Questioning the Tree

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It wasn’t such an unusual sight, but it was the first time I’d seen it live, the first time they’d snared one of my own colleagues.

I had just come through the revolving doors that deposit visitors into the opulent lobby of the Metro Towers building like a Pez dispenser, from nine to five every day. Across the white Italian marble floor at the far side of the atrium, camera crews for every major news company lay in wait for something deliciously ominous; had to be, to draw this kind of attention.

An elevator door slid open in front of the throng and floodlights poured into the space revealing a middle-aged man with tightly cropped gray hair twisting away from the brightness. His hands were cuffed behind his back, each arm in the grasp of a uniformed federal officer. As he turned in my direction, the familiarity of his bushy gray eyebrows, ruddy complexion, and paunchy abdominal girth sent a chill up my spine. It was Arnie Hirsch, an old friend who’d joined my practice at the District Thirteen Medical Clinic seven years ago.

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