Timothy’s injured hand was able to write, but it was difficult and painful.  This was not quite as bad a problem as it might otherwise have been, because Timothy was suspended from school for two weeks due to his outburst.  He might have faced worse; he might have faced complete expulsion, had it not been for Mrs. Gibson going to bat for him, for the fact that he was otherwise an excellent and motivated student, and that his mother was able to bring up the fact that his outbursts were thought—by Dr. Putnam, at least—to be medical in nature.  It helped that Earl had not been seriously injured.  His personal soreness lasted a much shorter time than Timothy’s did.

Timothy’s schoolwork was brought to his home—not by Earl, but by another student who was more an acquaintance than a friend—and so he was able to avoid falling behind during the period of his suspension.  He dedicated himself obsessively with doing at least as good a job on all the studying and homework while he was on suspension as he would have done when in school.  Partly this was done as penance.  He found the writing quite painful, and this pain served, in his own mind, as a punishment for his inability to control himself, to keep from lashing out at Earl.  It was not the only cost he paid for that, but it was the most immediate one.  He relished it, and this embrace of his own discomfort, if it did nothing else, at least made sure that he returned to school eventually with work that earned nearly uniform “A” grades.

His appointment with Dr. Putnam happened during his suspension, which would officially run out the following day, with Timothy returning to school the next Monday.  He arrived at the doctor’s office with his brace on, though at home he sometimes eschewed it, welcoming the pain thus caused.  Despite Dr. Putnam’s statements about how he sometimes ran a little late, Timothy was brought back to the exam room a few minutes before two.  His mother had not accompanied him; she’d already lost too much time at work, and Timothy was more than confident in taking the bus.  The city was hardly a hotbed of crime, particularly toward teenage boys during the day, but even if it had been…well, woe betide any but the most hardened criminal who would have tried to interfere with Timothy’s hopeful trip.

And it was a hopeful trip for him, despite the failures of the pheochromocytoma workup.  Timothy hated his temper, hated the dark force of anger that episodically arose within him, beyond even his best attempts to control.  It had always felt, to him—once he’d gotten old enough to think about it in such terms—to be a force rather than a state of his own mind.  He felt ordinary frustrations on a day-to-day basis just as much as any other boy in a single parent home.  Yet, oddly enough, these almost never instigated his uncontrollable rages.  He had always complained as much as any child when told that it was bedtime, when told to clean his room, and he was irritated by such requirements as much as the next child.  He’d thrown his share of minor tantrums over toys his mother refused to buy, pets he was not allowed to have, and all the typical, “character-building” deprivations of a typical childhood.  These had almost never devolved into explosions of the extreme rage that led him to lose control of his reactions and seek to cause utter destruction.

Over the years, he thought he began to recognize some hint of a pattern in his furies, a common factor in most, but not all, of the instances in which his rage became a physical force that overwhelmed his ability to control himself.  These were almost always in response to a perceived situation of victimization or injustice.  The case of the two bullies trying to steal the backpack from the younger boy, which had led to his breakup with Allison, was almost prototypical in character.  He later came to suspect that his attack on Earl had not really been triggered by the teasing Earl had done with his name, but by the fact that he had done so to try to impress the other group of boys nearby, victimizing Timothy—if only in the most minor of ways—to try to seem cool or funny to other high school boys.

Timothy’s recognition of this pattern, though, was years in the future.  As he sat in the exam room, waiting for Dr. Putnam to arrive to remove his itching stitches, he was just hoping that the doctor might find some other physical cause to explain his problem, preferably something that could be treated.

Dr. Putnam walked into the exam room at seven minutes after two—Timothy confirmed this by looking at the cheap K-mart watch he wore then, and which had not suffered any damage in his outburst because it was on his left wrist.  This was impressive, especially since the waiting room outside had been fairly packed with patients waiting to see either Dr. Putnam or his partner.

“Afternoon, Timothy,” the doctor said as he walked into the room, holding a medical chart.  “It’s good to see you.”  As he walked up to stand near Timothy, a thought seemed suddenly to occur to him and he asked, “Actually…do you prefer to be called Timothy, or would you rather it be Tim, or something else?”

Adults rarely asked such things, even of teenagers, so Timothy was mildly surprised.  “Um…well, to be honest, I kind of like just Timothy better than Tim or anything else.  Is that okay?”

“Of course, it is,” Dr. Putnam replied.  “You’re the patient, and it’s your name.  Heck, if you prefer a bit more formality, I’ll be happy to call you Mr. Outlaw.”

Timothy grimaced and replied, “Please, no.  I…that always sounds like it’s supposed to be some stupid TV show or comic book character or something.”

Dr. Putnam gave only a mild chuckle and replied, “I suppose you could see it that way.  And I will respect your wishes.  So, Timothy…how’s the arm?”

Timothy shrugged, holding his right forearm up for the doctor to look at it, regarding it himself as well as he said, “It’s fine, I guess.  I mean, the cuts are all fine, that’s for sure.  They itch and stuff, but even that’s getting better.”

“How about your hand?” Dr. Putnam asked, tilting his head.  “I had a look at the X-ray reports when the hospital sent over your records.  That had to have hurt quite a lot.  I imagine it still does.”

Timothy contemplated his hand, the back of which was marred with the greenish-turning-yellow residua of fairly extensive former black-and-blue patches.  “Oh.  Yeah,” he said, sounding quite dismissive even to his own ears.  “It hurts, especially if I bump it on something.  And writing hurts, too.  But that’s a good thing.”

“Why do you say that?” Dr. Putnam asked, eyeing Timothy quite sharply.

Timothy felt embarrassed, for reasons that weren’t clear to him.  “Do you think that’s wrong?” he asked in return.  “I mean…do you think that’s weird?”

“Not necessarily,” Dr. Putnam replied.  “I can think of many ways in which pain can be and is a good thing.  But I’m curious as to why you think so.”

“Oh,” Timothy said.  “Well…I guess it’s sort of like…like punishment, I guess.  I mean, partly, it’s just…it’s just what I deserve for what I did.  But also…I don’t know, maybe if it hurts enough, I won’t…won’t lose my temper like I did.”

“I see,” Dr. Putnam responded, nodding and smiling.  “So, you’re hoping for some Pavlovian conditioning, is that it?”

Timothy had not known what the man had meant.  If he’d been exposed to the concept before that day, he could not recall it.  “Some what?” he asked.

“Sorry,” Dr. Putnam said with a shake of his head.  “I’m sure they haven’t covered that yet in your biology classes.  Or perhaps it would be psychology.  But there was a scientist named Pavlov, and he demonstrated a thing called conditioned reflexes when he trained dogs to salivate…to drool…whenever he rung a particular bell.”

Timothy, confused, asked, “How would he do that?”

“Well, for quite a long time, he rang that bell whenever he was bringing the dogs food.  Dogs’ mouths water when they anticipate eating something good—just like people.  But pretty soon, with the bell always being there, just ringing the bell would trigger the drooling, even if there was no food coming.”

“Huh,” Timothy said, not quite getting the connection to his own situation.  “That’s…interesting.”

Dr. Putnam smiled, and Timothy felt certain that the man recognized his confusion.  “Well, that idea laid the groundwork for a…a framework of approach called ‘behaviorism,’ with the idea that all behaviors of all complex organisms are just such conditioned reflexes, and that they can be modified by the application of controlled rewards and punishments…reinforcement, treats, the giving and taking away of treats and the like.  They did a lot of work with pigeons, interestingly enough, but they were convinced that every animal, including humans, acts as it does because of all those conditioned responses.  And that behaviors can be encouraged or discouraged by careful and consistent application of rewards and punishments.

“So, I was saying, it sounds like you’re thinking along those lines.  If you focus on the pain in your hand as the outcome of your rage, then—so the theory goes—you’ll be less likely to lose your temper in the future.”

