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He put the small flashlight in his shirt pocket, adjusted his glasses, and looked at my face thoughtfully. He was an overweight, balding, deeply tanned golf player, with rings of blond hair on his forearms.
"How do you feel now?" he said.
"Like something's torn in my head. The way wet cardboard feels when you tear it with your hands."
"Did you eat anything?"
"I threw it up."
"You want the good news? The tests don't show any booze in your system."
"How could there be? I didn't drink any alcohol."
"People have their speculations sometimes, warranted or not."
"I can't help that."
"The bad news is I don't know what did this to you. But according to the medics you said some strange things, Dave."
I looked away from his face.
"You said there were soldiers out there in the marsh. You kept insisting they were hurt."
The wind began gusting, and rain and green leaves blew against the window.
"The medics thought maybe somebody had been with you. They looked all over the levee," he said. "They even sent a boat out into those willow islands."
"I'm sorry I created so much trouble for them."
"Dave, they say you were talking about Confederate soldiers."
"It was an unusual night."
He took a breath, then made a sucking sound with his lips.
"Well, you weren't drunk and you're not crazy, so I've got a theory," he said. "When I was an intern at Charity Hospital in New Orleans back in the sixties, I treated kids who acted like somebody had roasted their brains with a blowtorch. I'm talking about LSD, Dave. You think one of those Hollywood characters might have freshened up your Dr Pepper out there at Spanish Lake?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"It didn't show up in the tests, but that's not unusual. To really do a tox screen for LSD, you need a gas chromatograph. Not many hospitals have one. We sure don't, anyway. Has anything like this ever happened to you before?"
"When my wife was killed, I got drunk again and became delusional for a while."
"Why don't we keep that to ourselves?"
"Is something being said about me, doc?"
He closed his black bag and stood up to go.
"When did you start worrying about what people say?" he said. "Look, I want you to stay in here a couple of days."
"Why?"
"Because you didn't feel any gradual effects, it hit you all at once. That indicates to me a troubling possibility. Maybe somebody really loaded you up. I'm a little worried about the possibility of residual consequences, Dave, something like delayed stress syndrome."
"I need to get back to work."
"No, you don't."
