The Shunning - 2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"I'm home." Steven shouted from the front entry before hanging his coat in the nearby closet.

"Finally... I've been wanting to eat for the past two hours," a near identical voice replied.

"You could have eaten without me Patrick," Steven replied as he made his way through several rooms to the kitchen.

"I told you I was cooking tuna tonight. If I cooked it when I wanted to, it would have dried out and gone cold before you came home," Patrick said to the sizzling sound of uncooked flesh hitting hot oil.

"Did you remember not to put so much pepper on mine?" Steven asked, as he looked over Patrick's shoulder.

"Of course," he replied, turning his face, a near copy of Steven's, to kiss his twin brother's lips.

"Mmmmmm... now this kind of spice I don't mind," Steven chuckled as their lips parted.

"Well this is all you are getting tonight... got a date," Patrick replied, flipping the pan seared fish over.

"Work, or pleasure?" Steven asked, as he went to the counter where a salad bowl stood.

"A little of both." Patrick replied.

"Oh?" Steven asked, as he picked out a chunk of tomato.

"Yeah... remember that cute guy at the club last week?"

"Of course... how could I not? You were with him the whole time," Steven said as a piece of avocado slipped from his fingers.

"Well he gave me a call today; seems he wants to hire me for a job."

"What is it this time... blackmail, embezzlement, jealous boyfriend?"

"Don't know yet... all I know is the target," Patrick said as he took the fish out of the pan, letting the oil heat up before cooking his brother's tuna.

"Someone important?" Steven asked.

"A local celebrity," Patrick replied.

"Who?" Steven asked, now curious.

"You know the rule... You don't tell me about your celebrity patients and I don't tell you about mine."

"Fine... be that way," Steven said, as he took his plate from his twin before heading to his office.

There, sitting on his desk was a single DVD... the Stockton report. Putting his plate down, Steven took the disk out of its protective case and placed it in his computer's DVD drive. Within seconds a video began playing, the last recorded session he had done with Mr. Nathan Stockton right before the man had killed himself in front of his doctor.

Nathan had been like most of Steven's patients... first generation success stories, many times being the first in their family to go to college. Having come from a similar background, Steven felt he had good understanding of the issues and emotional insecurities faced by some people new to money. That, at least, was what Steven had first thought when Nathan stepped into his office.

Nathan... having grown up in a small Southern Baptist farming community in Georgia, had been a local football legend... good enough to earn a scholarship to go to college in Athens, the first of his family to do so. In his second year, however, a hard tackle received while making a winning touchdown had torn his Antilles tendon, ending his career and costing him his NCAA scholarship. His coach however, not wanting to see the promising young man's future destroyed, made a few calls to certain well-to-do alumni who raised enough money to allow Nathan to finish college.

Getting a degree in accounting, Nathan scored exceptionally well on the GMAT; well enough to get into Wharton's. So... against his father's advice, Nathan left Georgia for Pennsylvania, working as a part time accountant. From then on life moved into the fast lane for Mr. Stockton. Heavily recruited right out of business school, he quickly became one of his company's leading investment bankers, making his first million before turning 30.

Using that money, Nathan paid off his family's mortgage on the farm and bought his parents a pair of new cars. It was a couple of years after that when Nathan's physician referred him to Steven for depression.

For the next three months Steven had listened patiently while Mr. Stockton complained about his family's never ending demands for more money while at the same time refusing to take any action to stop it. Eventually, Steven started to suspect that Nathan's problems had nothing to do with his family... at least where money was concerned.

It was with these kinds of patients that Steven was glad he had his brother. Having worked as a police undercover officer until a case ended with him getting shot at, Patrick had retired to the less strenuous role of providing security and private investigations. So... whenever Steven suspected one of his patients was not being totally open and honest, he would use his brother to dig up whatever secrets were really eating away at them. It might be unethical, but Steven felt it was for his patients' own good.

When Patrick came back with the deal on Mr. Stockton, Steven was both impressed, and a little horrified. As it turned out, Nathan was not just cheating on his wife but was cheating on her with a much older man... one of the rich alumni who had helped pay for his college education. Knowing Mr. Stockton's religious background, Steven began to wonder if the money he was giving his family was not out of feelings of generosity, but of guilt.

If that had been all of it, Steven would have been sure he knew how to guide their meetings to help Nathan reach some resolution. That wasn't all that Patrick found out however. His brother didn't know if Mr. Stockton was aware of it, but the man he was sleeping with was HIV positive. This placed Steven in a difficult position, for he was sure that Mrs. Stockton did not have a clue about her husband's ambiguous sexuality.

Considering how he came by the information and the code on ethics dealing with patient confidentiality, Steven knew he could not go behind Mr. Stockton's back and tell his wife to get tested, but his conscience would allow him let one of his patients put another person's life at risk. So they came to their last meeting.

Showing Nathan the evidence his brother had gathered, Steven had expected some sort of response, but all Mr. Stockton did was thank him for the information and then left ... his face pale.

What happened later still haunted Steven's dreams. Not liking how Mr. Stockton left, he had called his house to check up on him, only for the police to answer the phone. On learning that Steven was Mr. Stockton's psychiatrist; the police had him report to the station at once. On arriving there, Steven learned what happened to Mr. Stockton after he left his office. First he had gone to the house of his gay lover and killed him. Then he went home and killed his wife before killing himself with a single shot to the head.

Steven knew what he should have done... tell the police everything about his last meeting with Nathan, but he didn't. He knew if he did, he would never free himself from the guilt that still haunted him. Three people were now dead, and while not all his fault, he had been the catalyst, the one drop too many that had broken the weak forces holding Nathan's sanity together.

After watching the entire video, Steven took the disk out, snapping it in half with his hand, a sharp shard cutting into his palm, destroying the last piece of evidence of what he had done.