You Are Not A Stranger Here Read Online Free PDF

"thank you."
    She took a seat on the couch and he lowered himself into the leather armchair.
    "The reason I'm here is the director thought it would be a good idea for me to check in with you in person. He said you'd had some trouble getting down to the clinic for your last few appointments."
    Her gaze rested somewhere over his shoulder. "I take it you're childless," she said.
    Frank had patients who asked questions about his life, but they usually didn't come so fast.
    "It might be best if we talked about how you've been doing lately. The clonazepam, it's an antianxiety drug. Have you been experiencing much anxiety lately?"
    She lowered her glance momentarily to look Frank in the eye. She had a handsome, slightly gaunt face, powerful green eyes, a strong, almost male jawline; her black hair was brushed back off her high forehead. Frank didn't often see female patients with such a self-possessed demeanor. The women who came to him at the clinic usually had the blunt affect of beating victims or the long-untreated ill.
    "You're here to write a prescription. Am I right?"
    30
    Frank was about to respond when Mrs. Buckholdt raised her left arm from her side to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. As she did so, she lifted her other arm from her pocket to rest on her lap. All four digits were missing from her right hand, the skin grown smooth over the rounded ends of the knuckle bones. Frank couldn't help but stare at the fleshy little knobs. Some kind of farm accident, he guessed, the injury Pitford had mentioned. Catching himself, he focused resolutely on her face. Whatever he'd been planning to say had vanished from his mind.
    "Maybe I'll have a glass of water after all," he said.
    "Yes, do. Just help yourself. The key's in the door."
    " H E Y T H E R E , " H E said to the boy in front of the television as he looked in the kitchen cupboard for a glass. Apparently this one wasn't a big talker either. He was slightly older than his sister, twelve perhaps. He stared at Frank with an odd expression, as if he were trying to decide if this man in front of him existed or was merely a passing mirage.
    "What are you watching there?"
    On the screen, a jackal or wolf fed on the gashed belly of a deer.
    "You want some water?"
    The boy shook his head.
    T H O U G H H E F E LT odd doing it, Frank turned the key again in the door, locking it behind him as he reentered the living 31
    room. Mrs. Buckholdt hadn't moved from the couch. She sat rigid, her eyes following him as he crossed to his chair.
    "I see you first visited the doctor about four years ago. That was just after your son died. The notes here say it was mostly depression you were coping with at that point. Is that right?"
    "I wonder, Dr. Briggs. Where is it that you grew up?"
    "Mrs. Buckholdt, I think that in the time we have it's important for me to get a handle on your situation so we can try to help you."
    "Of course. I apologize. I just like having a sense of who I'm talking with. You're from the East I take it."
    "Massachusetts."
    "Whereabouts?"
    "Outside Boston."
    "I take it you grew up in a rich town."
    "Mrs. Buckholdt--"
    "I won't go on forever," she said. "But tell me, it's a rich town, isn't it? Tidy lawns. A country club. Kids going to college. Am I right?"
    "A relatively affluent suburb, yes," he said, taken in by the gravity of her tone, chiding himself at once for being drawn out on a personal matter.
    "Now, is the depression something you're still having an active problem with?" he asked firmly.
    Her eyes wandered again over his shoulder, the same look of recollection he'd seen on her husband's face appearing now in hers. He realized she must be looking at the picture on the wall behind him. He turned to get a glimpse. It 32
    was a print of a late medieval painting, the image of a bustling town square during some kind of revel, all manner of people--vulgar, refined, youthful, decrepit--praying, eating, wandering through the square, the scene painted in browns and