Death and the Intern

by Jeremy Hanson-Finger

  “The Mixers mix drugs in one syringe. The Pushers use separate syringes. They get kickbacks from Syrinx because they use three to four times as many syringes as we do. Syringes are made of plastic. And plastic is made from oil. Syrinx gets kickbacks from Cohasset Oil and Gas. And you must be familiar with Cohasset—they’re trying to build a pipeline from Alberta across British Columbia, which is bound to cause an environmental disaster.”

  Signs saying “Stop the Pipeline” have sprouted up all over Vancouver over the last year, so Janwar is very familiar with Cohasset.

  “Maybe you won’t credit this, but we’re very ethical, we Mixers,” Llew says. “So I hope you can understand and that you’ll keep on mixing. We won’t let Shaughnessy near you again; one of us will be here around the clock until you’re mobile again. It goes through me that this happened to you. So, can you forgive us, boyo?”

  Janwar shrugs as much as he is able, which is not much.

  Llew picks up on the movement. “Aye, sometimes it takes a while to forgive. I can appreciate that. But we aren’t the ones who gave you a belting. And if you’re ambivalent about forgiveness right now, that’s okay.”

  Janwar looks to Carla, but she is facing the hallway.

  Llew’s jaw hardens. “I have to tell you: nobody’s going to let you leave with a good reference if you go in for an exit. It’s early days yet. You’re sticking with us, boyo.”

  This isn’t a question, but Llew seems to be waiting for a response.

  “Yes,” Janwar says.

  “Good. You’ll come up a treat in no time.”

  Llew fiddles with the IV drip, and Janwar’s eyes roll back. Llew’s warm, firm hand on Janwar’s forehead is the last thing he feels as he slips back into darkness.

  When Janwar wakes up, the first thing he registers is blond hair. Why would Susan be here? If Susan is here, will Shaughnessy come back and finish the job? But as his vision swims into focus, he sees that the hair is Emanda’s, not Susan’s.

  Peter is dozing in the visitor’s chair. Emanda puts her finger to her lips, upends both her palms, and pats herself down to show she doesn’t have anything hidden on her person.

  She bends down to Janwar’s ear. “Don’t worry. I just want to make sure you know something. And then I’ll go.”

  Janwar nods. His ear brushes against her lips. “Is he—?” he whispers. He can form words that don’t drag on forever again.

  “Drugged? No, he’s just asleep. If you shout, he’ll wake up.”

  Janwar tries to engage his vocal cords. It doesn’t go well. He goes back to whispering. “So what do you want me to know?”

  “The Mixers aren’t innocent either.”

  “In what way?”

  “Thiopental has traditionally been the best induction drug.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “Because it’s cheap and it doesn’t go bad for a long time. You can open a vial for one operation and use it again a month later.”

  “Right, but—”

  “But the Mixers can’t use it because it doesn’t play nicely with other drugs if you inject them all at once. It can crystallize and kill the patient.”

  Janwar sees Diego’s last minutes again, the flatline, the crash cart, the drape, the orderlies, but he’s still too tranquilized for the tightness in his chest to return.

  “Right,” he says.

  “And instead, you use…”

  “Propofol. I’m not sure about the others.”

  “They do too. Even now that it’s generic, propofol is expensive. There are often shortages, and it goes bad six hours after you open the vial. So you have to keep throwing it out and buying more.”

  “That’s true. I—”

  “And who makes the generic propofol we use here?”

  “Suspira Labs?”

  “Bingo. What I’m trying to say is that if you look closely, there’s a lot of Suspira merch floating around.”

  Peter snorts in his sleep, and Emanda startles.

  “I’d better go. Just think that over before you make any serious decisions.”

  Janwar is offline right now and there isn’t much he can do, research-wise, when he can’t make it out of bed. Something is bothering him, though. It’s nice of Llew to give him “the good stuff,” but it is presumptive of him to assume that Janwar likes being whacked out on morphine derivatives, which he doesn’t really. Is that all they gave him? What day is it? How long has he been drifting? Where is his cellphone? Are they going through his messages?

