M Sellars - The Law Of Three

I returned to staring out into the yard as she spoke. The seasonally barren branches of trees twisted in the air, their grey-black bark collecting cottony traces of the falling precipitation. As I stared at them, they began to look as though they were spindly arms reaching out in some agonized death throe-all in all, a visual metaphor for my own tortured mood.

I took a hard drag on the end of my cigar. I normally reveled in the spicy taste of a good, Maduro-wrapped smoke, but at the moment it wasn’t bringing the pleasure I hoped. I allowed the blue-white smoke to stream out slowly between my teeth, making a futile grab for some modicum of enjoyment and finding none.

“Ben asked you to come here for my sake, didn’t he?” I asked.

My matter-of-fact tone didn’t faze her. “Of course, Rowan, but you knew that already.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“I am certainly willing to be here for all of your friends as well,” she added.

“I’m sure they would appreciate that.”

“Under the circumstances, however, you are the primary concern.”

“I’m okay,” I told her.

“I am certain that you are,” she replied. “However, I sense that you have concerns of your own.”

“Don’t we all?” I asked the question in an easy, rhetorical sense. I wasn’t looking to be difficult, and I didn’t want to come across to her that way.

“Of course,” she answered in her own comfortable tone. “Your concerns, however, are far less… shall we say ‘mundane’, than most.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Guess so.”

“Benjamin told me you had some type of seizure earlier.”

“You could call it that.”

“Do you think that it was something else?”

I looked over at her. “What do you mean?”

“Your comment.” She shrugged. “It implies that you think of the episode as something other than a seizure.”

“Oh, that.” I nodded then shrugged. “I’m not really sure what it was. I know it wasn’t very pleasant, but other than that…” I allowed my voice to trail off as I pondered the event.

“Do you feel that it might have something to do with Eldon Porter?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

She shuffled for a moment and then looked up at the grey sky. “I love snow. It carries with it such a simple purity.”

“It’s frozen water crystallized around any number of impurities it picks up in our polluted atmosphere.” I stated the fact. “Not sure how that qualifies in the purity department.”

She regarded me with a slight chuckle. “I see that you are not in the mood for philosophical metaphors today, Rowan.”

“Guess not.”

She nodded as she fished out a fresh cigarette and lit it from the smoldering butt of the first. After discarding the spent smoke in the sand bucket, she cocked her head to the side and watched me for a moment.

“How has Felicity been holding up?” she finally asked, shedding her initially adopted clinical air.

“Okay I guess. But, you probably know more about that than me.”

I based my observation on the fact that my wife had recently taken advantage of Helen’s offer of therapy in the wake of the kidnapping and attempted rape she’d experienced.

She clarified the question. “I meant in light of what has happened today.”

“She’s frightened,” I offered with a shrug. “Natural reaction if you ask me.”

“I should think so.” She nodded. “Porter’s threats are coming on the heels of a very traumatic experience for her. She is feeling terribly vulnerable right now.”

“How deep does that vulnerability go is the question,” I said aloud.

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I guess I’m lamenting my own feelings.”

“Would you like to share those feelings, Rowan?”

“Like? No. But, to be honest, standing here talking with you, I have to say that I feel compelled to, yes.”

She let out a small, musical laugh. “Compelled? Oh my, Rowan, I truly wish that all of my patients were as easy to work with as you.”

“You mean you don’t have this effect on everyone?” I smiled.

“Believe me, my life would be much easier if I did,” she returned.

“Probably be boring though,” I offered.

“Perhaps, however, you are certainly not boring in any sense of the word, Mister Gant.” She puffed on her cigarette and watched the large woodpecker as it continued drilling away at the suet cake. “So, you were saying?”

Her casual attitude had put me at ease as usual, and suddenly my emotional baggage seemed much easier to unpack in front of her.

“I can’t help but wonder if part of the vulnerability she is feeling might stem from a lack of confidence in my ability to protect her.” I offered the thought to her and waited patiently for her analysis. The wait was short.

“What is it that would lead you to believe such a thing?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Just a feeling.”

“Is it really a feeling, or is it something you have conjured in your imagination?”

“Full of questions today, aren’t you?”

“It is my job, Rowan,” she returned with a smile and cocked her head to the side. “Now, do you happen to have answers for my questions?”

I raised an eyebrow as I looked back at her. “I get the impression that I do whether I know it or not.”

“You catch on fast.”

“I can probably find a few people who would dispute that,” I returned with a grin.

“We all have our critics,” she answered then brought her free hand up and began tapping her index finger against her pursed lips as she deepened a crease in her brow. After a moment, she spoke again. “I am confident that I would not be breaking a doctor-patient trust by telling you that your feeling is incorrect. Felicity has no lack of confidence in your ability to protect her.”

I sighed heavily as I weighed the information I’d just been given. “I’m sure that should make me feel better, but unfortunately it doesn’t.”

“Why do you think that is, Rowan?”

“I suspect that the logical answer would be that I am the one who lacks the confidence.”

“That would be the logical answer, yes.”

“But not the correct answer?” I asked.

“I am certain that it is a part of it, Rowan, but I believe we both know that it goes somewhat deeper than that.”

“Okay. How about, I’m afraid?” I said simply.

“What is it that you fear, Rowan?”

“It isn’t obvious?”

“Why don’t you tell me? Is it so obvious?”

“Well, I think it is,” I shrugged as I spoke. “I’m afraid of Porter.”

“Are you really?”

Again, I raised an eyebrow and regarded her silently for a moment. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of him. I mean, the bastard is out to kill me, and he doesn’t seem interested in giving up on the idea.”

“I am not so certain that you are being honest with yourself, Rowan.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.”

She drew her lips into a thin frown for a moment, her expression telling me that she was obviously in search of the words to express what was on her mind. It didn’t take her long to track them down.

“As I recall, you are the man who purposely drove a van through a set of plate glass windows, climbed injured from the wrecked vehicle, and then headed straight into a situation where you could have been ambushed by a killer.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It does not sound like the action of a fearful man to me.”

“No,” I agreed. “It was the action of a desperate man. The son-of-a-bitch had kidnapped my wife.”

“All right, perhaps that was not the best example for you. How about this…Do you remember a conversation we had a few weeks ago, Rowan, when I asked you why you had chased Eldon Porter out onto that bridge by yourself instead of immediately calling the police?”