"And he's not fitting that pattern?"
"No. He's not. But he should. His background is textbook. I had him pegged as growing up in an authoritarian home, and I couldn't have been more right. The poor kid's father was an ex-Marine, and used to make him run drills when he was five and six. When he had a paper route, the father wouldn't even break down and take over for him when he was sick — he'd follow him to make sure he still did the job, but he wouldn't help. That was the father's way of instilling a sense of responsibility."
Sarah's face soured. "Sounds like a real bastard."
Adrienne nodded. "It goes on and on like that. A lot of the patterns are the same from case to case, but it never seems to screw up any two people in the exact same way."
"But this one's different even beyond the variations?"
"I think so. It's odd — in spite of all my expectations to the contrary, he's been surprisingly cooperative. That's not to say he made it easy all along. He started out digging at me with a few barbs. Our first session he suckered me into one of the more cleverly segued propositions I've gotten."
She caught a tiny pinching between Sarah's eyebrows; perhaps she shouldn't have mentioned that. She had overlooked the subtle associations that might trigger in Sarah, the kind of thing she was usually sensitive enough to avoid. While Adrienne was as happy with her as she’d ever been with anyone, she knew that Sarah held deep worries that could not be easily soothed, for they were not entirely groundless. While everyone worries to some degree about their mate leaving them for someone else, here it was compounded by Adrienne's ability to vacillate between either sex. This Sarah could not do, and while she hid her anxieties well, still Adrienne understood that she held a clear advantage. Should she decide to return to a more traditional relationship someday, there was little Sarah could do to fight it. There were times this lay between them like a silent threat, barely acknowledged but biding its time.
Adrienne stroked the backs of her fingers along Sarah's leg and went on. "All along, I felt he really wanted my help but would be too proud or too threatened to admit it, even if he didn't have to come right out and say so. But he proved me wrong there, too. 'Help me.' Those were his exact words."
As she drew in closer to Sarah's side, she remembered the apprehension that washed over her just before those words had left Clay's lips. She had watched him going through his emotional contortions, and there had surfaced within him a killing rage that thickened the air in the office. Every muscle had tensed and every doubt had surfaced: She had been wrong to trust him, been wrong to believe Ferris Mendenhall competent to prescribe an adequate dosage of lithium. She saw the wreckage that Clay could make of her office, and her. She saw her own obituary.
And as his seizure passed, there had swept through her an exhilaration she'd thought must surely be reserved for daredevil feats. Skydiving, ski jumping … anything where survival was left to fate.
This, more than anything, had taught her the addict's rush.
"There's something I'm not seeing yet in this guy," Adrienne murmured. "There's something in him that I'm missing."
"Then you'd better find it before long. You won't have all the time in the world with him."
"Tell me about it."
It was her one great fear in this case: Soon, word would come down to her that Clay Palmer was well enough to be discharged. He need not sit around until his hands healed and the casts were removed. While obligated to provide a certain measure of care, the hospital would fund the costs of a transient assault victim for only so long without squawking and demanding his release. He had insurance, a group employee policy, but the claim was being contested because, in leaving Denver, he had walked away from his job.
Of course, she had a certain measure of control, as well. His physical evaluation was out of her hands, but his psychological well-being was her responsibility. As long as she said he wasn't ready to be released, that might be enough to keep him around.
"What I'm most worried about," said Adrienne, "is if he decides he wants to go back home. There's no way I can justify any follow-up then."
"Have you thought about…?" said Sarah, almost teasing, dangling a possibility like tantalizing bait.
"What?" Adrienne met her eyes. "Come on, what?"
"Now think." Sarah nestled in closer as a chilled breeze began to blow in off the darkening desert. Adrienne curled one arm up around her shoulders and slowly ran her splayed hand through Sarah's tousled mane.
"Ow," Sarah said. "Your fingers are sticky and you're pulling my hair."
"Good." A cruel smile played over Adrienne's lips and she drummed her wine-tacked fingers. "What are you getting at?"
Sarah twisted her head around until she could bite Adrienne's hand, bearing down lightly with a grin until the hand relented.
"Don't tell me I haven't caught a little jealous pining in your eyes whenever the subject of my thesis comes up."
Adrienne pinched Sarah's nose. "If you'd decided on a subject, you mean."
"You know what I'm talking about. You love independent research, and the fact that it's going to consume my life before long digs at you, doesn't it?" She demonstrated by gouging her fingers into Adrienne's ribs, her most ticklish spot. "Right?"
"So what if it does? You're a presumptuous little bitch, you know that?" As she was running out of bodily places to torment, name-calling seemed a viable alternative.
Sarah grabbed both of Adrienne's hands and held them tight. "Then do something about it. What, the great healing motivator in my life can't see the obvious? If you're that intrigued by what makes him tick, run an end sweep around the hospital, go to the university psych department, and put in for some grant money so you can treat him as your first research subject."
"And what makes you think I haven't already moved in that direction?"
Sarah flashed her sweetest smile. "Because if you had, you wouldn't have been so insufferably mopey about him five minutes ago. You would've been bursting." She arched her eyebrows, smug and satisfied, and leaned in nose-to-nose. "Right?"
"Right," Adrienne confessed.
She stretched out her legs to prop her feet on the railing beside Sarah's, and together they watched the darkness thicken across the desert, waiting for someone to come and tell them how antisocial they were being. It was a birthday, after all.
Six
Her weekend passed too slowly after that, her Sunday shift crawling except for the hour-long session with Clay, their fifth. She was a victim of her own growing obsessions, and they murdered time while leaving its bloated corpse in her way.
Monday morning she went back in on her own time and flagged down an impromptu meeting with Ferris Mendenhall. The man himself was easy enough to work under, but she had always hated his office. Bare of wall and devoid of personality, it always gave her the impression of having just been moved into, or about to be vacated, with the decor boxed away. She wondered what it meant, if Mendenhall had never felt himself long for this office, this position.
"I'm trying to be as ethical as I know how," Adrienne said, "and not bypass hospital hierarchy."
From across his desk, for the most part clean as a windswept plateau, Ferris Mendenhall eyed her. He was a lean man in his mid-forties whose white coat tended to flap upon his frame like a clipper's sail, and had no upper lip that she had ever seen. It remained hidden behind a drooping moustache that curled down with lazy bravado, a relic of a bygone age. If the sunburned pate visible through his thinning hair had been covered by a cavalry officer's hat, he might well have been dashing.