  Soon he’s asleep. The fat-man silhouette from Sylvie’s office lumbers through his dreams, a supermassive man-shaped black hole, every piece of matter in the hospital drawn to him, sticking to the outside of his body as his shadow grows to encompass the entire universe…

  When Janwar wakes up this time, the lights inside the room are off and so is the radio. The door to the room opens slowly, letting light in from the hallway. Fang has replaced Peter, Janwar can see now, but she doesn’t stir. Two figures in scrubs and surgical masks pause in the doorway, waiting for any signs of alarm, then tiptoe into the room, followed by two more figures, then two more, their Crocs squeaking at an almost sub-audible level. Maybe they’ve added skins to the bottom, fabric layers like Janwar used to climb hills on smooth telemark skis while backcountry skiing on outdoor club trips.

  “Fang!” Janwar hisses. She doesn’t move. “Fang!” He feels shame at having spoken out loud in the silent room, but on the plus side, at least his lips are working properly.

  The first figure in the door drops something into the sharps container attached to the wall, and Janwar’s shame ramps back up into fear. “Don’t bother,” Shaughnessy says. “She’s in lotus land for a couple of hours. And I don’t mean BC.”

  The second figure looks out along the hallway. Dr. Aspen Tanaka.

  “All clear.” She shuts the door and turns the light on.

  Two further figures are Dr. Tariq Hadad and another woman Janwar doesn’t know, slight and with one eye that seems less real than the other—and then last, Henry and José. They crowd around him.

  “Nurse! Can I get some twins? Stat?” Henry says.

  “Hand me that dwarf!” José holds out his hands behind him.

  Shaughnessy is unimpressed. “Shut up, you goons.”

  “Come on, we’re a reasonable Paraguays.”

  Shaughnessy rolls his eyes. “I don’t even get how that one’s connected to Dr. Mengele.”

  “And you’re a fascist,” Janwar says. “Paraguay was where Dr. Mengele eventually died.”

  Henry and José look at each other and then at Janwar with a modicum of respect.

  The thin woman’s eye seems unreal because of the way it wobbles vertically. Either it’s a very slippery glass eye, or something is going on with her extraocular muscles.

  “So, blue-eyed brown boy, have you given any thought to your situation?” Shaughnessy speaks with a hypnotic cadence, but that might just be whatever’s clamped onto Janwar’s neurons, making him think that.

  “Lots. I can’t do much besides think. Though it’s been going very slowly on account of whatever Llew shot me up with. Which particular thoughts do you want to know about?” He surreptitiously flexes some muscles, but although he might be able to raise himself into a sitting position, he isn’t in any offensive or defensive shape.

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “You want to know whether I want to stay a Mixer or become a Pusher or somehow assert my neutrality, which nobody seems to think is an option,” Janwar says.

  “Right. It’s not. It’s an all-or-nothing deal,” Aspen says. “Fuck an excluded middle.”

  Shaughnessy pulls on a pair of gloves. “Now, don’t waste my time and thrash around.”

  “Waste your time?” Janwar says.

  “I have patients to get to. This is a hospital.”

  “Ah. Have to keep helping people because it’s in your blood.” His heart hammers.

  “That’s right.”

&nb
sp; “It’s not the only thing that’s in your blood from the looks of your pupils.”

  Shaughnessy’s pupils are black pinpricks. He’s also been hitting some heavy opiates.

  The door opens and the Mixers file in, Llew in the front, holding his hickory bat by his side.

  But before the drama can play out, unskinned Crocs squeak outside the door and someone clears their throat. Llew and Shaughnessy exchange glances. A message transmits between them.

  “Come in,” Llew says.

  Emanda holds up her hands again to show she isn’t packing anything. “Rat Fink Patrol’s just down the hall. Thought y’all down here at the OK Corral would want to know that.”

  Llew crosses his arms. “Which of us are the Earps?”

  “Fuck if I know.” Emanda shrugs. “Actually, no, wait. You’re all Doc Hollidays.”

  “Nice,” José says. Henry nods. Aspen mouths “mew” at Janwar and holds up her fingers to her face like whiskers.

  Llew scowls at Emanda. She blushes and withdraws, which Janwar, even in his addled state, thinks is a strange response.

