Dr Healy was absent that night and no one was the wiser. He went off just to have a smoke and returned just before the smoke cleared. I have a memory of him scanning the scene before his entrance. Most unusual don’t you think? Why the hesitation? One would properly assume he’d burst into the room but rather he wandered, as if strolling through a smoke shop while killing time on his lunch hour. But this was the dark of night to be clear and I fear the good Doc had a hand in it…both of them. He was impatient because he had patients waiting, or so he said, so who was I to question? Yet, that remains my task in life while “in absentia”
V