Timothy brightened.  “Yeah,” he said, “that’s kinda what I was thinking.  Does it…well, I mean, if these guys all study this kind of stuff, does it work, that reward and punishment stuff?”

Dr. Putnam pursed his lips slightly, bobbed his head and shrugged, replying, “Well…sometimes, and to a certain extent, depending on what the cause of a behavior is.  But it turns out that the behaviorists were a bit too simplistic.  The causes of behavior are a lot more complicated than they thought.  Though, of course, rewards and punishments do have effects, there’s no doubt about that.  But they’re nothing like as absolute as they thought them to be.”

Timothy, feeling slightly glum in response to this revelation, asked, “So…what can make a difference?”

“Well, that would depend on what’s causing the problem,” Dr. Putnam said.  “Here, let’s start getting your stitches out, and we’ll talk more about it while I do it.”

Timothy had already taken his brace off and hadn’t put any dressing on the wounds already for several days, the cuts having closed over quickly and cleanly thanks to the speed of healing in his still-growing body.  Dr. Putnam grabbed a small paper-and-plastic kit of some kind from a cupboard.  It looked vaguely similar to a microwaveable meal.  Then the doctor had wheeled a portable, adjustable table up in front of Timothy and raised it to a level at which Timothy could comfortably rest his forearm, which he did after the doctor laid out a white paper sheet.  Dr. Putnam next wheeled a rolling stool up in front and, after donning a pair of latex gloves, he peeled open his little kit, which contained some gauze, a pair of tweezers, and a pair of scissors.

“Is that, like, a ready-made thing for taking out stitches?” Timothy asked.

“Exactly,” Dr. Putnam replied.  “It’s called a suture removal kit…which is almost exactly what you said.”

As the doctor reached out to pull Timothy’s arm gently toward him, Timothy asked, “Do you just…throw it away once you’re done with it?”

“More or less,” Dr. Putnam replied.  “It may seem a little wasteful, but the benefit of avoiding the spread of infection outweighs the cost.”

“Oh.  I guess that makes sense,” Timothy commented.

Dr. Putnam examined Timothy’s arm quickly but thoroughly, declaring that all the wounds looked as though they were healing beautifully.  Then, starting with the largest of the cuts, he began carefully snipping the sutures and pulling them out.  It felt strange to Timothy, but it was not uncomfortable, and certainly not painful, so he didn’t flinch even with the first suture removed.

After taking out several, and not looking up from his work, Dr. Putnam asked, “I was wondering if you’d ever heard of Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower shooter.”

“I don’t think so,” Timothy replied.  Then unable to hold back a true and deep puzzlement, he asked, “Why would…why would someone shoot a tower?”

This brought a larger laugh than had Timothy’s earlier comment about his name, and Dr. Putnam said, “No, sorry.  He didn’t shoot a tower, he shot from a tower.  He was a man who, more or less out of the blue, one day went up into a tower at a university and, with a rifle, started shooting random people on the ground.  He was a good shot—I think he’d been a Marine—so he hit quite a few.  If memory serves, I think he killed about fourteen or fifteen people, and wounded many others, before the police finally killed him.”

“Holy crap,” Timothy said, carefully avoiding profanity in front of the doctor.  “So, he was like those school shooter people, huh?  At that one high school?”

“A little bit,” Dr. Putnam said, pulling another suture.  “But this man had been a relatively well-adjusted adult, not a…well, not a poorly socialized high school loner.  And he apparently left a note, talking about how he’d been having headaches and increasing fits of uncontrollable rage developing over recent time.  He’d…well, he’d killed his wife and mother before shooting people from the tower, it turned out, but he couldn’t understand, himself, why he’d done it, and why he was doing what he was doing.  He requested that his body be examined after his death, especially his brain—he was pretty sure he was going to be killed, I guess.  And he was right.”

“Wow,” Timothy said, thinking with horror—and with slight anger—at what the man had done, particularly at the notion of killing his mother.  Timothy had a powerful sense of loyalty to his mother, since she was the one who raised him, and he strongly disliked anyone who disrespected a mother.

“Yes,” Dr. Putnam said.  He was now well over halfway done with the suture removal.  “Well, the investigators followed his request, and they found that he had a brain tumor—I forget what type—that was pressing against a part of his brain called the amygdala.  The name’s not really important, but what matters is that this particular part of the brain regulates things like fear and hostility…anger and aggression.  So, it was pretty clear that the tumor was probably the cause of his increasing fits of uncontrollable anger, and what finally made him kill all those people.”

“Wow,” Timothy said.  Then, suddenly, it occurred to him that Dr. Putnam wasn’t telling him this story just out of desire to share an interesting and morbid tale.  After all, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing most doctors would discuss with their patients, especially young patients.  Timothy made what he thought should have been the obvious connection from the first, and he asked, “Wait, do you think I might have a brain tumor?  That…that that’s what might be making me get so mad all the time?”  He had already become used to the notion of tumors when dealing with the search for the pheochromocytoma, so he was not resistant to the idea of some other kind in his body, though if he were honest with himself, the notion of a tumor in his brain was more disquieting than that of one in his body.

Dr. Putnam paused in the process of the suture removal, and he looked Timothy directly in the eye.  “Well,” he said, “I think it’s something we should consider.  I mean…you tell me.  Do you think you have a tumor?”

Timothy thought this was a ridiculous question.  Dr. Putnam was the doctor, not him.  How should he know if he had a tumor?  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I mean, how could I tell?”

“Well, the only way to tell for sure is to look,” Dr. Putnam replied, now returned to the removal of the last few stitches.  “But have you had any unusually bad headaches, vision changes, any…local weakness or sensory weirdness?”

Timothy didn’t really know what might constitute “sensory weirdness,” but he said, “I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I mean, I get headaches every now and then, but nothing especially bad.  And I haven’t had anything going on with my…my vision, I guess.  Not that I’ve noticed.  I don’t wear glasses or anything.”

Dr. Putnam finished with the last suture, had Timothy lift his arm, wrapped all but the metal implements up in the white drape and brought them over to the large, red metal waste receptacle, into which he threw them.  The metal implements he dumped into a curious container on the wall, which was also red.  Then he turned back to Timothy and said, “Well…maybe it’s not a tumor.  Which, I suppose would be a good thing, when you get right down to it.  No one really wishes for a brain tumor.”

Timothy wasn’t so sure he agreed.  “But a tumor could be taken out,” he said, unable to disguise the hopefulness in his voice.  “I mean…if my bad temper is caused by a tumor, they could take it out, and then I wouldn’t…wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore.”

Dr. Putnam regarded him seriously for a moment, then said, in a subdued voice, “Hurting other people worries you a lot more than hurting yourself, doesn’t it?”

“Sure, of course,” Timothy replied, surprised that anyone would have to ask such a question.  “I mean…it’s kind of up to me if I hurt myself, right?  I mean, it’s my body, I’m the one who’s gonna be in pain, so…so if I hurt myself, it’s my problem.  But if I hurt someone else…I mean, that’s not right.  It’s…I can’t just go around hurting other people.”

After the tiniest of pauses, Dr. Putnam asked, “Have you hurt other people?”

Timothy recalled that his mother had deflected the conversation in the ER away from the fact that he’d attacked Earl, and made it seem as though the only thing he’d done had been to hit the door.  Even at the time, Timothy had suspected that Dr. Putnam had recognized that more had gone on than was being revealed, and he didn’t see any need to hide his shame.  He also didn’t think he deserved to have it hidden.

“Yeah,” he replied, looking down.  “I mean…I didn’t hurt him badly or anything, I don’t think, but I hit my friend Earl…hard.  I hit him a bunch of times before the gym teacher started coming over and I was able to…to stop myself and to run over and hit the window instead.”

“Did you want to hurt your friend?” Dr. Putnam asked.

