“You see, it’s hard to explain…”
Dr. Clemens looked up at Neil. “How so?”
Neil Moore, a pudgy forty-one year old man, grappled for the words to express himself. “I thought… I used to think people were never just good, or just bad. That the world was a whole lot of gray, never black and white.”
The doctor’s brow knotted. “I think that’s how most people see the worl-
“No. Not me. People are mostly bad- like 99% bad- or 99% good.”
“But people do good things and bad, it’d be hard to pigeonhole somebody as all bad or all good.” The doctor reasoned.
“Well, that’s the thing, really. It’s the majority that dictated whether you were good or bad: you steal something, that’s bad; you steal it for family, well, that’s less bad but still bad. Everything fits into bad or good. Everything.”
The doctor was silent; Neil continued.
“You see on the news everyday: a white guy, forty, good upbringing, family man, churchgoer by day, but homosexual serial killer by night. He does good things to cover the bad things.”
The doctor pointed his bic pen at Neil.
“And this Godly maniac… does he know he’s bad?”
“Well, everybody thinks they’re a good guy. It doesn’t matter, though.”  
The doctor referenced his notes.
“That’s right, you said you, uh, ‘changed’ your thinking.”
Neil nodded. “That’s right.”
“Can you tell me what caused that change?”
Neil’s beady eyes screwed up. “Really? My wife. I thought, ‘Because she loves me, and because she’s good, she’s a good person.’ But everybody had their faults. Nobody was all good or all bad…” Neil eyes glazed over, his voice cracked. “She’s not- I mean, well…”
Dr. Clemens gave Neil time to gather himself together, which didn’t happen.
“You don’t-” -He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes- “You don’t understand how much I loved her. Things had… well, things… We were beginning to drift apart. She wasn’t my Cindy anymore.”
“…What happened?”
“My life was changing, and she never… grew accustomed to those changes.”
The doctor’s pen shuffled across his notepad.
“I take it you mean the disorder.”
“Yeah.”
“Neil, when were you diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder?”
“…about five, six weeks ago?”
“And how did that go for you?”
“Well, at first, I was shocked. You can understand the sort of things a person thinks when they find out something’s wrong with them.”
“How’d your wife- what was her name?”
“Cindy.”
Dr. Clemens stared at Neil compassionately. “What was she like?”
“She was… beautiful. She used to be a singer… at a café.” The warm memories surfaced in Neil’s head. “She… sang to me, and, when it was done… I told her, ‘You have the most beautiful voice in the world.’ And I started to visit the café more often, and she would sing just for me. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask her out, and I discovered we really had more in common than I thought. We never argued, or fought.”
“Well, everyone fights from time to time.” The doctor said.
“True, we got into fights,” Neil said, allowing the other memories to surface, “she used humor to end arguments. Not that that did everything. She could be very manipulative to get what she wanted. Not like a God complex, but… subtle.”
“Like what?”
“She would do things and not tell me.”
The doctor persisted: “Can you give me an example?”
“She almost was thrown into a big addiction with Valium.”
The doctor sat up and discontinued his note-taking. “How’d she manage that?”
Neil’s tone lost its nostalgic scent and slid into a factitious, hard-worked mumble.
“She went to a counselor for her anxiety. I didn’t know that a performer like her could even get anxious, but she did. The psychiatrist prescribed her Valium, and she found some way to take too much of it, but I don’t know how.”
“But if you could guess, how do you think she did it?”
“I think a doctor was supplying her in exchange for… well…”
The doctor nodded.
“She’d get calls on her cell, and whenever I was there she told me that it was nobody or that it was a telemarketer, which is a lie, she was on the Do Not Call list.”
“What did you do about it?”
Neil sighed. “I threatened I would take Claire away.”
The doctor seemed shocked. “Your daughter?”
“It was something I had to do. It was taking her life again.”
The doctor appeared to be fixated on something he couldn’t see. “Again?”
“I always suspected she had some sort of drug problem- before we were married, she might have been addicted to painkillers, I’m not sure.”
“But you weren’t positive?”
“I wouldn’t allow someone like my daughter get wrapped up in this!”
“And how did your daughter, Claire, how did she fit into this?”
“Claire was out of the picture for a long time until after the Valium. Then my wife became almost… more attached.”
“More involved, you mean?”
Neil nodded. “It was something of a turn-around for her. At least, that’s what I thought, she kept ‘wanting what was best for Claire’, sacrificing her activities for my daughter’s- though, there wasn’t many, the girl was only two. But Cindy seemed… possessive. I confronted the man she was calling. He was a psychiatrist, and I think I scared him off, but… after that she claimed that I was ‘controlling’ her life.”
Clemens turned his head to the side. “What did you do about it?”
“Well, soon after that incident, I was diagnosed with BPD and was prescribed a mood stabilizer.”
“Valtrigine” the doctor said, referring to his notes.
“Yes. That’s actually where it really started.”
“How so?” The doctor asked, scratching words into his notebook.
“She… hid things from me even more. We hardly talked. She spent most of the time making calls in our room. She was quieter.”
“And you think this was a reaction to your diagnosis?” he said.
