Medicine Men by Alice Adams

Author:Alice Adams [Adams, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780307798237
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1997-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

“It was Matthew, of course. But I never quite woke up, and I thought I was kissing Paul. He must have been startled.”

Home at last, Molly lay in her own wide sunny bed. At the moment, she was being visited by Felicia, who had brought a great bunch of roses, the last from her garden. “How’d he get in?” she asked Molly, speaking of Matthew, whom she had never met; Paul was enough, she thought. She said, “It must have been late.”

“Easy.” Molly laughed. “He said he was a doctor. But it’s more of a Paul kind of caper, actually. Matthew’s always been very law-abiding.”

“Maybe now he’s inherited Paul’s character. Don’t twins sometimes do that, shift back and forth?”

“That’s what their mother said, but then when Matthew called the next morning he was more like himself. Pretty stiff. But very proud of his out-of-character exploit. He said all you need to prove you’re a doctor is an expensive suit and a pushy manner.”

“Sounds right. Sandy pays two thousand for London suits—can you believe it? Is Matthew living here now?”

“Oh no. Or I don’t really know where he’s living. I seem not to be getting things straight.”

“Me neither,” Felicia told her. And then she said, “I’m really getting scared about Sandy. I keep seeing him, or else I’m hallucinating.”

“Maybe he’s stalking you.”

“I suppose, but could he be, really? A famous doctor and all that?”

“O.J. was famous.”

“If Sandy is stalking, you’d think he’d be better at it. I mean, do it so I wouldn’t see him.”

“But isn’t part of the point to scare the woman?—let her know you’re stalking?”

“Of course. You’re right,” Felicia conceded. “He’s probably terrific at stalking. In control, as usual.” She added, “I’m going to start looking for another job. I think that would help.” And then she said, “I could swear I heard him in my garden last night. I think he was, uh, peeing. Again.”

“Why do you think it was Sandy? He pees in some special way?”

“I thought I got a glimpse of his hair in the streetlight.”

“What an odd thing to do, though. To pee in your garden.”

“He has a problem with his prostate. And it would be a way of saying he’s not afraid. And claiming territory, like a dog.”

Molly smiled; she felt grateful to Felicia for making this a funny story as well as a scary one. Somewhere in the story, though, there were threads that she was too tired to follow. And some clue that she had forgotten. In fact, for some weeks she did not remember that Sandy had come to see her in the hospital.

Molly had been talked into leaving the hospital before she wanted to. Before she felt that she was ready to go. “Forced out,” is how she thought of it, but that was possibly too strong—and unfair to Dr. Bill Donovan, who had come to her one morning, with his proud and happy entourage of residents, and announced, “Well, young lady, you’ll be ready to go home tomorrow. Just can’t keep you around anymore, as much as I’d like to.

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