Been In Love Before: A Novel Read online

  Chapter Ten

  Monday morning Ryan Macgregor arrived early at his office, hoping to speak with his partner, Doctor Mary Gladings. He noticed that her car was not in her assigned parking spot as he guided his SUV into the space next to hers, marked “Dr. Macgregor.” She had asked him to cover for her while she was on an extended cruise with her husband and family, just in case any of her patients needed to speak with someone in an emergency. He himself usually did limited talk therapy but was going to be lecturing at a convention about the benefits of mixed therapy and medications. Talking to patients would be good practice for him.

  He waited in the car for a few minutes, hoping to see her, but then remembered that she was leaving that day and would not be in the office for at least a week. He would talk to her when she returned. Maybe he would take some time off when she was back in the office. It had been years since he had had any vacation. Or maybe next year, he thought.

  He entered through the private rear door to his office and set his briefcase next to his desk as he perused his calendar of patients. Busy day, he thought. A patient just about every forty-five minutes, then an hour for lunch at one o’clock and then busy again until three p.m. He took a deep breath and flipped the switch. A green light went on in the waiting room to alert June, his longtime assistant, that he was in his office and ready to see patients. A few minutes later she knocked on his door and nudged it open, holding a mug of coffee in one hand and two chocolate chip cookies on a plate in the other.

  “Good morning, June. How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to bring me coffee . . .” He looked at the homemade cookies and finished by saying, “But I do appreciate you bringing me these homemade cookies. Thank you.”

  “Happy to oblige, Dr. Macgregor.” She laid a napkin on his desk and set the plate of delicious morsels on top, next to his steaming cup of coffee. “There you go. Let me know when you’re ready for your first patient. They are already outside waiting.” She walked to the door and paused before turning. “And Dr. Macgregor, I added a patient at ten a.m., one of Dr. Gladings’s. His file is on your desk. You said it was okay if one of hers called in and had to see someone. I hope you don’t mind?”

  He looked up from his newspaper and cookies and said, “It’s all right. Who is it?”

  She hesitated before she said, “Jeffrey Long. He was very insistent. I’m sorry. Did I do something wrong?”

  He started to say something but thought better of it. She had only been following his instructions. “No, it’s fine, June, really.”

  Ryan was not ready for someone like him today; he had seen him once before when Mary was out of town for a wedding and had ordered a special blood test done on him. He constantly babbled about such nonsense going on in his life. During his last visit, Long had spoken incessantly about his refrigerator’s needing a replacement part and how the manufacturer did not make the part anymore since his refrigerator was nearly fifteen years old. He talked in a monotone, on and on. But that’s what Ryan was there for, to listen to people drone on and on and . . .

  The door opened, and in walked his first patient. His day was about to begin.

  The morning seemed to crawl by as he thought about Mary Kate’s wedding preparations, the endless stream of invoices, the continual details, the dresses, the bridesmaids’ phone calls referred to him, the number of contractors and consultants they both had to deal with. “I thought that’s why we hired a wedding planner,” he once told his daughter, to her inevitable response: “Oh, Daddy.”

  He had finished his notes on his first two appointments when June buzzed him. “Dr. Macgregor, Mr. Long is here to see you.”

  “Give me just a minute, please, and then you can send him in.” He wanted to review his file again before seeing him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He opened the file and saw that the results of the blood test had ruled out other conditions and confirmed his suspicions: the diagnosis was dysthymia, resulting in mild to sometimes severe depression. Strange, there was no note of any medication for it. He read the file and finally saw a note at the bottom of the last page: “Patient refuses to take any and all medications.” That explains it.

  He buzzed her a few minutes later, saying, “Okay, June, you can send him in.”

  “Good morning, Doc. Thanks for squeezing me in today,” Jeffrey Long said. He took his place on the sofa and rearranged the pillows to his liking. He next stood and closed the blinds half an inch; he said the light bothered his eyes. He looked as if he had not slept, bathed, or changed his clothes in ages. He was wearing a soiled tan T-shirt and rumpled trousers. He managed a weak smile and said as he sat down. “Mornin’, Doc.”

