Sing (Songs of Submission #7)(2)

He must have seen it on my face. He put his cup down and opened a chrome canister on the counter. It was full of teabags.

“That explains the car.”

Was I just being sensitive? Because it sounded like he thought I couldn’t possibly have bought a Jaguar without f**king someone. I didn’t have time to decide if I was mad, because Dr. Thorensen continued as if he knew he’d implied something that could twist my knickers in a knot and wanted me to forget it.

“We have a weekly meeting on the high risk cardiology patients,” he said. “Just to check diagnoses and make sure we’re on the same page about treatment. I’ve seen him.” He held up a hand as if the reassure me. “I’m not his doctor or anything. Dr. Emerson is with him. He’s highly qualified.”

“And you agreed a sixteen year-old overdose gave him a heart attack? That makes no sense.”

“Adderall is basically legalized speed,” he continued. “Taking a fistful will damage your valves, and the slightest blockage will give you a heart attack. No question. It’s a miracle he made it this far.”

He handed me my cup. I didn’t want it, but found my hands clasping it anyway.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing in his own defense.

“I don’t mean to question you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t go to medical school. But before it happened, we were at a party, and he was gone a long time. I think...” I felt so stupid even saying it. I’d only told Margie my theory, and she’d dismissed it. “I think he was poisoned.”

I stared into my teacup.

“That’s a pretty broad accusation.” He said it softly and kindly, but under it all was a hint of condescension, as if what he really wanted to say was that I was crazy.

“He has enemies,” I said.

“Yes.”

“His ex-wife was mad at him.”

“Okay.”

“He was fine just before.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“I was there, you weren’t. I’m sorry, but he was fine.”

He put his cup down, and I felt the weight of my intrusion. He was playing a video game at eight in the morning, getting a moment’s peace from a high pressure job, and here I was dragging his work into his kitchen. And he didn’t believe me. I wanted him to believe me, even as I was feeling crazier and crazier.

“There was nothing on his tox screen. I sat with his attending for two hours looking at EKGs. He had a massive coronary event. There’s a pretty good chance he’d been having small heart attacks in the days previous. His valves are shot.”

He stopped his sentence as if catching himself. He’d been talking about a man’s heart like it was a carburetor.

“I should go.”

“He has a very good prognosis.”

“Thanks for the tea.” I put it on the counter.

“Monica, listen—”

“Dr. Thorensen—“

“I’m Brad.”

“Brad, it’s been a rough five days. He’s got seven sisters and a mother and they...most of them...act like I’m no one to him. I’m on his list, so I’m told everything, but I’m surrounded by strangers. And seeing him like that, with the IV and the tubes and just waiting to get cut open. Everyone’s worried and no one wants to listen.”

“I understand the desire to blame someone, but he wasn’t poisoned. I promise you.”

He was right, of course. There had been no evidence of poisoning, and Jessica had been in my sights, or in the bathroom most of the time, but I was looking for a ten second interval where she could have...What? Fed him something? Slyly injected him? Did I think I was living in an Agatha Christie novel where conceptual artists moonlit as chemists?

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“Tell you what. This is fun. Why don’t you play City of Dis with me for a little while? I’m in the eighth circle. I’ll build you a character from my profile. You’re not getting an opportunity to play at that level anywhere else. All your problems go away.” He snapped his fingers. “Magic. Come on.”

“I can’t.”

“An hour.”

“I haven’t done laundry in two weeks and I have to go to work.”

He put his cup down. “Rain check?”

“Yes, and thank you, Brad.” His short name sounded, at once, overly familiar and coldly detached in my mouth.

“Any time.”

He walked me out and I went home to wrestle with the laundry. Maybe I’d hang out a Christmas light myself.

There was a letter taped to my screen door. No envelope, just an open sheet.

NOTICE OF PUBLIC AUCTION

The rest was legal bullshit, but I scanned the page for the handwritten parts. My address. Thirty days. Non-payment.

“Shit.”

I looked at my house as if there might be an answer there, but it was just a dark wooden box with a crumbling foundation. I still hadn’t gotten the papers signed to fix it, but if the permits had been opened, my mother had gotten the notice in the mail. So she knew something was going down. Now, this, which must have been the result of my failure to send her a check two months running.

I had to call her.