Old Maid For My Room, Young Maid For His Bed, I Kicked All Three Out novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Nine O'Clock
The doctor was a pale man in a quilted vest, and he sat on the edge of my mother's sofa with his bag on his knees.
Britt sat beside him with a notepad on her knee.
"Witness," Craig said, and gave her shoulder a pat.
Nobody had asked me to sit, so I took the armchair and crossed my ankles.
"Mrs. Granlund," the doctor said. "Your husband tells me you've been hearing voices at night."
"I hear my husband's voice at night," I said. "Usually coming up the stairs."
Britt's pen stopped.
The doctor cleared his throat and asked me the date, and who the president was, and to count backward from a hundred by sevens.
I did it all, slowly and clearly.
At eighty-six I stopped.
"Doctor, have you been told what I drink every night?"
"Herbal tea, I understand. Chamomile."
"Dorothea," I said, not loudly.
She was standing in the hall doorway with her hands folded.
She had been standing there since before the doctor rang the bell.
"Bring the thermos, please."
Craig said, "Jo, this is ridiculous."
"It's a cup of tea."
Dorothea went to the kitchen and came back with the steel thermos held against her chest.
I took a clean cup off the sideboard and put it in the doctor's hand.
"Pour him some," I said.
"It's only for Mrs. Granlund, dear," Dorothea said, very softly.
"Why?"
She did not answer.
The doctor looked at the cup, then at the thermos, then at my husband.
He put the cup down on the coffee table and did not pick it up again.
"I think," he said, "I'd like to see Mrs. Granlund's records before I write anything."
Craig's smile never moved.
"Then I'll write it myself," he said. "Jo, I've filed an emergency petition. A deputy is coming at ten to take you in for seventy-two hours. If you go quietly now, Eli never has to know."
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