Dr. Val

The bust of Hippocrates stared up at Val Riordan from the desk. “First, do no harm…”

“Yeah, bite me,” said the psychiatrist, throwing her Versace scarf over the Greek’s face.

Val was having a bad day. The call from Constable Crowe, revealing that her treatment, or lack of it, had not caused Bess Leander’s suicide, had thrown Val into a quandary. She’d zombied her way through her morning appointments, answering questions with questions, pretending to take notes, and not catching a word that anyone said to her.

Five years ago there had been a flood of stories in the media about the dangers of Prozac and similar antidepressants, but those stories had been set off by sensational lawsuits against the drug companies, and the follow-ups, the fact that not one jury found antidepressants to cause destructive behavior, had been buried in the back pages. One powerful religious group (whose prophet was a hack science fiction writer and whose followers in-cluded masses of deluded movie stars and supermodels) had fielded a media attack against antidepressants, recommending instead that the de-pressed should just cheer up, buck up, and send in some gas money to keep the Mother Ship running. The various professional journals had re ported no studies that proved that antidepressants increased the incidence of suicidal or violent behavior. Val had read the religious propaganda (it had the endorsement of the rich and famous), but she hadn’t read the professional journals. Yes, automatically treating her patients with antide-pressants had been wrong, but her attempt to atone by taking them all off the drugs was just as wrong. Now she had to deal with the fact that she might be hurting them.

Val hit the speed dial button to the pharmacy. Winston Krauss answered, but his voice was muted, as if he had an incredibly bad cold.

“Pine Cobe Drug and Gibt.”

“Winston, you sound horrible.”

“I hab on my mask and snorkle.”

“Oh, Winston.” Val rubbed her eyes, causing her contacts to slide back in her head somewhere. “Not at the store.”

“I’m in the back room.” His voice became clear on the last word of the sentence. “There, I took it off. I’m glad you called, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about killer whales.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m attracted to Orcas. I’ve been watching a Jacques Cousteau tape about them…”

“Winston, can we cover this in session…?”

“I’m worried. I was especially turned on by the male one. Does that make me a homosexual?”

Jeez, it didn’t worry him that he was a wannabe whale-humper, as long as he wasn’t a gay wannabe whale-humper. As a psychiatrist, she’d tried to drop terms like “full-blown batshit” from her vocabulary, even in thought, yet with Winston, she couldn’t keep the term from rising. Lately, Val felt as if she was running the batshit concession on the cave floor. It had to stop. “Winston, I’m putting everyone back on their SSRIs. Get rid of the placebos. I’m going to put everyone on Paxil to get their levels up as quickly as possible. Make sure to warn the ones who were on Prozac that they absolutely can’t miss a day like they used to. I’ll move those who need it later.”

“You want me to take everyone off of the placebos? Do you know how much money we are making?”

“Start today. I’m going to call my patients. I want you to give them credit for the unused placebos they still have.”

“I won’t do it. I almost have enough saved to spend a month at the Cetacean Research Center on Grand Bahama. You can’t take that away from me.”

“Winston, I won’t compromise my patients’ mental health so you can go on vacation and fuck Flipper.”

“I said I won’t do it. You were the one who started this. What about your patients’ mental health then?”

“I was wrong. I’m not going to put everyone back on antidepressants either, so you’re going to lose some revenue there too. Some of them didn’t need the drugs in the first place.”

“No.”

Val was shocked at the conviction in Winston’s voice. His self-esteem problem no longer seemed an issue. What a crappy time for him to be making progress. “So you want the town to know about your little problem?”

“You won’t do that. You have more to lose than I do, Valerie. If you blow the whistle on me, then I’ll tell the whole story to the papers. I’ll get immunity and you’ll go to jail.”

“You bastard. I’ll send my patients down to the Thrifty Mart in San Junipero. Then you won’t even have the legitimate sales.”

“No, you won’t. Things are going to stay just the way they are, Dr. Val.” Winston hung up.

Valerie Riordan stared at the receiver for a second be fore replacing it in its cradle. How? How in the hell had she given control of her life over to someone like Winston Krauss? More important, how was she going to get it back without going to jail?