Every Fifteen Minutes (25 page)

Eric accelerated, driven by a glimmer of hope. The traffic lights had been switched to blinking yellow and it took only five minutes to reach his street. He craned his neck to see if there was a car parked in front of his house or in his driveway, but there wasn't. The fixture next to his front door cast a white cone of light onto his front step, where something was sitting.

“Come on, son,” Eric said to himself, trying to see as he drew closer. From two doors away, he could see that it wasn't a person but some sort of shape on the doorstep. He pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition, and got out of the car.

He crossed the lawn, pocketing his keys. A brown shopping bag sat on his doorstep, and he looked inside. There was a handwritten note on top, which read
Here's the dinner you didn't get to have. Call if you need to. Love, Laurie
.

Eric picked up the bag and went inside.

 

Chapter Twenty-nine

5.I perceive the emotions of others but I do not feel those emotions.

Circle one: Doesn't apply to me. Partially applies to me. Fully applies to me.

I love funerals.

I love funerals the way normal people love parades, fireworks, birthday parties, or barbecues.

I suspect I'm not the only sociopath who feels this way.

Why do we love funerals?

Not because we're evil, though we are.

Because they're so damn easy.

Look, most of my life is me playing a role, picking up on the social cues, trying to read people to know what to say. I'm very good at it, as I've said, I was born this way, and I've only gotten better at it over time.

But to be real with you, it gets old.

It gets tiring.

It's an effort to always be putting on an act, because you're trying to figure out how to act.

You know how you feel at a party, when you're trying to show everybody that you're cool, or smart, or make good conversation, or look good? You're giving them your party face, and you probably can't wait to get home, when you can take it off.

Well, that's how I feel all the time. I can never take my face off, except when I'm alone.

But when somebody dies, like at a funeral, it's obvious what I'm supposed to do.

Act sad.

That's easy, so easy.

I haven't been to a lot of funerals, but I'm looking forward to more.

I don't even try the full-on cry, because honestly that is a little tough for me, to try to muster up some tears when I have absolutely no idea what sadness feels like.

Plus my mother is the master of the full-on cry, a fact I didn't even know until I was in high school and my Uncle John died. We were at his funeral on a cold and cloudy morning, standing in the cemetery in a small group, all of us wearing black, which I didn't even have when I was thirteen so I had to take the bus to the shopping center the day before and spend my entire birthday savings, $189, on black clothes, a total waste of money.

Anyway, my mother made a fool of herself that day, crying like a baby at the graveside, her face turning all kinds of pink, snot pouring from her nose, the sobs interrupting whatever the priest was saying, and when the time came that we were supposed to put the roses on the wooden casket, she threw herself on top of the thing and started hugging it, like it was a tree.

What a scene.

Can you say, “over the top”?

That's when I learned how
not
to behave at funerals, because later when we went to the restaurant, I could hear my older cousins gigging about what a drama queen my mother was and how she didn't like her brother anyway. My grandmother even told my other uncle that she probably owed him money, that's why she cried crocodile tears.

That was the first time I heard the expression “crocodile tears,” and I had to go look it up to see what it meant, obviously not tears that crocodiles cry.

Whatever.

What I learned was that when somebody dies, or whenever you hear any really bad news, the trick is to just get a glimmer of wetness in your eyes. This way, everybody will think you're holding back tears, that you'd be crying your eyes out like Niagara Falls if you really let it rip, but you won't, because nobody needs to see you making a fool of yourself when, let's face it, people die.

Even nice people, like Uncle John.

Who my mother really did love.

Anyway, sometimes at night, in the bathroom, I practice in front of the mirror, trying to get the glimmer going. I bought some Visine that does the trick, and it helps if you touch the plastic tip to your cornea, which irritates it. But I'm trying to see if I can do it without the Visine, on my own.

I can't really think of anything to make the tears come, except sometimes, I think back to Uncle John's funeral. I think back to that morning, and I pretend I'm thirteen years old again and a really nice guy died.

