Corruption in the Or

by Barbara Ebel

  She drove right past the hospital and reflected on her native country’s breed of horse, different from the rest of the world. With sturdy builds and a heavy coat, the small, long-lived breed also had unique gaits which made them internationally popular. Her family had maintained a pasture and a barn with chestnut, black, and gray beauties and her oldest brother still owned many horses from the same line.

  She did miss owning horses, and she often thought that not owning any was the downside to her lifestyle. But better to leave her native country’s animals where they are, she thought, where they are subjected to few diseases. The law even significantly protected them by seeing to the purity of the breed and their isolation to prevent outside diseases. Horses from other nations were not allowed to be imported into the country and an Icelandic horse which leaves the island nation was not allowed to return.

  Although her older brother mailed the chocolate liquorice candies to her that she enjoyed, he couldn’t do anything about her love for the horses except send her pictures and videos. She frowned as she parked her Honda. Her heart yearned to go back to Iceland and visit, but she couldn’t manage that happening in the near future.

  Viktoria leashed Buddy who trotted by her side into the user-friendly pet store. A young man without a customer at his register beamed and exclaimed as he walked over. “Hey fella.”

  Buddy crouched to the floor and inched over, giving the man a submissive, friendly greeting.

  “Point me to dog crates, toys, collars, and better leashes. Treats too.”

  The boy had a full face and smile wrinkles alongside his mouth. “All on that side of the store. Take a cart. Sounds like you’ll need it.”

  It took Viktoria one hour, an hour she didn’t mind at all. It gave Buddy the chance to socialize with other dogs and to become familiar with a public place. When she charged the contents of her shopping cart at the register, Buddy cost her another couple of hundred dollars.

  The young man shook his head. “When people tell me they got their dog free, I laugh to myself. There’s no such thing as a free dog.”

  “So true,” she said. He helped her to the car and, together, they loaded it up. Buddy sat on the back seat and Viktoria felt pleased that she had stocked up. Back in the hotel she single-handedly assembled the crate and introduced him to it with a treat.

  Like the dog, her energy was dissipating, but she needed to eat. Her subconscious favorite food surfaced to mind, and she got in her car. She didn’t want to walk this end of town in the dark, so she drove over to the waffle restaurant. No matter what time of day, she could always eat breakfast. She debated where to sit; a booth or the counter. The answer was clear cut whenever she went into an establishment like this one. Did she want to look outside or watch the hustle of the employees behind the counter?

  She chose a window booth and grabbed the menu behind the napkin holder.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” a waitress asked, a perky twenty-something year old with a bobbing-blonde ponytail.

  “Sure. No coffee. Orange juice, but bring me water and an extra cup. And I’ll order your number three.” She pointed to the ‘All Day Breakfasts’ on the back of the laminated menu.

  “Sure thing.” She went off and returned quickly with water, o.j., and an extra cup on a tray. “Your food will be out shortly.”

  Viktoria poured half her orange juice in the empty cup and then filled the rest of the two juice cups with water. She was thirsty and started polishing off one of them as she gazed out to Hospital Road. Already familiar with the layout of the area, she knew the road to the right where she found Buddy was called Erie Trail.

  Although dark, she noted the little activity out front by the street lights. A pickup truck was parked all alone by the street, and she wondered if it was one of the Stay Long Hotel workers. The window rolled all the way down on the dark burgundy truck and the man in the front seat flicked out a cigarette butt. He inched his head to the open space and his head reeled back like he inhaled a deep breath. She was confident the guy was the one she nicknamed “Skinnier.”

  “Straight off the frying pan,” the waitress said and put down two plates.

  “Appreciate that.” Viktoria nodded her approval.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “You’ve got it covered,” Viktoria said. The pony-tailed waitress left, and she tasted the scrambled eggs and bacon—piping hot the way she liked them. She took her time and then paused before starting the two pancakes on the next plate. With the truck still parked outside and the window half rolled up, the guy with the scar on his cheek now put his head flat on the head rest.

  Viktoria spread maple syrup between the two pancakes. They tasted fluffy and light, and she polished off the other glass of half-diluted orange juice. She heard a ding on her phone and put it next to the plate.

  “How was your day?” her husband texted. “And what about the dog?”

  “Eating dinner now. Dog’s fine.”

  “Let me guess. You’re at a fine restaurant with white tablecloths.”

  “Yup. The maître de just sat me down to scrambled eggs a la mode.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  He was kidding, of course, but she didn’t want to go any further with the conversation. She was the main breadwinner in the family and had no tastes that ran up credit card bills. Her nice clothes were few and far between. He on the other hand …

  “I’ll leave a good tip. How about your day?”

  “Plumber came today. Fixed the constant drip from the laundry room faucet.”

  “It’s about time,” she thought. “That’s good.”

  “Also picked up an insurance client today.”

  “A successful day then.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Sweet dreams,” she wrote.

  “I’ll be up for a while. Good night.”

  Viktoria polished off the two pancakes and thanked the waitress. She left a tip and paid at the register. Outside, she leaned against the back end of her Accord and scrutinized the pickup truck. The man in the truck turned his head in her direction. There was some semblance of recognition towards her, but he let his head rest again trying to fend off sleep.

