“Well.” Georgia opened her arms in welcome. “Here’s his stuff.”
The woman crossed to the desk, prompting an awkward moment of reshuffling as Georgia scooted out of her way so she could access a desk drawer. Her intimidated expression didn’t alter, even though she could not have failed to notice that Beezon’s computer monitor was still on and displaying a document Georgia had no business seeing. She kept her eyes averted, both from the screen and from Georgia. Working as an administrative assistant for Beezon must wreak havoc on the nerves.
The mouse found whatever she’d been seeking and straightened up. Beezon’s computer chimed with an email and it belatedly occurred to Georgia that perhaps Jonah had run into him elsewhere.
“Have you seen Dr. Tsukada?”
Georgia expected her to say Who? Instead, she grimaced. “I’m sorry, I haven’t.”
“What about John Beezon?”
On this score, she looked more relaxed. “I think he’s left for the day.”
Georgia looked at the computer’s clock: it was five thirty. Outside the room, she could hear the unmistakable sound of things winding down: the thud of chairs being shoved under desks, voices murmuring, heels tapping down the hallway. Retrieving her phone from her bag, she sent a text to Jonah: Where are you?
No answer.
The mouse, hovering near the door, was looking at Georgia expectantly but could not seem to work up the gumption to kick her out. She wanted to stay and root through Beezon’s computer, but that would require lying to this poor soul, not to mention the questionable ethics involved. Reluctantly, she stood.
“Okay, thanks,” she said. “I’ll try him later.”
The mouse nodded, grateful that she was leaving without a fuss. She checked her phone again. Nothing. Where was Jonah?
Suddenly it came to her: perhaps they were in one of the conference rooms. A long corridor, carpeted in an industrial-grade shade of barf, led to a set of double doors opening to the outside. For reasons no one fully understood, all the conference rooms were housed in a small annex across the patient parking lot, necessitating a slog across the scorching pavement whenever anyone called a meeting, which, with this many doctors and administrators milling around, was hourly. The mouse followed Georgia as she zipped across the lot toward the employee parking garage.
Halfway across, something caught Georgia’s attention. She slowed and squinted against the angled sunlight: two people were turtling their way across the black tarmac toward the boatlike grandeur of an ancient maroon Oldsmobile. It took a moment longer than it should have to recognize them since something seemed to be off in their pacing, but eventually she got it: it was a patient of hers named Frieda Myers Delacroix and her companion, a much younger man whom she knew only by his first name, Andreas.
Frieda Myers Delacroix—everybody called her by her double first name, Frieda Myers—was an aging Southern queen who’d reached a point in life where she felt perfectly content to be her most authentic self in public. In Frieda Myers’s case, being her most authentic self meant using feminine pronouns, even though her physical anatomy at birth had been male. The nature of her urologic issues was such that she saw Georgia often, but she sought out Jonah, her primary care physician, even more frequently. Known around town for her impeccable manners, she sent thank-you notes in beautiful cursive, hand-delivered by courier after each appointment.
Her face vacant, Frieda Myers appeared to be mustering her dignity as she plodded with straight-backed stiffness toward her car. Andreas trailed her with uncharacteristic reticence, his hands wrung together in front of him. They reached the car and Frieda Myers fumbled a bit as she tried to manipulate the key into the lock, her hands visibly shaking even at that distance. Still trailed by the woman from Beezon’s office, Georgia had just taken a step toward them when Andreas looked up and saw her.
She faltered at the raw fury on his face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead of saying anything, he sliced his hand across the air in her direction in an unmistakable gesture of disgust. His movement must have caught Frieda Myers’s attention; now she looked up and spied Georgia too. In contrast to Andreas, Frieda Myers appeared depleted: an old balloon of a person. For a moment her gaze locked with Georgia’s before some reserve of control within her shifted and a single sound escaped her: a hoarse, abbreviated gulp. She turned back toward the Oldsmobile.
Wincing at the sound, Georgia started toward her but once again was felled midstep by the death rays emanating from Andreas. “Miss Delacroix,” she called. “Is everything okay?”
Andreas raised a trembling finger at Georgia. “You leave us alone.”
After another futile attempt at unlocking the car, Frieda Myers, her shoulders hitching, opened her hand and allowed her keys to drop to the pavement. Andreas, his handsome face distorted with distress, stood behind her whispering something into one of her wattled old ears, and eventually she bent and retrieved her keys and Andreas opened the door for her and they got in and drove away, very slowly, as if the car had transformed into a motorized wheelchair.
Georgia turned to the mouse, wide-eyed. “What in the world was that about?”
Her eyes darted. “I don’t know.”
You didn’t need to be a psychologist to recognize the tell of a lie. “You do know,” Georgia said. She concentrated on her voice: firm, but nonthreatening, persuasive. “What’s going on?”
The mouse capitulated, her shoulders lowering as she released the information. “I think a lot of Dr. Tsukada’s patients have decided to leave the clinic.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I heard there have been problems with his care.”
3
THE PRECIPICE DIVIDING THE LIVING FROM THE DEAD
The next morning dawned clear and cloudless, one of those sensational autumn mornings when it was neither too warm nor too cool. Still slick and salty from her run, Georgia eased into the kitchen to fire up the French press, letting the coffee brew as she showered. She missed Dobby: the house felt sterile without his happy panting and the prancing click of his toenails against the floor.
Jonah had canceled their karaoke plans last night, texting her a few minutes after she’d left the clinic to say he’d changed his mind about going out. Concerned at the brusque tone of the text—so different from his voice a few minutes earlier—she’d driven to his house, way out in Folly Beach, but he hadn’t been home.
This was not unprecedented. Jonah had a habit of going dark when something big was going down, but usually this related to the throes of a new relationship. Occasionally, however, it portended something more ominous: a plunge into depression. Jonah suffered from periods of depression, from time to time falling into an unforeseen pit of black misery. When it happened—sometimes triggered by actual events, but sometimes without warning—his characteristic resilience and chipper personality vanished, replaced by a grim fatalism. He could not see that he’d ever return to normal. He could not even appreciate that there had ever been a normal to which he might return. He saw only darkness and hopelessness, a world robbed of light and meaning and purpose.