Then I think about the 189 bucks I wasted.

And it makes me cry.

 

Chapter Thirty

It was a humid morning, and Eric walked toward the hospital from his car, feeling raw and distracted, since Max was still missing. He'd hardly slept last night and ate only some of the delicious food that Laurie had left him. He'd called Max two more times, then called the Berwyn and Radnor police, but Max hadn't been picked up or seen. He called the local emergency rooms, but Max hadn't been brought in there, either. He'd called Marie from the car this morning, but she hadn't picked up, and he was guessing she was hungover. Still, knowing Max, home would be the last place he'd go.

“Congratulations on the new ranking, Dr. Parrish,” said one of the hospital accountants, materializing beside him as the automatic doors of the breezeway whisked open and employees and visitors entered the hospital.

“Thanks,” Eric said reflexively, coming out of his reverie. The number-two ranking was undoubtedly the worst-kept secret in the Western Hemisphere. He'd always thought that the myriad HIPAA regulations governing privacy were unnecessary, but he was starting to think everybody in the hospital was a blabbermouth.

“We're so jazzed about it in Accounting. We think it will do a lot for business. It's profile-raising.”

“Yes, hope so.” Eric's pager went off, and he reached reflexively for his holster. Employees flowed around him to their various elevators and wings. “Excuse me, I should get this.”

“Sure, bye.” The accountant headed to the elevator bank, and Eric paused to check his pager.
Please come up before you go to the unit
, read the page, and it was from Brad Farnessen in hospital administration. Eric was in no mood for hospital bureaucracy, but he had no choice and now he was going to the same floor as the accountant, who was already stepping into the elevator cab.

“Hold the door!” Eric ducked inside, the doors closed, and they rode up together.

“Isn't Wright in the other side of the hospital?”

“I have to stop up and see Brad.”

“Prepare to have your ass kissed,” the accountant said with a sly smile, smoothing out a patterned tie. “I heard some scuttlebutt they're afraid you're gonna leave. You can write your own ticket.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Be real. You think we're the only hospital that heard about the rankings?”

“I'm not going anywhere.” Eric smiled as the doors to the elevator rattled open, and both men stepped out.

“See ya,” the accountant said, with a short wave.

“Take care.” Eric heard his phone alert that he'd gotten a text and he slid it from his pocket and checked it. It was from Laurie
: You okay? Any word on Max? Call anytime.
He took a second to reply,
I'm fine no word re max. thx for the grub ttyl.

He entered the lobby, a circular room with an airy domed ceiling, located in the oldest wing of the hospital, which dated back to colonial Philadelphia. White plaster filigree covered the walls, brass sconces lit the space, and the floor was black-and-white marble parquet, polished to a high sheen. There were three arched exits, leading to the financial, personnel, and executive departments, respectively, a power rotary controlling the operations of the entire seven-campus medical system of The PhilaHealth Partnership.

Eric took the middle exit, for executive. The hallway was hushed and empty, unlike the rest of the hospital, which bustled with activity. Currier & Ives foxhunting prints lined the walls, their green and blue hues fading. Offices lined the hallway, belonging to the many functionaries employed by the system, and Eric peeked through the open doors to see them in incongruously modern carrels, retrofitted to squeeze into the historic dimensions of the space.

He passed office after office, which mirrored the complexity of hospital bureaucracy. A maze of regulations governed the system, especially in the employment area, and it was a little-known fact that not everyone who worked at the hospital was an employee, especially on the medical staff. Eric was one of the minority of doctors employed by the hospital, and it gave him better benefits, even if it required him filling out three hundred more forms. He had once looked at the organizational chart in his employment manual, pleased to see his own name near the top, reporting only to the Chair of Psychiatry of the entire multi-campus system, Tom Singh, who in turn reported to the Chief Medical Officer, the CMO of the system, Brad Farnessen. Eric liked and respected Tom and Brad, but he never wanted their jobs. Both were physicians, but neither got to practice anymore, and that was no fun at all.

