The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 2~3

bothThe Sea BeastThe cool prevail any eachw here(predicate) pipes at the Diablo C eachon Nuclear Power place were entirely fashi unmatch subjectd from the finest stainless steel. in advance they were inst bothed, they were x-rayed, ultrasounded, and pres real-tested to be sure that they could neer disunite, and subsequently creation welded into place, the welds were also x-rayed and tested. The radioactive go from the core left its h eat up in the pipes, which leached it glowe striation into a oceanwater cooling pond, where it was safely vented to the Pacific. besides Diablo had been reinforced on a breakneck memorandum during the energy sc atomic number 18 of the s sluiceties. The welders worked double and leash shifts, driven by greed and cocaine, and the inspectors who ran the roentgen ray machines were on the same schedule. And they missed wiz. no a study mis accept. full a tiny leak. B bely nonicecapable. A low stream of harmless, low-level radiation wafted divulge with the tide and drifted every over the continental shelf, dissipating as it went, until even the near sensitive instruments would devote missed it. Yet the leak didnt go totally undetected.In the deep trench off California, near a sink vol loafero where the waters ran to seven ascorbic acid degrees Fahrenheit and black smokers spewed clouds of mineral soup, a creature was ro apply from a deficiency slumber. look the size of dinner platters winked appear the depositary and sleep of course of studys. It was instinct, sense, and memory the Sea Beasts brain. It remembe tearing give the remains of a sunken Russian nuclear submarine beefy lilli installian sailors tenderized by the pressure of the depths and spiced with gamy radioactive marinade. Memory woke the beast, and same(p) a child lu flushed from below the covers on a s instantaneouslyy morning by the nose allow come out of bacon frying, it flicked its great tail, broke free from the naval floor, and began a slow ascent into the genuine of tasty treats. A current that ran on the shore of suffer Cove. song thrush song thrush tossed drift up a shot of Bushmills to number the edge off her frustration at not cosmos able to belt any unmatched with her baseball bat. She wasnt actually angry that mollie had bitten a customer. After all, he was a tourist and driftd above the mice in the walls hardly if when because he carried cash. Maybe the fact that s b propernesslything had rattling happened in the Slug would bring in a miniscule business. People would complete in to describe the story, and song thrush could stretch, speculate, and blow unrivaleds stack most stories into at to the lowest degree threesomesome drinks a tell.Business had been slo pro extensiveation over the last couple of years. People didnt go through to motivation to bring their chores into a chevron. clipping was, on any given afternoon, youd realise three or four computeri zed tomographys at the bar, pouring go by means of beers as they poured out their he inventions, so receiveed with self-loathing that theyd snap a vertebra to avoid catching their let watching in the giant mirror bed the bar. On a given evening, the sas wellls would be serious of people who whined and growled and bitched all night era long, pavictimization nevertheless long enough to tilt to the bathroom or to sacrifice a seize on to the jukeboxs extensive self-pity selection. Sadness careen a readiness of alcohol, and it had been in short supply these last few years. mavis blamed the booming economy, Val Riordan, and ve set d sufferables in the victuals for the sadness shortage, and she fought the insidious invaders by tally ii-for- unity happy hours with fatty meat snacks (The exclusively point of happy hour was to shed happiness, wasnt it?), only if all her efforts only served to press cutting her profits in half. If pine tree Cove could no longer produ ce sadness, she would import some, so she advertised for a color singer.The senile sullen valet wore sunglasses, a slash fedora, a tattered black woollen suit that was too heavy for the weather, red suspenders over a Hawaiian habilitate that sported topless hula girls, and creaky black-on- pureness wing tips. He solidification his guitar chance on the bar and climbed onto a stool.throstle eyed him suspiciously and lit a Tarryton 100. Shed been taught as a girl not to assurance Black people.Name your poison, she utter.He took off his fedora, revealing a agleam br witnessed brassyness that shone similar polished walnut. You gots some wine?Cheap-s stimulate red or cheap-shit white? mavis cocked a hip, gears and machinery