Wax Apple by Donald E. Westlake

You weren’t blaming yourself for having been clumsy?”
    “I wasn’t clumsy,” I said, but this line of questioning was difficult to deal with. I tried to think what my reactions would have been if it had been a true accident. Would I have been angry at myself for stumbling? Probably, it would only be natural. But not very angry, and not guilty. But what was I to say, beyond the denial that I’d been clumsy. Lamely I said, “It was just an accident.”
    He smiled, a large false smile that made me think of an animal trainer who’s just gotten a fairly stupid dog to roll over on command. “Very good, Tobin,” he said. “You understand why I asked that, of course.”
    I didn’t, and I suppose I just looked blank.
    “Because of your history,” he reminded me, frowning slightly. “Wasn’t it an overpowering feeling of guilt that sent you to Revo Hill in the first place?”
    Then I remembered the false background Doctor Cameron and I had prepared. It had made me someone who believed he was responsible for the death of a co-worker—as in fact I was—and who had become unable to function as a result of the conviction of his own guilt. (The false background had been uncomfortably close to the truth in a number of ways, but Doctor Cameron had assured me it would be much easier for me to behave like a facsimile of myself than as, for instance, a suicidal transvestite or an irresponsible schizophrenic.)
    So I said, “I’ve gotten all over that. That’s why they let me out of Revo Hill.”
    “I’m glad to see they were right,” he said. “Since you’re the new man, would you like to fill the others in on your background, how you happen to have been at Revo Hill and so on?”
    Which was just exactly the sort of detailed question I couldn’t possibly handle at all. Doctor Fredericks would see through me first, and some of the others might also smell a rat. Mental patients would know whether someone in their midst was a real mental patient himself or not, unless he kept his mouth discreetly shut. I said, “I’d rather not today, Doctor. I just got here, and had the accident, and I’m feeling a little shaky still.”
    He frowned at me again, more thoughtfully this time. I knew it was a false note I’d just struck, that the whole concept of group therapy is built on the fact that mentally sick people enjoy describing their symptoms just as much as physically sick people do, and that it wasn’t properly in character for me to attend this session and not want to talk, but this was the lesser discrepancy when compared to the Swiss cheese I’d create if I tried to narrate my fake history to these people. So I had to remain silent.
    Doctor Fredericks said, “Then why did you join us today?” Exactly the question I knew I’d raised in his head.
    I said, “I wanted people around me, I guess. I didn’t particularly want to be alone.”
    Up till now, the other six residents had merely sat and watched the doctor and me, their eyes on whichever one of us was talking, but not one of them joined the conversation. It was Molly Schweitzler, the fat woman, who was sitting across the table from me. Almost glaring at me, as though in some sort of challenge, she said, “Did anybody laugh at you?”
    I looked at her, not understanding the question but relieved at distraction in any form. “Laugh at me?”
    “When you fell,” she said.
    “Nobody was there when I fell,” I told her. “The people I’ve seen since then have all been very kind. Nobody’s laughed at all.”
    Doctor Fredericks, thank God, hared off on this new scent, saying to Molly Schweitzler, “Why should anyone laugh at a man with a broken arm?”
    “Well, they sure laughed at Rose and me,” she said, “when that table broke on us.” She turned back to me. “That was about a month ago,” she said, “and I still got bruises on my legs.”
    Doctor Fredericks said, “Molly, no one laughed when they found out how serious the situation