Tom Schreck - Out Cold

"Sure."

"The captains of the football team, do you remember them?"

"Of course. Two of them are still in the area. Pendergast works for the state and is the offensive coordinator on the football team and Meyerson is an accountant with some big firm."

"What about Newstrom and Greene, you remember them?"

"Sure, great kids. Besides being football captains they were class officers. Newstrom was president and Greene was his VP. After graduation they enlisted. I think they got in Special Forces in the military, but we've kind of lost track of them in the last few years. I wouldn't be surprised if they're both big time heroes now," the coach said with a smile.

"Yeah? Really? You don't say?" was all I could say. My interaction with Coach Whoever slowed down after that and I realized he was staring at me as I looked into the trophy case. Life just isn't fair when you got the wrong colored tag, so I figured it was time to go.

I got back to the clinic with the computer everyone immediately deemed useless. Just the same it had been worth it to me to get out of the office. Trina watered her plants and I hung around just long enough to see her water the plant hanging from the ceiling. It was my favorite, not because I care about plants, but because she had to stretch to reach it. Trina's black clingy T-shirt rode up, as she stretched to reach the pot, to show a very flat stomach and an adorable belly button. An inny-which was good. Outies kind of gross me out.

"Duff? Hello? Why don't you take a picture?" Trina said. Her tone had mock anger to it, but her eyes smiled as she said it. I smiled, too.

"Need any help?"

"Not the kind you're offering?" A pretty good line considering our history.

I also got a twinge of guilt. I wasn't quite sure where admiring Trina's navel fit in on the engagement-commitment continuum. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be asking clarification from my fiance on the matter.

"Hey, check this out. I went out at Vorhees High, and did you know Karl captained the championship football team?"

"Is that why he wears a football helmet all the time?"

"Not only that, he was vice president of the class and generally an all around big man on campus."

"Damn. How does that guy become Karl?"

"I'm guessing the Army didn't help."

"That sucks. You never really hear much about the mentally screwed up guys. It's almost worse than getting hurt physically."

"Yeah-I think I'd rather get hurt physically," I said.

"Hey-by the way you seem better today-even better than just yesterday. Did you go to the doctor?"

"Better? Better than what?"

"You're not staring off in to space, you're not wobbling, and you haven't repeated yourself in this whole conversation," she said without smiling.

"I wasn't doing that shit, was I? Really?" She just looked at me and shook her head.

My head still throbbed every now and then, but in the last couple of days it did seem a lot less painful. Today was the one day of the week we had our consulting psychiatrist in. Dr. Laura Meade was this season's model. I say that because we switched shrinks every couple of months for a couple of reasons. One was our pay sucked, so they usually picked up extra hours in our clinic until they could find extra hours someplace that paid them more money. The second reason, they got to do very little therapy, because they had to manage all the psychiatric medications the clients got prescribed. Mostly clients came in for fifteen minutes, got a new prescription, or got the old one adjusted, and moved on. It wasn't much fun for the shrink. I have to admit that though I've had my problems with some of the whack jobs who have been assigned to us in the psychiatric department, I liked Laura. She had just completed her psychiatric residency and couldn't have been even thirty yet-she looked closer to twenty-five. She did triathlons for fun, so she had an athletic build that was still attractive, probably because she did them for fun and not competition. She wore her long straight dirty blond hair gathered in a ponytail and leaned toward cargo pants, T-shirts, and running shoes for a wardrobe. Never a hint of make up, but she had something incredibly feminine about her-strong and feminine.

She'd been around for a couple of months, but because of her schedule I barely had said hello to her. Today, I wanted to catch her with a few questions.

"Excuse me, Doc?" I said as she came out of the ladies room.

"Hi Duff. Do me a favor-don't call me that," she said.

"Why? You're a doctor, right?"

"Yeah, but the term 'Doc' kind of has a certain feel to it. Like some sort of special authoritative fraternity. I don't want to be thought of in those terms."

"Okay, I think I got it." It seemed like a fair request.

"What can I help you with?"

"I have a couple of questions about one of the guys on my caseload. You haven't seen him yet. His name is Karl."

"It will be tough for me to comment on him then." I noticed I could see the veins in her arms and when she put her hands on her hips the biceps flexed. Not like a weightlifter's, but like an endurance athlete's.

"Well, Karl came back from the war and he's got some major paranoia. He's all into conspiracy theories and he's got some pretty strange behavior."

"Like what?"

"He wears a football helmet and rubber gloves because he thinks people are out to get him."

"Is anyone out to get him?"

"Well, he keeps getting beat up around town, probably because of his bizarre behavior."

"Sounds like people are out to get him. Maybe a football helmet makes sense," she said.

I hadn't anticipated that kind of comment from a shrink.

"Anyway, by chance I found out that in high school, before his Army stint, Karl was a high-achieving kid from the suburbs. An athlete, a scholar; your basic big man on campus. My question is, how does a guy get to where Karl is now when only a few years ago he did so well."

"I can only answer in generalities, but there are a few possible explanations." She paused and looked up at the ceiling while she thought.

"He might be schizophrenic and its onset came on in the last few years, but he should've shown some danger signs in high school. It might be trauma from the war he dealt with by breaking from reality or, if he's a drug user, the drugs could've caused a chemically induced psychosis. It could also be a little bit of all three."

" Hmmm…so he could've been normal and then something happened along the way."

"Something clearly happened along the way. We just don't know what. The question is, did something happen organically, meaning was there something in his brain chemistry pre-set for him to have psychiatric episodes, or did an environment filled with trauma touch it off? That trauma can also include heavy drug use."

She looked at her watch.

"Duff, I have to get to my next med review. Nice talking to you." She extended her hand and gave me a firm, quite androgynous handshake.

It got me thinking. Could there be a crazy time-bomb in any of us waiting for the right fuse to set it off? Or were the cards dealt in this existential game of Texas Hold 'Em what held our fate? Did 'Ol Karl just land on the wrong Monopoly square and now he's destined to sport Redskins headgear and be equipped for washing the world's dishes. I had an awful lot to think about. When I had that much to think about, it was best for me to do something mindless. Since my files ran out of date back to Nixon's term, I decided to write in some of them. Trina was doing something with the petty cash box when I went to grab some files.

"Hey, Duff."

"Hey, Trina"

"Did you hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Homeland Security just arrested six members of Al Qaeda in Chicago."

"Holy shit. What happened?"

"About to dump some bio poison into the reservoir." No kidding, holy shit.