a while. I’m having the lab check out just what it was that he swallowed.”
Twenty minutes later, a laboratory technician appeared, his face a mask. He signaled to Malone, then went into the treatment room. Malone followed.
“I don’t know what’s with that kid,” the technician said softly. “He must have swallowed at least twelve ounces of straight Lysol. You ask me, he should be dead.”
So the crisis wasn’t over after all.
For Mark Malone, it promised to be a long day, and a difficult one.
Chapter 21
FOR THE FIRST TIME in five years, Sally Montgomery wished she had a cigarette. The problem, she knew, was her hands. If she only had something to do with them, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so nervous.
She was lying to herself, and she knew it.
It was Dr. Wiseman who was making her nervous, with his calm eyes and placid expression, his understanding smile and his low-pitched voice.
She had been listening to him for half an hour while Steve waited outside.
All he really wanted, he kept insisting, was for her to talk to someone—a stranger, someone who had never met her before and knew nothing about her. A stranger who would listen to her objectively and then try to help her sort things out. Perhaps, Wiseman even admitted, this stranger might actually agree with her that something was “going on,” and his fears for her would prove groundless.
Or perhaps, Sally thought, your friend will be one more voice hammering at me to stop worrying, face reality, and go on with my life. Isn’t that what you all say? That I should bury my head in the sand? Pretend nothing’s happening? She felt indignation rising up from the pit of her stomach, flooding through her like a riptide. threatening to tear away the veneer of false serenity in which she had wrapped herself.
“Would you like something?” she heard Wiseman saying.
“No—no, nothing at all,” Sally said a little too quickly. She forced a smile. “I’m afraid I was just regressing a bit, wishing I had a cigarette.” She bit her lower lip, regretting her words even as she spoke them. “It happens every now and then, but I always resist.”
“Just as you’re resisting me now?” Wiseman said, lounging back in his chair and smiling genially.
Exactly, Sally thought. Aloud she said, “I didn’t know I was resisting you. I didn’t think I needed to. Do I?”
“I don’t see why.” He leaned forward, folding his hands and resting them on his desk. “We’ve known each other for a long time, Sally. If you can’t trust me, and you can’t trust Steve, whom can you trust? You seem to have decided that for some reason we’ve turned against you.”
Sally frowned in studied puzzlement. “I do? I’m sorry if I’ve given you that impression. I’ve listened to every word you’ve said.”
“And dismissed them,” Wiseman replied. “Sally, I’m your doctor. I’ve known you for ten years, but I’m sitting here talking to a stranger. Don’t you want me to help you?”
Sally felt her guard slip just a little. Did he really want to help her? “Of course I want you to help me. But I want you to help me with my problem, and you only want to help me with what you think is my problem. I’m not crazy, Dr. Wiseman—”
“No one has said you are.”
Sally’s resolve crumbled around her, and all the feelings she had been struggling to control boiled to the surface. “Everyone has said so.” The words burst out of Sally, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. “I keep hearing it from everyone—you, Steve, my mother, even the neighbors are starting to look at me strangely. ‘Oh, dear, here comes poor Sally—you know, ever since her baby died, she’s been a little odd.’ By next week, they’ll be crossing the street to get away from me. But I’m not crazy, Dr. Wiseman. I’m not crazy, and neither is Lucy Corliss. Do you remember her, Dr. Wiseman? You probably don’t, but you did the same thing to her that you did to me, and to Jan Ransom, and to God-only-knows how many other women. We didn’t want children, so you gave us IUDs. But we had children anyway—for a while. But mine died, and Jan’s died, and Lucy’s is gone. Is that your kind of birth control? After the fact?”
She started sobbing in fury and frustration. She was dimly aware of Wiseman getting up and moving from behind his desk to lay a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Sally,”