Duby's Doctor

Chapter 7: MOMMY

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Agent Stone presents Mitchell with an offer she, literally, can't refuse, in today's chapter of DUBY'S DOCTOR.  

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That evening in the tiny, cluttered room that served as Mitchell's office, she and Stone had reached a stalemate after an hour's discussion. At least, it had begun as discussion. During the hour it had morphed into debate, then argument, and finally highly-charged silence.

Mitchell's pacing footfalls echoed in the tile-floored space.

Stone slouched in a side chair, watching her.

Mitchell's shoulders drooped from having worked ten hours and sparred verbally for an hour more. "No, no, no, no, no, no!" she said at last, shaking her head while she continued pacing. "It just won't work."

She stopped in front of Stone and looked into his face. "Look," she said, "he's a grown man. He must have been living somewhere."

Stone nodded. "And when this is all over, he can go back there. But right now, it isn't safe. They're sure to be watching his old place."

Mitchell began pacing again. Two steps east, pivot, three steps west, pivot, one step east. Again she stopped and addressed Stone.

"But, he needs special attention," she said. "He still has so much to re-learn. I work all day. I can't be expected to deal with that."

"Lots of parents work."

"Yeah, but they don't have two-hundred-fifty-pound preschoolers!" Mitchell almost resumed pacing, but she swung back toward Stone with a new thought. "Geez, how could I even afford to feed him? I'm on a salary, here. It might be different if I were in private practice – "

Stone answered before she could complete the sentence. "I'll get his work accepted at a gallery in South Miami. His paintings will sell. You'll get along." He caught her eye and added slyly, "Maybe better than you think."

"Don't be ridiculous." She scoffed. "I'm old enough to be his ... sister."

Two steps east, pivot, three steps west, pivot, three steps east...

"Dr. Oberon, it's been over two months," Stone crooned soothingly. "He can't stay here in the hospital any longer, and you said, yourself, he's not recovered fully. Even if he weren't in danger, he couldn't live alone – "

"What kind of danger? You said as long as people thought he was dead, there'd be no danger."

"And that's all the more reason not to expose him to society at large. We can't take a chance he might be recognized, alive and well and presumably able to identify the people who tried to murder him.

"Who knows what might happen if he were sent to some rehab facility with hundreds of people coming and going all the time? His picture was in the paper with his obituary. Sooner or later, someone is going to think he looks familiar. Sooner or later, somebody is going to look him up on Yahoo or Google or some such thing. He's much safer in a private home with one trusted, familiar, trained medical person looking after him."

A horrible new thought sprang into Mitchell's head. "Oh, no! My neighbors!" she wailed. She paced to her desk chair and dropped into it. "I can't move some young stud into my condo. People will think we're living in sin!"

Stone actually laughed out loud.

Mitchell felt insulted. "Would that be so hard to believe? Is it so unlikely that I might have a gentleman friend? Plain women have lovers just as often as pretty ones."