That evening, on my drive home, I obsessed over my new habit of confronting fellow schizophrenics. Again, I tried telling myself it was all merely coincidence. But I couldn’t help considering whether I’d slipped free of my sanity altogether, whether in fact I’d been committed to some mental institution some time ago, my plight, my world, nothing but unbroken delirium, a waking dream. It wasn’t until I arrived home and kissed Sarah and swept Ellie up into my arms and felt Duke’s jealous paw scratching my crotch that I was cured of such morbid thinking.

The next morning, I phoned a staff physician at the District of Columbia’s Maximum-Security Psychiatric Unit, who informed me that Sally Anne Bilchik was in no condition to receive visitors, and wouldn’t be for another day or two.

By early afternoon I was in Charlottesville, my hometown. Normally, I would fly out there twice a month to visit my mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. The city is also where my psychiatrist was located. An out-of-town shrink was an added—yes, paranoid—precaution for keeping my illness a secret.

“Got a little broth in my beard,” Doctor Shields said to me faster than most people could think it. The man’s words always went off like a string of Chinese firecrackers. “Just had soup at my desk for lunch, Campbell’s chicken vegetable, have a seat, I’ll be right back, you look good, have a mint.”

I knew that nerdism wasn’t a clinical term for the doctor’s own condition. I wondered what was—and whether Shields knew he suffered from it—as I sank into one end of an over-stuffed sofa, beside his rocking chair.

The office didn’t fit the man. It was all potted plants and flowers in vases and embroidered artwork. Ceramic animals sat on the window sills. I smelled potpourri. The doc, I’d decided, had read in some scholarly journal that such an environment put people at ease. Maybe it did, but it also made me miss my grandma, made me hungry for milk and cookies.

“Now,” he said, returning, wiping his chin with a paper towel, taking his seat. “What’s the emergency? Why is it I had to see you right away? Something about a naked stewardess?”

“They’re called, ‘flight attendants’ now.”

“Oh, yes, quite right.” He put his rocking chair in motion. He rocked as fast as he talked.

I began telling him about the plane flight from Austin, moment by moment. Doctor Shields listened intently and with a steady curtain fire of nods. He was dressed in a tan linen suit. His scrawny neck looked as thin as a well-sucked candy cane. I kept wishing the doctor would stop tapping his teeth with his fingernail.

“Unusual,” he said when I was through. “Highly unusual.” Tap, tap, tap. “That episode should’ve been preceded by milder symptoms—yes, yes, yes—especially given your personal history with schizophrenia. Tell me, are you hearing any voices?”

“I hear yours. And mine.”

“No strange or unidentified voices inside your head?”

“No.”

“No voices coming from unusual places? Your toaster, for example? Your microwave oven?”

“No, in fact, all my household appliances have been mum.”

“Besides the naked stewardess, ur, flight attendant, has anything else fantastic happened to you recently? Meet a ghost? Uncover a plot to assassinate the president?”

I flashed back to the boardwalk outside my office, only one day before. No ghosts, I told myself, just some farmer.

“You’re hesitating,” Dr. Shields said.

“Just thinking. Something else fantastic? Well, last week, my scratch and play card at McDonalds won me a free soda.”

Doctor Shields reared his head back and laughed. “Argh, argh, argh, argh, argh.” With the slightest spark of mirth, the doctor’s top front teeth would jut out and quiver, like a beaver’s. Yet he’d turn serious in a flash. “So what you’re telling me is it’s just this naked flight attendant?”

“That’s right.” It was the only thing I felt certain had been truly out-of-this-world.

With a quick nod, he said, “First thing we’ll do is take a CAT-scan of your brain—yes, yes—hoping to rule out all the organic brain syndromes which might cause visual hallucinations.”

“Yes, let’s,” I said, my pulse spiking at a fresh worry.

“And we’ll up your daily Risperdal dosage by two milligrams.”

“I’ll need a new prescription. The pills I have now—”

“Are five milligrams each, I know.” Tap, tap, tap on the teeth. “Argus, I want you to go back into psychotherapy, as a precaution, I have someone in mind for you.”

I started shaking my head before the doctor finished. “I don’t have time for that. I never got a lot out of it, anyway.”

“No time, no time, no time. Hmm, hmm, hmm.” The doctor’s hands and fingers formed a church steeple that he soon lodged under his chin. “We haven’t discussed your workload in quite awhile. How’s business?”

“Booming,” I said.

“Longer hours than usual?”

“I’m not stressed out, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“How many hours a week?”

“I never count.”

“Try.”

“Okay, let’s see . . . twelve hours a day times five days a week is what, sixty? Plus another four hours or so on Saturdays, let’s say, on average. So the answer’s sixty-four, I guess.”

Doctor Shields stopped rocking. “Listen to me carefully, Argus. On the one hand, I’m damn proud of you. To say that you’re a high functioning paranoid schizophrenic would almost be an understatement. You haven’t suffered a major relapse in two decades, and—”

“Twenty-two years.”

