Page 497 - A Little Life: A Novel

“You’re lying,” Andy repeats, still in that same quiet voice, and he slides
off the examining table, the bottle of juice slipping from his grasp and
shattering on the floor, and moves for the door.

“Stop,” Andy says, and he is cold, and furious. “Jude, you fucking tell
me now. What did you do?”
“I told you,” he says, “I told you.”
“No,” Andy says. “You tell me what you did, Jude. You say the words.
Say them. I want to hear you say them.”
“I told you,” he shouts, and he feels so terrible, his brain thumping
against his skull, his feet thrust full of smoldering iron ingots, his arm with

its simmering cauldron burned into it. “Let me go, Andy. Let me go.”
“No,” Andy says, and he too is shouting. “Jude, you—you—” He stops,
and he stops as well, and they both wait to hear what Andy will say.
“You’re sick, Jude,” he says, in a low, frantic voice. “You’re crazy. This is
crazy behavior. This is behavior that could and should get you locked away
for years. You’re sick, you’re sick and you’re crazy and you need help.”

“Don’t you dare call me crazy,” he yells, “don’t you dare. I’m not, I’m
not.”
But Andy ignores him. “Willem gets back on Friday, right?” he asks,
although he knows the answer already. “You have one week from tonight to
tell him, Jude. One week. And after that, I’m telling him myself.”
“You can’t legally do that, Andy,” he shouts, and everything spins before
him. “I’ll sue you for so much that you won’t even—”

“Better check your recent case law, counselor,” Andy hisses back at him.
“Rodriguez versus Mehta. Two years ago. If a patient who’s been
involuntarily committed attempts serious self-injury again, the patient’s
doctor has the right—no, the obligation—to inform the patient’s partner or
next of kin, whether that patient has fucking given consent or not.”
He is struck silent then, reeling from pain and fear and the shock of what

Andy has just told him. The two of them are still standing in the examining
room, that room he has visited so many, so many times, but he can feel his
legs pleating beneath him, can feel the misery overtake him, can feel his
anger ebb. “Andy,” he says, and he can hear the beg in his voice, “please
don’t tell him. Please don’t. If you tell him, he’ll leave me.” As he says it,
he knows it is true. He doesn’t know why Willem will leave him—whether
it will be because of what he has done or because he has lied about it—but

he knows he is correct. Willem will leave him, even though he has done