dangerous too. They scare me, the real crazies, the ones that shoot people. You’ve heard of John Britton? David Gunn? George Tiller?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. You’ve got to realize I’ve been out of touch for a while.”
“Shot down by people like the ones you saw out there today. Two of them died.”
I didn’t like hearing that. The thought of one of those nutballs attacking my brother, attacking me, was like throwing gasoline on a bed of hot coals. I’d never been one to turn the other cheek, and I didn’t feature martyrdom, not at all. I looked out on a blur of brake lights and the crust of ice that seemed to narrow the road into a funnel ahead of us. “Why don’t you shoot them first?” I said.
My brother’s voice was hard. “Sometimes I wish I could.”
We stopped to pick up a few things at the market, and then we were home, dinner stabbing at my salivary glands, the whole house warm and sugary with it, and Philip sat down to watch the news and have a scotch with me. Denise was right there at the door when we came in — and now we embraced, no problem, sister- and brother-in-law, one big happy family. She wanted to know how my day was, and before I could open my mouth, she was answering for me: “Not much of a challenge, huh? Pretty dull, right? Except for the crazies — they never fail to liven things up, do they? What Philip goes through, huh, Philip? Philip?”
I was beat, but the scotch smoked through my veins, the kids came and sat beside me on the couch with their comics and coloring books, and I felt good, felt like part of the family and no complaints. Denise served a beef brisket with oven-roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions, a fresh green salad, and coconut creme pie for dessert. I was planning on turning in early, but I drifted into the boys’ room and took over the Winnie-the-Pooh chores from my brother because it was something I wanted to do. Later, it must have been about ten, I was stretched out on my own bed — and again I had to hand it to Denise, because the room was homey and private, done up with little knickknacks and embroidery work and whatnot — when my brother poked his head in the door. “So,” he said, mellow with the scotch and whatever else, “you feeling okay about everything?”