Bloody River Blues

kidding,” Dr. Weiser said, “I’m from Wood River.”
    “Ha, Land of Lincolners in the Show Me state.” Buffett snorted.
    “When I was married—he was a professor at Wash U—we lived in Clayton. God, I was glad to get out of there, move back to the country . . . You were telling me about this friend of yours?”
    “Just a kid. He dived in the water . . .” Buffett wondered if dived was the right word. Dove? He wished he’d said jumped. “. . . and you know how high some of those piers are. He hit a board he didn’t see. We got him out right away so he didn’t drown but whathappened was he went blind. He hit the back of his head or something. He tried to beat me up. He said I should’ve seen the board. He accused another kid of pushing the board under him. Finally he moved away. He never came back or called.”
    He wondered what the point to the story was. He looked for something concluding—something to tie it into what she was saying—and fell silent.
    Weiser said, “We’re used to behavior like that. It’s part of recovery. You may get some of it right back from me. I grew up with three brothers. I’ve got kind of a short fuse myself sometimes.” She retrieved her cigarette from her pocket and broke away the crushed part. She lit it again and drew three times then went through the extinguishing routine once again. “The fourth phase is where we get the work done. You’re going to come to understand what’s happened. The defenses—whether it’s anger or denial or rationalization—will crumble and you’ll confront it.”
    “I never did understand that word. Confront . Like deal with . Those aren’t words that mean a lot to me.”
    “You’re not there yet so you can’t expect them to. You’ll be in heavy-duty physical therapy throughout this phase. Finally . . . You’re looking skeptical again. Are you listening? The final phase is the coping phase. In effect, you accept what’s happened and you reorganize your life around the way you are.”
    Buffett laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be able to play the violin after the operation.”
    Weiser’s smile faded and she leaned forward. For an instant he was wholly unnerved by the eye contact but was compelled to return her gaze. He felt electricitybetween them. His scalp bristled and his heart suddenly pounded like a snare drum.
    He felt a twitch of pain. Well, phantom pain. When he spoke, it was not his own voice that he heard but one that was lower and more mature and calmer. “Doctor, I don’t want you to think I’ve got a swollen head or anything but I’m a survivor. I don’t lose. At anything. Ever. Getting into the police academy, getting onto the varsity basketball team, yeah, even at five ten. Everything I’ve ever set my mind to do, I’ve done. Well, what happened to me is crap, sure. But I’m alive. I got friends. I got family.” His right hand curled into a fist. “And I’m going to get through this.”
    Weiser sat back, her pine green eyes neither cautious nor inspirational, but immensely pleased. It seemed as if by delivering his monolog he’d passed a test of some sort. “It’s going to be a real pleasure working with you, Donnie.”
    They shook hands and made an appointment for their next session.
    When the door closed, Donnie Buffett exhaled slowly and said a short, silent prayer of thanks. If Weiser had turned inches to the right she would’ve seen the hypodermic syringe that a harried orderly had accidentally left on the bedside table just before the doctor entered the room—the syringe that had been virtually the only thing in Buffett’s thoughts during the doctor’s entire visit. He gripped the head of the bed with his large hands and tightened his ample biceps. He moved up one inch. Sweat broke out. Another huge flex, another inch. He felt as if he were dragging the weight of ten men with him. He reached for the syringe.
    No, not yet. Six inches to go.
    He inhaled deeply and gripped the bed once more. Another inch, then another.
    He kept at it, two more inches, closer and closer. A half inch. He paused for a minute, wiping the slick sweat from his eyes and feeling his heart slam fiercely from the immense effort. Donnie Buffett figured this exertion was good. It was perfect. Because when he injected the air into his vein, the course of his racing blood would speed the bubble straight to his heart and jam it stopped like a swollen piston, sending his whole body to join his legs in a