The Best Defense by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page A

They called me and I met them there and took care of her. I’ve seen her off and on from the start, of course. Very early on I told her that if she needed something to help her sleep, she could have it.”
    “Did she talk to you?”
    “Not a word.”
    She wished he would get a haircut, and have his glasses adjusted, or simply sit on his hands, but they were in constant motion, fiddling with his glasses, his hair, a few papers, a patient’s file.
    “What happened last night, or this morning?” Barbara asked.
    His hands came to rest on the file folder.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “This morning when I was over there they said her lawyer had brought in a private doctor for her, that she had been agitated and the doctor had given her a sedative. From now on she will be in his care.”
    He was lining up papers, rearranging them in minute increments.
    “That’s his right,” he said hurriedly, watching the progress his hands were making.
    “The county encourages inmates to have their private physicians after the initial examination. That’s not at all irregular.”
    She watched him and waited. When he remained silent, she asked, “What is irregular, then, Doctor?”
    “I didn’t say that,” he said swiftly.
     
    “I’m willing to forget this whole conversation,” Barbara said.
    “It never happened. But I have to know why you agreed to see me, what it is you have to tell me.
    Not only that she has a private doctor now.”
    He stood up and pushed his chair back against the window; he looked with despair at the cramped office and sat down again. They hadn’t even given him pacing room, Barbara thought with sympathy.
    “They told me you had a breakthrough with Paula,” he said then.
    “We all tried, but you did it. There’s something we don’t talk about much,” he went on, sounding almost embarrassed.
    “The will to live. In children we say failure to thrive. Almost the same thing.
    She has lost the will to live. I tried to get through to her, I really tried. I don’t know what’s going to happen at the trial, or what will happen to her after that, but while she was my patient, I tried to help her.” His hands had started their restless motions again.
    “You’re still trying to help her, aren’t you?”
    “Yes. But I’m in a funny position.” He attempted a grin that failed and was only a grimace.
    “I can’t protest what another physician does, you see. I can’t override her choice of doctors. But her sister could find out if that really was her choice, or … But I can’t really get in touch with her, either.” He added almost ingenuously, “They told me you were representing the sister.”
    “You don’t think the new doctor was her choice?”
    He shrugged.
    “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for certain. Her attorney said he was her doctor.”
    “Who is the other doctor?”
    “Peter Copley,” he said in a low voice.
    “And what did he prescribe?”
    “Halcion.”
    “And the dosage?”
    “The nurse showed me,” he said.
    “Two blue ones initially, then one every four hours.” He lifted the folder he had been fooling with and picked up a paper, the kind that pharmaceutical companies inserted in their medications. He held it out to her.
    “Just some information about Halcion,” he said, not looking at her. When she took the paper covered with small print, he stood up, pushed his glasses back into place, and held out his hand.
    “Thanks for coming.” His relief was transforming;
    all the indecision, the hesitation, the embarrassment had evaporated.
    She rose from her chair to shake his hand.
    “Thank you. Doctor.” She hesitated at the door.
    “I won’t mention your name, but the sergeant knows I was coming over here.”
    “Sergeant Perry doesn’t know anything,” he said quietly.
    She nodded and left.
    In the parking structure, sitting in her car, she read the information sheet quickly, then read it again more slowly.
    “Son of a bitch,” she muttered under