  “Morning, Jeffrey. How’ve you been?” Ryan asked, as he sat in his usual chair behind him.

  “Good. I finally bought a new refrigerator. I was afraid that my last one would give out and leave me stranded without a . . .” He continued.

  Why won’t he take any medication? Especially since it has been shown in studies to help others like him? His mind drifted. Ryan began to doodle on his notepad. Mary Kate’s tenth birthday party. Cake was in the fridge. Everybody was there, except for Mum and Da. I miss them. Why are we having so many people at the rehearsal dinner? You rehearse, you eat, and . . .

  “The refrigerator was first to go, then the microwave. Everybody says things start to go bad after ten years. Next it’ll be the goddamn . . .” He heard Jeffrey mumble in the distance.

  If only Gracie were here. She would know what to do. She always knew what to do. What would she think of Mary Katherine’s future husband? She would embrace him and tell me to do the same. Right. I guess he’s all right, but everything about the wedding is just so rushed. What’s the rush? These young folks, sometimes I just don’t know how . . .

  “. . . then my wife got so mad . . . that was just before she died . . . she asked me to . . . I needed someone to talk to . . . the pain . . .” Jeffrey’s voice went in and out of Ryan’s consciousness, but one word stuck in Ryan’s subconscious vocabulary: died. It was a painful word for him.

  Ryan looked up to observe Jeff still lying on the sofa, almost serene, with his arms folded on his chest. He shifted in his seat and wrote Gracie’s name everywhere on the notepad, surrounded by a heart and with his name penciled underneath. It was only then he heard something strange . . . silence. Jeff had stopped talking. Then Ryan heard a loud metallic click. When he looked up from his notepad and turned his attention to his patient, he was staring down the barrel of a gun, a very large black gun—pointed directly at him.

  “Do I have your attention now, Doc? Huh? What do you say?”

  “Yes . . . ,” he managed to stammer, his eyes never leaving the black hole of the gun barrel facing him and following his every move. “Yes, you do. You have my full attention.”

  “Good. Now why don’t you put down your notepad and sit over here where I can keep my eyes on you,” Jeff said, motioning him with the gun to a chair at the foot of the sofa. “Then we can talk more comfy-like. Okay?”

  “Sure, Jeff, but you don’t need a gun. Why don’t you put it on the table, and then we can talk as long as you want. Okay?”

  “No . . . I kinda like holding it. I like the power it has over people. Gets their attention. Come on now, move over here,” he said again, pointing to the large brown leather chair.

  Ryan stood and found that his knees nearly crumpled beneath him as he made his way slowly to his desk and reached for the phone.

  “Over here, Doc!” Jeff shouted, insistently pointing at the chair.

  “I was going to tell my assistant to clear my calendar for this morning so we can talk as long as you want. This way we won’t be disturbed. Okay?”

  “Okay, but use the intercom so I can hear her as well, and don’t try any funny business.”

  His hand was shaking as his finger went toward the intercom button. Then he saw the gun pointed at him, and it sent a shiver down his spine.

  “Easy now, Doc
. Real easy,” Jeff whispered behind him.

  Chapter Eleven

  “June?” Dr. Macgregor said through the intercom.

  A few moments later, her voice came over the speaker, “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m going to need a little bit longer with Mr. Long this morning than I originally anticipated.” He looked over and smiled at Jeff, who sat back on the sofa and seemed to relax, as he uncocked the gun and returned the hammer to its resting position. “So I want you to cancel all my morning appointments, please. All of them.”

  “Cancel? Did you say cancel, Dr. Macgregor?”

  “Yes. Cancel. Thank you, June. Oh, and reschedule Billy for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Uhhh . . . okay.”

  “That’ll be all. Thanks, June.” He stood, his legs now able to fully support him as he walked to the chair at the foot of the sofa and sat down.

