Keith (Hathaway House #11) - Dale Mayer Page 0,19

in that shape. But Keith had been on his feet for a lot of that time, so it’s not like he was completely crippled.

He slowly moved back to his room and to his tablet to check on his next meeting. He wasn’t even sure who it was, but it was some doctor something or other. Weren’t they all doctors here?

As he wheeled into his room, he found a tall, angular midfifties woman, working on her tablet in a chair beside his bed. She looked up when he entered. “Keith?”

He nodded.

“Good,” she said, reaching out a hand. “Don’t get comfortable. We’ll head back to my office.” And, with that, she came around behind him, grabbed the wheelchair, and headed out into the hallway.

“Where is your office?” he asked, figuring out what doctor this was.

“This one here,” she said, and she pushed him down a short hallway on the right. She wheeled him inside an open door on the left, parked him in front of her desk. Then she walked around to her side and, dropping the tablet, sat down in her chair. “So tell me,” she said, “where are you at mentally with all this?”

Now he knew what kind of doctor she was. His heart sank. “I think I’m fine mentally,” he said slowly, his mind immediately searching for the answers that would get her off his back.

She smiled. “You don’t even know what I’m looking for, so no sense in digging around, trying to say the right thing to get rid of me.”

He stared at her with a frown. “How did you know I was doing that?”

“Because you’re in a chair across from me,” she said with a quiet snicker. “Everybody tries to do exactly the same thing.”

“That’s not a very good way to make friends, you know?” he said.

“If I was on that side of the desk with you,” she said, “I would be trying to make friends with you. But I’m on this side of the desk, and my job is to assess your mental health.”

He frowned at that.

She nodded. “You have a very morose frame of mind. Your file says that you refused antidepressants and that you experience general downward-spiraling moods. We have a lot of clinical terms for this,” she said, “but basically it means you’re always on the edge of being depressed.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “But, if I’m on the edge of being depressed, then I’m also on the edge of being happy,” he said. “If it’s a knife’s edge, it can cut both ways.”

She laughed at that. “Good,” she said. “I like to see your brain snappy like that. It shows that someone is still in there and that somebody hasn’t given up.”

He stared at her in surprise. “Does being depressed mean I’ve given up?”

“No, not necessarily,” she said. “But it often goes hand in hand. Sometimes people can’t see their way out of a situation, so they get depressed, and it’s a downward spiral after that.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve wondered how much of my moods could be part of the constant medical cocktail I’ve been served.”

“Interesting take,” she said, taking notes. “And one I certainly won’t argue with because, with the number of surgeries you’ve had, undoubtedly a variety of chemicals still circulate through your blood. When did you finish your last antibiotics?”

“Before I got here,” he said absentmindedly. “But I’m still taking a couple pills.”

She read them off from the information in front of her.

“If you say so. I don’t know what the names are, but, if they’re almost done too, it won’t matter unless they are antidepressants.” He shrugged. “Like you said, I don’t take them,” he said, his tone hardening. “I think my body has been through enough. I don’t need more chemical inducements to interfere with what should be a natural process.”

“And what is that natural process?”

“Adjustment,” he said instantly.

“Adjustment of what?”

“My life. My physical body. The fact that maybe, if I’m lucky, there will be no more surgeries. The fact that I’m here. The fact that I’m spending time with my sister for the first time in ten years. The fact that—” He shook his head.

“Go on,” she said gently.

He glared at her.

She smiled. “Whenever you’re ready.”

He stared down at his fingers. Even his pinky finger had needed surgery to straighten up the bones.

“Just adjustments,” he said quietly. “From what was before, to what was, to what I’ve just completed, to whatever it is that’s now.”

“And then there is whatever comes after this,” she said.

He raised his head