Private Practices by Stephen White

Author:Stephen White [White, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-08-30T18:39:51+00:00

28

“I have an emergency in my practice,” I said to Merideth while fighting an impulse to scream “What next?” I held up the phone to her and asked, “May I make a couple more calls?”

She said, “Of course,” and then seemed bent on following me as I walked away from her around the ambulance to get enough privacy to call Randy.

Rita Templeton sounded terribly relieved to hear from me. She told me Randy was fine—unhurt, anyway—but that he seemed confused. I spoke with Randy briefly, and he agreed to stay put until I could get to Mirabelle.

Next, I called Pain Perdu and was told Geoff Tobias was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. Too weary to argue or to beg, I told the young man on the phone to tell Geoff I’d just found Randy and that he seemed to be unhurt. As I tried to find the button to turn off the phone, I noticed that Merideth had edged to the corner of the ambulance in order to keep an eye on me.

I handed her the phone and explained that I had to go see a patient.

“Will you call me later, Alan?”

“Yes, I will. Right now I need to find a ride down to my office. I don’t have my car.”

She thought for a moment. “I’d give you ours, but I don’t know what’s going to happen here next. I’m sorry. I’d like to help. Let me see if I can find you a ride.”

I said, “No, no, you’re busy, I understand. It’s fine. I’ll find a ride.” I was almost too distracted to notice that Merideth had indicated a desire to help. Merideth could, on occasion, be generous, but the impulse was usually the result of some internal drive of hers and not necessarily responsive to someone else’s actual need. Early in our relationship I’d had to adjust to her relative insensitivity to needs of mine that were less than overt and less than convenient for her to meet. In the present circumstances I was tempted to expend my shallow energy trying to allay Merideth’s remorse at not being permitted to find me a ride. Instead I squeezed her shoulder and told her I would talk to her later.

When I tracked down Purdy a few minutes later, he was talking to the patrolman with the clipboard. I waited impatiently for almost two minutes before I blurted out, “I’ve got a patient in trouble. I need to go. Can you get me a ride back downtown?”

He seemed irritated. “What?”

“It’s that kid. Remember? The one who was missing? It happened again. I need to go.”

He nodded absently and turned back to the cop with the clipboard. I couldn’t tell if Purdy had even processed what I told him. I turned on my heels to walk the twenty blocks back to my car.

“Hold it, damn it!” Purdy snapped.

I took three more steps before I stopped. I turned slowly to face him.

He said, his voice pretending calm, “I’ll get you a ride.

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