"But let me look in on her for you," she added and opened the door.
I peered in over her shoulder like a voyeur, a child wanting to see something exciting. &race was asleep, her face caught in the moonlight peeking through her curtains. She looked absolutely angelic to me.
"She's fine. Doctor." the nurse said. I nodded and we both backed out and closed the door softly.
I am truly a madman, I thought on the way home that night.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow I will turn her over completely to Ralston.
But when I arrived at the clinic the next morning and went to his office to do just that. I found I couldn't even suggest it
. Not yet. I wasn't ready for such surrender. I had to continue to test myself, and perhaps, dear Willow, perhaps that was where I went right. You would have expected me to say wrong, but even to this day I refuse to believe I was guilty of anything but a pure and wonderful love.
We returned to our walks, our wonderful walks. Grace was talking more and more about her life in Palm Beach now, telling me how difficult it had been far her to make new friends and how out of place she had felt right from the beginning.
"I had come from a very structured world, the world of a navy family on a navy base, and was dropped into this... this world where rules almost didn't matter. Doctor. My new friends didn't worry much about disappointing their parents. I used to think some of them actually didn't like their own parents."
"Yes, that's not something that surprises me. Young people want to have some structure. You might think otherwise, but when they're tossed out to sink or swim on their own, they feel neglected and should feel that way. Disciplining, supervising is another way to show you care."
"Were your parents that way?"
"Oh, yes," I said. laughing. "My father was a very strict disciplinarian, not that I really needed it. I was too well behaved and responsible. I was probably very boring to my classmates, a bookworm. Even as a teenager, I hated wasting time."
"Didn't you have girlfriends?" she asked. "Didn't you fall in love a dozen times?"
"I had crushes on girls in my classes, but I was always a bit too shy to make anything of it"
"Your wife is very attractive. You couldn't be all that shy," she said.
I began to wonder if someone who didn't know listened in, who would he think was the patient here? It made me smile.
"Why are you laughing?" she wondered.
"I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at the contradiction. Yes, my wife is beautiful, but if you asked me what was it about me that drew her attention. I think I would have a hard time giving you a satisfactory answer."
"Oh. I think I know that answer." Grace said.
We were on the crest of that hill. gazing dawn at the river again. "Really?" I smiled at her. "What's the answer?"
"You make people feel comfortable with themselves. You're like a warm home. I feel like I could cuddle up and go to sleep safely in your arms. and I haven't felt that way since... since my father died." she said.
For a long moment. Willow, I just stood there. Yes, your literate, wordy father was speechless and brought to that point by this purely innocent beautiful woman whose eyes untied the last cords that bound me to my oaths, my profession, my responsibilities. I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder and slowly, ever so slowly, brought her closer until I was holding her against me.
Neither of us spoke, but it was a moment I can't forget. We did nothing more than stand there looking out at the river, watching the gauze-like layer of clouds slide gracefully down the blue slope of sky toward the horizon. A flock of sparrows lifted from the branch of a tree below and flew to the right until they disappeared behind the forest. And then the world seemed to take a deep breath. The breeze stopped. The strands of her hair that were lifted fell back to her forehead.
"Are you happy now. Doctor, happy with your marriage?" she asked.
Everything in me told me this was not a question I should answer. She was my patient. I was her doctor. This was crossing the line too far.
"It's more of an arrangement than a marriage," I admitted. "As the famous line goes, we share coffee."
It wasn't hard to see that she was pleased with that reply. She said nothing. She nodded softly as if she had expected no other kind of reply.
I lifted my hand from her shoulder and turned, and we walked back to the clinic, neither of us speaking. She returned to the arts and crafts room, and I went to my office to make some notes and prepare myself for my next patient. In the afternoon we had a staff meeting and reviewed our patient load. When Grace
Montgomery's name came up. Ralston lifted that one eyebrow of his and listened to my quick evaluation and my recommendations for continued therapies. I was reducing her medication dramatically now She hadn't been suffering the long bouts of depression she experienced when she had first arrived.
"So you're really making significant progress, Claude," Ralston said.