“Yes, yes, precisely so, and in the meantime, you’ve built a successful career, and a lasting marriage—finally, on your third try—and started your own family, but on the other hand, I’m very worried about you, very worried. I’m sure you’re aware—I’m sure you are—that there’s something in the nature of schizophrenia that makes it easy for those who suffer from it to periodically deny they have the disease.”

“So I’ve heard, but—”

“Yes, yes, many schizophrenics come to believe they’re cured, or believe they never really had a problem to begin with, and they go off their medication.”

“But I’ve never gone off mine, Doctor, not ever.”

“True, I suppose, but in your case, there appears to be a related type of denial in play, you seem to think that by taking your meds each morning you become a normal person for the day’s remainder. The truth is, Argus, that stress is particularly dangerous to a paranoid schizophrenic—Oh, yes, yes, yes!—and whether you take your pills or not, stress can lead to a relapse. So I would take this airplane incident as a warning signal—Yes, indeed!—a warning that you’re taking on far too much, grinding too hard, you’ve got to cut back, cut back, ease up, ease up.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“You’ll do it.” Doctor Shields began rocking again. “And you’ll make time for psychotherapy to boot, I’ve an excellent clinical psychologist in mind for you, her name is Miranda Meade and she’s located in DC, so that’ll be convenient—”

“I can’t right now.”

Again, Doctor Shields put a halt to his rocking. He rubbed the bridge of his long nose with a thumb and forefinger, as if to relieve pain. “Can’t,” he repeated.

“I just can’t. I’ve got too much on my plate. Maybe in another three or four months.”

“Need I remind you that what you build in this life, personally or professionally, is in the end little more than a house of cards? It can all come crashing down on a moment’s notice. You can do everything right—cut back on work, take your pills, do your psychotherapy—and still it can all come crashing down. And it wouldn’t be all that unusual—even after all this time, after all the success you’ve enjoyed these past twenty odd years—for the disease to grow stronger than you and me put together, Argus, you and me put together.”

On the plane ride back to DC, I decided that my Doctor Shields had that God complex so many doctors have, physicians of every stripe. That’s why, I told myself, he hadn’t listened to me when I’d insisted that my work was not a problem. How could it be when I love my work? Sometimes the patient knows best, after all. Don’t they teach that in medical school?

My plane was a fifteen-seater, one of those tiny twin engines that are closer kin to birds than to commercial jets. The ride was bumpy, but at least the flight attendant kept her clothes on.

I recognized my seatmate, who I knew only as a fellow frequent passenger between Charlottesville and Washington. He was about fifty, his salt and pepper hair still heavy on the pepper, and quite hawk-nosed—at least if some hawks drink enough alcohol to forge rivers of red capillaries on their beaks. He always dressed in a business suit, often pin-striped, as on this particular day. He preferred sports chit-chat, or else no chit-chat, depending on his mood, and he often smelled of cigars.

“We see each other all the time,” I said to him. “What is your name, anyway?”

The man gave me a startled look. “Ned,” he said with reluctance. “Ned Pelletier. Yours?”

“Argus Ward.”

“Indeed.” Ned returned to his newspaper. “Reading about the Orioles. Pathetic, aren’t they?”

“Indeed,” I said.

The sky was turning purple, the plane skimming atop dark clouds. I shut my eyes and damned Doctor Shields all to hell.

Cutting back my work schedule seemed unthinkable at the time. You see, I suffered under the delusion—common among non-paranoids too—that my every contribution was indispensable, that I was irreplaceable.

When the plane had begun its descent, I turned my cell phone back on. I was expecting a call, not from anyone in particular, but simply because my phone was always ringing. After a most unsettling visit with Doctor Shields, Argus Ward was more than ready to lose himself in the familiar problems of Argus Ward, Incorporated. I picked up on the phone’s first ring.

“You’ve got Argus,” I said. But there was only silence on the other end of the line. “Hello? Anybody there?”

“Argus,” said a man’s voice, an old man’s. “Argus, this is your . . . this is your father.”

“Who?”

“Your father. It’s good to hear your voice, son.”

I couldn’t speak. But I could see that farmer on the boardwalk again. I tried to recall ancient memories of my father’s voice. Yet couldn’t.

“Is this a joke?” I said at last.

“No, son, this is no joke. You have to be warned.”

“Warned? About what?”

“John Helms plans to kill you. So kill him first.”

“This is a joke,” I said. “And not a very good one. Who is this? Danny? Chris? Nate? I give up, who?”

“Listen to me, son,” said the caller. My father? “Kill John Helms.” Then he hung up.

“ ‘Kill John Helms,’ ” I repeated stupidly.

Beside me, the man I now knew as Ned Pelletier gave me another startled look.

Next Chapter: Chapter Eight