“No,” Timothy replied emphatically.  Then, being more honest with himself, and more careful, he added, “Well, I mean…when it was happening, I wanted to hurt him.  I mean, I wanted to hurt almost anything.  I felt like I wanted to…to just hurt and break anything, everything.  I wanted to…to break the whole world if I could, sort of.  But that was only while I was…while I was flipping out.  I’ve never really ever wanted to hurt him.  I mean, he’s my friend, right?”

“Of course,” Dr. Putnam said.  He smiled.  “Believe it or not, that’s reassuring.  There are people out there who wouldn’t care whether they hurt other people, who sometimes actually enjoy hurting other people.  They’re called sociopaths.  They use pain and fear in other people as a tool, to get what they want.  But your situation is very different.  It seems clear to me that you’re a normal, even an unusually good-hearted, young man who has this…this anger problem as a kind of…a bug of some kind.  A factory defect, say.”

Timothy, a little slow at following Dr. Putnam’s point, said, “And you think it might be because of a brain tumor?”

Dr. Putnam shrugged and replied, “Well…maybe.  But there are lots of other things around that can have similar effects.  You’ve already ruled out the pheochromocytoma notion, I see, but that was always a bit of a zebra, anyway.”

This made no sense to Timothy.  “A zebra?” he said, wondering if maybe it was Dr. Putnam who had a brain tumor.

Smiling indulgently, Dr. Putnam said, “That’s a bit of medical short-hand.  When you hear hoof-beats coming down the road—in America, at least—if you look for their source, you expect to find a regular horse, not a zebra.  It’s a way of saying that common things are…well, common.  It’s a rule of thumb to keep us from getting too excited about possible wild tangents and carried away with the prospect of diagnosing exotic illnesses…which we sometimes do, especially early in our medical careers.  Most of the time, though, the ordinary, run-of-the-mill diagnoses are the right ones.  But of course, every now and then, there’s a slip-up at the zoo, and the zebras get loose, so you can’t rule them out entirely.  But you have to weigh your estimates based on how common things are…and how one illness or process can masquerade as another.”

“Oh,” Timothy said.  He thought he followed most of Dr. Putnam’s point but was far from sure.

Dr. Putnam seemed to realize that Timothy wasn’t keeping up with him quite as well as he might, and he stepped forward, patting Timothy on the shoulder before saying, “The point I’m making is, there are numerous things that could be causing your problems.  Among the most common, for instance, depression can often present as anger and irritability.  So can thyroid disease…though Dr. Barrett ruled that last one out pretty well with your blood tests.  And of course—perhaps most common of all—some drugs can cause fits of extreme anger.  So, I know they’ve gone over this with you before, but I want to get it straight from the horse’s mouth…or the zebra’s mouth, if you prefer.  Do you use any drugs?  Remember, everything you say is confidential between you and me, even from your mother, even from police.  Unless you’re planning a murder, of course, which I seriously doubt.  But…have you used any recreational drugs, especially cocaine, or amphetamines?”

Timothy, not bothered by the question, was able to shake his head and honestly reply, “No way.  I haven’t even tried to sneak a beer or anything.  I mean, mom doesn’t drink, because of my dad and all, and…well, because of my dad and because of me, I don’t want to screw around with anything that might make my temper worse.  I’m really scared about that.”

Dr. Putnam smiled.  “I think that’s a wise attitude,” he said.  “Until we know more about what’s going on—if we figure it out—I think it would be very sensible for you to stay away from all drugs.  Certainly, illicit drugs.  Perhaps, in the future, there might be a place for modest amounts of medical quality marijuana, which might be useful in taking the edge off things, but…well, for now, even that particular generally benign substance should probably be avoided.”

Timothy was mildly surprised to hear even such a guarded endorsement of weed, but he didn’t dwell on it.  Instead, he asked, “So, what do you think we should do?”

“Well, first I’m going to do a quick neuro exam, just to see if there’s any signs of anything focal, then we’ll decide what step to take next.”  After saying this, Dr. Putnam proceeded to do a thorough set of checks on everything from how Timothy responded to lights in his eyes, to looking back and forth and up and down, checking his strength—he gave the grip strength a pass, he said, because of the state of Timothy’s right hand—checked his hearing, his peripheral vision, his reflexes in places Timothy hadn’t known there were reflexes, tested his ability to feel even light touches with a tiny plastic string on the bottom of his feet, his arms, his hands, his face…numerous things, the purpose for some of which Timothy couldn’t readily guess.

Then, smiling slightly, Dr. Putnam said, “Well, you’ve certainly got no focal neurologic deficits.  Meaning, your exam is as good as a human could hope for.  It doesn’t rule out a tumor, but it means that if there is one, it’s probably small.  Which is good.  And I already know that your blood work is as normal as can be.  So, I think the next step is to set you up for an MRI.”

Timothy had heard the term but wasn’t too sure what it meant.  “What’s that?” he asked.

“Well, it’s a little bit like the X-rays, in that it lets us see inside your body, but it’s much more sophisticated.  It uses very strong magnetic fields and radio waves to take images inside your body…inside your brain, in this particular case.”

“Really?” Timothy asked, honestly curious.  “How does it do that?”

Dr. Putnam tightened his lips a bit, then smiled mischievously before answering, “To be honest, I don’t really understand it myself.  It’s something to do with quantum mechanics, and physics wasn’t my best subject as an undergrad.  But it definitely does work.  We can get incredibly detailed pictures of the insides of almost any part of a person’s body with it.  Way better then X-rays.”  He paused a moment, then asked, “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

Timothy, wanting to be clear and honest, said, “I…I know a phobia is a fear thing, but I don’t know which one that is.”

“A fear of enclosed spaces,” Dr. Putnam said.

“Oh,” Timothy said.  “Well then, no.  Not as far as I know, anyway.  I mean, I don’t get in places like that for fun or anything, but I don’t think I’ve ever been bothered by them much.”

“Good,” Dr. Putnam said.  “That’s good.  That’ll make things easier.”

“Why?” Timothy asked.

“Oh, sorry,” Dr. Putnam said, “I didn’t realize I might’ve been a bit cryptic there.  To do an MRI, you have to be kind of slid into a pretty narrow…tube, I guess, is the word.  That’s to get the magnetic field particularly strong, I guess.  Claustrophobic people can find it problematic.”  After a moment of watching Timothy absorb this information, he said, “The only other problem is, it’s a bit loud.”

“Huh,” Timothy said, honestly more intrigued than worried.  “That’s weird.”

“It is, a little,” Dr. Putnam agreed with a laugh.  “I don’t know why it has to be so noisy, but I guess it really has to, because they always are.”

Little else of significance was said during that office visit.  As Timothy left, Dr. Putnam’s office staff set him up for an appointment at a nearby MRI place, giving him a sheet with the location and the date of his appointment.  Timothy noted that it was the following Wednesday, at two in the afternoon.  Which meant he was going to miss still more school.  He was glad that he’d worked hard on the assignments that had been sent home for him, so he was well-prepared to keep up.  It was mildly irritating to have to miss school again, but if it could give him any clues about why he lost his temper so much, it was worth it.  Even the prospect of brain surgery—which he was more than intelligent enough to realize would surely be the treatment of choice for a brain tumor—seemed far from worrisome.

In fact, that weekend, as he passed the time at home reading ahead on his schoolwork, as well as watching TV and movies, he went to some medical sites on the still-young internet, trying to see what he could learn about brain tumors.  What he learned didn’t really help him much; it was far too general.  Then he researched the “Texas Tower Shooter” Dr. Putnam had mentioned.  He couldn’t recall the man’s name, but that title alone brought him to places where he could find out enough.  It wasn’t Wikipedia, of which he would become a contributing fan later in his life, but there were some true crime sites already in existence, and he was able to get at least a rough idea of what the man in question had done.

He supposed he should have been sympathetic with Charles Whitman, the shooter.  After all, the man really had been the victim of a brain tumor and had led a previously relatively normal and useful life, at least by the account Timothy read.  However, rather than feeling sympathy or pity, Timothy found himself becoming angry, even disgusted by the man.  Whitman had killed his wife and his mother before going up into the tower to start killing strangers…and had written some kind of note, which was effectively a suicide note.  So, he had known that he was going to die.  He had expected to die.

