living room and headed for the door.
«Michael, hello!» Carol was incredibly attractive in the dim light of the entrance light.
«Come in, hello! What happened?»
«I’m going to my friend’s and I decided to call on you to say thanks for your help. Things went to plan, he was quiet, as you said. But I want to help me with another thing if you don’t mind.»
«No, I don’t. Come in, come in, of course,» he stepped aside, letting her in. The pleasant scent of perfume, cream, and something else distant, alluring and inherent in real women, touched his nostrils and carried him into the living room.
Carol confusedly told him everything that they had already discussed with him more than once before, when she was just getting ready to make this difficult decision, but then the conversation took on a different tone, and when Michael understood it, it was too late.
«To be honest,» she leaned forward, as if she wanted him to hear better, «I cannot forget what was between us.»
«But this… we both agreed it was an accident,» he muttered in panic, watching the door in the corridor out of the corner of his eye. Carol spoke quietly, but her voice could be heard in the bedroom.
«Yes, we did. You’re right, but you felt sorry for me and understood. You were so imbued with my grief that I didn’t even know how to explain it, and your attention… it did something unimaginable to me. I think about you constantly. I agree that I shouldn’t have done so. Perhaps, I was too weak and wanted this, but now I don’t care. I miss you. I know that sounds silly but you’re divorced too. Why don’t we think about… well, you might understand me. At least we could try to live together. We can move to Frisco, I have a house there and it’s not far from here. My mother…»
«Carol,» he interrupted her, feeling that his throat was dry. «It’s impossible. I have a clientele, my job, connections here… You see I agree that I was wrong and made a mistake, but I can’t do that again…»
«You aren’t Weinstein and you don’t need to make excuses!» a sharp answer sounded. «I knew it!» she cried and leaned back in the sofa. Tears flowed from her eyes in thin streams, as when they first crossed the line of formal communication. «Don’t worry, I will not throw a tantrum. It’s just a pity, it’s a pity… Give me something soothing and I’ll go,» she could not restrain herself and burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands.
«OK, wait,» he wanted to make sure that nothing was heard in the bedroom, so he hurried there first.
«Give her sleeping pills!» was the first thing he heard when he carefully opened the door. There was no point in asking if his visitor heard everything – he clearly did. It was terrible. «Faster!» the whisper was hot, burning hot.
«You’re crazy! It’s…» Michael Woodruff was desperate to pull himself together.
«What? I’m gonna tell her everything and then I’ll tear the two of you apart. Did you sleep with her? Did you sleep?» the last words turned into the hiss of a cobra, ready to take a lethal leap. Michael realised it was necessary to reassure him.
«Wait, wait. I’ll be right back! Just don’t go out, I beg you!» he spoke in a whisper, but it seemed to him that he was screaming. Having slipped out of the bedroom, in one breath he swept along the corridor into his study and opened the safe. Then he took out the strongest sleeping pills and shook the capsule on the table with trembling hands.
«Thanks! You look so excited. Sorry,» Carol said in a low voice, seeing him with a glass of water. «How many?» she asked with a guilty smile, taking a glass from the doctor’s trembling hands.
«Usually three are enough, but you can take four now, I think,» he said in an uneven voice, wondering in his mind what dose she would receive and whether it would be harmful.
«I’ll take five!» the capsules disappeared into Carol’s hands. She washed them with water and again threw her head back on the sofa. «Now, let me have just a minute… I’ll calm down a bit and go. My friend Tina is waiting for me.»
Five minutes later, her body relaxed. A hand slowly slipped into a handbag at the back of the sofa. Michael stood up and headed towards the corridor. He was shaking from excitement.
«Where have you been for so long? I’m about to burst! Come here! If possible, I would put her on this table instead of this glass. Look what I have! This is a wig. Do I look like her?» listening to this, Woodruff felt that he was beginning to give in to internal instincts.
«You are definitely out of your mind today! Stop it! Otherwise, I…» he did not have time to finish, having received a push in the chest and finding himself on the bed. The only thing he managed to say sounded pathetic and humiliating, «Just don’t tie me! She may come to her senses out there.»
Half an hour later, both sat back in bed, and Michael said quietly:
«You are strong and do you also keep taking hormones?»
«Yes.»
«This is odd. Okay, I’m gonna get some water, I feel thirsty. I can’t believe that all this is true. Horrible! Imagine, the patient is behind the wall! What if she regains consciousness? That’s dangerous…»
«Bring me a drink,» he heard his visitor’s answer. «Come back and tell me about her divorce. I’m just bursting with curiosity! Don’t argue! Didn’t you enjoy it? It was as tough as you like.»
It took Woodruff some time to find whiskey, because he completely forgot where he’d put the bottle the previous Christmas. Holding two glasses in one hand, Michael left the kitchen and, taking two steps, was dumbfounded. Carol looked at him with wide eyes and smiled, but this could not be true! Five capsules would have knocked down an elephant.
«You still decided to treat me to whiskey?» she asked tearfully. The intonation was sluggish, as if she were tired and wanted to sleep. In fact, she did, but, facing her in a bathrobe and slippers, Michael felt terrible. However, she acted, as if she had not noticed it. «Pour me some. Quite a bit, a third. Do you have any ice? Sorry, I don’t drink it, you know.»
Without thinking, Woodruff poured the whiskey. He was completely at a loss, and his brain refused to think. In complete silence, she drank a third of the glass and asked for more. To his words about the car, Carol waved her hand and said that she would take a taxi and pick up her car tomorrow. Instead of drinking the second glass, she leaned back again and immediately fell asleep. All this was very weird, and Michael had a thought that such a reaction could have been caused by antidepressants, which she took on his prescription. If so, then everything was clear, but now he had to urgently solve another problem – his visitor. For five years he had kept an eye on this strange patient and his hallucinations. Obvious personality disorder based on the complete denial of one’s gender was not uncommon. However, his inability to pay for surgery and the constant use of hormonal drugs only aggravated the situation and he already had a complex type of nervous disorder that led him to the stage of transition to pathology: tantrums, a sharp change of mood, hallucinations, memory loss, paranoia, feeling ashamed of his appearance and much more.
Patience and Woodruff’s sincere interest yielded very positive results. Moreover, after so many years of communication and a positive trend, all those results could be combined into scientific work, although, on the other hand, this has led to unexpected closeness and informal relations between them, which have recently become a burden on Woodruff. The desire to become famous in the scientific community haunted his vanity, and the treatment method, based on a combination of drugs and telling stories about other patients seemed to be unique. Stories about difficult cases of curing psychiatric pathologies, especially in couples, such as, for example, Carol Lindstone and her husband, put his young patient, who had suffered a serious psychic trauma in his youth and decided to change his gender and become a man due to this, completely at ease. Suggestion, infusion and persuasion