Tail Spin

yell his head off.
    Dr. Shockley straightened. “Well, you’re good to go, Dr. MacLean, despite the excitement.”
    Sherlock introduced herself, waited for him to leave the room, which he did, with one last very long look at MacLean.
    Before he could spit at her, Sherlock intoned just like she would to Astro, “Bad dog, Dr. MacLean, very bad dog.”
    “Bad dog?” MacLean said slowly, “Bad dog? That’s pretty funny, Agent Sherlock, but that’s exactly my point. I’m not your damned dog. It’s none of the FBI’s business if I want to talk to a reporter. It’s just talk, a bit of conversation with another sentient human being— wait, he’s a reporter, but at least I was sentient.”
    “Hey, that was pretty funny, too. Are you done?” When he would have continued, Sherlock raised her hand. “I understand, Timothy, I really do. But you’ve got to believe me now. It was wrong—you broke patient confidentiality, and to a reporter. Try to think clearly about this for a moment. This is exactly why someone is trying to kill you. Do you understand that your speaking to Jumbo Hardy was inappropriate?”
    MacLean shrugged. He looked petulant.
    A different tack then. Sherlock punched him in the arm. “I hear your wife was pretty upset about what happened last night. She didn’t want to leave you alone.”
    “Yeah, right. Oh, that stupid Molly, she’s always hovering, always checking my pulse, my eyeballs, my goddamned feet. She says my toenails need trimming. I didn’t do anything to deserve it—well, hardly anything, at least in cosmic terms.”
    “You told her to go find a lover because you found her disgusting.”
    He shrugged. “Well, fact is, she smelled funny.”
    Down the rabbit hole, Sherlock thought. “She loves you.”
    He was silent for a very long time. Then, “No, she doesn’t.”
    “What do you mean?”
    MacLean leaned his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes. “When she found out what finally happens to people with this disease, she nearly left me.
    “Everyone thinks she’s a bloody saint for sticking so close to me, but I know the truth. I know she’s siphoning off all the money she can out of our joint accounts. I know she’s got a lover, you see. Only thing is, she can’t very well leave me in this sucky condition, now can she?” He paused, shrugged. “It isn’t Pierre or Dolores behind this. No, Molly’s the one who’s trying to kill me.”
    Whoa.
    “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard out of you, Tim, and you know it and even the good Lord knows I’ve heard more than my share from you over the past twenty-seven years!”
    Molly MacLean stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, her face nearly scarlet with rage.
    “Mrs. MacLean,” Sherlock said, smiling at her, “would you please come with me for a moment?”
    “If I stay in the same room with this ... individual, I just might kill him,” Molly said, and waved her fist at her husband. “Lead on, Agent Sherlock. Save this idiot’s miserable lying hide by removing me.”
    Savich found Sherlock and Molly in the nurses’ lounge, Molly in tears. He paused in the doorway. Sherlock raised her eyes. “Hi, Dillon. I think we’ve got things in some perspective. Do we, Mrs. MacLean?”
    Molly knuckled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve got it together again. It’s so easy to forget he doesn’t realize what he’s saying, doesn’t begin to comprehend how his words twist and turn the knife. He doesn’t even know there is a knife. And when I heard him talking about me to you like that—I’m sorry. Oh God, he’s so sick, so unlike himself. Sometimes I can’t stand it.” Molly lowered her face in her hands and wept.
    Sherlock lifted her to her feet and held her in her arms, murmuring nonsense to her, really, but kept it low and soothing.
    Molly pulled back, sniffed, and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I lost it like that. I’ve got your blouse all wet. I’m a miserable human being for losing it when I know—I understand—he can’t help it.”
    “You’re doing remarkably well under the circumstances, Mrs. MacLean,” Savich said, and he meant it.
    Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean was wound up today, probably as a result of last night. He called a reporter and he verbally attacked you, probably because Dillon and I ruined his fun. We’re so sorry.” And Sherlock hugged Molly. “You’re hanging in there as best you can.”
    She sighed and walked away from them to the window. She hugged