InSight

do whatever necessary to keep it. Then he needed to come to terms with the new Luke McCallister.

Chapter Six
    The Internal Compass Goes Awry

    T hat evening, Abby listened to the computer’s robotic voice of Luke McCallister begging forgiveness. For once, she was glad she couldn’t hear the inflections of someone’s words.
    “I know I have issues,” he wrote, “and that Mack Tollison’s evaluation was spot on, if I were being objective, which right now I’m finding difficult.”
    Another apologetic email followed. Then another. She didn’t answer any of them.
    Abby knew Luke was going through hell. Bad enough to lose your hearing to the job, but to lose the job because you couldn’t hear was a cruel irony.
    During her training dealing with disability—she gave in to the word—her instructor had posed this question: Which handicap is worse, being deaf or blind? She remembered the words of Helen Keller because at the time she didn’t agree.

    I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus – the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.

    Abby thought about those words for a long time after hearing them, and eventually agreed. Through a sign language interpreter, a former patient, deaf since birth, conveyed her total isolation from the hearing world, from music, from television before closed captions.
    Although the intellectually-gifted woman had been mainstreamed in school, children still teased her and called her dummy. She felt ostracized from both the hearing and the deaf worlds and attempted suicide in her adult life when the loneliness became so pervasive she couldn’t go on. Luke could communicate, but his situation still left him at a disadvantage concerning the work he loved.
    She weighed Luke’s situation for a few days, pondered his apologies, and found both difficult to consider objectively. When she did, she wrote him an email. No response. She didn’t want to ask anyone to text him, so she waited. Still nothing. Finally, she called Pete Valkonis.
    “Pete, I’ve been trying to reach Luke. Do you know where he is?”
    “Luke’s taking some personal time.” Pete hesitated. “He didn’t say where he was going, and I didn’t ask. I could text him if you want.”
    “No, that’s okay.”
    Pete changed the subject. “Have there been any more incidents?”
    “No, thankfully.”
    “I doubt there will be. Whoever spooked you accomplished what he set out to do. Call if you need me.”
    * * * * *
    A bby scanned the letter that waited for her when she got home from work. She listened to its contents. Someone had lodged a complaint against her to the Board of Examiners of the South Carolina Psychological Association.
    She called immediately. “Can’t you tell me who made the complaint?”
    “No, Dr. Gallant. All I can say is that someone filed an anonymous complaint that you have engaged in unethical conduct with a patient. You’ll be assigned an investigator who’ll communicate with you in the near future.”
    “You mean you don’t even know who filed the complaint?”
    “That’s all I can say. I assure you the investigation will be conducted in a fair and thorough manner.”
    She got off the phone and realized she hadn’t felt this low in years. Everything was happening at once: the ransacking of her home, the phone calls and computer messages, the complaint to the ethics committee…and Luke McCallister. She knew she’d acted properly, but that didn’t assuage the sickening rumbling in her stomach. What a mess.
    Abby called her attorney, Zeke Barnes, to establish her rights. “I’ll accompany you if it comes to a hearing,” he said, “but considering what you’re telling me, I doubt it will.”
    She called Don Weston and explained the situation. He’d been her counselor in school and had helped her through some bleak days. They’d developed a professional and personal relationship, and she felt he would advise her objectively. She assumed the unethical behavior charge concerned Luke and explained the situation to Weston.
    “I can’t discount the possibility of a future association with this man, Don, although at the moment it seems remote.”
    “Abby, I don’t see you’ve done anything inappropriate or unethical. Conversely,