Who, Whom, and How to Misuse a Pronoun

Angie was clos­ing up when she heard the rear door open. The rear door that she'd just locked. As qui­etly as she could she went to her desk and took out the flash­light she kept for emer­gen­cies. She felt its weight, and con­cluded it would make a ser­vice­able club. Then she moved toward the rear door.

“I'm not here to hurt you,” she heard his voice before she saw the man. He was mostly in shadow, what lit­tle of him she could see was illu­mi­nated by a street­light shin­ing through a win­dow. His hand were empty, palms fac­ing toward her.

She could see that he was unarmed, but that didn't mean he wasn't a threat. She kept her flash­light ready. “Who are you?”

“I'm some­one who needs help.” She didn't dis­agree, the longer she looked at him the more con­vinced that he was injured and in pain. It wasn't any one thing, more his over­all appear­ance. “I was hit by a car.”

“I'm a vet. If you're not a spaniel you don't belong here. Go to a hospital.”

“Doctors can't help me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need some­one, whom I can trust, whose train­ing includes how to treat wings.” He took a pained step for­ward, and as he moved fur­ther into the light of the win­dow Angie saw some­thing that wan't pos­si­ble. On his back were two giant wings. Mostly white, but stained with blood.

She strug­gled for words, she strug­gled to process any­thing. The flash­light hit the floor, but she didn't notice drop­ping it. “Who are you?”

“My name is Colin, we met once before.”

-

The lights were on, Colin was sit­ting on a table while Angie exam­ined his wings. The left seemed fine. The right one not so much. Angie told Colin she'd never done any­thing like this before, he sug­gested she imag­ine he was a giant parakeet.

“It's bro­ken. I'll have to set the bone.”

Colin sighed, “Great.”

“So, who hit you?”

“A jerk for whom noth­ing is sacred, least of all the traf­fic laws. I was– OW!”

“Sorry. I told you I had to set the bone.”

-

“So, where will you go?”

“Whither.”

“What?”

“'Whence did you come?' 'Where are you?' 'Whither will you go?' You should have said 'whither' not 'where'.”

“I'm not going to say that. That just sounds silly.” Colin stared at her. “Who says that?”

“I do.”

“The ques­tion stands: to what place are you going?”

“Probably into the woods. I'll find an iso­lated spot where there's no one by whom I will be seen.”

“Good morn­ing, Mr. Arkin, please come in and have a seat.”

Mr. Arkin, nod­ded at his psy­chi­a­trist, but didn’t sit. He stood near the door, eye­ing a large pot­ted dra­cena, which looked like a six foot tall corn plant. It occu­pied the cor­ner near the window.

“Have a seat, please, Mr. Arkin,” the psy­chi­a­trist ges­tured toward a large com­fort­able look­ing arm­chair across from his own seat, and also across from the shiny green dracena.

“Are you going to intro­duce me to him?” said Mr. Arkin, his eyes still on the plant.

“Introduce you to whom, Mr. Arkin?”

“Him in the green suit, the big guy. Is he a foot­ball player?”

“There’s noth­ing in the cor­ner but a plant Mr. Arkin.”

“Plant,” said Mr. Arkin, and he took a seat but kept his feet squarely on the floor and his back straight. He nod­ded at the plant, and winked.

“Are you tak­ing your med­ica­tion Mr. Arkin?”

“Yes, but there’s a plant in the room. He’s onto us.”

“Did you take you med­i­cine this morn­ing, Mr. Arkin. When did you last take your medicine?”

“I take it when­ever they tell me to.”

“When who tells you too?”

“Not the plants that’s for sure”

The psy­chi­a­trist picked up the phone, rang his sec­re­tary, and asked her to make sure there was a room avail­able on the psy­chi­atric unit.

“If there are any plants in the avail­able room, please ask who­ever is in charge today to have them moved out.”

He placed his glasses on the table and arranged the papers on his desk, his usual rou­tine before a new patient was about to arrive. John made sure that the water pitcher on the table had enough water and the pil­lows were arranged in the proper order. Lastly, he fixed him­self a large glass of green tea that he sips on through­out most meetings.

"Uh, um, hello," he heard as he was just sit­ting down in his chair. "The door was open or I would have knocked." the new patient said.

The new patient stood there awk­wardly. John looked him over before speak­ing. He appeared to be six­teen or sev­en­teen, six foot one with black hair and dark fea­tures. He was wear­ing skinny black jeans, a black shirt and a black leather jacket. John noticed that he had an anar­chy sign made of safety pins on the front of his t-shirt. It stood out as the only non-black item about his wardrobe.

"Oh! I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Please come in. Have a seat over there on the sofa."

The new patient sat down on the sofa and placed his hands deep in his lap.

John took his usual place in the large leather recliner that his father, also a psy­chi­a­trist, had bought him when he first opened his prac­tice twenty years ago. John thought about his father, whom he had always admired, as he placed his glasses on and grabbed his pen and paper.

"So your mother, who is an old friend of mine, tells me you wanted to speak to some­body. Your name is Patrick, right?", John said.

"Yeah, but nobody calls me Patrick. You can call me Pat.", he said with a low, almost whis­per, of a voice.

"What would you like to talk about, Pat?", John asked.

"College, actu­ally.", Pat said.

"Okay. Well what about col­lege would you like to talk about?", John asked some­what surprised.

"This is my senior year in high school and I've been think­ing of apply­ing to col­leges lately. My mom never went to col­lege so I asked her if there was any­one I could get some advice from. She told me that I should speak to the most intel­li­gent per­son she knows and set this appoint­ment up with you.", Pat explained.

John began to blush and put down his pen and paper some­what relieved. He began to real­ize that this was not going to be such a tough meet­ing after all. He took a deep breath and began to speak.