And this was what irritated Timothy, what had irritated him about the high school shooters in Columbine…and it worse than irritated him, it disgusted him, it filled him with vindictive ire.  These people had known that they were likely to die, they had planned to die.  But if they were willing to die, why the hell hadn’t they just killed themselves, which they could have done without harming, without killing, all those other, innocent people?  They had been prepared to die, had been willing to die themselves, so there was absolutely no excuse for not simply killing themselves and saving the horrible steps in between.  Timothy fantasized about being able to bring such people back to life and submitting them to torture, while screaming at them, “Why didn’t you just kill yourselves, you selfish pricks?  You want to die now, don’t you?  Well, you don’t get to.  This is for what you did to everyone else!”

He tried not to think too explicitly about what he would like to do to them, because it got his anger going, and that wasn’t a good thing.  Righteous—and even self-righteous—anger was far more insidious and tempting, far harder to keep under control, Timothy was to find, than spiteful or selfish anger.  That made it particularly dangerous.  It was only too easy to give yourself free rein if you were able to think of your victim as evil, as deserving of punishment.  But ultimately, he decided early on, that was just an excuse people gave themselves.  It was one he could not afford.

The example of the Texas Tower Shooter did clarify one thing to Timothy about himself, giving him a very important determination:  if he were ever to come to the point where he thought he was not going to be able to control himself enough to avoid killing, or even just hurting, a bunch of innocent people…if that state ever seemed inescapable, then he would just kill himself, as all those other suicide murderers should have done if they’d had any balls at all.  If he was ever so angry that he had to kill just anyone, then the choice of who that anyone should be was obvious.

It would be him.

Okay, here it is, the third part of Outlaw’s Mind, for anyone who is interested in reading more.

It was shortly after that incident that Timothy had finally allowed the school counselor to talk him into seeking some form of medical help for his problem.  That counselor, a pleasant but serious woman in her forties known to him only as Mrs. Gibson, had recognized—after quite a few sessions with the troubled young man—that he was not a case of the youthful signs that predicted a future of sociopathy, or antisocial personality disorder.  She had quickly discerned that he was more troubled by his rage than those around him were, that he wanted to behave well, that he wanted to accomplish a good life.  But his rage, as he had awkwardly explained to her, seemed to have a life of its own.  He even sometimes woke up from dreams feeling furious, not able to recall what had triggered it, but unable to dismiss it.  He was, when younger, a somewhat artistically expressive youth; he drew pictures and occasionally even made clay sculptures, amateurish on both counts, but nevertheless pleasing to him.  When he woke up in the night consumed by unreasonable anger, his only recourse was often to destroy these minor works of his own art, damaging himself so that he wouldn’t damage anyone else.

Mrs. Gibson had recognized that this anger might well be fundamentally biological, that it might literally have a life of its own within him.  This idea had thrilled Timothy, as it matched his own experience of the anger he’d inherited, with accrued compound interest, from his father.  Thus, after his disturbing epiphany with Allison, he went to see Mrs. Gibson again.  She spoke to him of a type of tumor—not cancerous, but dangerous—that she’d heard of, called a “pheochromocytoma”.  He had asked her to write the word out for him, so he could do research of his own.  With real pride in her eyes, she had done so, and had then referred him to an endocrinologist she knew through her family, calling the doctor’s office that day while Timothy was in the office.

Timothy’s mother had been leery of this at first.  She feared the expenses entailed in serious medical workup, let alone in treatment, but thanks to Mrs. Gibson’s connection and recommendations—and, it seemed, the doctor’s fascination with the possibility of treating such a young man with such a rare condition—the endocrinologist had assured Mrs. Outlaw that he would accept whatever payment her insurance company offered, meager though it was.

A further hurdle of getting a referral from a primary physician, something required by the insurance company to Timothy’s tremendous irritation, had been eased by the neurologist getting him a quick appointment with a general internist of his acquaintance, who quickly evaluated Timothy, found him grossly healthy, and wrote a clear and convincing referral to the endocrinologist, as though he had been caring for Timothy for years.

When Timothy first met Dr. Barrett, the doctor sat him down, checked him over, checked his blood pressure and pulse rate, looked at the EKG that the primary doctor had done, and then sat down to go over what Mrs. Gibson had told him about Timothy’s past.  Timothy had granted her permission, in writing, to do so.

Dr. Barrett had explained to Timothy that a pheochromocytoma was a type of tumor of neuroendocrine origin, that secreted large amounts of “catecholamines” such as epinephrine and norepinephrine, the former also known as adrenalin, often in bizarre, pulsatile fashion.  He told Timothy that often people afflicted with these tumors had baseline high blood pressure and frequent headaches, neither of which Timothy had, but that they were by no means universal, and in any case, Timothy was very young and otherwise healthy.  He might tolerate physical processes now that would later produce much more glaring symptoms and signs if left untreated.

Timothy had felt that his personal symptoms and signs were more than catastrophic enough.

Dr. Barrett had seemed utterly confident that they would find the evidence of one of these “benign” tumors, given Timothy’s history, and he’d seemed almost insultingly happy about it.  Timothy forgave him this, though, because one thing the doctor had made clear to Timothy was that most of the time, correcting a pheochromocytoma was simple:  the tumor was surgically removed.

Timothy had fantasized longingly about being admitted to the hospital, prepped, fearlessly interacting with the staff, eager to have an operation, and he fantasized about awakening afterward to a smiling, handsome, soap-opera surgeon who told him the tumor had been removed and he was cured.

Alas, this was not to be.

Timothy had joyfully submitted to blood tests and had even been happy to spend a good portion of one weekend at home so that he could do a twenty-four-hour urine collection.  This, the endocrinologist explained, was to measure catecholamine breakdown products.  As the doctor had explained—and as Timothy confirmed in his own research, using the then-early internet as well as the public library—at any given moment, the various adrenalin-related chemicals in the blood of a person with a “pheo” might be well within normal range, and so the blood test, while necessary, was far from sensitive.

Unfortunately, when Timothy had gone back to Dr. Barrett, the man had been disappointed to report that the levels were normal.  He had obviously been able to see how crestfallen Timothy was, because he had hastily assured him that, especially in such a young person, the frequency and amount of the secretions were not likely to be as obvious as they were in a typical patient.

Dr. Barrett commissioned a second, then a third, twenty-four-hour urine collection.  The Outlaws’ insurance plan had refused at first to cover either of them, had been cajoled and pressured finally into covering the second, but had stubbornly insisted that the third was not medically necessary nor indicated.  Dr. Barrett had, with some sorrow and obvious sympathy, covered the price of this one out of his own pocket.  He had met with Timothy for a final time, trying to reassure him with the knowledge that at least he knew that his endocrine system was normal, based on all the tests they had done.

This had not reassured Timothy.  A problem that could not be detected could not be removed.

In the weeks following this failure, Timothy’s temper was, if anything, worse than before.  He got in several fights at school, avoiding major trouble mainly because he’d been held back by groups of other students as soon as he’d shown that he was going to continue attacking even once it was clear that he had the upper hand.  This had, on each occasion, been carried out by older boys, and even they had seemed afraid to try to restrain Timothy singly.  He was not physically imposing, a slim, average-height fourteen-year-old, but when his rage gripped him…

One of his friends from the time, a boy named Earl Walla, had told him after one occasion, “Tim, when you get pissed off, it’s freaking scary.  I mean, I don’t even have to see your face.  It’s like I can feel it coming off you, like you’re possessed or something.”

“That’s stupid,” Timothy had told him, feeling a chill go down his back, nevertheless.