  The Mixers step away from the door to let the Pushers out.

  Fang’s eyes pop open, unclouded, as far as Janwar can tell from his bed.

  Llew turns to Janwar. “Thanks be to security. Expected we were going to have a scuffle. Boyo, you’re going to be safer at home. I thought we could protect you better here. But we botched it. We have too many operations to do to give you more than one guard, and all it took was one quick stab and Fang was out.”

  “How did it happen, Fang?” Janwar says.

  “I don’t think I remember.”

  “They must have hit you with something that causes amnesia…”

  Llew holds up his palm. “We can draw a blood sample and send it to the lab in a minute. But Fang’s awake now and she seems right enough. We have to get Janwar home.”

  Peter circles into Janwar’s field of view. “One of us should run you home. You may be awake but your judgement is probably still off. Dr. Louisseize, do you want to do the honours?”

  “That’s plain Dr. Choi again,” Horace says.

  The corner of Peter’s mouth twitches. “You mean…”

  “She wants a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry we messed with you the other night.”

  Horace waves Peter’s apology away.

  “Does she—” Fang starts, but a warning look from Llew shuts her up.

  “Ready to go, Janwar?” Horace says.

  “Yes, thank you. Hey, I have a question, though.” Janwar looks over at Llew as Horace disconnects him from the IV tree. “The woman with the weird eye. I didn’t recognize her. She’s not an anaesthesiologist, is she?”

  “Deadeye Dalsgaard,” Peter says.

  Llew nods. “She’s the head Pusher. She’s an administrator like me, head of the department.”

  “Oh, Sylvie Dalsgaard, with the office next to yours.”

  “Righto. No end of grief.”

  “What’s with her eye?”

  “No idea, but I credit whatever it was. She deserved it,” Llew says. He fishes in his pocket. “Here’s your cellphone. I forgot to give it back to you. The paramedics picked it up from outside that bar.”

  Janwar swipes across the screen to unlock it. It’s fully charged. Nine missed calls from Ajay and Garati. He texts Ajay Still alive. Everything cool. Don’t panic. He’ll pay for this later, but for now he just can’t deal.

  Horace’s car is a blue-flake sixties Corvette Stingray, painstakingly restored.

  “Didn’t figure you were a classic-car guy.” Janwar folds himself into the passenger seat, still drugged enough that the vinyl feels amazing against his legs. Little bursts of pleasure shoot up and down his thighs.

  Talking about cars allows Horace to pass his sadness in the left lane, and he responds in a far cheerier tone. “I grew up in California, which is nothing but muscle cars and muscle beaches. And I don’t look good in a swimsuit. My back makes my jawline look airbrushed,” rubbing his acne scarring, “so muscle cars it was. I restored her myself.” Horace turns his key in the ignition, and the engine growls. “Are you into muscle cars?”

  “Sort of. Mostly because of old cop movies and shows. Bullitt, The French Connection, The Rockford Files. Speaking of which, your Corvette is pretty close to Rockford’s Firebird. I’ll bet you could do a beastly J-turn. Start in reverse, jam on the e-brake, and swing it around so you’re facing forward and going in the same direction.”

  “I’m not big on risk, to be honest,” Horace says. “I like driving fast cars slowly.”

  They drive in silence for a couple of minutes. “You doing all right?” Janwar asks.

  “I’m just having a rough day. A little distracted.” Horace turns onto Bronson, leadfoots the accelerator, and darts around a funeral procession. What would happen if nobody claimed Diego? Janwar doesn’t know if the city will pay for embalming and a coffin, or just for cremation. He assumes cremation is cheaper, although maybe it’s only cheaper in bulk…

  “Do you want to talk about it, Horace?”

  “Not really. We can keep talking about cars, or something else.”

  “I was meaning to ask, why’s Llew got so much hate for Sylvie? What he said at the end—it seemed like a giant leap in cruelty for him.”

  “They were friends before.”

  “Just friends?”

  “Yes. Just like me and— Yes, just friends.”

  “It seemed almost like a jilted lover sort of vengeance-anger.”

  “No, he probably just feels bad.”