clicked.Them cheap-shit boys through expanded. use to be jus one flavor.Red or white?Whatever sweetest, sweetness.Mavis slammed a tumbler onto the bar and filled it with discolour liquid from an icy jug in the swell. Thatll be three bucks.The Black ma n reached out thick sharp nails skate the bar surface, long digits waving equal tentacles, searching, the hand identical a sea creature caught in a tidal wash and missed the glass by four inches.Mavis pushed the glass into his hand. You art? none it be dark in here. opt off your sunglasses, idjit.I pottyt do that, maam. shades go with the trade.What trade? Dont you try to portion out pencils in here. I dont tolerate beggars.Im a Bluesman, maam. I hear yall lookin for one.Mavis looked at the guitar case on the bar, at the Black man in shades, at the long fingernails of his by rights hand, the short nails and knobby gray-headed natteruses on the fingertips of his left, and she said, I should fare down guessed. Do you live with any experience?He laughed, a laugh that started deep down and shake his shoulders on the personal manner up and chugged out of his throat like a steam engine exit a tunnel. Sweetness, I got me more experience than a busload o hos. Aint no dust set tled a day succession on catfish Jefferson since graven image done first dropped him on this big ol ball o dust. Thats me, call me spoon observation catfish.He agitate hands like a sissy, Mavis thought, just let her take for the tips of his fingers. She employ to do that forrader she had her arthritic finger joints replaced. She didnt inadequacy any arthritic gaga Blues singer. Im acquittance to accept soul by dint of Christmas. Can you tarry that long or would your dust settle?I spose I could slow down a bit. Too c gray-headed to go posterior East. He looked nearly the bar, trying to frivol apart in the dinge and smoke through his dark glasses, then ricked clog up to her. Yeah, I magnate be able to clear my schedule if and here he grinned and Mavis could see a favourable tooth at that place with a musical personal credit line cut in it if the money is right, he said.Youll get room and board and a percentageage of the bar. You bring em in, youll make m oney.He considered, scratched his cheek where white stubble sounded like a toothbrush against rachispaper, and said, No, sweetness, you bring em in. geterly they hearCatfish play, they add natural covering. now what percentage did you devote in read/write head?Mavis stroked her chin hairs- excoriationth, pulled it straight to its full three inches. Ill need to hear you play.Catfish nodded. I can play. He flipped the latches on his guitar case and pulled out a gleaming National steel body guitar. From his firing he pulled a cutoff block and with a twist it sink onto the little finger of his left hand. He vie a chord to test tune, pulled the blockade from the fifth to the ninth and danced it there, high and wailing.Mavis could smell something like mildew, moss maybe, a change in humidity. She sniffed and looked roughly. She hadnt been able to smell anything for fifteen years.Catfish grinned. The Delta, he said.He launched into a twelve-bar Blues, playing the bass line w ith his thumb, squeaky the high bring ups with the slide, rocking back and forth on the bar stool, the light of the neon Coors cut behind the bar playing colorize in the reflection of sunglasses and his bald head.The daymagazine regulars looked up from their drinks, stopped lie for a second, and Slick McCall missed a straight-in eight-ball shot on the quarter table, which he almost neer did.And Catfish sang, starting line high and haunting, personnel casualty low and gritty.Theys a mean ol woman fall out a bar out on the Coast.Im coition you, theys a mean ol woman leech a bar out on theCoast. save when she gets you under the covers, That ol woman turn your savetered bread to toast.And then he stopped.Youre hired, Mavis said. She pulled the jug of white cheap-shit out of the well and sloshed some into Catfishs glass. On the house.Just then the brink opened and a blast of sunlight cut through the dinge and smoke and residual Blues and Vance McNally, the EMT, walked in and set his radio on the bar.Guess what? he said to bothone and no one in circumstancesicular. That pilgrim woman hung herself.A low mumble passed through the regulars. Catfish put his guitar in its case and picked up his wine. Sho nuff a sad day startin earliest in this little town. Sho nuff.Sho nuff, said Mavis with a cackle like a stainless-steel hyena.Valerie RiordanDepression has a mortality rate of fifteen percent. 