Behind Sanity

Chapter Thirty-Three

                                                                  Behind Sanity

                                                            Chapter Thirty-Three

                                                                             1

Robertson didn’t like the news he had received this morning.  Elisa had brought it to him with a sort of ghastly nervousness.  It seemed Alice was getting new help.

Elliot was back.

He had arrived the night before – making this special trip in for dear Alice’s sake.  Now, why would he do something like that?  The man had retired.  He’d surrendered his profession, so why did the girl mean anything to him beyond that?  Though Johnathan felt this was all highly inappropriate, he knew he hardly had the right to speak up.  He was no longer Alice’s doctor.  He didn’t have any more say in what was done with the patient and, though he hated to admit it, that appeared to be all she was to him – a patient – just as he was only a doctor to her.

Or perhaps the devil.

He wondered deep down what she really thought of him.  She must hate him, no less.  He supposed she had the right.  He had, after all, abandoned her.  But he’d had no choice!  She wouldn’t have really understood why even if he had tried to explain.  

He wiped his hands on a clean rag beside a basin that had been brought into his office.  He had spilled the ink again – all over his desk and papers.  His hands hadn’t stopped shaking since this morning when he had heard about Elliot.  He had used the basin, only intending to cleanse his hands, but had wound up splashing his face with the water as well.  He was trying to wash his soul and conscience.  It didn’t work.

What had he done by ceasing to be Alice’s doctor?  Had he not only made the situation worse?  Perhaps he should have simply trusted her to get through this on her own.  All he had done was shut her up more and open the way for Elliot to come back, though Robertson hadn’t had the slightest thought that he actually would.  He didn’t believe in Elliot’s methods.  Hypnotize her again?  What good would it do if it was simply to wear off just like it had this time?  Robertson believed her problems ran much deeper, but, again, he had no say.

John stepped into the hall to drop the moist rag into the cleaning cart parked outside when footsteps up the corridor behind him released him from his thoughts.  

“Robertson,” a voice addressed.

It scratched at John’s ears and made his eye twitch slightly.  Slowly, he turned his head and tried to keep a calm, professional manner.  He hadn’t wanted this man to come face to face with him at all.  There was nothing to be said between them.

So he had thought.

The man came toward him in the hall, thinning hair slicked back and shoes reflecting the dim light.  John almost wanted to laugh, but kept it inside.  How could this man stride in here as though he was some great doctor?  He knew nothing.  John stepped back and stood in the doorway of his office.

“John Robertson,” Elliot said, offering a firm handshake. “Good to see you again.”

“A pleasure, of course,” John lied, squeezing the man’s hand tightly, almost roughly.

“I was reading your reports on Alice,” said Elliot, standing before the taller, younger man and opening the casebook he carried.

Cutting right to the chase, wasn’t he?