Jonathan Kellerman - The Conspiracy Club

The chart said she was twenty years old, but the reading material on her bed table was all teen zines.

Jeremy introduced himself, and she frowned.

“A shrink? You’re kidding. What, someone thinks I’m crazy?”

“Not at all. Dr. Dirgrove would like you to be as calm as possible before the surgery, and he thought I might be able to help you with that.”

“If he wants me to be calm, he shouldn’t cut me up.”

Jeremy pulled a chair up to her bed. “May I?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure.”

Merilee Saunders rolled her eyes. “What the hay. Park.”

“So,” he said, “surgery wasn’t in your game plan.”

She turned sharply, regarded him as if his skull had split open and his brain had tumbled out. “Sure,” she said. “It’s a fun thing for me, I can’t wait to be sliced. What a rush.”

“Has the reason for the surgery been explained to-”

“Blah- blah, blah- blah, blah- blah, blah- blah. Yeah, Freaky Dirgrove told me the facts.”

“Freaky,” said Jeremy.

“He’s a stiff. Roboticon. Except when he wants to turn on the charm. My mom loves him.”

The chart said the Saunders family was intact.

“What about your dad?” said Jeremy.

“What about him?”

“Does he like Dr. Dirgrove?”

“Sure, why not.” Merilee Saunders looked over at the TV suspended from the wall. “The channels here suck. Home shopping and Spanish crap and other crap.”

“True,” said Jeremy. “We’re a bit behind the times.”

The young woman shifted position under her covers. “Dirgrove tell you I’m nuts?”

“Not in the least. He just wants to make sure you’re in peak shape for-”

“Maybe I am,” she said. “Nuts. So what? And what does that have to do with getting my heart sliced open? And why now? All these years I’ve been fine and all of a sudden… I’m twenty, I don’t have to do something I don’t want to do.”

“If you have doubts about the-”

“Look, I’ve had this ”- she patted her left breast-“since I was born. They tell me it’s a hole in my heart, but I don’t feel any different from anyone else. Not until some docko slips me the old steth and he hears it and everyone starts freaking out .”

“You feel fine, so why should you-”

“It just doesn’t feel right, know what I mean ? I come into this shithole all okay and they poke me and jam crap in me and give me X rays and CAT scans and all kinds of crap and now tomorrow I’m gonna wake up feeling like I got run over by a truck. It doesn’t make sense, but try telling Mom that. She’s only out for my best interests .”

“Your mother-”

“My mother loves doctors,” said Merilee. “Especially the cute ones. She thinks Dirgrove’s cute. I don’t. I think he’s a stiff. And since you’re obviously going to ask about my dad, let’s just say he works like eight hundred hours a week, pays the bills, goes with the flow.”

“You’re right,” said Jeremy. “You’re an adult, and it’s your body we’re talking about. So if you have serious reservations-”

“Nah. I’ll go with the flow, too. Why not? What’s the worse that can happen, I die?” She laughed.

Jeremy started to speak, but she waved him off. “Don’t think I’m gonna talk shrinky, to hell with that. Even if I am nuts, so what? It’s not my brain we’re talking about, it’s my heart.”

“Sometimes there are things we can do to make the experience easier,” he said. “Relaxation exercises.”

“I hate exercise.”

“This is more like meditation- hypnosis.”

She regarded Jeremy through slitted eyes. “What, you want to put me asleep and tell me my heart’s okay and the hole closed up by itself? If you can pull that off, sure, let’s party.”

“Sorry,” said Jeremy. “That’s a bit beyond my abilities.”

“Then who the hell needs you?” said Merilee Saunders, shaking her fingers as if discarding flecks of filth. “Leave me alone, I’m tired.”

Pt. More angry than anx. Understands need for surgery intellec.

but not emot. More discussion of procedure from Dr. Dirgrove

recommended. Pt. Refuses relax.trng. J. Carrier, Ph.D.

Not one of his triumphs.

But later that day, he picked up his voice-mail messages and the third of a dozen said: “Jeremy, this is Ted Dirgrove. You were a great help. Thanks.”

Another envelope arrived in the interoffice mail. Same source: Otolaryngology. Once again, an unnamed recipient, but it had ended up in Jeremy’s stack.

This one was copied from a five-year-old gynecology journal. Laser hysterectomy technique in the treatment of uterine lieomyomata, endometriosis, and pelvic adhesive inflammation.

Optimally, the patient should be positioned in the dorsal lithotomy posture with low stirrups, prepped and draped…

Another team of authors, physicians, and biomedical engineers. Americans, working at a West Coast university hospital.

Construction of a bladder flap… endoscopic kittner… dissection of the broad ligaments.

Jeremy slipped the article back in the envelope, walked over to the Psychiatry Department, and asked Laura, the secretary who disbursed the mail if she had any idea who had delivered the envelope.

“It all comes in a batch from the mail room, Dr. Carrier.” Laura was barely twenty, just out of junior college. Still sufficiently green to hold the professional staff in awe.

“This wasn’t addressed to me.” He showed her. “So it had to be dropped off in person. Any idea how it got in my pile?”

“Uh-uh. Sorry.”

“When the batch gets here, where’s it stored?”

“Right here.” She pointed to a bin on the counter, just to her left. “I go through it, divide it by staff member, and tie up each stack with a rubber band and a Post-it with your name on it. Then someone- me or a clerk or a volunteer- brings it around to each office. Yours we do last because you’re on a different floor.”

“So once the batch is divided, anyone could insert another envelope into any pile.”

“I guess so- is something wrong, Dr. Carrier?”

“No, just curious.”

“Oh,” she said, looking frightened. “Have a nice day.”

He barged in on the ENT receptionist. A young man, beautifully dressed and groomed, whose fingers flew over a computer keyboard.

“May I help you?” he said, without looking up. Same voice Jeremy had spoken to when he’d inquired about the first envelope.

Jeremy said, “I have a question about this.”

The young man stopped typing, and Jeremy handed him the envelope.

“Didn’t you call me about this before?”

“That was the first, this is the second. So I don’t think it’s an accident. I’ve obviously been confused with someone else.”

The young man inspected the photocopied article. “Hmm… well, I didn’t send it. These envelopes get reused all the time.”

“I guess someone’s stockpiling ENT envelopes.”

The young man grinned. “That’s because we’re so charming.” He tried to hand the article back.

“All yours,” said Jeremy.

The young man touched his hair. “First time anyone’s given me anything in a long, long time, but no thanks.”

He placed the article on the counter. Jeremy took it.

Now he wondered.

Dissection of the broad ligaments.

Jeremy returned to his office and called Detective Bob Doresh. This time he introduced himself. He heard Doresh sigh.

“Yes, Doc?”

“Last time we spoke you called Tyrene Mazursky a Humpty-Dumpty situation and implied Jocelyn had been the same-”