Ghost Country by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online Page A

woman?”
    Mara scrunched her face into its most evil scowl. “She’s my mother, dickhead. What’s it to you?”

5
Offstage Performance
    Made rounds early, ordered blood workup on Mrs. Herstein before her discharge, told her to come to clinic next week for results. She asked what would happen
if
she took the Prozac: “Will I have deeper insights?”
    Into what, I asked. “The nature of life.” Not one of the side effects ever reported in the literature—told her I didn’t know, but that the drug might make her feel calmer, less like weeping. At that she got angry.
    “I want to weep. Weeping gives you insight if you do it right.”
    Too tired to try to understand what’s going on with her. Told her to come to clinic next week if she wanted to discuss further treatment when we have results of blood work.
    Strange dream right before I woke up. Walked into room—large, light, empty, like a music room in a rich man’s house, thought at first I was alone, then uneasily aware of presence, pulled a screen aside and saw Mrs, Herstein dressed in surgical scrubs, large butcher knife in one hand, stereo receiver
in
the other. She was going to do surgery on my brain, plant the receiver in it. I turned to run and found door blocked by Hanaper, smiling, saying, just let her do it, it will keep her happy.
    Woke in sweat before she could begin operating. Is this some kind of substitution for my parents? What did I think Mom wanted to plant inmy brain? But Hanaper as a stand-in for Dad doesn’t make sense—I dislike H, dislike his bullying, his lack of interest in patients, while Dad was a peace-at-any-price kind of guy. Or does that equate to lack of interest in children—in me? Hanaper called me into his office this morning….
    “Dr. Tammuz. You’re always complaining that we are more attentive to the needs of the hospital than we are the community.”
    Hector, the dream still heavy on his mind, eyed the department head warily. “Yes, sir?”
    “An opportunity has come to me—to the hospital—to give something back. I think you would be ideal for the position.”
    “And what is that, sir?”
    “The Lenore Foundation has designated a fund to send a psychiatric resident into the homeless community one day a week. As you know, since the mayor closed community mental clinics, all hospitals in the city have experienced a greatly increased load of mentally ill homeless patients.”
    Hector thought of the man who wanted to prove he was a chicken at the State of Illinois building, the one Hanaper had bullied into leaving the hospital so that he wouldn’t add to their uninsured costs, and said, “I hadn’t realized that, sir.”
    Hanaper squinted to see if he could read irony in his resident’s face. “The man in charge of finding the right resident is Angus Boten. I think you met him when you came out for your interview. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to stay with the department here, but he called me yesterday to see if I could recommend anyone. Of course I thought immediately of you.”
    Hanaper stared at me with a kind of cocky maliciousness. Does this mean he’s aware of my disappointment at not being able to work with Boten? But if that were the case he wouldn’t give me the opportunity to have even this modest association with B: H knows I am more interested in talking therapy than pharmaceuticals, and thinks it’s his job to ridicule that nonsense out of me, wouldn’t deliberately send me into aclinic where the emphasis would be on Boten’s approach to treatment. More likely H has some knowledge about—poor—conditions of Lenore clinic: perhaps a cold cheerless room where an endless progression of smelly, psychotic men and women rant at me, much like Mrs. Herstein, only without benefit of soap.
    Hector could see himself, ever shorter on sleep, writing prescriptions for Ativan, Prozac, Haldol, flinging drugs at the mentally ill the way GIs threw candy to children in wartorn countries. “I presume this means