Fugue State Read Free

personal life and listened carefully to her stories. He always left a simple, tasteful card — nothing lewd or disgraceful — on her desk on her birthday. She tried to forgive his many faults for that reason. But in the end, she didn’t like him.
    Jimmy had left his door open. He’s expecting me. The click-clack of her heels on the linoleum must have stirred him. Jimmy’s head popped out of the doorway, and he invited her in. “Ah, Alexa. It’s good to see you.”
    She winced at the trepidation in his voice and found the lighthearted façade reproachable. Everyone at the office must have known this day was coming. She’d asked to meet with him at the lunch hour, knowing the ancillary staff would be gossiping in the break room and swapping their desserts, so she wouldn’t have to face them when she walked in. They were her coworkers, people she’d known well and whose eyes she couldn’t bear.
    “How are you holding up?” Jimmy asked, taking a seat. It felt good to think for a moment that someone still cared about her well being, even if his words were merely a polite banality.
    “I’m fine, Jimmy. Thanks for asking,” she lied. She wasn’t fine, and they both knew it. If she were fine, she would be working her usual daytime hours, not spending her days in a courtroom while struggling to interpret a few MRIs at night.
    “How’s the trial going?” Thornton asked and motioned toward another chair. The words fell from his lips slowly, as if treading lightly on the subject.
    She hesitated before she sat. Today was the only day all week she wasn’t scheduled to be in the courtroom. Please don’t make me talk about the trial.
    “Everything’s fine.”
    “Good, very good. We look forward to having you back full-time again. Isn’t that why you wanted to meet with me? That voicemail sounded urgent.” His cheery expression faded and little frown lines settled in around his mouth.
    She raised an eyebrow, and a small sigh escaped. Why make this difficult? You know why I’m here. He knew the stress was getting to her, and her work was suffering. The urgent voicemail. She scolded herself. I’m going to spare you the details of that night. The night I let that word slip out. She shuddered. Two nights ago, after a long day in court, Alexa tried to get some work done reading MRIs at home. With the help of speech recognition software, the word she’d spoken into the microphone instantly appeared on her computer monitor. She stared at the word in incredulity. She had meant to say the word myelogram, a follow-up procedure she was recommending on a postoperative spine patient. Instead, the word she saw on the computer screen was murder . The horror.
    She wanted to blame it on the late night, the stress of the trial, the combination of alternating sleeping pills with caffeine pills and the other stimulants on which she relied in an attempt to maintain a steady balance of sleep and wakefulness. No. She had cracked under the pressure. After deleting the word one letter at a time, she called Jimmy and left a message requesting that he meet with her.
    “You know I’m not coming back, Jimmy. You know that’s why I’m here.”
    “Alexa, you just need more time. You…You’ll be able to come back. Perhaps after the trial is over. You can still make partner next year. You need more time, that’s all.”
    Don’t fight me, Jimmy . “I can’t do it anymore.” She tried to sound strong and unwavering, but the abrupt change in the pitch of her voice conveyed her apprehension.
    “Is it the nightmares?” he pressed.
    Damn. My loose lips have said too much. The vivid nightmares she’d been having since the incident were so frequent, so commonplace in her daily routine — occurring nearly every time she closed her eyes — that sometimes she doubted she was ever asleep to begin with. It slipped out once to Jimmy in passing. She had mentioned them indifferently, as if they were discussing the weather, and hadn’t expected