Ella paused at the door, taking time to calm her nerves, to compose herself.
"Go on, doc," the heavyset officer at the door chided her. "He can't bite you. He's on a short leash."
She wondered if he would have teased a male doctor that way, and then quickly regretted the thought. 'You cannot blame him for thinking of you first as a woman if you do so yourself,' she thought. Feeling rushed by this unwelcome pressure, she swallowed hard and tried to force calmness, knowing, as she turned the doorknob, that calmness had eluded her. She would have to face him nervous and try not to let him see.
It is only natural, she knew, to be nervous when you walk into a room occupied by a madman. Your mind knows that there are, waiting just outside the door, looking in through the one-way mirror, armed men and women ready to protect you. Your mind knows that there are, shackled to the madman's ankles and wrists, chains of tempered steel limiting his movement. Nevertheless, a madman is an unknown quantity, a foreign land. How can you weigh these things that your mind knows against this madness that you cannot measure? Some part of you knows that a madman is still a man, but another part of you wonders how thoroughly you really understand the limits of a man unmoored from sanity, the boundaries of this foreign land.
