Dr. Fletcher

(writing notes) Marty has had a hard time keeping his grief from interfering with his professional life.

Marty

One of the children in my practice has a father who is a recovering alcoholic. And the father and I thought it would be a good idea if sometime we took his child, his son, and went together to one of these AA meetings. They have open meetings - you may know about those - the open AA meetings.

Dr. Fletcher

Yeah, I actually do the same thing with my patients.

Marty

Well, then you know. So people talk and it seemed to be a good place to take the child: kind of a safe place to get a sense of what his father's doing. He thought it was a good idea, too.

Dr. Fletcher

(writing notes) Grieving for Susan, his dead collie, has turned Marty into a chronic malingerer.

Marty

So I was going home from work in my car and by the time I got home I was spending the time the way I like to - with my thoughts about Susan. And it came time for me to go to the AA meeting; I didn't want to go. I wanted to be with Susan. So I called up and made an excuse that I'd had a minor automobile accident and had skidded on the road and hit a tree. And I let him know I was fine so he wouldn't worry. Didn't want to worry the son, either.

The trouble is that the next day he called me up and he started quizzing me about the accident. He went into all these details: What kind of car do you drive? What kind of tires do you have? I don't know the brand of my tires so I had to make up the name of the tire. And then he wanted to know the exact street corner. I just made up one that came to mind and it happens to be a well-known one because he knew it.

So he asked me whether I was going around the right-hand - was it the west side or the east side of the corner? So I made up the corner and he told me he thinks that the oak tree is there. Did I hit the oak tree or the maple that was next to it? I kept making this up as I went along.

And finally he said that as a recovering alcoholic he was responsible for intervention and helping other people, and 'I think that the cause of your accident was drinking. So I want you,' he said to me, 'to meet me for coffee tomorrow on your way to work so we can talk this over.'

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