His stomach rumbled like a passing freight train as he passed the reception desk. He glanced at his watch. One o’clock? Where the hell had the day gone? He opened his office door, intent on retrieving his lunch from his bottom drawer, and was startled beyond words to see Anne Vining-Ellis sitting in front of his desk.
“I just wanted to speak to you privately before you get the X-rays back,” she said. “I wanted to know what you thought about counseling.”
What the hell was she talking about? Why was she here, in the middle of the day, instead of at the emergency department of the Glens Falls Hospital?
“Well,” he temporized, “what do you think?”
“I think he ought to be seeing someone, but he won’t listen to me. There’s this ridiculous prejudice against mental health treatment in the military.” She looked up at him. “But you’re in the army.”
“The Guard,” he corrected automatically. He knew that much, at least.
“Whatever. You understand the culture. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
“Hmm.” He crossed the carpeted floor, sat at his desk. He dropped a file he hadn’t been aware he was carrying onto his blotter. His heart was pounding so hard he was amazed Anne couldn’t hear it from across the desk. “I’m hardly an expert at psychology.” He kept his voice steady.
Anne leaned forward. “I don’t mean you should counsel him. You’re going way above and beyond as it is.”
He glanced at the papers atop the file. Some sort of spreadsheet. He slid it aside and flipped open the folder. There was a copy of a PT order for Willem Ellis. Beneath it, a copy of an X-ray request. Beneath that, exam notes in his own hand. Bilateral TT amp, he read. Inadequate exercise. Depressed affect.
“Let’s see how he responds to physical therapy.” He looked up at Anne. “That can have a dramatic effect on a patient’s mood.” He let his eyes drop to the notes again. P. 19. Was X-C. Touchy issue-P? or mom? “Especially for a young, athletic guy like your son.”
The phone buzzed, thank God, thank God. He answered it. “It’s Cindy,” the voice on the other end said. “I’ve got the Ellis pictures for you, if you’re ready.”
“I’ll be right there.” He could have kissed her. Cindy. He remembered her. He could picture her brightly colored lab coat, the way she wore her hair screwed up on top of her head. Last Halloween, she baked skeleton-shaped cookies for the office.
He could remember her. Why couldn’t he recall a single thing about the file in his hands? He stood up. “The X-rays are ready. Do you want to wait-” He had no idea whether Will Ellis was still around or not. He changed the question to “Where would you like to wait?”
“Why don’t you meet us back in the exam room?”
Which one?
“That’s fine.” He let her precede him out the door and watched her walk up the hallway to the waiting room. He took the side way to radiology and ducked into the staff bathroom. Locked the door behind him. Leaned against it. Breathed in. Breathed out. He had been forgetting things since he got back from his tour of duty. His wife had said… she had said… he couldn’t remember what she had said.
He lurched forward to face the mirror. He looked pale and damp in his own eyes. “Stress,” he said to his reflection. “The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include mood swings, sleep disorders, inability to concentrate, and short-term memory loss.” Reciting the symptoms made him feel better. He was a doctor. If he could survive going without sleep for thirty hours at a pop during his residency, he could survive this.
His gaze shifted to the still-pink scar curling through his hair. It had been made by a chunk of cement, part of a makeshift clinic until it was blown to pieces by insurgents. The impact had rendered him profoundly unconscious, thank God. He had never had to witness what the explosions did to the kids and parents waiting to be seen by army doctors. He had done his time in his own Forward Response Station and been cleared for duty by his superior. These… memory lapses weren’t related. He was suffering from-
Traumatic brain injury.
“Stress disorder,” he said loudly.
There was a knock at the door. “Dr. Stillman?” One of the insurance clerks. “Are you okay?”
He closed his eyes. “Yeah.” Nobody can know about this. “Be out in a sec.” He turned on the faucet and flipped open the Ellis file. While the water ran and splashed, he read over the complete history. When he was done, he turned the faucet off and reflexively pulled three paper towels from the dispenser. He stared at them for a second before throwing them away, unused.
The corridor was empty when he emerged. He had to get the X-rays and meet the Ellises-meet them-his mind was blank for a bowel-dropping second. Then he pulled examining room out of the darkness. He flipped open the file and wrote it down. Notes. That would be the key.
He could deal with this. PTSD responded favorably to therapy and stress management techniques. He could prescribe himself Xanax for anxiety. He would-for a moment, his future yawned away beneath him, an endless, dark pool. He shuddered.
Parker swung around the corner, nearly bowling into him. “There you are.” He thrust an X-ray folder into Trip’s hands. “Cindy gave me these to give to you. Don’t you have the Ellises waiting in D?”
“Huh? Oh. Yes.”
“Meeting at four.” Parker continued down the hallway. “Don’t forget,” he called over his shoulder.
Trip’s hand, scrawling D and MEET AT 4 on the folder, fell still. “I won’t.”
FRIDAY, JULY 1
Clare had thought slipping in the deliveries door of the soup kitchen and tying an apron on over her jeans and sleeveless shirt would make her entrance a little less noticeable. She was wrong. As soon as she crossed from the large food storage area into the steamy kitchen, one of her congregation spotted her. “Reverend Clare!” he yelled. “It’s Reverend Clare!” A cheer went up. She resisted covering her cheeks, although she could feel them pinking up.
The volunteer crew clustered around, smiling, laughing, pelting her with questions.
“When did you get in?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought we were going to have a reception!”
Clare raised her hands, laughing. “If y’all will let me get a word in edgewise-”
Velma Drassler, the head cook, wrapped her arms around Clare and squeezed her hard enough to crack ribs. “Oh, it’s so good to have our rector back.”
“I got in late last Friday and took the weekend off,” Clare said when she had her breath back. “I’ve been meeting with Father Lawrence and with the vestry.” That had been a surreal experience. They, too, had hugged her and thumped her back and escorted her to her old seat in the meeting room, and the whole time she’d been laughing and talking and answering questions, she’d been thinking What is it? Why do they look so strange? When Mrs. Marshall laid her hand on Clare’s arm, frail bones and onionskin and blue veins, she realized: They’re old . With the exception of Junior Warden Geoff Burns, every member of the vestry was over sixty. In a year and a half, Clare hadn’t clapped eyes on another American older than-well, older than Russ.
Of course, she had seen Iraqis, men and women who had been sandblasted by war and hardship and deprivation until they looked more preserved than alive. They weren’t healthy and affluent, either, like her vestry; they had been poor and angry, poor and desperate, poor and screaming for help after-