Deprivation by Roy Freirich

Author:Roy Freirich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Meerkat Press, LLC
Published: 2020-01-28T18:50:26+00:00

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Clambering down into the cabin, soaked and breathless, Sam slows beside the Boy thumbing his handheld game at the dinette table. He meets the Boy’s quick glance with a murmur: “You okay, Admiral?”

Sam watches the Boy’s dark lively eyes that follow everything but always return quickly to his bright little screen. Did his mom walk him halfway to the beach and turn him bewildered but mercifully away, down some other lane, while she kept on?

“Sam, you’re drenched!” Kathy exclaims, but he’s drawn by a glimpse of the Boy’s flashing screen—a princess in a castle, waiting to be rescued, no doubt. His eyes fill to see it.

None so lost as children who witness.

Sam turns away with a quick, apologetic smile. “Just going to dry off and make a quick call. Anybody hungry?”

He doesn’t wait for a reply, but steps into the stateroom. He wipes his face with a flung tee shirt and paces, scrolling his contacts for Dr. Malcolm Hale’s home number. His finger trembles over it as he hesitates. Hale was his psychiatrist for much of the required therapy that any psychology professional must undergo, and through the sudden loss of his client, later, when continuing in the field no longer seemed like such a given.

He closes his eyes and rubs the lids, trying to focus, but a sheet of improbably hard rain drums on his deck and a gust has rigging ding ding dinging against masts.

He imagines a relaxed, murmured tone that doesn’t sound panicky or scattered, but it all deserts him when he leaves his message:

“Professor! Sam Carlson here, hope you’re well. Been awhile, I know. Can you give a call back when you get this? I could use some advice on a . . . situation. I’ll try you back later, too. I’d just like to—”

“Hello? One moment.” A rustling on the line, a creaking sound. “Yes, I’m sorry, who’s calling?” Hale sounds annoyed.

“Doctor Hale, it’s Sam Carlson, I’m—”

“Ahh, of course. How are you, Sam? Out on Carratuck, I heard. A clinic?”

“Yes, Urgent Care, a day facility. Barely an ER, really.” He plows on, absurdly, too edgy for silence. “Sunburns, jellyfish stings, that sort of thing.”

Sam hesitates here, hoping Hale will prompt him to continue. Is his call so unwelcome?

He wades in: “More lately, it’s why I’m calling.”

Ten minutes of pacing, positioning, framing and cajoling meet kindly skepticism: what proof has Sam got that these fatalities, the missing suicidal mother, and the dozens of sleepless share a single cause? Or even the same multiple causes?

Hale shifts from mild doubt to musing speculation: “Of course, these days sleep deprivation is a complaint I hear more and more. But why not? We’re barraged, everywhere, by screens flashing more and more images, faster and faster, overt and subliminal, wearing down our resistance to suggestion. Why shouldn’t it affect us in unprecedented ways?”

Sure, but who cares now? Sam remembers the man’s prissy, patronizing moue, his shifty eye contact, the cheesy titles of his lectures. A vain spinner of his own image, adept at the intrigue of departmental politics.

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