JASON STARR - Panic Attack

He left the studio and went right to a newsstand on Lexington Avenue and bought copies of the Post, News, and Times and read them while standing in the vestibule of a closed shoe store. His story didn’t make the front page of either of the tabloids- the Post and the News- but both gave it space several pages in.

It wasn’t exactly what he expected.

The News headline was trigger happy. The Post: gun crazy.

What the hell was going on? Adam skimmed the articles, getting increasingly upset, wondering if he should call his lawyer, threaten a libel suit. Both articles were totally skewed and misleading, making it sound as if Adam had acted impulsively, shooting an unarmed man who posed no danger to him. The News article reported that Adam confronted Sanchez on the stairs and fired “without warning,” shooting the unarmed man “multiple times.” The Post called Adam “the new Bernie Goetz,” comparing him to the vigilante who’d shot four unarmed teenagers on the subway in the eighties. Neither paper included any quotes from Adam, and while both acknowledged that Sanchez had a criminal background, they made this seem incidental compared to what Adam had done. Both also left out the quote from Detective Clements that had played on the TV news last night, about how Adam had been justified in his actions. The Post actually wrote that the police “weren’t able” to press charges against Adam in the shooting, implying that they wanted to charge him but, for legal reasons, couldn’t.

Even the Times didn’t get it right. Although the Times article wasn’t as sensationalized, it was still written from the angle that Adam had acted impulsively and irrationally, not in self- defense, and it didn’t include the supportive quote from Detective Clements, either.

After Adam read the three articles twice, he remained outside the shoe store, stunned. He couldn’t believe that this was actually happening to him. It was bad enough to have had his house broken into, to have been forced to kill someone, but now he felt like he was being victimized all over again. Had the Post actually compared him to Bernie Goetz? That was insanely ridiculous. Adam hadn’t acted like a vigilante, carrying his gun around, trying to clean up the scum of New York. He’d been asleep in his bed, for God’s sake.

He glanced at the articles again, as if to confirm to himself that he’d actually read what he’d read, that it hadn’t all been some nightmarish hallucination, and then, in a daze, he headed downtown toward his office.

Unlike yesterday and earlier this morning, now he didn’t want people to recognize him. He felt embarrassed, ashamed. He couldn’t believe that he’d actually been looking forward to today, that he’d talked himself into believing that he was going to be treated like a hero, wearing his sport jacket with the shades sticking out of the pocket. He felt like the punch line of a bad joke.

He just wanted to disappear, be anonymous again, like he normally was in New York, but was he imagining it or were people staring at him? That guy in the suit walking toward him with the earbuds looked like he was thinking, Don’t I know you from somewhere? The mother and daughter waiting to cross the street ahead of him- they were looking at him, too, knowingly and judgmentally. Adam tried to look straight ahead, to avoid the intrusive looks, but it was impossible not to notice them. That young black guy was looking at him; the old lady pushing the shopping cart filled with groceries was looking; the Arabic guy at the pretzel cart was looking. They all seemed to know exactly who he was and what he’d done and why he’d done it. There was no room for negotiation.

When he entered his building on Madison off Fifty- eighth, he expected Benny, the building’s security guard, to give him his usual warm smile and say, “Morning, Dr. Bloom,” or at least make a polite, banal comment about the weather, like “Gettin’ colder out there, huh?” Instead he barely looked at Adam as he walked past, and Adam knew why. There was a copy of the Post on Benny’s desk.

On Adam’s floor, when Lauren looked at him, he saw her do a double take. She said, “Hi, Adam, how are you?” but there was no sincerity in her tone, no sympathy for what he’d been through. The coldness surprised Adam. He thought he’d at least get some sympathy and understanding from his colleagues. After all, if the people who know you best won’t stick by your side during a crisis, then who’s left?

“Okay, considering,” he said.

“That’s good,” she said, still avoiding eye contact and seeming tense and distracted. “Alexandra Hoffman called, and I forwarded her to your voice mail. And Lena Perez called; she said she has to reschedule her appointment next week.” When the phone rang she seemed eager to answer it, to have an opportunity to end the conversation.

On his way to his office Adam passed Robert Sloan, one of the other therapists in the suite, but Robert wasn’t exactly Mr. Supportive either. He asked some questions about the shooting, but, like that woman Annie in the greenroom, he didn’t seem to get that what Adam had done had been heroic. He even seemed judgmental, as if he’d already decided that Adam had done something wrong and nothing could change his opinion.

Throughout the morning everyone in the office seemed to be avoiding him. Even Carol, his own therapist and mentor, seemed to be ignoring him. Adam passed by her office several times, hoping to have a chance to talk to her and pro cess everything that had happened, but her door was closed all morning even during times when Adam knew she didn’t have any patients scheduled.

There was no flood of phone messages from patients and old friends, but Adam was relieved about this. He hoped it meant that no one had seen him on the news or read about him in the morning papers. Oh, God, he hoped Abby Fine didn’t buy a newspaper today.

When Lauren came into his office to let him know about some correspondence regarding a patient’s insurance claim, Adam felt he had to set the record straight and said, “Look, what the papers said is total crap. That’s not what happened at all, okay? The guy broke into my house, and the police think there might’ve been somebody else in the house with a gun, and that that person might’ve shot my maid. So I did the right thing, okay?”

“I believe you,” Lauren said, but it was obvious she was just saying this to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

Adam felt like locking himself in his office and spending the rest of the day alone, but he had an eleven o’clock appointment with Martin Harrison. Martin was what Adam and his colleagues called a professional patient. Adam had been seeing him for nearly two years but except for exhibiting mild symptoms of OCD and perhaps some generalized anxiety disorder, there was nothing really wrong with him. He was happily married with two kids and was doing well in his career as an advertising exec, but, for whatever reason- perhaps it was a subconscious emotional de penden cy issue, because his father had left his mother when he was five years old- he continued to pay out of pocket to see Adam two days a week. During most sessions, they rehashed topics they’d already discussed, and sometimes it was a strain to find anything to talk about. But what was Adam supposed to do, suggest that he end his treatment? What with managed health care restricting the annual visits of his insurance- paid patients, cash- paying patients like Martin were what made Adam’s practice sustainable.

Martin’s major personality flaw was that he had a very direct style of communication, almost too direct, bordering on inappropriate. When he entered Adam’s office, he didn’t even say hello but went right to, “So I was reading about you online this morning.”