Runaway

depressions are clearing up, whether the pills are working, and how their moods are affected by the visits they have had from their relatives or their partners. She has worked on this floor for years, ever since the practice of keeping psychiatric patients close to home was introduced back in the seventies, and she knows many of the people who keep coming back. She took some extra courses to qualify herself for treating psychiatric cases, but it’s something she had a feeling for anyway. Sometime after she came back from Stratford, not having seen
As You Like It,
she had begun to be drawn to this work. Something—though not what she was expecting—
had
changed her life.
    She saves Mr. Wray till the last, because he generally wants the most time. She isn’t always able to give him as much as he would like—it depends on the problems of the others. Today the rest of them are generally on the mend, thanks to their pills, and all they do is apologize about the fuss they have caused. But Mr. Wray, who believes that his contributions to the discovery of DNA have never been rewarded or acknowledged, is on the rampage about a letter to James Watson. Jim, he calls him.
    “That letter I sent Jim,” he says. “I know enough not to send a letter like that and not keep a copy. But yesterday I went looking through my files and guess what? You tell me what.”
    “You better tell me,” says Robin.
    “Not there. Not there. Stolen.”
    “It could be misplaced. I’ll have a look around.”
    “I’m not surprised. I should have given up long ago. I’m fighting the Big Boys and who ever wins when you fight Them? Tell me the truth. Tell me. Should I give up?”
    “You have to decide. Only you.”
    He begins to recite to her, once more, the particulars of his misfortune. He has not been a scientist, he has worked as a surveyor, but he must have followed scientific progress all his life. The information he has given her, and even the drawings he has managed with a dull pencil, are no doubt correct. Only the story of his being cheated is clumsy and predictable, and probably owes a lot to the movies or television.
    But she always loves the part of the story where he describes how the spiral unzips and the two strands float apart. He shows her how, with such grace, such appreciative hands. Each strand setting out on its appointed journey to double itself according to its own instructions.
    He loves that too, he marvels at it, with tears in his eyes. She always thanks him for his explanation, and wishes that he could stop there, but of course he can’t.
    Nevertheless, she believes he’s getting better. When he begins to root around in the byways of the injustice, to concentrate on something like the stolen letter, it means he’s probably getting better.
    With a little encouragement, a little shift in his attention, he could perhaps fall in love with her. This has happened with a couple of patients, before now. Both were married. But that did not keep her from sleeping with them, after they were discharged. By that time, however, feelings were altered. The men felt gratitude, she felt goodwill, both of them felt some sort of misplaced nostalgia.
    Not that she regrets it. There’s very little now that she regrets. Certainly not her sexual life, which has been sporadic and secret but, on the whole, comforting. The effort she put into keeping it secret was perhaps hardly necessary, seeing how people had made up their minds about her—the people she knew now had done that just as thoroughly and mistakenly as the people she knew long ago.
    Coral hands her a printout.
    “Not much,” she says.
    Robin thanks her and folds it and takes it to the closet, to put it into her purse. She wants to be alone when she reads it. But she can’t wait till she gets home. She goes down to the Quiet Room, which used to be the Prayer Room. Nobody was in there being quiet at the moment.
    Adzic, Alexander. Born July 3, 1924, Bjelojevici, Yugoslavia. Emigrated Canada, May 29, 1962, care of brother Danilo Adzic, born Bjelojevici, July 3, 1924, Canadian citizen.
    Alexander Adzic lived with his brother Danilo until the latter’s death Sept 7, 1995. He was admitted to Perth County Long Term Care Facility Sept 25, 1995, and has been a patient there since that date.
    Alexander Adzic apparently has been deaf-mute since birth or from illness shortly after. No Special Education Facilities available as a child. I.Q. never determined but he was trained to