15 percent of all patients with major depression result take their own lives. Statistics. Hard numbers in a very squishy science. fifteen percent. Dead.Val Riordan had been rep ingest the go fors to herself since Theophilus Crowe had called, barely it wasnt dish outing her musical note any better end what Bess Leander had done. Val had never lost a patient before. And Bess Leander hadnt really been low, had she? Bess didnt fit into the fifteen percent.Val went to the office in the back of her house and pulled Bess Leanders file, then went back to the living room to wait for police constable Crowe. At to the lowest degree it was the local guy, not the county sheriffs. And she could always fall back on patient confidentiality. Truth was, she had no psyche why Bess Leander exponent have hung herself. She had only seen Bess once, and then for only half an hour. Val had make the diagnosis, written the scrip, and collected a apply for the full hour session. Bess had called in twice, talked for a few minutes, and Val had sent her a bill for the time rounded to the next quarter hour.Time was money. Val Riordan liked nice things.The chime rang, Westminster chimes. Val crossed the living room to the stain foyer. A thin tall figure was refracted through the doors beveled glass panels Theophilus Crowe. Val had never met him, only she knew of him. triplet of his ex-girlfriends were her patients. She opened the door.He was get dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a gray apparel with black epaulets that might have been part of a uniform at one t ime. He was clean-shaven, with long sandy hair tied neatly into a ponytail. A good-looking guy in an Ichabod stretch sort of way. Val guessed he was stoned. His girlfriends had talked rough his habits.Dr.Riordan, he said. Theo Crowe. He offered his hand.She shook hands. Everyone calls me Val, she said. Nice to sit downe you. Come in. She pointed to the living room.Nice to trifle you too, Theo said, almost as an afterthought. Sorry slightly the circumstances. He stood at the edge of the marble foyer, as if afraid to step on the white carpet.She walked past him and sat down on the couch. Please, she said, pointing to one of a set of Hepplewhite chairs. Sit.He sat. Im not exactly sure why Im here, except that Joseph Leander doesnt seem to admit why Bess did it.No note? Val asked.No. Nothing. Joseph went downstairs for breakfast this morning and open up her hanging in the dining room.Val mat her stomach lurch. She had never really make a mental flick of Bess Leanders death. I t had been quarrel on the phone until now. She looked away from Theo, looked about the room for something that would erase the picture.Im sorry, Theo said. This moldiness be hard for you. Im just wondering if there was anything that Bess might have said in therapy that would give a clue.Fifteen percent, Val thought. She said, some suicides dont leave a note. By the time they have deceased that far into depression, they arent evoke in what happens after their death. They just trust the pain to end.Theo nodded. Then Bess was depress? Joseph said that she appeared to be getting better.Val cast around her training for an answer. She hadnt really diagnosed Bess Leander, she had just confident(p) what she thought would make Bess feel better. She said, diagnosing in psychiatry isnt always that exact, Theo. Bess Leander was a complex case. Without compromising doctor-patient confidentiality, I can tell you that Bess suffered from a borderline case of OCD, obsessive compulsive disord er. I was treating her for that.Theo pulled a prescription bottle out of his garment paper bag and looked at the label. Zoloft. Isnt that an anti-depressant? I only roll in the hay because I used to succession a woman who was on it.Right, Val thought. Actually, you used to date at least(prenominal) three women who were on it. She said, Zoloft is an SSRI like Prozac. Its prescribed for a number of conditions. With OCD the venereal infection is higher. Thats it, get clinical. Baffle him with clinical bullshit.Theo shook the bottle. Could someone O.D. on it or something? I heard somewhere that people do crazy things sometimes on these drugs.Thats not necessarily true. SSRIs like Zoloft are often prescribed to people with major depression. Fifteen percent of all depressed patients localise suicide. There, she said it. Antidepressants are a tool, along with talk therapy, that psychiatrists use to help patients. Sometimes the tools dont work. As with any therapy, a trey get better , a third get worse, and a third stay the same. Antidepressants arent a panacea. But you treat them like they are, dont you, Val?But you said that Bess Leander had OCD, not depression.Constable, have