Timothy had lost that friendship not long after.  Earl, though a nice enough boy, was of course subject to the usual teenage frailties of wanting to seem cool and jaded to other boys, and to girls.  One day, when PE class was outdoors, and the boys were doing laps and sprints around the track, Earl had made a point of saying, within easy hearing of a group of other boys that he had apparently deemed cool, “Hey, I saw this rerun on TV the other day, and I realized what you’re missing.”

Timothy, utterly puzzled, and breathing rapidly from a recent wind sprint, just said, “What?”

“It was that stupid old show, Lassie.  I realized, what you need is a collie dog, like that one,” Earl had said.

His hands on his knees, holding himself slightly bent over as he caught his breath, Timothy had asked, “Why would I need a dog?”

“Not just a dog, a Lassie dog.  The kid who owns Lassie was named Timmy, just like you.”

Timothy had closed his eyes, irritated.  “I don’t like being called Timmy,” he said.

“Why not?” Earl had asked.  “That kid’s famous, or he was anyway.  He’s probably rich, too, if they’re still showing that show on reruns.”

“I don’t like it,” Timothy had said.  “I’m not ‘Timmy’.”

If Earl had heard the early warning signs in his friend’s voice, he had not paid attention to it, perhaps because one of the nearby boys had chuckled appreciatively when he’d first suggested the Lassie association, with its diminutive version of Timothy’s name.

“Okay, okay,” he said, in a mock-placating tone, obviously still poking fun at his friend in what should have been a typical, traditional, and harmless bit of male bonding camaraderie.  “Well, how ‘bout this.  There was this old singer in the sixties called Tiny Tim.  He sang this song called ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’.  What do you think about Tiny Tim?”

A few of the other boys had laughed a bit more loudly, one of them mumbling “Tiny Tim” in appreciation.

Timothy, however, had not been amused.  He had looked up from under his brow at his grinning friend, feeling his head begin to pound, the fatigue of the run quickly dropping away.  “Don’t call me that,” he had growled.

Earl had not heeded the danger, or he been distracted from it by the response to his comments from the other boys.  If Timothy’s anger was indeed a palpable force on prior occasions, Earl was oblivious to it that day.  At least for the moment.

“Come on!” he’d said, laughing at his own ideas.  “It could be one of those retro things, something that’s cool now because it’s so dorky.  You could go on tour.”  Then, glancing back at the other boys to confirm their approval, he broke into a silly little dance on the balls of his feet, his arms cocked at the elbows, his index fingers making rings with his thumbs and his pinkies extended, and he sang in a high falsetto that was quite a good impression of the original singer, Tiny Tim, “Tiptoe…through the tulips…by the ocean…”

That was as far as he got.

Earl was probably lucky that Timothy—for no particular reason—targeted his stomach rather than his chin or face, because Timothy exploded upward, striking Earl with the force of his entire body behind the blow.  It struck Earl in the belly, just below his ribs, and it lifted him off the ground a few inches.  If Timothy had landed an uppercut with that force, he might have broken Earl’s jaw…or his neck.

Timothy considered none of this at the time.  Even before Earl had begun to fall over, his breath knocked out of him by the blow, Timothy’s left hand had followed up with a blow to his friend’s exposed side.  This was later found to have caused minor rib fractures in the floating ribs.

Earl was unable to yell in pain, his wind still knocked out of him, but he had fallen to the ground, bent in half.

With no particular thought behind the decision, Timothy had chosen to continue punching rather than to kick his friend’s now-horizontal form, and this might well have saved the boy from far worse injury than he ended up receiving.  He swung downward with his right hand, striking Earl in the rear of his right shoulder.  It sounded like a drum thanks to the resonance of Earl’s lungs.

The boys who had laughed at Earl’s comments had jumped to their feet, but they said nothing, simply stared in shock at Timothy laying into Earl.

Earl had balled up automatically as he had fallen, and Timothy continued to pummel at his back, one blow near the spine, another more on the side, one or two falling frighteningly close to Earl’s neck.

Finally regaining his breath, but clearly not able actively to resist, Earl had yelled, “Stop!  Stop!  I’m sorry, Timothy, I’m sorry!  Please, stop!”

Timothy heard tears in his friend’s voice.  Earl was bawling like a grade-schooler, bunched up like a fetus, and begging Timothy for mercy before the eyes of the boys he’d clearly been trying to impress.  Timothy recognized this, knew that he was overreacting, knew that the nearby boys were right to be gaping at him in undisguised shock and impotent horror.  And he wanted to keep beating on his friend.  He wanted to beat him bloody.  He wanted to beat him to death.

It was the spectacle of Earl’s utterly conquered tears that had prevented this, more than the sound of the gym teacher yelling in fear and anger as he rushed toward them.  Timothy, his rage still mostly in control of his actions, stood up, did not wait for the teacher to get close, did not obey any commands but those of his own ire.  He screamed aloud, a guttural, primal sound of ancient fury, and he took several strides toward the school.

There was a door nearby—it was not the one they had used to exit the school, but was a single door, perhaps there for teachers’ access or for emergency purposes.  It was metal, but with a pane of what was presumably safety glass in it.

Timothy, hating the world, hating Earl, hating himself, swung at the glass.  Whatever it was made of wasn’t quite strong enough, for it spiderwebbed in response to his blow.  This time, bones broke in Timothy’s hand, but he didn’t feel them any more than he’d felt the brick wall.  He swung again, and this time his fist went through the safety glass.  Though not ordinary window material such as would have been in a house, the broken edges were still sharp, and Timothy suffered several lacerations in his forearm both as he put his hand through the pane and as he pulled it out to try to strike again.  One of these cuts must have been over a decent-sized blood vessel, since it immediately started to bleed copiously.

Timothy was no more forestalled by this than he had been by pain in his hand.  Indeed, a tiny but serious part of him thought, “That’s good.  Maybe I’ll bleed to death.  I deserve it.”

Then the gym teacher, who was also the school’s wrestling coach—Timothy could never remember his name in later years—had seized him from behind, put him in a full nelson long enough to calm him down, and had tried at the same time to put direct pressure on Timothy’s wound, clearly unfazed by the direct contact with a student’s blood even in that era of HIV and Hepatitis.  Even as he had held Timothy in place, despite howls and shrieks and a flailing of legs, the gym teacher had yelled for someone to call 911.

Timothy had been brought to the emergency room, calmed significantly by shock and—just possibly—by a modest amount of blood loss.  The coach/gym teacher had controlled his bleeding well enough until the EMTs had arrived, then they had put a compressive dressing on it and sped him along to the hospital.  There it was discovered that, despite the amount of bleeding, no truly major blood vessels had been damaged, so Timothy would not require surgery.  He did need stitches, though…twenty-eight of them, spread over four different cuts, a few other minor ones simply requiring ordinary bandages.

These were likely to heal faster than the bones of his right fist.  X-rays—done in the ER, after his mother had finally arrived from work, having given approval for the stitches over the phone, and the urgency being strong enough for the ER docs to go ahead—revealed that he had simple fractures in two his metacarpals and in the first phalanx of his pinky.  Timothy, who learned the meaning of the bone names later, wondered whether the pinky fracture had happened at that earlier time when he’d smashed his fist against the brick wall.

He asked the ER doctor whether it could have been an older fracture, and she told him she doubted it.  There was no sign of any healing having taken place in it—no callus formation, as she called it—so it seemed to have happened at the same time as the others.  In retrospect, this would have become obvious to Timothy, for the pain, and its duration, of the recovery from this new injury was far worse than had been that following his hammer blow to a much harder surface.

Thankfully, none of the fractures was displaced, so treatment would be supportive, and no cast was recommended, though a brace of sorts was made, which could be taken off to bathe, but which the ER doctor recommended Timothy leave on at most other times.

As things were preparing to wrap up for Timothy’s discharge from the ER, the doctor had asked his mother if she wanted a prescription for some pain medicine for Timothy, but his mother had fervently shaken her head, and had acted somewhat insulted.  Timothy would come to curse that decision, but he also found himself glad of the pain his injury caused him.  As before, he felt that he deserved it.  This self-spite, however, did nothing to reduce his tendency to rage; it anything it worsened it.

