He took a quick shower. Emerging from his room, he looked for Carol. Having recovered to an extent from the depressive depths of the previous day, he wanted some h1iman contact and a bit of sympathy. He hoped that Carol had not left for work without talking to him. He wanted to apologize for his lack of appreciation for her efforts the night before. It was a good thing, he now realized, that she’d interrupted him, and that she’d gotten him irritated. Unknowingly she’d saved him from committing suicide. For the first time in his life, getting angry had had a positive effect.
But Carol was long gone. A note was leaning against a shredded wheat box on the kitchen table. It said that she’d not wanted to disturb him since she was sure he needed rest. She had to get to work early. She hoped he’d understand.
Jeffrey filled a bowl with cereal and got the milk from the refrigerator.
He envied Carol her job. He wished he had a job to go to. It would keep his mind occupied if nothing else. He would have liked to have made himself useful. It might have helped his self-esteem. He’d never realized quite how much his work defined his persona.
Back in his room, Jeffrey disposed of the IV paraphernalia by wrapping it in old newspapers and carrying it out to the trash barrels in the garage.
He didn’t want Carol to find it. He felt strange handling the material. It gave him a tremendous uneasiness to have been knowingly and voluntarily so close to death.
The idea of suicide had occurred to Jeffrey in the past, but always in a metaphorical context, and usually more as a retribution fantasy to get back at someone who he believed had wronged him in some emotional way, like when his girlfriend in the eighth grade had capriciously switched her affections to Jeffrey’s best friend. But last night it had been different, and to think that he’d come within a hair’s breadth of doing it made his legs feel weak.
Returning to the house, Jeffrey considered what effects his suicide would have had on his friends and family. It probably would have come as a relief to Carol. She wouldn’t have had to go through with the divorce. He wondered if anyone would have missed him. Probably not…
“For Pete’s sake,” Jeffrey exclaimed, realizing the ridiculousness of this line of thought and remembering his vow to resist depressive thoughts.
Would his thinking thrive on his low selfesteem for the rest of his days?
But the subject of suicide was hard to shake from his mind. He wondered again about Chris Everson. Had his suicide been the product of an acute depression that had struck like a sudden storm, like Jeffrey had felt the night before? Or had he planned it for some time? Either way, his death was a terrible loss for everyone-his family, the public, even the profession of medicine.
Jeffrey stopped en route to his room and stared out the livingroom window with unseeing eyes. His situation was no less a waste. From the point of view of his productivity, the loss of his medical license and his going to prison was no less a waste than if he’d succeeded in committing suicide.
“Damn!” he shouted as he grabbed one of the pillows from the couch and punched it repeatedly with his fist. “Damn, damn, damn!”
Jeffrey quickly wore himself out and replaced the pillow. Then he sat himself down dejectedly with his knees jutting up in front of him. He interwound his fingers and rested his elbows on his knees and tried to think of himself in prison. It was a horrid thought. What a travesty of justice! The malpractice stuff had been more than enough to seriously disrupt and alter his life, but this criminal nonsense was a quantum leap worse, like throwing salt into a mortal wound.
Jeffrey thought about his colleagues at the hospital and other physician friends. They had all been supportive at first, at least until the criminal indictment had been handed down. Then they had avoided Jeffrey as if he’d had some kind of infectious dis-