Waiting for Wednesday

Frieda,
you, Reuben, him, all in the article. Is that just a coincidence?’
    ‘The man running the research project
is a psychologist called Hal Bradshaw. He works with the police and we were on the case
that nearly got me killed.’
    ‘And you didn’t get
on?’
    ‘We disagreed about various
aspects.’
    ‘Do you mind if I have a look at the
article?’
    Frieda pushed the newspaper across the
table. Sasha leaned over and peered at it, not reading it through but seeing it in
flashes. She took in the headline:
SILENT WITNESSES
    She saw a row of photographs. A picture of
Frieda that had been in another press report, a photograph of her taken in the street,
caught unawares. There was a picture of James Rundell, more youthful than when
she’d been involved with him, and a much older picture of Reuben. He looked like a
psychoanalyst in a French New Wave movie.
    She read the intro: ‘A disturbing new
report suggests that therapists are failing to protect the public from potential rapists
and murderers.’
    She moved her finger down the page,
searching for Frieda’s name.
When confronted with a patient showing
the classic signs of a murderous psychopath, Dr Frieda Klein offered no treatment
and made no attempt to report him to the authorities. When questioned about why she
had failed to report a psychopath to the police, Dr Klein responded that she had
‘had some concerns’ about the patient but that she ‘wouldn’tdiscuss them with anyone but him’. In fact, Dr Klein had
refused to treat the patient.
    Frieda Klein, a 38-year-old
brunette, hit the headlines earlier this year when she was involved in a shocking
incident in which two women were knifed to death and Klein herself was hospitalized.
An eighty-year-old woman, Mary Orton, was killed in a crazed attack by a
knife-wielding schizophrenic, Beth Kersey. Police accepted Klein’s explanation
that she killed Kersey in self-defence.
    The leader of the research project,
Dr Hal Bradshaw, commented: ‘While it is understandable to feel sympathy for
what Dr Klein has gone through …’
    ‘That’s nice of him,’ said
Sasha.
    ‘Of who?’ said Frieda.
    ‘Bloody Hal Bradshaw.’ She
turned back to the paper.
‘While it is understandable to
feel sympathy for what Dr Klein has gone through, I think there is a serious
question of whether she is a risk both to her patients and to the public at
large.’
    Dr Bradshaw spoke of the urgent
issues that his research has raised. ‘It brings me no pleasure to expose the
failings in the analytic community. We tested the responses of four psychoanalysts
and of those only one acted responsibly and called the authorities. The other three
failed in their responsibilities both as healers and as protectors of the
public.
    ‘When he talked to me, one of
the patients in the study, Seamus Dunne, is still angry about his experience:
“I was told that Dr Klein was a top expert, but when I gave her the story that
showed I was a psychopath, she didn’t react at all. She just asked irrelevant
questions about food and sleepingand things like that. She seemed
like her mind was on other things.’”
    Sasha threw down the paper. ‘I know
I’m supposed to say something comforting to you, but I literally don’t know
how you can bear this. You’ve become this object out in the world that people kick
around and throw things at and tell lies about. The idea of this guy coming to you and
saying he was in need and asking for your help and it was all a trick – don’t you
feel violated?’
    Frieda took a sip of her coffee.
‘Sasha, if it wasn’t you, I’d say it wasn’t a problem and that
it comes with the territory. And I’d say it was all quite interesting if it
wasn’t happening to me.’
    ‘But it is me, and it is happening to
you.’
    Frieda smiled at her friend. ‘You
know, sometimes I wish I wasn’t doing this job at all. I’d like to be a
potter, that’s what I’d like. I’d have a lump of clay on my wheel and
it wouldn’t matter what I was feeling or what anybody was feeling. At the end of
it, I’d have a pot. Or a cup. Or a bowl.’
    ‘If you were a potter,’ said
Sasha, ‘I’d be lost or worse. And you don’t want to be a potter
anyway.’
    ‘That’s nice of you to say, but
you would have got better on your own. People usually do, you know.’
    Frieda pulled the newspaper back to her side
of the table and glanced at it again.
    ‘Are you going to do anything about
it?’ Sasha asked.
    Frieda took a