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glass door into the back of the pharmacy.
    Finally he said, "I can't do that Val. That's unethical. I could lose my license, go to jail."
    Val had really hoped it wouldn't come to this. "Winston, you'll do it. You'll do it or the Pine Cove
    Gazette will run a front-page story about you being a fish-fucker."
    "That's illegal. You can't divulge something I told you in therapy."
    "Quit telling me what's illegal, Winston. I'm married to a lawyer."
    "I'd really rather notdo this, Val. Can't you send them down to the Thrifty Mart in San Junipero? I could say that I can't get the pills anymore.
    "That wouldn't work, would it, Winston? The people at the Thrifty Mart don't have your little problem."
    "You're going to have some withdrawal reactions. How are you going to explain that?"
    "Let me worry about that. I'm quadrupling my sessions. I want to see these people get better, not mask their problems."
    "This is about Bess Leander's suicide, isn't it?"
    "I'm not going to lose another one, Winston."
    "Antidepressants don't increase the incidence of suicide or violence. Eli Lilly proved that in court."
    "Yes and O.J. walked. Court is one thing,Winston, the reality of losing a patient is another. I'm taking charge of my practice. Now order the pills. I'm sure the profit margin is going to be quite a bit higher on sugar pills than it is on Prozac."
    "I could go to theFlorida Keys. There's a place down there where they let you swim with bottlenose dolphins."
    "You can't go, Winston. You can't miss your therapy sessions. I want to see you at least once a week."
    "You bitch."
    "I'm trying to do the right thing. What day is good for you?"
    "I'll call you back."
    "Don't push me, Winston."
    "I have to make this order," he said. Then, after a second, he said, "Dr. Val?"
    "What?"
    "Do I have to go off the Serzone?"
    "We'll talk about it in therapy." She hung up and pulled a Post-it out of Hippocrates' chest.
    "Now if I keep this oath, and break it not, may I enjoy honor, in my life and art, among all men for all time; but if I transgress and forswear myself,may the opposite befall me."
    Does that mean dishonor for all time?she wondered. I'm just trying to do the right thing here.Finally.
    She made a note to call Winston back and schedule his appointments. four Estelle Boyet As September's promise wound down, a strange unrest came over the people of Pine Cove, due in no small part to the fact that many of them were going into withdrawal from their medications. It didn't happen all at once – the streets were not full of middle-class junkies rocking and sweating and begging for a fix – but slowly as the autumn days became shorter. And as far as they knew (because Val Riordan had called every one of them), they were experiencing the onset of a mild seasonal syndrome, sort of like spring fever. Call it autumn malaise.
    The nature of the medications kept the symptoms spread out over the next few weeks. Prozac and some of the older antidepressants took almost a month to leave the system, so those people slipped into the fray more slowly than those on Zoloft or Paxil or Wellbutrin, which was flushed from the system in only a day or two, leaving the deprived with symptoms resembling a low-grade flu, then a scattered disorientation akin to a temporary case of attention deficit disorder, and, in some, a rebound of depression that dropped on them like a smoky curtain.
    One of the first to feel the effects was Estelle Boyet, a local artist successful and semifamous for her seascapes and idealized paintings of Pine Cove shore life. Her prescription had run out a day before Dr.
    Val had replaced the supply with sugar pills, so she was already in the midst of withdrawal when she took the first dose of the placebo.
    Estelle was sixty, a stout, vital woman who wore brightly colored caftans and let her long gray hair fly around her shoulders as she moved through life with an energy and determination that inspired envy from women half her age. For thirty years