Just outside the waiting room, on the sidewalk under the emergency room marquee, Phil stood near the electric doors, smoking a cigarette. He inhaled. The end of the cigarette flared red. He held the smoke in his lungs for a moment, exhaled, a stream of smoke curled in arabesques toward the ceiling.
People entered—bruised, limping, holding bloody towels to face or arm—tentatively, blinking, from the healthy world outside.
Phil, squinting in his cigarette smoke, judged everyone passing: condemning the injured or sick for not being healthy, disdainful of the worried companions, helping the infirm. Wondering if the burning in his chest was indigestion or his heart.
Through the glass doors, he watched Carol approach Friday, who sat on a Popsicle-orange molded plastic chair, staring into a cardboard cup of coffee.
Phil snapped his cigarette butt into the circular driveway and headed inside through the sliding doors.
“Why do you put up with it?” Carol was asking Friday.
“Why do you?” Friday asked.
“Aside from genes?” Carol shrugged. “I love him.”
“So do I,” Friday said.
“You can’t marry a madman,” Carol said. “Not in this state.”
Friday didn’t answer.
“What are you going to do?” Carol asked, “play Sam Spade with my brother for the rest of your life, Linda?”
“Linda,” Friday said. “I hate that name.”
“You prefer what Harry calls you? Friday.”
“When Harry’s calling me that. Yes.”
Bender came into the waiting room.
“The nurse told you?” he asked.
Friday nodded.
Phil joined Friday and Carol.
Bender said, “Harry’s got what we call partial complex seizure disorder. A limited delusion. He’s logical about everything—except who he is.”
Neither Carol nor Phil said anything.
Bender shook his head.
“With patients’ rights,” he said, “it’s hard to get a court-ordered commitment.”
“He attacked Cotton,” Phil said.
“In similar circumstances,” Bender said, “you, me … Maybe, we’d’ve done the same.”
No one said anything.
“We don’t really know the circumstances,” Bender explained. “The context.”
“We know what Cotton said,” Phil objected.
“Legally,” Bender said, “it’s a gray area.”
“My brother-in-law,” Phil said, “is a nut!”
“But,” Bender asked, “is he a dangerous nut?”
Bender shook hands with Carol and Phil. Nodded at Friday.
“Get him to commit himself,” Bender said. “Or you’ll have to learn to live with it.”