slippers, Michael felt terrible. However, she acted, as if she had not noticed it. «Pour me some. Quite a bit, a third. Do you have any ice? Sorry, I don’t drink it, you know.»
Without thinking, Woodruff poured the whiskey. He was completely at a loss, and his brain refused to think. In complete silence, she drank a third of the glass and asked for more. To his words about the car, Carol waved her hand and said that she would take a taxi and pick up her car tomorrow. Instead of drinking the second glass, she leaned back again and immediately fell asleep. All this was very weird, and Michael had a thought that such a reaction could have been caused by antidepressants, which she took on his prescription. If so, then everything was clear, but now he had to urgently solve another problem – his visitor. For five years he had kept an eye on this strange patient and his hallucinations. Obvious personality disorder based on the complete denial of one’s gender was not uncommon. However, his inability to pay for surgery and the constant use of hormonal drugs only aggravated the situation and he already had a complex type of nervous disorder that led him to the stage of transition to pathology: tantrums, a sharp change of mood, hallucinations, memory loss, paranoia, feeling ashamed of his appearance and much more.
Patience and Woodruff’s sincere interest yielded very positive results. Moreover, after so many years of communication and a positive trend, all those results could be combined into scientific work, although, on the other hand, this has led to unexpected closeness and informal relations between them, which have recently become a burden on Woodruff. The desire to become famous in the scientific community haunted his vanity, and the treatment method, based on a combination of drugs and telling stories about other patients seemed to be unique. Stories about difficult cases of curing psychiatric pathologies, especially in couples, such as, for example, Carol Lindstone and her husband, put his young patient, who had suffered a serious psychic trauma in his youth and decided to change his gender and become a man due to this, completely at ease. Suggestion, infusion and persuasion gave a good result, while the pharmacological effect of antidepressants and other drugs was weak. Discussing the treatment of other patients was best of all. As a psychiatrist, Michael Woodruff sincerely believed that in the head of his ward, his past emotional experience and suffering was overlapped and superimposed on the scripts of other patients, which in a certain way corrected the fears and phobias that periodically haunted him in current life. However, now the materials have accumulated more than enough. It only remained to process them and make a speech at the annual conference, which Professor Sardston from the local university advised to do. The proposal was made for a reason. The professor also shared Woodruff’s views on the free relationship between the sexes, and this could become the basis for something more than just the private practice of a psychotherapist Woodruff was running. In this regard, intimacy with a mentally recovering transgender began to constrain Woodruff and interfere with the implementation of his plans.
He slowly entered the room and wearily put the whiskey on the dresser. His visitor was already waiting for him. A female wig made of real hair was probably worth a fortune. Half an hour ago, it caused him an extreme degree of excitement, and now seemed like an absurd masquerade. Strange, but only now it occurred to him that for all this time their intimate relationship has been one-sided and after psychotherapeutic sessions with discussion of critical patients, his partner always acted as the main one and always used an imitator, without bringing the matter to direct contact. Woodruff always was driven as a slave. Maybe his partner had HIV? Weird… No, the tests said otherwise. In addition to increased hormonal levels, there was nothing to worry about – just perverse imagination.
He caught himself comparing his visitor to the strikers from Lookouts nightclub. Clearly Michael had to break with this past once and for all. Yes, everything has changed and it was time to end this. In the semi-darkness he could see only a shadow on the bed with no face.
«You are simply the best!» I adore you! Thanks for the whiskey, but I changed my mind. Give me some water. What’s up with her? Is she sleeping?» a familiar voice wondered.
Michael told him sparingly about Carol’s strange behavior after taking the sleeping pills. Then he looked down and sighed. Now he had to overpower himself and say the most important thing.
«Listen, we need to talk. I’m going to start another practice and collaborate with a university. So I’ll have to devote more time to work. I would like to stop our relationship for a while. Do you mind?»
His words, oddly enough, did not cause his partner to react violently. The young man took off his wig, put it in his backpack, and nodded his head.
«Okay. If that’s what you want.»
«Will you call a taxi? Michael asked hopefully. The answer was quite predictable:
«Balls! If you’re doing this to me, then at least take me home! This will be your last gift. Maybe you can tell me something else and then you can return to this «sleeping beauty’ of yours!» In another situation, Woodruff would have found a way out and would never have left Carol alone, but now everything was different. Perhaps the young patient was jealous of him and Carol, maybe something else, but he clearly needed to be reassured. Woodruff had to make sure that his visitor would not do anything wrong on the way home, so Michael agreed. This was the last favor before starting a new life and the next day he could be free to start preparing for the scientific conference of state psychiatrists.
«Well, get dressed. I’m going to the garage,» he nodded.
«Okay, I’ll be right there.»
When the door closed, the young man got out of bed and poured whiskey into a lonely standing glass goblet. Then he took out a napkin and quickly wiped the bottle. After thinking a little, he quickly did the same with all the places on the bed, the doorknob and the nightstand. He pulled off a sheet and a bedspread, a pillowcase from a pillow and a small towel, putting it all in his voluminous backpack. The next place was Woodruff’s office and the laptop on the table with the lid open. After a moment, it, too, was in the backpack along with the battery charger. Next was the living room. It was necessary to act quickly as he wouldn’t get a second chance. He was definitely lucky that day. Going to the sofa, he wanted to get a box with a medical kit from his backpack, but suddenly stopped. Something in the still pose of the woman sleeping on the couch was unusual. His fingers carefully touched her neck over her collarbone – there was no pulse. Nor was there on her hand. There was a cosmetic mirror in his backpack. Bringing it to Carol’s nose, he counted to ten. However, the surface remained smooth and not foggy. The guess was confirmed – there was no breath and her heart did not beat. There was the last way – his phone. Finding «Rantastic» cardiograph icon on the screen, he took her pale, thin finger with a napkin and put it on the back camera. The first and second attempts showed zero result. After the third time, there was no doubt she had no pulse. Wiping Carol’s wrist and neck with a napkin, he pulled her smartphone out of her bag. Gently holding her index finger with a napkin, he pressed it to the scanner. The screen did not want to unlock. His hands were trembling, but then it worked out for the sixth time. Now the last thing he had to do was to type 911 on the numeric keypad, and he could go.
Michael Woodruff was about to return to the house, when the back door opened and his secret visitor fell with a sigh of relief into the back seat.
«Sorry,» the face of a strained apology reflected in the rearview mirror. «I did not touch your creams and manicure sets, don’t worry. Here, my hands don’t smell. Go! I’ll be looking at you from behind like in a taxi.
«Where are we going?»
«Go to the port, and from there to Green Street.»
The conversation along the way did not go