“Well, the diagnosis wasn’t intense- I had a very mild case (it had to be mild, it was undiagnosed for nearly forty years). But Valtrigine is not mild. Anything but… It was her idea to use that one. At first I was kind of confused as to why she suggested that one, it being new and all…”
“At first?” The doctor questioned, his pen momentarily frozen.
“It makes sense now that you think of it. I ‘took away her life,’ and she wanted revenge. It’s that simple.”
“You had proof of this?”
“Yes. I was in the shower. I must have fallen asleep, or something because I woke up to the sound of running water. When I got out, the medicine cabinet door was slightly open and the bottle of Valtrigine- there was fewer pills than I thought there were.”
“Did you tell your wife?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
The doctor’s pen froze again. “You thought your wife took the pills.”
“Yes.” Neil replied.
“Why?”
“…I… At the time, I didn’t know.”
“You believed that she was harming herself?”
“She was… poisoning my daughter.”
The pen stopped. “You could… you- what?”
“The day after I lost my pills in the shower,” Neil leaned over, staring the doctor in the eye- “my daughter got sick,”
Neil continued: “She was vomiting, and crying, and everything. We eventually took her to a hospital: they said it was a simple case of food poisoning and that she would be better soon.”
Neil’s eyes began to water and he avoided the doctor’s stare as much as possible. “Of course the hospital won’t keep her. They won’t keep anything that isn’t actually dying in front of them. They give her back to us, and we take care of her. I skip work to take care of her.
“Eventually it gets to a point where I can’t take off any more days from work, so I leave her with Cindy, though I have an idea she was responsible for it. I should have done something, but I didn’t.” Neil shook his head, crying. “I didn’t. So I leave my daughter to go to work, thinking that Cindy would take care of her… and when I come back, my daughter is dead and my wife…”
Fighting to control himself, he managed: “She shot herself. She killed Claire, and shot herself.” And Neil broke down.
It was silent. Dr. Clemens put away his things, and calmly, slowly began to speak.
“Neil, sometimes our minds play tricks on us. We see things that aren’t there, or think bad thoughts, and sometimes that causes us to do things that we don’t mean.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Neil said with dark finality. “How many days of her life had she dreamed of that happening? Of killing Claire? Of killing me?
“How many times did she see me and hate? How could I not see it? Now, it’s obvious: she could’ve influenced me to select Valtrigine, the only real medicine on the market that was so fatal to children. Claire had been sick for only a week before she died. Innocent. Good. The destruction of innocence is evil, wouldn’t you agree?”
Doctor Clemens winced at the soulless simplicity guiding Neil’s tone, and lamented the ironic bitterness surrounding Neil’s words. The doctor hid his face in his hands- he hated this job, when it came to cases like this. The doctor wiped his eyes and glared at Neil.
“Does your… ‘theory of judgment’ apply to the insane?”
“Certainly. There are insane people who believe they are Santa Clause, and others who rip apart kids.”
“What about people who… are under influence of… things they can’t control?” The doctor’s tone was laced with anger.
“I’m sorry?”
The doctor thought of the wife: broken bones. Pulled hair. Black eye. To Neil’s credit, there was a gunshot wound, but it certainly had not been self inflicted. He was edging on unprofessionalism, and that would not do. He straightened himself up, inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and said, “It’s, it’s tragic. You’ve had a lot of bad things happen to you, Neil, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Neil said, content.
“But they saw your daughter. They tested her for the presence of foreign substances, Neil. She came up negative.”
“No, I, she-” Neil stammered.
“It’s rare, yes, but she died of Addison’s disease.”
“Don’t tell me what I saw! I saw her die. I saw my wife steal my pills, my-
The doctor spoke in a factual tone. “Although it is uncommon, Valtrigine does have a side effect of increased paranoia and dependency in some patients, Neil, the revenge thing was in your head.”
“The pills were gone, they were taken, how could-
“But you’d have to take an overdose for that memory loss and the unconsciousness in the shower, that’s why there was less-
“THOSE- SHE KILLED HERSELF!!!-
Neil’s screaming had devolved into a sobbing whine. A guard unlocked the door and three more entered the office.
“You were abusing the medicine, Neil! You saw your dead daughter, went into a rage, and killed your wife! They have the proof! They have-
A guard looked at Andrew Clemens warily. Andrew waved a hand and two of the guards dragged a ravenous Neil away, leaving a senior officer in the room with him.
“Did he hurt you? Sir?”
Andrew shook his head, half-heartedly. “…Each day, I walk in to this place thinking I can save one,” he said. “One of these people has retained at least some portion of their humanity. Someone can be saved.” The doctor’s eyes were bloodshot, his hair matted and messy. He looked like a drunk.
The officer looked at him pityingly. The doctor turned to him, sluggishly.
“Thought they have some good in them.”
“Are you okay? Do you need to take a-
“No, no, I’m fine.”
The officer seemed mildly relieved. “Okay, if you’re sure, because we have a real doozy for you, next. A woman who killed both kids, left ‘em on a church doorstep, and blames it on Bipolar Disorder.”
The doctor sighed. I told you: he hates this job, when it came to cases like this.