While they were being given discharge papers, Timothy’s mother looking quite weary as she tried to focus on the necessary information, a voice had called from the side, “Timothy Outlaw, is that you?”

Both Timothy and his mother had looked up in surprise.  The ER nurse doing their discharge just glanced up and smiled as a tall, balding man in horn-rimmed glasses and a long, white coat approached.  Timothy could not recall the man’s name—though he was impressed that the man had recalled his—but he recognized this as the primary care doctor who had been willing to give the rubber-stamp referral to the endocrinologist.

“Oh, uh, hi, doctor…” Timothy had stammered.

“Putnam,” the man had replied.  “I’m Dr. Putnam.  Not sure if you remember me…”

“Sure, I do,” Timothy had said.  He held up a hand to wave, but it was his right hand, so his injury and dressing were prominently displayed.

“What happened?” Dr. Putnam asked with a sardonic smile.  “Did you get into a fight at school?”  He was speaking in a jocular tone, but Timothy thought his eyes looked too sharp for a casual inquiry.

Before Timothy could respond, his mother jumped in.  Timothy judged her to be embarrassed—he supposed she probably recognized Dr. Putnam as well as he now did—for she said, “No, actually, he got in a fight with a door at school.  Well…the window of a door, anyway.”

Dr. Putnam raised an eyebrow, and Timothy thought that the man suspected that his mother was not being completely forthcoming.  Apparently weighing his further inquiry to avoid discomfiting Timothy’s mother, he simply asked, “How on earth did that happen?”

Timothy felt embarrassed, could even feel the heat in his own face, but he decided to continue with his mother’s minor fiction and replied, “Well…I got really mad about something one of my friends said, and I…I kind of just punched the door.  The window, I mean.”

“Good lord,” Dr. Putnam had said.  Looking at Timothy’s bandaged and braced hand, he said, “You must have hit it pretty hard.”

“Yeah,” Timothy said, his voice barely audible even to himself.

His mother, on the other hand, took this point up with greater enthusiasm.  “Oh, yes,” she said.  “He broke the window…and it was some kind of plexiglass, apparently.”  Looking with motherly contempt at her son, she added, “Twenty-eight stitches and three fractures.  That’s in him.  I only hope the school doesn’t bill us for the window.  That wouldn’t be covered by insurance.  If they do, I can promise you that you’re going to pay for it out of your allowance and any after-school job you might get, with interest added for my trouble.”  Timothy thought that she was being quite serious.

Dr. Putnam’s eyebrows drew down in concern, and with a tilt of his head, he looked at Timothy and asked, “How did things go with Dr. Barrett?  Any…well, not good news exactly, but any revelations?”

Timothy hung his head, somehow ashamed that Dr. Barrett’s and Mrs. Gibson’s speculations had been incorrect.  He didn’t say anything, but let his mother reply, “None.  Not a thing.  He peed into a jug for twenty-four hours on three separate weekends, and I don’t know how many blood tests they did, but they didn’t find anything.  Not a trace of one of those stupid theological tumors or whatever they are.”

Timothy knew that his mother was merely pretending not to know the name of the tumor that had been speculated as possibly causing his fits of fury.  She had done a fair amount of research on it herself, wondering aloud whether such things could be genetic and whether one might have explained the behavior of her son’s father, the cause of his eventual untimely death.  Her mispronunciation was an act of defiance and contempt at the fact that her hope—both current and retroactive—had been dashed.

Dr. Barrett, instead of correcting Timothy’s mother, had laughed strongly in response to it, drawing an answering smile from her.  It was clear that he understood the reason for her renaming of the negated diagnosis.  Then, still smiling, he had said, “So, I guess there’s still no clear cause of the outbursts, then?”

Timothy was impressed that the man, who had after all been only barely involved in his previous care, recalled his case so clearly.

His mother, weary and exasperated, said, “Nope.  Nothing.  I guess he’s just got a rotten temper.”

Timothy again looked down, but not before he noticed Dr. Putnam regarding him sympathetically.  The man’s voice was soft and empathic as he said, “Well…maybe.  But I’d like to think of that as a diagnosis of exclusion.  It’s pretty unusual for someone to have such a forceful temper that they break a window and their own arm over something a friend said.  A girlfriend, maybe, but a high school pal?  That seems more unlikely.”

“What is it then?” Timothy’s mother said, her voice conveying no hope at all.

“I’m not sure,” Dr. Putnam had said.  “But I think I might have some ideas.  Do you think…well, would you mind Timothy coming to see me at my office?”

Timothy’s mother sighed and said, “I don’t know.  How are we going to justify it?  I don’t want to have to fight with the insurance company.  I can barely afford the food he eats.”  Timothy knew this to be an exaggeration; he and his mother were not quite so on the verge of poverty as she was pretending, but they were far from comfortably well off.

“Well, for starters, we can have it just serve as an ER follow-up visit,” Dr. Putnam replied.  He turned to the nurse, who had patiently stood waiting, an indulgent smile on her face, while the doctor had spoken with the two living members of the Outlaw family.  “Emma,” he said, “have they made any appointments for follow-up?”

“No, Dr. Putnam,” she said.  “We were just going to have him come back to the ER for suture removal.”

“Oh, no, that’s no good,” Dr. Putnam had said playfully.  “No offense, but there’s no way to know how long he’ll have to wait when he comes back.  I sometimes get a little behind schedule in the office, but not as badly as someone with a follow-up is going to face in the ER.  Wouldn’t you say?”

“It depends on how busy the day is,” the nurse had replied, smiling, clearly fond of Dr. Putnam.  “But, yeah, it can be a wait sometimes.”

“All right, then,” Dr. Putnam said.  “Since I am, officially, young Mr. Outlaw’s primary doctor of record, why don’t you set him up with an appointment in my office?  Tell them I told you to work him in.”

“I’d be happy to,” the nurse—Emma, apparently—said.  “Why don’t I do that right now?”

“Thank you very much,” Dr. Putnam said.

As the nurse went around the desk to call Dr. Putnam’s office, Timothy’s mother said, “Are you sure this isn’t a bother?  I mean, we’re already taking you away from your work here.”

Dr. Putnam looked honestly startled by her comment, then he gave a quick laugh and said, “No, not at all.  Actually, I just finished admitting a patient of mine for what is, I suspect, nothing too severe, but we can’t be too careful.  Otherwise, this is my afternoon off.  I’m not even supposed to be on call, but…well, you can take the doctor out of the hospital, but you can’t get the hospital out of the doctor.  Or something like that.”

Timothy’s mother had laughed, clearly drawn in more by the doctor’s demeanor than his words.  The man positively radiated warmth and compassion, rather the opposite of the way Earl had described Timothy when he was angry.  How Timothy wished he could have that attribute rather than the one he possessed.  There were no doubt many teenage boys who would have thought that being utterly terrifying to those around them—even only upon occasion—was a wonderful thing.  Timothy knew better.  He knew that fear and anger made people distant, kept a person lonely, and only drew in twisted people like Allison, more frightening in her way than Timothy himself.

He would go on to develop a serious “man-crush” on Dr. Putnam, as he was sure many others had before him—and eventually to consider him a friend and one of his only confidants.  Without Dr. Putnam, he might well have met an end similar to that of his father, but probably at a younger age.

He would later come to suspect that this might have been the better fate…but that would be much later.

Emma came back from around the desk and told them that Timothy had an appointment for two weeks from that coming Thursday, at two in the afternoon.  Dr. Putnam gave this his strong approval, told Timothy that he looked forward to seeing him, and then bid the trio of Timothy, his mother, and the nurse goodbye.  They all watched him go rather breathlessly, like fans who’d just met a celebrity.

