Waiting for the Moon

Common sense told him that it was impossible, that Andrew would carry these images like a stone on his heart until the day he died. Until one of his feeble suicide attempts succeeded.

So what could Ian do? Return to Selena and apologize, tell her that some heartbreaks were irreparable?

Such surrender was inconceivable. All of his life he'd accepted challenges that other men walked away from. He thrived on insurmountable odds, on beating the whims of fate.

He felt a stirring of ambition. The doctor he'd once been lifted his tired old head, peered through the dusty

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jacket of Ian's soul, and smiled. He was a trained physician-once he'd been the best of the best-and he'd sworn to help people in pain. And Andrew was in more pain than any patient he'd ever treated.

Ian went to his bedroom and pawed through his books, pulling down anything about diseases of the mind. When he had everything, he went back to Andrew's room and resumed his seat.

One by one, he read the books, kept reading until the sun began its lingering descent into the silver sea. He closed the last volume at seven o'clock that night.

He threw it across the room and stared dully at the pile of books and papers beneath the window. He'd never studied psychiatry before, certainly not with so specific an inquiry in mind, but he'd always thought of it as a fringe science, a loose collection of tricksters and misguided doctors trying to cure the incurable or watch the inevitable. Still, he'd thought they knew something, that they'd at least developed a theory for helping their patients.

But they were dangerous men, ugly and frightening in their narrow-minded view of the world in general, and women in particular. He stared at the paper at his feet. Thomas Hawkes Tanner's "On Excision of the Clitoris as a Cure for Hysteria."

Hysteria. That's what they called it when a woman said she'd been raped as a child.

"Hysteria." He shook his head, thinking of the articles and ideas he'd read. They left him feeling dirty and ashamed of his profession. Dr. Freud-supposedly one of the best alienists of the time-had been the only beam of hope in a dark, dirty, misogynistic profession. At first Freud had believed the women who reported that they'd been raped as children, and his theories excited Ian.

Then, for no apparent reason, Freud had stopped believing. Suddenly these same women who years before

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had been victims were now suffering from "hysterical fantasies."

Ian had no source in his library that even allowed for the possibility of what had happened to Andrew. The respected psychiatrists would clearly treat the boy as if he were hysterical-no doubt they'd use electrical shock treatments on his genitals to cure him of the unacceptable "fantasies" that lurked in his mind.

It was sickening.

Ian shoved a hand through his hair, wondering what to do. Unlike his "colleagues," Ian had access to the ultimate, unvarnished truth. He knew Andrew was neither hysterical nor fantasizing. The boy was a victim, pure and simple.

And so, it fell on Ian's shoulders to treat his patient.

Anticipation nibbled at his consciousness again. He'd owned an insane asylum for ten years, and managed it for six; and now, finally, he was going to treat his first patient.

Andrew released a quiet moan.

Ian leaned forward and forced himself to touch the boy's shoulder. "Andrew? Can you hear me? It's Dr. Carrick."

Andrew blinked groggily. Slowly his eyes opened.

Ian felt a rush of pure adrenaline. Just like the old days. "Andrew? I'm here."

Andrew turned his head. "Dr. Carrick?"

Ian stared down into the boy's pale gray eyes. "Hello there, Andrew. You gave us quite a scare."

"You touched me," Andrew said softly.

"Yes."

Tears glazed Andrew's eyes. His lip trembled. "You shouldn't have done that, Dr. Carrick. I was always so careful around you."

"I'd like to help you, Andrew." .