  Strange place to take a nap, she thought.

  -----

  Fred, Ben, and David hung around the hotel later than normal and figured they’d paint the last wall in the unit that needed to be done. Waiting for the man to arrive to pay them was worth the wait, and they planned on docking the extra time today from tomorrow’s hours. More than likely, each of them would enjoy the extra sleep in the morning a lot more.

  Their boss arrived and paid them plenty. It was a short interlude and the three men were still in no hurry when he left. Although they needed to eat dinner, they each took a spot on the bare floor and hung around.

  “I’m leaving,” Fred finally said. He stood and leaned against the freshly painted wall, steadying his footing.

  David peered up from under his baseball cap. He rubbed his eyes. “You dumb shit. You just ruined that wall.”

  Ben had assumed a stretched-out position on the nearby carpet. He had managed to pull up his trousers before going flat, but they rode up so high that he kept pulling at his crotch. “Fred, you run a paint brush over that tomorrow when you’re saner.”

  David snickered softly. “Him? Saner or more sane?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fred said. “I swear I’m going to go eat something.” He hoisted himself into his pickup truck but then had to figure out where he stashed his keys. First, he checked all over the cab, but finally found them deep in his pocket. He set the vehicle in motion, only to the nearby restaurant. Inside, he ate fried eggs and then ordered a bowl of chili.

  The waitress with a pony tail grinned. “Now that’s a new one,” she remarked. “Eggs and chili.”

  Fred stayed hunched over at the front counter. He pulled out a hundred-dollar bill at the register. As he half-stumbled out, he leaned over and gave her a ten-do
llar tip.

  In the parking lot, he opened his front door. “Damn,” he mumbled. On his seat back were paint smudges from having leaned against the hotel wall.

  He was too tired to drive, so he enjoyed the thrill of hanging out in his truck. A half hour elapsed and when he poked his eyes open and to the side, he wondered if the lady out in the lot was the runner from the hotel.

  He didn’t care who was around and closed his eyes again.

  -----

  Back at the hotel, Viktoria grabbed her bag but this time she decided to bring her handgun into the suite with her. She pulled it out from under the front seat, grasped the leather case, and locked the car door. The moon and the stars were dazzling, and she stood still taking in the view. In the direction of Lake Erie, it was even more magnificent where no ground lights dampened the twinkling in the sky.

  She hated the fact that Long Island had changed in that regard. The night skies in Iceland had always been spectacular and had not changed one bit by the time she and her mother had left when she was thirteen.

  And when they first settled on Long Island, the heavenly skies were nicely visible, but now twenty-six years later was a different story. For years, throngs of newcomers kept moving eastward from the denser city areas outside of New York City, and now the “island,” was one big tie-up on the Long Island Expressway or the LIE as the locals called it, and the density of shopping areas, condominiums, retirement facilities, restaurants, and houses were heaped together with no separation like years before.

  At night now on Long Island, there was so much light, that the clarity of the night sky was totally lost. She knew a single old man who had recently moved to a growing area in upstate New York to again see that night sky in the remaining years he had left.

  She shared his sentiment that nature was not part of most people’s everyday lives anymore. So, she gazed in silence a few more minutes and also made note that she heard not a peep from Buddy inside. She went inside, placed her gun on the counter, and slid open the closures of the crate. Buddy crawled out in front of her and exposed his belly for a rub.

  “You are so sweet.” She stroked his abdomen until he popped up.

  She grabbed his leash to give him a short walk and the dog circled and jumped up. In his sheer excitement, he let out a puppy bark as she threw the slip lead over his head.

  Before she opened the door, a pounding sounded on the wall from next door. She rolled her eyes and shook her head at the behavior of her next-door neighbor. It doesn’t take much to annoy him, she thought, after they went out, and she let Buddy pee by the road.

  Before she finally rooted herself into bed, she placed her handgun on the nightstand. She had a concealed carry permit and had purchased a gun because she traveled alone and stayed in strange locations. It was also one of her extra-curricular activities while away from home—going to gun ranges to practice shooting. She must finagle target practice into her Masonville schedule one of these days.

  She smiled at Buddy after he jumped up on the bed and curled up against her. Running her hand through his fur, she realized how extraordinarily silky he was. Some white hair was a glistening silver and the official AKC coloring of “black with white markings” stood out, starkly delineated.

  “My, my,” she whispered, “you are a beautiful creature. And to think …” No, she reminded herself. She needed to stop thinking about his horrific ordeal because it made her so upset, it unhinged her soul.

  She moved her hand to his head, and he nudged her back.

  “And I named you correctly, Buddy.”

  She turned to her side. The left side. The side facing her Border Collie.

  CHAPTER 9

  Occasionally during the night, Viktoria felt the warm curled-up dog on the other side of the bedspread. For such an active breed and for being so young, he made a perfect bed buddy. She could get used to this, she thought, after the recent years of traveling alone as an anesthesiologist.

  Now she recognized what she had been missing but, then again, Buddy had not been available until now. From her previous experience, she also knew this was only the beginning of their relationship. It takes time for a solid bonding to occur between a human and a dog, and she looked forward to every minute of it.

