9
“Ron, let’s have you come back to my office. I’ll give you something to help you calm down,” Dr. Leonard said, apparently not noticing—or not caring about—the scene with Angela.
Ron grumbled something Elijah couldn’t make out. Dr. Leonard and Natasha each held one of his arms and walked back down the hallway. Elijah stood in the middle of the living room in stunned silence.
He sunk into the couch where Angela had just been sitting. Could it be possible that Dr. Leonard hadn’t seen Angela take the bottle of penicillin? He thought about what he would say if Dr. Leonard pressed him on the matter: “She was insistent on taking the penicillin. She took it right out of my hand. I was being patient-centered.”
Ultimately, Elijah decided that he had to make peace with his decision. He started talking to himself on the couch as he stared at the ceiling: “He doesn’t need to know. He wouldn’t care, anyway. Maybe this can stay between me and me. I can just accept it as a valuable lesson in.... A lesson about.... If the universe is good, it will just let me have this. She’ll be cured, she’ll never come back, and Dr. Leonard won’t notice the missing penicillin.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Elijah said in conclusion to the empty living room.
He heard the sound of Dr. Leonard’s office door opening. He sat up straight on the couch and picked up one of the books on the coffee table, flipping to a page toward the back.
Dr. Leonard, Natasha, and Ron reemerged into the living room.
“Thank you so much for coming in,” Dr. Leonard said. “It was so good to see you both. Come back in a few weeks, or whenever makes sense to you. We’ll be here.”
“That sounds good, Dr. Leonard. I really appreciate it,” Natasha said.
“Call me Cal,” Dr. Leonard said, smiling.
Ron and Natasha walked out the front door, and Dr. Leonard closed it behind them. He let out a long sigh, then turned back toward the hallway and started walking. Elijah got up and followed him to his office. It had become second nature for him to follow Dr. Leonard around like this.
“Have you met that patient before?” Elijah asked, and Dr. Leonard groaned in response.
“That’s Ron and his daughter, Natasha,” Dr. Leonard said. “He’s been my patient for a few decades now.”
They walked into Dr. Leonard’s office and sat down at opposite sides of the desk, which was kept very neat.
“Natasha is really worried he has dementia. Apparently he just wanders around talking about chickens all day. He seemed pretty with it to me, though,” Dr. Leonard said. “I just told her she might have to start taking care of more things around the house. Bills and things.”
“Do you think he has dementia?” Elijah asked, trying to steer the conversation away from his encounter with Angela.
“Probably,” Dr. Leonard answered absently, staring at his computer screen. “He’s 83 years old, for Christ’s sakes. And he still works at this big industrial chicken farm. If it were up to me, he wouldn’t be working anymore. But he didn’t seem to appreciate that suggestion.”
Elijah nodded, suppressing a grin at the thought of an 83-year-old man wandering around an industrial chicken farm shouting at people about how they’re feeding the chickens wrong.
“How was it holding down the fort?”
Elijah stared at Dr. Leonard for a moment. He tried to think of what to say as Dr. Leonard clicked and typed.
“Somebody came in with a pimple on her finger.”
“Oh?” Dr. Leonard said, looking at Elijah for the first time since they’d started talking. “And?”
“She’s gone now. It was kind of nothing. She just—,” Elijah stammered. “Yeah, it was nothing.”
“Nothing?” Dr. Leonard said.
“Yeah, not really.”
“Hm. Okay,” he said, and went back to typing.
Elijah breathed quietly and wondered if he’d gotten away with it.
“Anything else?” Dr. Leonard said, still typing. Elijah hesitated. “You should head back out there in case anybody shows up,” he added before Elijah could respond. “Yes, sir,” Elijah said, gladly accepting the opportunity to put the conversation to rest.
He walked back out to the living room and thought about what he’d said. It really was nothing, he reminded himself. It was, wasn’t it?
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