  “Good job, Doc,” Jeff said as he leaned back on the sofa with the handgun resting on his stomach. “Now where was I?” He stopped, his eyes narrowed as if watching prey. “Were you listening at all, Doc? Huh?”

  “Yes, I was, Jeff, but let’s go back to your wife. Tell me about her. And you can put the gun down. You have my full attention. It makes me nervous. You don’t need it.”

  Jeff looked at the gun before he started. “My Dottie? She was the best,” he began, and set the revolver on the chrome-and-glass table between them. It clattered loudly as it hit the glass. “She kept me sane and out of trouble. I never wanted to do anything crazy-like because of her.” He paused, nearly in tears. “All anybody wants to do is to give me drugs. They say it’s supposed to help, but it just gives me terrible nightmares, over and over . . . reliving the day she died.” He stopped talking for a moment.

  “And now—she’s gone. Gone from my life forever. I wake up every morning thinking of her. Damn!” he shouted. Ryan nodded in agreement, which only seemed to anger his already-agitated patient. “What the hell do you know? About loss? You got it all. Fancy clothes, nice office, I bet you got a new car—yeah, Doc, you got it all.” He picked up the gun from the table and began waving it around.

  Ryan’s hands began to shake as his gaze met the raging eyes of the broken man sitting before him. “No, I don’t. It may just look that way, Jeff, but without my Gracie, life is not worth living. I miss her terribly, but you tell yourself every day that you have to go on living.”

  “You lost your wife?” Jeff said, looking visibly shaken. “I didn’t know . . . really. Nobody ever told me that she died.”

  “Yeah, close to two years ago. She was riding her bike along the beach road, on A1A, and somebody hit her and kept going.” His voice drifted off. “She held on for a few hours at the hospital, but she had too many internal injuries to survive.”

  “Did they catch the guy? The guy who did it?” Jeff asked, leaning toward the doctor, the gun drooping in his hands, toward the floor.

  “Yeah, they thought so, but they couldn’t make it stick. His wife and best friend came through with an alibi for him. I would have done anything to save her.” He stopped for a moment, his voice cracking. “And I miss her so much that sometimes I wish it had been me that had died because without her I just don’t want to go on living if . . .”

  The sound of car doors slamming drew his attention to the window. Jeff was on his feet in an instant and peeked through the small wooden blinds covering the windows. Police.

  “You almost had me there, Doc,” he said in the voice of one betrayed, “but you had to send for the police, now didn’t you? Get on your knees! Kneel down! Now! Put your hands behind your head. Move!” he commanded, waving the gun in Ryan’s direction.

  The scared doctor knelt down as he was told, facing his desk, and soon felt the hardened steel of the pistol barrel against the back of his head. He heard the now-familiar sound of the hammer’s being cocked, the gun ready to fire. He knew he was going to die.

  “So you want to see your wife, is that it? You want to join her? Right? I can arrange that for you, Doc, if that’s what you really want. Is it? Is it, Doc? Huh?”

  He did not know what to say. He had always thought he wanted to join his Gracie, and now all he had to do was say yes, or nod his head, and he would be with her. As he always said to himself, she was only a breath away. But what about Mary Kate? Robert? Bobby? Eian? And . . .

  “No. No, I don’t want to die a needless death like she did.”

  Jeff pressed the gun barrel harder against the back of his head. “Why not, Doc? What you got to live for? Tell me, Doc; tell the world. What do you have to live for?”

  Ryan stopped to think before saying, “I want to see my daughter get married. I want to hold my grandkids in my arms, and I want to spoil them and see them walk down the aisle and get married too. I want to travel, to see the Acropolis in Athens, the pyramids in Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome, and the mountains of Scotland. I would love to see the green fields of . . .” He heard a noise behind him but kept going as if he was praying for his life, placing his hands together in front of him.

  He slumped over but kept talking, almost praying, hoping that something he would say could save his life. He thought back to growing up with his brothers, his mom and dad, family picnics . . . the best. Good times. It all flashed through his mind.