Eric turned left onto the hallway with Tom's and Brad's offices, the two closed mahogany doors at the end of the hall, each with female assistants out front, sitting in carrels they had made homey by covering the low fabric walls with thumbtacked photos of their children, gardens, cats, and dogs. Both assistants were working on their computers.

“Hey, Eric.” Brad's assistant, Dee Dee, an attractive African-American woman with long hair, smiled at him. “Congratulations on making number two.”

“Thanks. How have you been?”

“Good.” Dee Dee slid off her colorful reading glasses and let them hang from a chunky beaded lorgnette around her neck. “They're ready for you, you can just go in.”

“They?” Eric crossed to the door and opened it, surprised to find that not only was Brad inside, but Tom and Mike Braezele from Legal, the three of them standing around the small conference table opposite Brad's large, uncluttered desk. Medical textbooks, regulatory manuals, and family photos lined bookshelves behind the desk, next to a lineup of framed diplomas. “Hi, I didn't know we were all meeting.”

“Hello, Eric.” Mike crossed the room, extending his hand, and so did Tom and Brad, and they all smiled stiffly through the bureaucratic ceremony of saying hello and shaking hands. Tom, Brad, and Mike struck Eric as corporate clones but for the fact that Tom was of Indian descent: they all were balding with graying hair and they wore similar steel-rimmed glasses that coordinated subtly with gray lightweight suits, white shirts, and ties of patterned silk. Eric felt oddly underdressed in his oxford shirt and khakis, and instead of a tie, his lanyard bearing its red W like a scarlet letter.

“Eric, please, sit down.” Brad gestured to one of the side chairs, and he took the head of the table. “Congratulations. That's an achievement to be proud of.”

Tom sat at his right hand. “It sure is, congrats.”

“Yes, well done!” added Mike from Legal, who sat a few chairs down, sliding a Mont Blanc from his breast pocket and a legal pad from the center of the table.

“Thanks, and my staff deserves a ton of credit.” Eric pulled out a chair and sat down. There was a polished sheet of glass on top of the mahogany table that reflected the divided squares of light from the mullioned windows.

Brad smiled. “Our service in Exton has thirty-five beds. They're an excellent service, but I know that the bigger units get the most attention. So your achievement is doubly impressive, given that the odds are stacked against you.”

“I completely agree,” Tom interjected, then patted his graying hair. His progressive lenses bisected his large, round brown eyes, magnifying their bottom half. “You should know that I was very pleased to see us get the ranking in psychiatry. I know we don't always get the respect we deserve as a specialty, but your efforts will go a long way toward remediating that, within our system.”

“Great.” Eric felt closer to Tom, who knew that their profession was stigmatized, so they were fellow underdogs. Still, he couldn't understand why the atmosphere felt so tense for a congratulatory meeting. He turned to Brad. “So, is this what you called me up to talk about?”

“Not exactly,” Brad answered. He shifted forward in the seat, stroking his tie as if it were out of place, which it wasn't. “Unfortunately, I received a call this morning from the Dean of Jefferson Medical School, and it seems that a third-year medical student on your service, Kristine Malin, is making an allegation of sexual harassment against you.”

“What?”
Eric asked, shocked.

“Of course, Eric, we're not accusing you of anything, but you know the procedure in the event of an allegation like this—”

“That's not true! What did she say? What is going on—”

“We will know more details soon. She filed something in writing with the Dean, and he called me.” Brad hesitated. “The Dean told me that, in general, she alleges that you have been making sexual advances on her, which culminated two nights ago, after you had been out drinking with her—”

“I wasn't
out drinking with her
! After we got the number-two ranking, I bought drinks for my staff on the unit, my
entire
staff. I met them at the bar, they were all there, not just her!”

“I'm sure. You don't have to defend yourself with us, Eric.”