  “Feels bad—like he’s been bad, or bad like he’s sad their friendship is over?”

  Horace shoulder-checks and changes lanes. “The second one.”

  “Wait,” Janwar says. “Deadeye Dalsgaard. Double D.”

  “Right.”

  “Carla said when Llew was really into experimenting with drugs on himself, a woman named Double D was also into it with him.”

  “Carla would know better than I would.”

  Janwar watches the sidewalk scroll by as they pull up to the light. Another advertisement for Lowell Chilton Real Estate, on a bench this time, the man’s upper body wearing an XXL hooded sweatshirt and holding up boxing gloves: “Don’t throw in the towel. Throw in with Lowell.”

  Janwar never thought he’d get sick of puns, but these Lowell Chilton ads are really pushing the limits. Slant rhyme isn’t playing fair.

  Something’s ringing in the back of his mind. Lowell Chilton reminds him of someone. Something to do with the slant rhyme, maybe.

  “How did the whole thing start?”

  “What?”

  “The division between the Mixers and the Pushers. Did it start because she’s the head of the department and he’s the dean? Some sort of turf thing? And people chose sides?”

  The engine races, and Horace looks down at the gearshift. “Actually, can we talk about my wife?”

  “Are you sure?”

  Horace says that he’s sure, but he speaks slowly, thinking about every word. “It had to do with children. We loved each other—we do love each other. There was nothing wrong. But we disagreed about children. I didn’t want them because I thought I’d be too absent and she wanted me to quit my job so that we could have them. I thought she would change her mind and she thought I would change my mind.”

  “Fuck, man.” Janwar isn’t really sure what to say, but his mouth is, apparently. “For what it’s worth, philosophically, I think I have the same position you do. I understand that there’s an evolutionary imperative to pass on your genetic material, but I have no interest in creating something that looks a bit like me and a bit like my partner, just for the sake of it. The world is overpopulated and fucked in so many other ways. I can make a positive difference in the world by being a doctor, which is what I feel I was born to do, or I can spend eighteen years raising a child and hoping that she will want to make a positive difference in the world, which is just putting off maki
ng a difference, and gambling that the sort of difference the child wants to make and is able to make then is more beneficial than the difference I’d make. I mean, the kid could be a white-collar criminal, which would be a net drain on the world, but I’d still be committed, because she’d have my nose. And if I tried to do both—raise a kid and be a doctor—I know I’d just fuck up one or the other. I don’t think I can do anything at less than 100 per cent. And in the end, I think being a doctor is more valuable.”

  “I’ve never heard that justification for not having children before. I think about my own gratification and work and the impact on one child’s life, and you think about the entire world.”

  Janwar shrugs. “Do you have a place to live? Outside where you live with your wife, I mean?”

  “I can go stay with my brother. The condo isn’t ready yet.”

  “The condo? You move fast.”

  “Oh, it’s— Yeah, I do. All about that Craigslist. Speedy Louisseize. Speedy Choi.” His face crumples.

  Choi Division, Janwar thinks. Much sadder than Bombay Calculus.

  They pull up in the lot outside Dr. Flecktarn’s building in the Glebe and Janwar climbs out.

  “Thanks for the ride, Horace.”

  Horace nods. He looks ready to weep. As he reverses, Janwar sees Horace’s hand hover over the e-brake, as if he’s considering a Rockford turn, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking on Janwar’s part. The Stingray rumbles off, the exhaust note from its big-block V8 taking several intersections to fade from earshot.

  Janwar spends the elevator ride alternating between looking at his reflection, which has seen better days, and trying to psych himself up to face the mammoth task of transferring his mental mind map to his index-card map—adding “Suspira,” “propofol,” “Syrinx,” and “Cohasset”—but by the time he gets up into Dr. Flecktarn’s apartment, his bed beckons, and he barely has the energy to make sure his phone is plugged in and the alarm is set before blackness claims him again.

  CHAPTER 9

  Animate and Otherwise – Nothing But Butchers – Sneaking Around – La Chasse – Dirty Bird – Body World – Fat Man – Year of the Glad – I Don’t Know, Are They?