  “I want to see both of my brothers happy and help them leave their pain behind. I want them to both find somebody to love. And hell, maybe I want to love again, I want to find somebody to hold in my arms and . . .” The office door came crashing in, splintering, and soon his office was filled with uniformed police officers. They stood over him, watching as he still knelt on the old multicolored Moroccan prayer rug Grace had given him years ago. Finally one reached out a hand to help him stand up.

  “Did you get him?” he asked in a shaky voice before he noticed his office’s rear door was ajar.

  “He must have left through the rear exit there. But we’re still searching the building for him. Don’t worry, we’ll find him, he can’t be too far away,” said one of the younger officers as he leaned over and picked up a hand-scribbled message from the chair. “He left a note, Dr. Macgregor: ‘See you soon doc.’”

  Ryan’s legs began to shake again.

  Chapter Twelve

  The two jovial voices came out loud over the airwaves. “Well, that’s it for us, South Florida. Thanks for joining us on The Sports Show. I’m Terry Walker . . .”

  “. . . And I’m Eian Macgregor, signing off. We’ll be back here tomorrow to talk sports on The Sports Show on WFLX. See you then.” The red-and-white “ON THE AIR” light went dark, and they both took off their headphones and grinned. They had been working together for the past three years and now were both glad their workday was over.

  “Good show, buddy boy,” said Walker, a former pro-football quarterback.

  “Yeah,” Eian chimed in quietly.

  “Hey, Mac, everything all right with you?”

  “Just one of those days, you know?”

  “Yeah, man, got plenty of those myself. What’s goin’ on?”

  “Well, to start with, I got evicted from my own house—by my stepdaughter.”

  “Laura?”

  “The one and only. So I had to move in with my brother Ryan at his beach house.”

  “You and him living together? He’s the meticulous one, right?”

  “Yep. Then my brother Bob’s house burned down, so he’s living there as well.”

  “Oh my God, all three of the Macgregor brothers living under one roof?”

  “Yeah, and . . .” He grew silent. “Tomorrow marks the anniversary of Alice’s death. So let’s just say it hasn’t been a good couple of days.”

  He missed her more than ever, lonely for her smile, her touch, her laugh. She had always made him laugh with her practical jokes, then she had amazed him by learning to speak both German and Greek at home, but in the end . . . she had made him cry when she couldn’t remember what lipstick was used for or even what it was called. She was always hi
s rock, his confidante, even when she no longer knew who he was. It was not easy, but he always remembered the promise he had made to her so many years before . . . “in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” He had always been big on commitments. Goddamn, he missed her.

  His radio-booth-mate coughed and brought him back to reality.

  “And on top of that, I have to be fitted for a damn tux again for my niece’s wedding.”

  “So?”

  “Man, I look terrible in a tux. I’m so tall I look like a damn oversize penguin. And she wants us all to take dance lessons . . . and get a date for the wedding. Can you believe that? I think I’m going to call her and tell her exactly what I think of the whole idea.”

  “Wait, you’re going to call Mary Kate Macgregor and give her a piece of your mind?”

  “Yeah.”

  Terry leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and grinned. “Man, this I gotta see.”

  “Well,” Eian stammered, “I don’t have time right now, but she’s on my list to talk to, got it?”

  “Got it,” Terry said, laughing. “Hey, you wanna get lunch?”

  “Sure. That’d be good. Oh no, can’t do it. I got an autograph session set up by the station later on this afternoon with some young kids. So I can’t go missing for an afternoon. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, man, have your gal call my gal and we’ll compare calendars.” They both laughed as they went to their desks on opposite sides of the tiny cubicle they shared. He missed having a regular office. Office? Damn, he thought. Rose.

  “Oh, gotta go. I got an appointment today for the reopening of my office. I finally get my office space back. And my sofa.”

  “Let me know what you think of your decorator. I may want to do something with my Miami office.”