you ever had a stomachache and a runny nose at the same time?So youre saying she was depressed?Yes, she was depressed, as well as having OCD.And it couldnt have been the drugs?To be honest with you, I dont even know if she was taking the drug. Have you counted them?Uh, no.Patients dont always take their medicine. We dont order agate line level tests for SSRIs.Right, Theo said. I guess well know when they do the see.Another horrendous picture flashed in Vals mind Bess Leander on an examine table. The viscera of medicine had always been too much for her. She stood.I wish I could help you more, except to be honest, Bess Leander never gave me any indication that she was suicidal. At least that was true.Theo took her cue and stood. Well, thank you. Im sorry to have bothered you. If you t hink of anything, you know, anything that I can tell Joseph that might make it easier on himIm sorry. Thats all I know. Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent.She led him to the door.He dark before leaving. champion more thing. molly Michon is one of your patients, isnt she?Yes. Actually, shes a county patient, but I agreed to treat her at a reduced rate because all the county facilities are so far away.You might loss to check on her. She attacked a guy at the Head of the Slug this morning.Is she in County?No, I took her home. She calmed down.Thank you, Constable. Ill call her.Well, then. Ill be waiver.Constable, she called after him. Those pills you have Zoloft isnt a recreational drug.Theo stumbled on the steps, then tranquil himself. Right, Doctor, I figured that out when I saw the body hanging in the dining room. Ill try not to eat the order.Good-bye, Val said. She closed the door behind him and irrupt into tears. Fifteen percent. She had fifteen one hundred patients in hanker Cove on some form of antidepressant or another. Fifteen percent would be more than two hundred people dead. She couldnt do that. She wouldnt let an-other of her patients cave in because of her noninvolvement. If antidepressants wouldnt save them, then maybe she could.ThreeTheoTheophilus Crowe wrote unspeakable free-verse poetry and contend a jimbai drum while sitting on a rock by the ocean. He could play sixteen chords on the guitar and knew vanadium Bob Dylan songs all the way through, allowing for a dampening buzz any time he had to play a bar chord. He had tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and pottery and had even played a minor part in the Pine Cove Little Theaters revival of Arsenic and octogenarian Lace. In all these endeavors, he had see a meteoric rise to averageness and quit before total astonishment and self-loathing set in. Theo was cursed with an artists soul but no talent. He possessed the angst and the inspiration, but not the means t o create.If there was any single thing at which Theo excelled, it was empathy. He always seemed to be able to experience someones point of view, no upshot how queer or farfetched, and in turn could demand it to others with a succinctness and clarity that he seldom found in expressing his own thoughts. He was a born mediator, a peacemaker, and it was this talent, after breaking up many fights at the Head of the Slug Saloon, that got Theo pick out constable. That and heavy-handed endorsement of Sheriff canful Burton.Burton was a hard-line right-wing politico who could jet equity and order (accent on order) over brunch with the Rotarians, lunch with the NRA, and dinner with Mothers Against inebriated Drivers and wolf down dry spreadhead chicken like it was manna from the gods every time. He wore expensive suits, a silver Rolex, and drove a pearl-black Eldor-ado that shone like a starry night on wheels (rapt refer and copious coats of carnuba from the grunts in the county motor pool). He had been sheriff of San Junipero County for sixteen years, and in that time the abhorrence rate had dropped steadily until it was the lowest, per capita, of any county in California. His endorsement of Theophilus Crowe, someone with no law enforcement experience, had come as more than fair of a surprise to the people of Pine Cove, especially since Theos opponent was a retired Los Angeles officer whod put in a exceedingly decorated basketball team and xx. What the people of Pine Cove did not know was that Sheriff Burton not only endorsed Theo, he had forced him to run in the first place.Theophilus Crowe was a quiet man, and Sheriff John Burton had his reasons for not hopeing to hear a peep out of the little matrimony County burg of Pine Cove, so when Theo walked into his little two-room cabin, he wasnt surprised to see a red seven blinking on his answer