Sitting there, leafing through a recent Newsweek, he thought that in some ways what had happened was a positive thing. It was like the false hospitalization they’d been planning, but with the advantage that it was real; no lies had to be told.
Of course, the disadvantage was that a shooting would naturally draw the attention of the police. Would their presence interfere with the robbery? Dr. Madchen sincerely hoped not. He sincerely needed that robbery. He sincerely needed it to save his life.
Some years ago, when Dr. Madchen was at a very low point in his life, when he had reached a point where he wasn’t sure he would be able to go on, he had happened to come across a very strange statistic in a professional journal. It seemed that a quarter century before, the state of California had done a statistical survey, using state records, to compare divorces and suicides according to occupation. One result showed that doctors of all kinds, except for psychiatrists, had the highest suicide rate and the lowest divorce rate of any occupation in California.
When Dr. Madchen read that item, his immediate reaction was dread. He became as frightened as if a tiger had walked into his living room. He felt so threatened, so alone and vulnerable and helpless, that he had to stop reading and leave the house and go for one of the longest walks of his life, around and around and around his lovely, expensive neighborhood with its curving, quiet streets and broad green lawns and large, sprawling wood or brick houses, mostly prewar, set well back from the road.
It was late spring at that time, and the gardeners of the neighborhood had been hard at work, so the bright, hard colors of northern flowers were everywhere, backed by the eternal bass note of the dark pines. Dr. Madchen, walking, looking at the beauty of his world, had thought, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave this. I have to remember that.
Because, in fact, suicide had been very much on his mind. On his mind but not acknowledged, the idea seeping into his brain like dampness in a basement until, without a drop of water having been seen to move, the entire basement is soaked.
He had been thinking about it, thinking about simply checking himself out of this life, thinking how easy it would be for him, as a doctor, to find a gentle, peaceful, painless way to end it all. That was what the article had suggested, that one reason doctors were so high on the suicide scale was because it was so easy for them and they could act with the assurance that they would neither hurt themselves nor make a mistake.
And the other reason, the article suggested, had to do with imagination. If a person in an unhappy life could imagine some other life, he was likelier to seek a divorce. If his training in the hard realities of medicine had left him unable to imagine another way out, he would reach for the sleeping pills. That was why writers and psychiatrists were at the extreme other end of the scale in that survey, having the highest divorce and lowest suicide rates. They were used to looking for new narratives, new connections. They could imagine a satisfying alternative to what they had, whether they ever achieved it or not.
I can imagine a different life, Dr. Madchen told himself as he walked through that spring day. I can imagine . . . something.
But how? A loveless marriage was at the heart of Dr. Madchen’s unhappiness—a marriage entered into for cold reasons, a mistake from the beginning. He had married Ellen for her money, and it was still her money, and he was still tied to it. Ellen was a cold, vindictive woman, who begrudged him any thought that wasn’t of her. To divorce her would be so grueling, so harsh, that of course he thought of suicide as the easier way. A divorce from Ellen—that he could imagine, and the image left him weak with misery.
Besides which, even if he managed to extricate himself from the marriage, what then? It was still her money. In fact, since she’d helped pay for his medical education and had entirely paid for his office, and given Ellen’s disagreeability, she would no doubt not only keep all her own money but would also use her lawyers to beat some of his money out of him. No, no, it could not be contemplated.
One thing that article did do for him, however, was make him more self-aware and more open to anything at all that might bring comfort to his life. And his life needed comfort. He had come to believe, during that period, that many of his patients led much better lives than he did—even some with chronic medical problems, even those with quite serious illnesses. He could see happiness and hope in their faces, when he knew he had neither in his.
One of these patients was Jake Beckham, a hearty, rowdy man who would surely never put up with a woman like Ellen, not for (literally) a million dollars. Dr. Madchen admired and envied Jake, and when Jake was arrested and imprisoned, neither the admiration nor the envy lessened. How staunchly Jake took his bad luck; how thoroughly he refused to be defeated. There was a man who could imagine another life for himself and make a leap for it, and so what if he failed this time? He would surely try again.
It was a happy coincidence that Jake wound up in the same state prison where Dr. Madchen’s worthless cousin, after years of drug addiction, had inevitably been placed. It had been to remain in contact with Jake as much as to be of help to Conrad that Dr. Madchen had asked Jake to help the worthless man. And of course Jake had helped.
A very different kind of patient, toward whom Dr. Madchen felt tenderness and pity, was Isabelle Moran, a healthy and beautiful young woman whose medical problems centered on an abusive husband. It was Dr. Madchen who patched up the bruises and the sprains and the scrapes, while telling Isabelle time and again that she should report the husband to the police. But she wouldn’t; she couldn’t; she was too afraid.
When, shortly after reading the statistics article, he had to treat Isabelle once more, this time for a badly scraped knee, a broken rib, and a broken finger (the man always left her face alone), Dr. Madchen realized that he and Isabelle were in one way very much the same: tied to a hateful spouse, unable to escape.
But they could console each other. They had been consoling each other for nearly three years now, secretly, hiding from the wrath of their spouses, and it had become, for both of them, intolerable. They had to get away, somehow. Neither could divorce, but both could flee. Or they could flee if they had money.
Jake, for Dr. Madchen’s assistance and silence and cover concerning the upcoming bank robbery, would give the doctor a third of his share of the take. A third.
He and Isabelle already knew they would go to California.
The wall phone in the lounge rang, and another doctor, in green scrubs, went to answer it, then turned to say, “Dr. Madchen?”
“Yes,” the doctor said, dropping the unread magazine and getting to his feet.
“Your patient is ready.”
3
Feeling better about herself, feeling she had done everything she could to ensure her more pleasant future, Elaine Langen drove homeward in the crisp fall afternoon light and thought how she would miss the seasons here, if nothing else. Not this white Infiniti, beautiful as it was, and so much more like a glove she wore than a machine she drove. Not the house toward which she steered, full as it was of bitter memories. Not her past, her friends, her remaining relatives—all of them felt tired in her thoughts, a dusty and dog-eared aura about them. Only the seasons—that’s all that she would miss.
Not that the south of France doesn’t have seasons—of course it does, but they’re not the same ones. They don’t contrast so much; they don’t so often create their own excitement. Well, too bad. Once this bank business was over, Elaine was prepared to create her own excitement, on her own terms, in a setting of her own choice.