As I mentioned previously, here is the draft of the “cold opening” to Outlaw’s Mind, to see what everyone thinks, so far.  Please, feel free to give feedback below if you’re interested.

I want to point out that, right after this, we go back in time to Timothy’s youth, and only work our way to this stage of the story gradually.  In fact, I haven’t written that far yet.  So, maybe, if readers show interest, I’ll soon post some of the subsequent portions of the draft.  Let me know what you think, please.

Outlaw’s Mind

by

Robert Elessar

Timothy Outlaw was quite surprised when he saw flashing lights and heard a brief siren through the front window of the upstairs apartment in which he lived.  His was a quiet neighborhood, not truly middle-class perhaps, but certainly not poverty-stricken, and every family or individual he knew on the street was a solid, sensible, positive part of the community…at least as far as he knew.

When he first saw the lights, looking up from the laptop in front of him on his kitchen table, Timothy worried that some neighbor might have suffered a heart attack.  But then a second, and then a third set of lights appeared, he heard the very brief boop of a siren, as of some emergency vehicle prodding someone else out of its way, and he thought he heard voices, one of which seemed to come from a two-way radio.

He walked to his front window, which looked down onto the front lawn of the duplex in which he lived, and he saw, to his astonishment, three police cars and an ambulance, pulled rather haphazardly into and around the property next door.

The ambulance he could just barely consider expectable.  The couple who lived in the house next door—much smaller than the formerly one-family dwelling in which Timothy lived—were retired, albeit recently.  Health problems were more common as people got older, and Timothy thought he’d heard that heart attacks were particularly frequent among the recently retired, though he couldn’t be sure that was right.  But police cars?  Maybe one police car, they often came along with an ambulance, at least until it was clear what had happened.  But three?  Three police cars?  At the Rosencrantz’s house?

Timothy didn’t like to associate himself even in a peripheral way with troubling events, but this was too much, too close to home.  He wanted to see at least generally what was going on.  The weather was still warm enough that he didn’t think he needed a jacket, so he simply went to the side door that opened on to the long stairway down to the side of the house.  This was on the other side from the Rosencrantz’s place, but he could still see the multiple blinking flares from the emergency vehicles, reflecting off windows and the sides of houses in the early night.

As he came around to the front of the house on the narrow concrete walkway, he saw that his downstairs neighbor, Bernice, was walking back into the yard, a sweater pulled around her shoulders.  She hunched, rather theatrically, against what seemed to Timothy to be a mild and rather pleasant breeze.  Then again, maybe she was hunched against something else.

She saw Timothy even as he saw her, and she nodded.  She appeared to try to give a greeting smile, but it came out as a grimace.

“Hi, Tim,” she said.

“Hi,” Timothy responded.  He didn’t really like the shortened version of his name, but he strove never to make much of it.  “What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing,” Bernice replied, coming closer to him and standing at an angle, where she could converse with him while watching the lights and vehicles and people in the neighboring yard.  “I thought I’d go over and see if there was anything I could do to help, but I guess it’s too late for that.”  Bernice was a recently divorced LPN, with long ER and ICU experience, so it wasn’t unreasonable of her to offer to assist even trained EMTs and police officers.  But that hadn’t really been the substance of Timothy’s inquiry.

“But what happened?” he asked.  “Are Mr. and Mrs. Rosencrantz all right?”

“Ah,” Bernice said, though Timothy honestly couldn’t see how she couldn’t have known what his question was about.  “That.  Well…I guess I would have to say no on both counts.”

Irritated by her evasiveness, but able to keep it under good control thanks to recently acquired practices and habits, Timothy said, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Bernice said, sounding both weary and sad, with a hint of the cynical undertone that so many career nurses developed, “from what I can gather, it looks like Mrs. Rosencrantz is dead…and Mr. Rosencrantz is the one who killed her.”

“What?” Timothy said.  “Are you…you can’t be serious.”  He knew, though, that no matter how jaded she might be, Bernice would never joke about such a thing.

“I wish I wasn’t,” she said.  “But I know one of the cops, there…he’s come into the ER when I’ve been working a couple of times.  He said they got a call from Mr. Rosencrantz a little while ago saying that he’d…well, that he’d just lost his temper with his wife over something and had bashed her head in with a metal knife holder.  Didn’t stab her, nothing like that, just beat her in the head with the holder.  Then, I guess, he called 911, but it looks like it’s too late for her.”  She sighed.

“Holy shit,” Timothy said softly.

“Yeah, you can say that again,” Bernice replied, nodding sadly.

Timothy could barely gather his thoughts.  He couldn’t quite comprehend the notion of his neighbor, a small, slightly stout man with a sardonic sense of humor and a comically jaded attitude suddenly losing his temper and beating his wife to death with a blunt object.  The two had occasionally bickered, even within the range of Timothy’s hearing, but it had been almost a theatrical kind of bickering.  It had always seemed to Timothy that, on those occasions when the Rosencrantz’s were fighting, they were doing so mainly out of a sense of obligation, as if it were a required part of being a recently retired couple, but not because they disagreed about anything of any depth.

And Mr. Rosencrantz looked like a man who had more likely been the target of bullying in his young life—and perhaps even in his adult life—than to be the instigator of violence, even if he were provoked severely by a sharp-tongued wife…which had not been a very accurate description of Mrs. Rosencrantz.

It wasn’t that Timothy couldn’t imagine people being violent, even to those closest to them.  Quite the contrary, he knew of such things only too well.  But he thought that there were certain types of people who were the ones who might one day lash out destructively, and other types who simply were not.  It appeared he had mis-classified Mr. Rosencrantz.

He watched for a bit, Bernice standing silently next to him.  He saw the two EMTs come out through the front door of the small house, a stretcher rolling between them, on which lay a small figure in a black plastic bag.  Timothy hadn’t ever really noticed just how tiny and frail Mrs. Rosencrantz had been—her physical presence had always been one of great energy, so one never felt that she was anything but large—but seeing what was clearly her form lying on the stretcher, pushed easily by the two emergency workers, who didn’t even need to make any special maneuvers to bring their burden down the few stairs from the front porch, that point was driven home.

With that, he felt a wave of anger begin, a judgmental contempt for Mr. Rosencrantz.  It was such the mark of a bully, for someone who was small and weak in one way or another to seek out those who were smaller and weaker to victimize.  Who knew, perhaps Mr. Rosencrantz had committed spousal abuse many times over the years but had been able to keep it contained and hidden enough that he didn’t get caught.  Timothy hated such a thought.  Poor Mrs. Rosencrantz, trapped in her marriage by tradition and fear, might never have said or done anything to stop it.  Timothy had no disdain for her, or for anyone in such a situation.  He understood how the threat of violence, how someone else’s rage, could be so frightening as to rob one even of rational self-preservation.

No, the blame was—always—on the perpetrator.  Timothy had no patience, no pity, no sympathy for people who committed acts of violence upon others.  This was not because he couldn’t understand their actions.  He could understand them only too well.  He had demons of his own that would surely have caused little Mr. Rosencrantz, the victimizer of a littler, frailer woman, to jump back in terror, and possibly flee screaming, if they were made manifest before him.

They were trying to manifest themselves now.  Timothy recognized it, the surging heat in his head, the decreased focus of his thoughts, the ache of his own fists, which wanted to bunch into cudgels and beat little Mr. Rosencrantz until he couldn’t move, couldn’t even be recognized, for his horrible crime and betrayal.

But Timothy recognized those feelings, and he knew what to do.  Without even needing to close his eyes anymore, he embraced his emotions, his anger, his hatred, cuddled them like a big, lovable pet, solidified them…and then, with the words “scatter to the winds,” he lifted them up through the top of his head and let them do just that.  The physical aspects of his anger—the tension, the faster heartbeat, the widened pupils—would take a few moments to re-settle, but his anger itself, the emotion, the thought of it, behaved just as though it had been a bag of leaves torn open in a gale.  Timothy could almost see little autumn shapes, sculpted from unnecessary emotion, fluttering and swirling about one another, reduced to impotent, disorderly remains, to decay on the lawns of the neighborhood.