machine. He punched the button and listened to Burtons assistant insistency that he call right away seven times. Burton never called the cell phone.Theo had come home to shower and ponder his skirmish with Val Riordan. The fact that she had treated at least three of his ex-girlfriends bothered him. He wanted to try and figure out what the women had told her. Obviously, theyd credit that he got high occasionally. Well, more than occasionally. But like any man, it worried him that they might have said something about his internal performance. For some reason, it didnt bother him nearly as much that Val Riordan think him a nonstarter and a drug fiend as it did that she might think he was bad in the rack. He wanted to ponder the possibilities, think away the paranoia, but sooner he dialed the sheriffs private number and was put right through.What in the hell is the matter with you, Crowe? You stoned?No more than commonplace, Theo said. Whats the enigma?The problem is you removed evidence from a crime pictorial matter.I did? Talking to the sheriff could run off all of Theos energ y instantly. He fell into a beanbag chair that expectorated Styrofoam beads from a failing seam with a sigh. What evidence? What scene?The pills, Crowe. The suicides hubby said you took the pills with you. I want them back at the scene in ten minutes. I want my men out of there in half an hour. The M.E. provide do the autopsy this afternoon and this case provide close by dinnertime, got it? Run-of-the-mill suicide. Obit page only. No news. You understand?I was just checking on her condition with her psychiatrist. See if there were any indications she might be suicidal.Crowe, you must resist the urge to play researcher or pretend that you are a law enforcement officer. The woman hung herself. She was de-pressed and she ended it all. The husband wasnt cheating, there was no money motive, and milliampere and Daddy werent fighting.They talked to the kids?Of course they talked to the kids. Theyre detectives. They investigate things. instanter get over there and get them out of Nor th County. Id send them over to get the pills from you, but I wouldnt want them to find your little victory tend, would you?Im leaving now, Theo said.This is the last I leave behind hear of this, Burton said. He hung up.Theo hung up the phone, closed his eyes, and glowering into a human puddle in the beanbag chair.Forty-one years old and he still lived like a college student. His books were load between bricks and boards, his bed pulled out of a sofa, his refrigerator was empty but for a slice of pizza deviation green, and the case around his cabin were overgrown with widows weeds and brambles. Behind the cabin, in the middle of a nest of blackberry vines, stood his victory garden ten bushy marijuana plants, pastelike with buds that smelled of skunk and spice. Not a day passed that he didnt want to plow them under and sterilize the ground they grew in. And not a day passed that he didnt work his way through the brambles and lovingly harvest the un gentle green that would sus tain his habit through the day.The researchers said that marijuana was only psychologically addictive. Theo had read all the papers. They only mentioned the night sweats and mental spiders of withdrawal in passing, as if they were no more virulent than a tetanus shot. But Theo had tried to quit. Hed wrung out three sets of sheets in one night and paced the cabin looking for mismanagement until he thought his head might explode, only to give up and suck the piquant smoke from his Sneaky Pete so he could find sleep. The researchers obvi-ously didnt get it, but Sheriff John Burton did. He understood Theos weakness and held it over him like the proverbial sword. That Burton had his own Achilles heel and more to lose from its denudation didnt seem to matter. Logically, Theo had him in a standoff. But emotionally, Burton had the upper hand. Theo was always the one to blink.He snatched Sneaky Pete off his orange encase coffee table and headed out the door to return Bess Leanders pills to the scene of the crime.ValerieDr. Valerie Riordan sat at her desk, looking at the icons of her life a tiny digital stock substance that she would surreptitiously glance down at during appointments a gold Mont Blanc desk set, the pens jutting from the scolder base like the antennae of a goldbug a set of bookends fashioned in the likenesses of Freud and Jung, gear up leather-bound copies of The Psychology of the Unconscious, The Diagnostic and Statistical manual of arms of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), The Interpretation of Dreams, and The Physicians Desk Reference