Court Papers in the Locked Drawer of a Community Doctor
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“I do not know,” the boy said, taking a step backward into the dark. “But he told me to tell him if you seemed confused when you got out of the car. He wanted me to write down the times.”
The cold plastic of my car key biting into my palm as I watched the boy slip into the shadows.
I stood by the passenger side of my Buick for a long minute, letting the exhaust fumes clear. The drive back from the Shell station took twelve minutes, every mile spent rehearsing how to breathe.
David was sitting in his green leather armchair when I walked into the living room. A medical journal lay open on his lap, and his spectacles sat low on the bridge of his nose.
“You were gone a while,” he said, not looking up from the page.
“There was a line at the pump,” I said.
I hung my woolen coat in the hallway closet, my fingers brushing against his heavy dark winter coat. A small piece of stiff paper nudged against my knuckle from his breast pocket.
