He headed back for the other side of the bridge. When he reached his post he decided he should make a note of it, anyway, so he hauled out his pencil and his notebook and wrote down the name, Edward Wright. So he would remember what the name meant, he added Big Eyebrows, Wife Dead, Contemplated Jumping.
The psychiatrist stroked his pointed beard and looked over at the patient on the couch. The importance of beard and couch, as he had told his wife many times, lay in their property for enabling his patients to see him as a function of such outward symbols rather than as an individual, thus facilitating transference. His wife hated the beard and felt he used the couch for amorous dalliance. It was true, he thought, that he and his plump blonde receptionist had on a few occasions occupied the couch together. A few memorable occasions, he amended, and he closed his eyes, savoring the memory of the delicious way he and Hannah had gone through Krafft-Ebing together, page by delirious page.
Reluctantly, he dragged himself back to his current patient. “... no longer seems worth living,” the man said. “I drag myself through life a day at a time.”
“We all live our lives a day at a time,” the psychiatrist commented.
“But is it always an ordeal?”
“No.”
“I almost killed myself last night. No, the night before last. I almost jumped from the Morrissey Bridge.”
“And?”
“A policeman came along. I wouldn’t have jumped anyway.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
The interplay went on, the endless dialogue of patient and doctor. Sometimes the doctor could go through the whole hour without thinking at all, making automatic responses, reacting as he always did, but not really hearing a word that was said to him. I wonder, he thought, whether I do these people any good at all. Perhaps they only wish to talk and need only the illusion of a listener. Perhaps the entire profession is no more than an intellectual confidence game. If I were a priest, he thought wistfully, I could go to my bishop when struck by doubts of faith, but psychiatrists do not have bishops. The only trouble with the profession is the unfortunate absence of an orderly hierarchy. Absolute religions could not be so democratically organized.
He listened, next, to a dream. Almost all of his patients delighted in telling him their dreams, a source of unending frustration to the psychiatrist, who never in his life remembered having a dream of his own. From time to time he fantasized that it was all a gigantic put-on, that there were really no dreams at all. He listened to this dream with academic interest, glancing now and then at his watch, wishing the fifty-minute hour would end. The dream, he knew, indicated a diminishing enthusiasm for life, a development of the death wish, and a desire for suicide that was being tentatively held in check by fear and moral training. He wondered how long his patient would be able to refrain from taking his own life. In the three weeks he had been coming for therapy, he had seemed to be making only negative progress.
Another dream. The psychiatrist closed his eyes, sighed, and ceased listening. Five more minutes, he told himself. Five more minutes and then this idiot would leave, and perhaps he could persuade plump blonde Hannah to do some further experimentation with him. There was a case of Stekel’s he had read just the other night that sounded delicious.
The doctor looked up at the man, took in the heavy eyebrows, the deep-set eyes, the expression of guilt and fear. “I have to have my stomach pumped, Doctor,” the man said. “Can you do it here or do we have to go to a hospital?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Pills.”
“What sort? Sleeping pills? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes.”
“What sort? And how many did you take?”
The man explained the content of the pills and said that he had taken twenty. “Ten is a lethal dose,” the doctor said. “How long ago did you take them?”
“Half an hour. No, less than that. Maybe twenty minutes.”
“And then you decided not to act like a damned fool, eh? I gather you didn’t fall asleep. Twenty minutes? Why wait this long?”
“I tried to make myself throw up.”
“Couldn’t do it? Well, we’ll try the stomach pump,” the doctor said. The operation of the pump was unpleasant, the analysis of the stomach’s contents even less pleasant. The pumping had been in plenty of time, the doctor discovered. The pills had not yet been absorbed to any great degree by the bloodstream.
“You’ll live,” he said finally.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Don’t thank me. I’ll have to report this, you know.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I’m... I’m under a psychiatrist’s care. It was more an accident than anything else, really.”
“Twenty pills?” The doctor shrugged. “You’d better pay me now,” he said. “I hate to send bills to potential suicides. It’s risky.”
“This is a fine shotgun for the price,” the clerk said. “Now, if you want to get fancy, you can get yourself a weapon with a lot more range and accuracy. For just a few dollars more—”
“No, this will be satisfactory. And I’ll need a box of shells.”
The clerk put the box on the counter. “Or three boxes for—”
“Just the one.”
“Sure thing,” the clerk said. He drew the registry ledger from beneath the counter, opened it, set it on the top of the counter. “You’ll have to sign right there,” he said, “to keep the state happy.” He checked the signature when the man had finished writing. “Now I’m supposed to see some identification, Mr. Wright. Just a driver’s license if you’ve got it handy.” He checked the license, compared the signatures, jotted down the license number, and nodded, satisfied.
“Thank you,” said the man, when he had received his change. “Thank you very much.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wright. I think you’ll get a lot of use out of that gun.”
“I’m sure I will.”
At nine o’clock that night Edward Wright heard his back doorbell ring. He walked downstairs, glass in hand, finished his drink, and went to the door. He was a tall man, with sunken eyes topped by thick black eyebrows. He looked outside, recognized his visitor, hesitated only momentarily, and opened the door.
His visitor poked a shotgun into Edward Wright’s abdomen.
“Mark—”
“Invite me in,” the man said. “It’s cold out here.”
“Mark, I don’t—”
“Inside.”
In the living room Edward Wright stared into the mouth of the shotgun and knew that he was going to die.
“You killed her, Ed,” the visitor said. “She wanted a divorce. You couldn’t stand that, could you? I told her not to tell you. I told her it was dangerous, that you were nothing but an animal. I told her to run away with me and forget you but she wanted to do the decent thing and you killed her.”
“You’re crazy!”
“You made it good, didn’t you? Made it look like an accident. How did you do it? You’d better tell me, or this gun goes off.”
“I hit her.”
“You hit her and killed her? Just like that?”
Wright swallowed. He looked at the gun, then at the man. “I hit her a few times. Quite a few times. Then I threw her down the cellar stairs. You can’t go to the police with this, you know. They can’t prove it and they wouldn’t believe it.”
“We won’t go to the police,” the man said. “I didn’t go to them at the beginning. They didn’t know of a motive for you, did they? I could have told them a motive, but I didn’t go, Edward. Sit down at your desk, Edward. Now. That’s right. Take out a sheet of paper and a pen. You’d better do as I say, Edward. There’s a message I want you to write.”