Bernice, on the other hand, seemed to have no such technique for assuaging her own emotions.  Not looking away from the two EMTs as they rolled the late Mrs. Rosencrantz up to the rear of their ambulance—which would not be needing its sirens—she said, “I can’t believe that little piece of shit did that.  The piece of shit.  And Mabel was such a sweet lady, too.”

Timothy realized just then that he had never known Mrs. Rosencrantz’s first name.  And though she had not ever struck him as saintly, he didn’t think the word “sweet” was too great an exaggeration, especially at a moment like that.

Sweetness, however, did not seem to be the mode in which Bernice was settled.  As the EMTs lifted their stretcher and its occupant up into the ambulance, she muttered, “I’d like to get that little bastard in one of my ER cubicles, and get some central line kits, and catheters, and suture sets, and everything else.  I’d put him on IV fluids and even intubate him if I had to, but I’d see how long I could keep him alive and wishing he was dead.  Piece of shit.”

Timothy’s mouth dropped.  He’d never heard Bernice talk in such a way, and it shocked him tremendously.  He wondered if Bernice—whose own marriage had ended less than a year before, but had no doubt been deteriorating for a long time before that—had personal experience with spousal abuse.  Surely that was it.  What else could explain such frankly horrific sentiments from a woman whose calling was care and healing?

Timothy felt that he ought to say something to her, but he didn’t know what it should be.  Before he could even mouth something mindless and banal, though, two policemen walked through the front door of the Rosencrantz’s house, with the small form of the man in question—not much bigger than his wife had been—between them, handcuffed, head down, and with tears noticeably streaming down his face, glinting in the porch light and the streetlights.  He certainly looked contrite.  He looked devastated.  Timothy could well believe that the man was as shocked by his own actions as anyone else would be, and that he would never stop feeling their horror for the rest of his life.

Bernice, however, had no apparent sympathy for him, any more than Timothy had at first felt.  As the somber-looking officers guided their charge toward one of the cars, Bernice suddenly yelled out, “You piece of shit!  How could you?  You son of a bitch!”

The officers escorting Mr. Rosencrantz stopped briefly, apparently surprised, despite their usual occupation, at the epithets being hurled.  Mr. Rosencrantz did not look up, but instead lowered his head even further, and sobbed audibly.

Far from being moved by this—at least in any benign direction—Bernice doubled down, yelling, “Yeah, you’d better cry, you shit!  I hope you get raped in prison, you bastard!  I hope you’re made into some big thug’s bitch!”

Timothy, thoroughly caught by surprise in the face of Bernice’s uncharacteristic anger, when she’d seemed merely grim and sad at first, didn’t have any idea what to say.

Now a new person appeared in the doorway of the house, as the officers began to move Mr. Rosencrantz along again.  This was another policeman, but based on his age and his uniform, he must have been of higher rank than the other two.  He looked quite surprised as he came out to stand on the small porch, and he looked first over at Timothy and Bernice, then around the street.  Only when following his gaze did Timothy notice that quite a few other neighbors had come out into the open to watch the proceedings.  One man, the neighbor on the other side of the Rosencrantz’s house, was nodding his head vigorously in response to Bernice’s words, and Timothy thought he heard the man mutter “Damn right.”  In the glow of the streetlamps and the porch lights, the man’s face looked almost demonic.  His expression would not have been out of place on a member of the Spanish Inquisition.  Clearly, he agreed with Bernice’s sentiments.

The new, senior officer, quickly assessing the situation, called out in Timothy’s direction, “Take it easy, Nurse Bernice.  That sort of thing isn’t helping anyone.”

Timothy had time to realize that this must be the cop that Bernice knew from the ER, before the nurse—whom the officer had clearly been trying cleverly to remind of her usual role as a caregiver—spat out, “There’s nothing that can help anyone here!  The only thing I want to help is to help give him a lethal injection!  I’m happy to volunteer!”

The Rosencrantz’s opposite neighbor chuckled evilly in response to this proposal, and more clearly than before, he said, “I’ll be a witness.”

The officer, clearly irritated, glowered and looked from Bernice to Timothy.  “Hey, sir,” he said, “why don’t you take Nurse Bernice inside.  This isn’t good, she’s only hurting herself, and the situation’s already bad enough.”

Surprised at being thus addressed, and thoroughly unused to being the calm one in any situation, it took a moment for Timothy even to respond.  Finally, he said, “Right.  Right.”  Turning to Bernice, he tentatively put a hand on her shoulder and said, “He’s right, Bernice.  Let’s go inside.”

Bernice’s gaze snapped up to Timothy with a speed that startled him, and he almost drew his hand away in fear.  He half expected her to begin shouting at him, but she just glared.

“Come on,” Timothy said.  “It’s not worth it.”

This seemed to have some effect, and Bernice’s face calmed just a bit, as she said, “You’re right.  You’re right…he’s not worth it.”

Not bothering to correct Bernice’s slight misquote, Timothy said, “Come on,” and he turned, gently pressuring Bernice to do so also.  She went along, not enthusiastically, and Timothy added, “Do you want to come up to my apartment and have a Coke or something?”  He wished he could have offered her a beer or a glass of wine—or even a shot of whiskey—but he did not use alcohol nor keep it around.

Bernice, trudging along beside Timothy, seemed to consider his offer, but then she said, “No, I don’t think so.  I don’t think I need to be around other people right now.  I feel like I need to hurt somebody, and there’s no point in having a target, especially not a nice guy like you.”

As they drew level with the front door of the house—the entrance to Bernice’s ground-floor apartment—Timothy took his hand away.  Bernice headed for her door but seemed to catch herself.  Her shoulders, her posture, her manner, were all so stiff and tense that Timothy half expected her to loose a barrage of obscenities upon him for pulling her away.  Instead, though, with clear significant effort, she said, “Thank you, though.  I appreciate the offer.”

Relieved, impressed, and rather goofily proud of himself, Timothy said, “You’re welcome.  Any time.”

Bernice seemed about to turn around and head back to the door, but she stopped, looking disturbed and puzzled, though still glowering.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “This really isn’t like me.  I’m just so angry.”

Timothy did not have to lie to respond, “Don’t worry about it.  I understand, believe me.”

Apparently, his thorough sincerity was successfully conveyed, for Bernice looked more relaxed, as well as a bit grateful, as she nodded and said, “Thanks.  Good night.”

She turned and walked into her apartment.  She closed the door with perhaps just a bit more force than was necessary, but only just.

Before rounding the corner to the stairs up to his apartment, Timothy heard a voice call out, “Thank you, sir!”

He turned, surprised, to see the senior officer still standing on the porch, clearly looking at him.  Not used to being on polite, let alone good, terms with members of law enforcement, Timothy stammered, “Pardon?”

The officer chuckled, clearly recognizing Timothy’s discomfort.  “I said, thank you.  That was well done, and it was really helpful.  I appreciate it.”

Timothy, both utterly wrong-footed and remarkably proud in an almost kindergartenish way, said, “It’s my pleasure.  I’m…I’m sure your job must hard enough without…without people making it worse.”

The officer nodded somberly, and he said, “That it is.”  He tipped a two-fingered salute to the brim of his cap, a gesture that made Timothy’s pride and gratitude swell even more than they had so far, then turned and walked into what must be a crime scene investigation.  Though apparently there was no mystery involved in what had happened, Timothy guessed that thoroughness was an absolute requirement, particularly in cases of suburban homicides.

As he almost floated up the stairs to his apartment, Timothy was ashamed of himself for feeling such joy in the face of the terrible tragedy, but he couldn’t help it.  This new technique Dr. Putnam had taught him was the greatest thing he’d ever found in his life.

It was too bad Mr. Rosencrantz hadn’t known it.  If he had, his wife might still have been alive, and he might not have been facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.