and a plaster-cast bust of Hippocrates that dispensed Post-it notes from the base. Hippocrates, that wily classic who turned medicine from magic to science. The originator of the famous oath that Val had uttered twenty years ago on that fortunate summer day in Ann arbour when she graduated from med school I forget use treatment to help the nauseated according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to malign or wrong them. I will not give poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor will I purport such(prenominal) a plan.The oath had seemed so silly, so antiquated then. What doctor, in their right mind, would give poison to a patient?But in purity and in holiness I will view as my life and my art.It had seemed so obvious and easy then. right away she guarded her life and her art with a custom security dust and a Glock 9 mm. stashed in the nightstand.I will not use the spit on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.Shed never had a problem with that part of the oath. She was loathe to use the knife. Shed gone into psychiatry because she couldnt handle the messy move of medicine. Her father, a surgeon himself, had been only softly disappointed. At least she was a doctor, of sorts. Shed done her internship and residency in a rehab kernel where movie stars and rock idols learned to be responsible by making their own beds, while Val distrib uted Valium like a flight attendant passing out peanuts. One wing of the Sunrise eye was druggies, the other eating disorders. She preferred the eating disorders. You havent lived until youve force-fed minestrone to a supermodel through a tube, she told her father.Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will do so to help the sick, tutelage myself free from all intentional erroneousness and harm, especially from fornication with woman or man, bond or free.Well, abstinence from fornication hadnt been a problem, had it? She hadnt had sex since Richard left five years ago. Richard had given her the bust of Hippocrates as a joke, he said, but shed put it on her desk just the same. Shed given him a statue of Blind Justice wearing a garter belt and fishnets the year before to display at his law office. Hed brought her here to this little village, passing up offers from corporeal law firms to follow his dream of being a country lawyer whose fooling docket would include disagreements over blur paternity or the odd subvention dispute. He wanted to be genus Atticus Finch, Puddnhead Wilson, a Jimmy Stewart or hydrogen Fonda character who was paid in fresh-baked bread and baskets of avocados. Well, hed gotten that part Vals practice had supported them for most of their marriage. Shed be paying him alimony now if theyd actually divorced.Country lawyer indeed. He left her to go to Sacramento to buttonhole the California Coastal Commission for a consortium of golf course developers. His job was to convince the commission that sea otters and elephant seals would please nothing better than to watch Japanese businessmen slice Titleists into the Pacific and that what nature needed was one long fairway from Santa Barbara to San Francisco (maybe sand traps at the Pismo and Carmel dunes). He carried a pocket watch, for Christs sake, a gold chain with a jade fob carved into the formula of an endangered brown pelican. He played his front-porch, rocking-chair-wise, country lawy er against their Botany cholecalciferol sophistication and pulled down over two hundred grand a year in the bargain. He lived with one of his clerks, an burning doe-eyed Stanfordite with surfer girl hair and a figure that mocked gravity. Richard had introduced Val to the girl (Ashley, or Brie, or Jordan) and it had been oh-so-adult and oh-so-gracious and later, when Val called Richard to clear up a taxation matter, she asked, So howd you screen the candidates, Richard? First one to suck-start your Lexus?Maybe we should start thinking about making our separation official, Richard had said.Val had hung up on him. If she couldnt have a happy marriage, shed have everything else. Everything. And so had begun her revolving door policy of hustling appointments, prescribing the give up meds, and shopping for clothes and antiques.Hippocrates glowered at her from the desk.I didnt intentionally do harm, Val said. Not intentionally, you old buggerer. Fifteen percent of all depressives commi t suicide, treated or not.Whatsoever in the course of practice I see or hear (or even after-school(prenominal) my practice in social intercourse) that ought never to be published abroad, I will not divulge, but consider such things to be holy secrets.Holy secrets or do no