Fran got to her feet, with difficulty because of the damn armchair and the damn cushion. “It’s my choice,” she said again. “I know what I’m doing, Dr. Southern.”
It was true, she thought defiantly. She reached over and took the prescription out of the doctor’s hand.
“Okay,” he said. “Well, then let’s leave it there for now. I’ll see you again week after next and we can review. If you do have another attack in the meantime, use your journal to get it all down—in as much detail as you can.”
“Of course,” Fran said. “Continued in next episode.”
She hated that he thought she was a coward. To her embarrassment, she felt the stinging in her eyes that meant she was about to cry. She wasn’t miserable, just ashamed and angry at being judged.
By a big, fat, donut-eating fat man! Jinx chimed in.
Fran got out of the room as quick as she could. Dr. Southern was still saying goodbye to her when she slammed the door shut behind her.
He’s just a dick, Lady Jinx growled.
“No, he isn’t,” Fran said, her voice thick. “He’s trying his best. But he doesn’t get it.”
She had to pull herself together before she went out to her dad. She took a side corridor that led to the bathrooms. There was a water fountain there too, so she pretended to be taking a drink, letting the water run while she bent over it and gulped back tears. They kept coming, though. Because if Dr. Southern didn’t get it, who would? And if he was going to block her off from doing the one thing that would make all the craziness go away, then there was no way out of this at all.
A rustle of movement from somewhere close by made her freeze. She wasn’t alone anymore. She waited for whoever it was to go away.
“Are you okay, Watts?” It was Zac Kendall’s voice. And he was right behind her.
“I’m fine,” Fran mumbled.
“Can I get you anything? Or call someone? If you’re—”
She spun round to face him. “I said I’m fine, Kendall!” she yelled. “Are you deaf or something?”
Kendall looked stunned. Too bad. He should have minded his own business.
Fran took to her heels and ran, out the side door and into the parking lot. She texted her dad from there, saying she was all done and waiting by the car.
By the time he arrived, her cheeks were dry and her face was composed.
“All good?” Gil asked.
“Yeah. All good.” Fran forced a smile, holding up the pink prescription slip. “Can we swing by Walgreens on the way home?”
Wednesday seemed to be taking its own sweet time to come around. Liz had been living in fear of another psychotic episode, and the constant tension made her start at shadows. Any time she got angry or even a little irritated, she stopped dead and probed the feeling to make sure it was hers. And since it was impossible to be completely certain, she tried to steer away from feeling anything at all. She was queasily conscious of holding the world at arm’s length. Even her fellow volunteers at the homeless shelter, who were glad to see her back. Even the kids, which she flat-out hated.
That was the main reason why she had asked Zac to drive her to Carroll Way. Learning to drive was still enough of a novelty for him that he relished getting behind the wheel of a car, even if the car in question was a tired old wreck, steered like a boat despite being the size of a roller skate and wore the dust and sap of a Pittsburgh summer like an extra coat of paint.
The sitter, Christine Keithley, arrived at 4:30 on the dot. She was a classmate of Zac’s who mostly sat at the weekends but was prepared to do a couple of hours midweek as an occasional one-off. Word had gone around among the Worth Harbor mothers that Christine was capable and reliable.
“I already cooked Molly’s supper,” Liz told the sixteen-year-old. “All you’ve got to do is warm it up.”
“Okay,” Christine said happily. She was a stocky teen with fiery red hair who played in Julian C. Barry’s junior volleyball team as a wing spiker. Zac said a lot of the boys were scared of her because of something unspecified that she had done to a boy who had gotten too fresh with her at a school dance. Liz felt an instinctive warmth for her on account of that story. She also liked that Christine had brought some schoolwork with her: it showed a serious mind.
“I’ll be back in time to put her to bed,” Liz added.
“So there’s really nothing I have to do except make sure she doesn’t set the house on fire?”
“Well, you’ll probably be drafted in for Lego duty.”
“Excuse me?”
“Through there. You’ll see.”
Christine went through to the family room, where the Lego table was out and Molly’s latest work-in-progress was … well, everywhere. By the time Liz had got her coat on and found her car keys, Christine had been recruited to build a dungeon for a dragon who had been naughty. Offenses unspecified. “I sort of feel like your daughter is running an authoritarian state, Ms. Kendall,” she told Liz.
“Every kid is born a fascist,” Liz said. “You have to pound democracy into them a little at a time.”
“Fair.”
“Don’t let her bully you, though. If you need to do your schoolwork …”
“I’ll get to it. Right after we build the dragon utopia.”
In spite of Liz’s good intentions, she and Zac were silent when they first got into the car. Mostly that was because driving still required his full attention, but she sensed that he was also a little bit freaked out at the thought that his mom was going to a psychiatrist. Liz didn’t blame him. She felt the same way about it, truth be told.
“So Nora wanted to add a new clause to my work contract,” she said at last. “So she can fire me if I turn out to be of unsound mind.”
Zac shot her a sidelong glance, scandalized. “She what? She can’t do that, can she?”
“She said she could, yeah. Said it was standard practice. It’s called the sanity clause. I told her she wasn’t gonna fool me with that one. My daddy told me there ain’t no sanity clause.”
Seconds went by. Zac shook his head. “That was terrible,” he said. “On a scale of one to ten, it’s … wow. It’s on a different scale. I can’t find it on the scale, Mom.”
“Pretty bad, right? And it’s not even original.”
“No, I’m relieved. If you made it up, I’d have to go get myself DNA-tested in case I’m related to you.”
“Only by birth, sweetheart.”
“Well, thank God.”
They sat in the waiting room for twenty minutes, which for Carroll Way was on the low side of average. Zac saw a girl he knew from school sitting over on the other side of the room with a man who was presumably her father. “Go ahead and talk to her,” Liz urged. “I’m fine just sitting here.”
“I don’t know her that well,” Zac hedged. Liz wondered if she was seeing a budding crush until he added, “Francine is really weird. Most people think she’s crazy.”
“And here’s your mom going to see a shrink,” Liz reminded him.
“Ha ha,” Zac mumbled. “Very funny.”
The girl got called in ahead of her, and Liz got a good look at her as she passed. She was a petite African American teen with a metallic blue streak down one side of her tightly curled hair. That was the only flamboyant touch in her appearance: she dressed right down toward camouflaged blandness in a white T-shirt with no logo, a pair of black jeans and unbranded sneakers. There was nothing strange about her that Liz could see, except that her slim build maybe shaded over a little too much toward actual gauntness. There was a solemnity about her that was unusual in a kid that age. Liz thought it might be the face you ended up wearing if everyone at your school thought you were crazy.