Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

Lou bobbed and weaved while circling his friend. He feigned a couple jabs that Cap shrugged off. Sweat was engulfing both men now. Cap’s shaved pate was glistening beneath the incandescent overheads. No matter what was ever troubling Lou, sparring like this was the treatment.

“Did you gash your head?” Cap asked, jabbing at but not hitting Lou’s forehead, indicating the bandage was visible from underneath his headgear.

“That accident was the craziest thing,” Lou said.

“Yeah, how so?”

Lou bobbed again, and this time got in one good shot to Cap’s jaw. Then he danced back and dropped his red mouthpiece into the palm of his glove so he could be heard more clearly.

“Carolyn Meacham, the dead doc’s widow, was convinced the busted taillight on the car in front of us was going to cause an accident, so she ends up causing one herself, trying to catch up and warn the driver.”

Cap waited until Lou had reinserted his guard, then almost immediately hit him with two quick punches-one to either side of his face. Lou thought he heard a crunch from the vicinity of his nose, and his eyes teared. He wiped at the area with the back of one glove and checked for blood. None.

“Keep your hands up, Doc! Hands up! Now, go on.”

Lou increased his movement around the ring. Sweat was pouring off him now, stinging his eyes. He loved the feeling.

“After the crash, she couldn’t explain why she’d gotten so reckless,” he said. “Lucky for her, she knew the chief of police. He let her off with just a warning, if you can believe it.”

“I can’t believe you can’t keep your hands up,” Cap answered, stepping away and removing his mouth guard. “Take a moment without the guard. I think trying to talk is wearing you out.”

Lou obliged, and took a few deep breaths to catch up. “Just for a minute or two,” he said. “I promise to keep my hands up. Did you get everything I said about Carolyn Meacham?”

“Most of it. Obviously she was distressed about what her husband had done. It could have been that. Any clue what set him off?”

“No idea,” Lou said. “He really was a talented doctor and an interesting guy. His AA recovery seemed right on track, and he hadn’t had any issues with his temper since he got in trouble four years ago.”

Cap continued shifting from foot to foot like a runner at a red light, staying loose. “I heard on the news,” Cap said, “that one victim, before she died, had said something about ‘no witnesses.’ They were speculating that’s what Meacham was saying during his rampage. ‘No witnesses.’ I suppose it had something to do with that lady he was yelling at.”

“What lady?”

“On the news. I saw them interviewing her. Apparently she left the office right before your pal went ballistic-so to speak. She said that Meacham had screamed at her about her weight and that she ran off in tears. She got home, turned on the TV, and saw the shooting on the news.”

“First I’m hearing of that,” Lou said. “I probably should have been watching more TV.”

“Nobody should ever be watching more TV, bro. Unless it’s the Friday-night fights. So, what was this ‘no witnesses’ thing all about?”

Lou toweled off and, feeling himself beginning to stiffen, started his own side-to-side shuffle. He needed more sparring time, but Cap was one of the wisest people he knew. If the man was interested enough to ask, his question was worth answering.

“According to the police,” Lou went on, “the only victim who lived long enough to say anything quoted Meacham as saying, ‘No witnesses.’”

“That’s strange.”

“I agree, but why?”

“Because if I understand what went down correctly, the potentially strongest witness, the woman I saw interviewed, had left the office before the shooting.”

Puzzled, Lou looked across at his sparring partner. “What are you getting at?” he asked.

“The kids from the street-the ones I train-they’d call that redonkulous. ”

“Redonkulous?”

“Yeah, it’s a portmanteau.”

“Portmanteau? I always thought you spent too much time reading.”

“I have a vocabulary notebook. I hardly ever get to use what I write down in it, but here’s my chance. Portmanteau means a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings. Redonkulous is a blending of the words ridiculous and donkey. It implies something bizarre, or impossible to the extreme.”

“Why donkey?”

“Poker donkey,” Cap said matter-of-factly.

“What’s that?”

Cap shook his head in dismay. “Doc, you need to hang on the streets more often. Get back in touch with the people. Poker donkey is just what it sounds like-a really bad poker player.”

“Okay, I got it. So why is what I said redonkulous?”

“Say it’s true, and Meacham was shouting ‘no witnesses’ while he’s gunning folks down.”

“Okay.”

“Why would he be worried about witnesses? What did he think these people had witnessed?”

Lou’s chest began to tighten as an anxious feeling took hold. “He’d be worried they had witnessed him yelling at a patient. John was already on probation with the medical board about his drinking and his temper, which is why he was under PWO supervision. An outburst like that might have cost him his license for good.”

“No witnesses,” Cap said. “But this lady he yelled at, she’d already left the building before he started shooting. Obviously, she was a witness, and someone he couldn’t get at now.”

“You think John realized his mistake after the shootings?”

“Otherwise, he probably would have gone after the lady and plugged her instead of himself.”

“It’s possible,” Lou said. “It’s sort of like Meacham’s widow realizing after the fact how she caused an accident because she was trying to prevent one. If that’s the case, then Carolyn wasn’t just traumatized by her husband’s death. She was acting just as crazy as he was.”

Cap reinserted his mouth guard, put up his gloved hands, and resumed his fancy footwork. “Not just crazy,” he said. “Redonkulously crazy.”

Babs Peterbee, the sixty-three-year-old matronly receptionist, greeted Lou’s arrival with a look befitting a funeral. Lou was accustomed to seeing the effervescent woman lodged behind her desk in the cramped Physician Wellness Office. But throughout all the tragic clients, disciplinary hearings, and budget crises, he had never seen her looking so deeply concerned.

“He’s waiting for you in his office,” Peterbee said as he approached her meticulous workstation.

“Mood?” Lou asked.

“Cat 5. I’m so sorry, Dr. Welcome.”

It was a poorly guarded secret that the staff at the PWO measured Walter Filstrup’s demeanor on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the one used by meteorologists to rate the power of hurricanes. The director seemed to enjoy his reputation and fostered it. Most days, Filstrup was a Category 2: strong winds. A couple of times that Lou remembered, he spiked up to a Category 4. But never in the two and a half years since the shrink was hired to run the PWO had he been labeled a Cat 5 by any of the staff.

“The only thing I have to fear, is fear itself,” Lou said, giving Peterbee a Winston Churchill V before he remembered that the quote was from FDR.

Okay, he was more nervous than he was willing to admit.

“I wish that were the case, Lou. I really do,” she responded. Peterbee puckered her face, possibly holding back tears.

“Hey,” Lou said, “we both know I’ve been through worse.”

“Just don’t let anyone change you. Since you got here, you’ve made a huge difference in the lives of a lot of people.”