  Viktoria drove down Hospital Road on the way to work and was comfortably on time. She pulled into the coffee establishment and went inside where a throng of morning coffee grabbers queued up placing orders. Her double-braided barista waved at her as the line shortened.

  “Did you see Dr. Price?” Linda asked when Viktoria stepped up.

  “I did. Thank you for the recommendation.”

  “How’s the dog?”

  “Surprisingly well after such an ordeal. He has stitches in his back leg, so they need to be removed in a few days.”

  Behind her, Viktoria heard a man sarcastically speak up to his girlfriend. “Is this place selling coffee or is it the ASPCA?”

  “Do you know what you want?” Linda spoke softly.

  “So early in the morning, I won’t be ordering an iced coffee like the Venti mocha I ordered the other afternoon. I’ll take the two-shot espresso Grande size. And make it an Americano house blend.”

  An exaggerated sigh sounded behind her as she glanced at items in the baskets on the counter and Linda rang up her drink. “And I’ll take this banana too.”

  Viktoria paid and stepped to the “pick up orders” area. The couple soon waited on theirs as well, and she leaned in front of them and dropped a five-dollar bill into a glass jar labeled “Donations for the ASPCA.”

  “See,” Viktoria said to them. “This place is partial to the ASPCA. Conversation about dogs is welcome here.”

  Linda handed Viktoria her drink. “Sounds like you’re keeping the dog.”

  “I’m going to try my best. Thanks again.”

  Outside, clouds assembled in the sky after the clear night, and the first scattered raindrops fell on her windshield. Her easy drive to the hospital parking lot was accompanied by sipping on her Americano. As she gathered her things, she left the empty cup and slipped the banana into her purse. Bananas were available in the doctor’s lounge, but she didn’t mind the extra purchase she had made in the line that moved too slow for the guy behind her.

  -----

  Viktoria silently made it into the changing room of the hospital OR. She slid off a cream-colored blouse, hung it in a locker, and slipped a scrub top over her head. Shoes banged around going in and out of the footlockers in the next aisle over as two women continued their conversation.

  “Because of her, the anesthesiologists forced Jennie to give a urine sample to the lab yesterday.”

  “Locum tenens agencies hire the bottom of the barrel,” the other woman said.

  “More importantly, they send us the bottom of the barrel.”

  “Yeah. No different than the nurse they sent us a few months back. That one came from Mississippi. She said her husband sometimes went out to hunt quail for their dinner. Can you imagine that?”

  “No. I can’t, but I don’t care about that so much as they must behave and do things differently down there. Remember how she talked to patients? So sweet I wanted to gag. Nobody around here is that gushy with patients.”

  “That’s because we act professionally,” the second woman responded. “However, don’t knock everybody from down there. My all-time favorite musician came from there. Tupelo, Mississippi.”

  “Elvis Presley? No way. Michael Jackson is the historic best solo musician.”

  “You’re not comparing apples to apples. Elvis had charisma and Jackson evoked electricity.”

  Viktoria pulled up scrub pants, pulled the strings, and tied a taut bow. She deliberated a call to action regarding the overheard locum tenens conversation, but decided against it. After already being verbally pro-active in the coffee place, she decided to be low-key. She grabbed the door handle and poked her head around to the women. First, she made note of their appearance: both wearing navy clogs, one
wearing dangling layered earrings, and the other one with thick hair difficult to stash inside an OR bonnet.

  “Good morning,” she said to their surprised faces and made her departure.

  At the front scheduling board, it was clear to Viktoria who was running the show in the anesthesia department. Jay Huff’s narrow shoulders were hunched forward as he wrote an addition into a room written towards the bottom. She peeked from the side. He was scribbling in an obstetric cesarean section with Jessy Winter and followed by writing in the anesthesia personnel as “Dr. Thorsdottir.”

  Jay straightened himself. “There you are. You won’t be supervising nurses yet because I need you upstairs on labor and delivery. Dr. Winter has a primagravida young woman needing a C-section. Baby’s having late decelerations. He said as soon as possible, but you don’t have to fly up the stairs. You’re on your own. Nurses can steer you in the right direction up there for drugs etc.”

  Viktoria stifled a frown as she left. She thought the request unreasonable, like sending a blind person into the woods. She took two steps at a time in the staircase, and opened the heavy door to her first look at the obstetric floor.

  “I’m Dr. Thorsdottir,” she said at the obstetric desk where two nurses were scrambling about. “Where and which OR is the C-section going into? And did an anesthesiologist put in an epidural for the patient during the night?”

  “No,” a woman said. “And the patient only arrived an hour or two ago. No epidural. Room 3.”

  Viktoria hustled to check the equipment and machinery in Room 3. She checked the chart, dispensed drugs, and quickly talked to and learned about her patient, Wilma Lancet.

  The woman gritted her teeth with a uterine contraction when Viktoria entered her room. She looked worn out for a thirty-year old and her dark bangs were matted.

  “I’ll be putting you to sleep,” Viktoria said. Dr. Winter wants to get started. “When did you last eat or drink?”