harm? Val asked, fancy the hanging body of Bess Leander with a shudder. Which is it? Hippocrates sat on his Post-its, saying nothing. Was Bess Leanders death her falling out? If she had talked to Bess instead of put her on antidepressants, would that have saved her? It was possible, and it was also possible that if she unplowed to her policy of a pill for every problem, someone else was going to die. She couldnt risk it. If using talk therapy instead of drugs could save one life, it was worth a try.Val grabbed the phone and hit the speed dial button that machine-accessible her to the towns only pharmacy, Pine Cove Drug and Gift.One of the clerks answered. Val asked to speak to Winston Krauss, the pharmacist. Wi nston was one of her patients. He was fifty-three, unmarried, and cardinal pounds overweight. His holy secret, which he shared with Val during a session, was that he had an unnatural sexual bewitchment with marine mammals, dolphins in particular. Hed confessed that hed never been able to watch Flipper without getting an erecting and that hed watched so many Jacques Cousteau specials that a French accent made him break into a sweat. He kept an anatomically coif inflatable porpoise, which he violated every night in his bathtub. Val had cured him of wearing a scuba mask and snorkel around the house, so gradually the red gasket ring around his face had cleared up, but he still did the dolphin nightly and confessed it to her once a month.Winston, Val Riordan here. I need a favor.Sure, Dr. Val, you need me to deliver something to molly? I heard she went off in the Slug this morning. Gossip surpassed the speed of light in Pine Cove.No, Winston, you know that familiarity that carries all the look-alike placebos? We used them in college. I need you to order look-alikes for all the antidepressants I prescribe Prozac, Zoloft, Serzone, Effexor, the whole bunch, all the dosages. Order in quantity.I dont get it, Val, what for?Val cleared her throat. I want you to fill all of my prescriptions with the placebos.Youre kidding.Im not kidding, Winston. As of today, I dont want a single one of my patients getting the real thing. Not one.argon you doing some sort of experiment? direct group or something?Something like that.And you want me to charge them the normal price?Of course. Our usual arrangement. Val got a twenty percent kickback from the pharmacy. She was going to be working a lot harder, she deserved to get paid.Winston paused. She could hear him going through the glass door into the back of the pharmacy. Finally he said, I cant do that, Val. Thats unethical. I could lose my license, go to jail.Val had really hoped it wouldnt come to this. Winston, youll do it. You ll do it or the Pine Cove Gazette will run a front-page story about you being a fish-fucker.Thats illegal. You cant divulge something I told you in therapy.Quit telling me whats illegal, Winston. Im married to a lawyer.Id really rather not do this, Val. Cant you send them down to the stinting grocery in San Junipero? I could say that I cant get the pills anymore.That wouldnt work, would it, Winston? The people at the Thrifty Mart dont have your little problem.Youre going to have some withdrawal reactions. How are you going to explain that?Let me worry about that. Im quadrupling my sessions. I want to see these people get better, not mask their problems.This is about Bess Leanders suicide, isnt it?Im not going to lose another one, Winston.Antidepressants dont increase the incidence of suicide or violence. Eli Lilly proved that in court.Yes and O.J. walked. Court is one thing, Winston, the reality of losing a patient is another. Im taking charge of my practice. Now order the pills. Im sure the profit borderline is going to be quite a bit higher on cacography pills than it is on Prozac.I could go to the Florida Keys. Theres a place down there where they let you swim with bottlenose dolphins.You cant go, Winston. You cant miss your therapy sessions. I want to see you at least once a week.You bitch.Im trying to do the right thing. What day is good for you?Ill call you back.Dont push me, Winston.I have to make this order, he said. Then, after a second, he said, Dr. Val?What?Do I have to go off the Serzone?Well talk about it in therapy. She hung up and pulled a Post-it out of Hippocrates chest.Now if I keep this oath, and break it not, may I enjoy honor, in my life and art, among all men for all time but if I die and forswear myself, may the opposite happen me.Does that mean dishonor for all time? she wondered. Im just trying to do the right thing here. Finally.She made a note to call Winston back and schedule his appointments.