One old gal in her eighties squeezed his hand while he was starting her IV, and when Peter met her milky gaze he thought he saw something there—pity? empathy?—as if the years and her own losses had allowed her to see beyond the visible. She startled him further when he tried to take his hand away and she held on with spidery strength, saying, “It’ll be okay,” through a toothless grin. She released him as the nurse started to prep her eye, leaving Peter to wonder if the old woman had been referring to her surgery or if she was somehow privy to what he was going through. He wanted to ask her about it later, but her son was waiting for her in the recovery area and the turn-over in Ophthalmology was brisk. By the time he started the IV on the next patient, the woman was gone.
They broke for lunch at eleven-thirty and Peter took a back staircase to the basement-level cafeteria. A few people who knew him glanced his way, but no one approached him. He had the girl at the deli counter make him a salami sandwich and started back along the main hall to the stairwell with it, thinking he’d find a quiet corner upstairs in which to eat. There was a big message board along one wall, papered with job postings, bake sale flyers and the like, and as he passed it something caught his eye: a Child Find poster, an artist’s rendering of a boy of maybe eight with huge doe eyes that seemed to stare right through him. Surrounding it were dozens of photos of smiling children, each displayed under the same stark banner: MISSING. Peter found himself focusing on one of them in particular, an adorable little boy with a full head of blond popcorn curls. He was clutching a beat-up Teddy with button eyes and a heart-shaped nose, the brief text saying he’d vanished from his own back yard six years ago. And here was another, a girl of about David’s age, missing since the summer of 2000. Eight years.
And so many others...
Standing there, looking from face to face, Peter thought of how horrible it must be, the wondering; how it would work on your nerves without mercy or pause. Were they still alive? Six years later? Eight? Would their loved ones ever see them again? With David’s death so fresh in his heart, he found himself thinking that losing his son in this manner would have been much worse. So few of these kids ever turned up alive. The hope would be unendurable, a shoreless sea with only the slenderest of reeds to cling to.
To gaze on these lost faces was torture, yet he couldn’t look away.
This one, the curly blond. Peter’s eyes were repeatedly drawn to him. What an angel. Almost six when he was taken. He’d be nearly twelve now. Peter could picture himself as the boy’s father, still wandering the streets, scanning the faces of every curly headed kid he saw—What if they dyed his hair?—realizing the boy could be buried in the neighbor’s basement next door or sold into slavery in a Russian village and he’d never know the difference. The mere thought of it made the world seem impossibly large. Searching would be as pointless as it would be fruitless. But search he would, without end.
Behind him people streamed by, going about their duties, but Peter was unaware of them, in this moment as lost as these children, these precious faces push-pinned to the wall. What kind of monster stole a child? What aberration of human circuitry did it require to abduct, rape, and kill an innocent child? If he could get his hands on one of these bastards—
Cool fingers touched his elbow and Peter cried out, dropping his sandwich, greasy discs of salami fanning out at his feet in a flurry of chopped lettuce; looking at it on the worn green tiles, Peter wondered how he could have found it even remotely appetizing.
“Oh, my God, Doctor Croft, I’m sorry.”
It was Rose, one of the orthopedic nurses, bending now to scoop the ruined sandwich onto its paper plate. Peter squatted to help her.
“Forget about it,” he said, feeling as if he’d been slapped awake from a nightmare.
“I’ll get you another one,” Rose was saying, “I’m such a klutz.”
“It’s not your fault,” Peter told her, rising to his full height. “I was day dreaming.”
Rose was standing now too, red-faced, the remains of Peter’s lunch mounded onto the plate, a scrap of Iceberg lettuce stuck to her wedding diamond. She said, “It’s just, they were paging you for the OR and I thought you mustn’t have heard. They paged you twice.”
It was true; he hadn’t heard a thing. He glanced at his watch. He’d been standing here for fifteen minutes. “Better be off then,” he said.
“Are you sure I can’t get you another sandwich?”
He manufactured a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Rose. I wasn’t that hungry anyway.”
He left her standing by the wall of posters.
* * *
Peter finished his day at one o’clock and left the building without going into the main OR. In the change room he'd considered it, just go ahead in there and get it over with, let them all have a look at him. But the posters had upset him. He didn’t even know why he’d stopped to look at them. He’d walked past that display hundreds of times, and if he’d noticed it at all, it had been only fleetingly; because when you had a child of your own, to ponder such things further was to plug your own child’s face into one of those photos, and that was just too much to bear. So you glanced as you passed, felt a tug at your heartstrings and then a flush of gratitude, your own child safe in his classroom or at home in his bed.
He drove home in a light drizzle, thinking he’d pop a movie into the DVD player and maybe jump on the treadmill, get himself moving again. But five minutes later he drove past the video store as if the thought had never occurred to him, his mind drifting back to those photographs, one in particular prominent over all the others, the one of that curly-headed angel clutching his teddy. He couldn’t stop thinking about him.
At home he sat at the computer and brought up the Child Find site, sifting alphabetically through dozens of thumbs until he found the boy’s face, this time reading his name: Clayton Dolan. Clay. He had lived on a farm near Ottawa, six hours' drive away, and it struck Peter now what was eating him. He wanted to find this boy, wanted it in the same way a kid wants to find a lost kitten. The urge—the need—to find this little boy had that same child-like intensity, the same obvious futility. Why he felt this way he had no idea. It made no sense. But he wanted to jump in his car right now and go. The power of this notion surprised him; he knew it was crazy and yet he could barely remain seated in his chair.
The desire ballooned in his chest, the certainty that he could pull it off so compelling his body thrummed with the force of it. A plan began to take shape in his mind, and he dragged the cursor to the Bookmark tab and clicked it, clicking again on a link to a site that listed dozens of Ottawa hotels, one he’d used in the past to book accommodations for the anesthesia conferences he sometimes attended in the area. The site opened and he commenced a search for a budget hotel with weekly rates, thinking he could set up his laptop there, pay for an Internet hookup and spend his evenings researching the case and his daylight hours looking for the child. He could start by interviewing the parents, maybe, tell them he was a special investigator or—
Then, under an almost crushing weight of disappointment, he realized how insane this was, really saw it, and he sagged back in his chair, tears rising to his eyes. And finally, he understood that no matter how much he wished it were different, he could no longer face his grief alone.
He left the computer and in his bedroom closet found the suit he’d worn to David’s funeral, the material still smelling of flowers and that faint, funeral-home odor of putrescence, chemically sanitized and suspended. There was a scrap of paper in the jacket pocket a nurse had tucked in there, squeezing his arm as she did, telling him how much calling the number printed on it had helped her when her daughter’s life was taken by a drunk driver.
He took the number to the phone by the bed and dialed it. The woman who answered told him a new bereavement group had started two weeks ago, but they always had room for one more. She said the next meeting was Thursday night at eight in the basement of Saint Michael’s Church on Paris Street, and sh
e’d be happy to add his name to the list. Peter told her to go ahead, thanked her and hung up.
Then he went back to the computer.
4
Thursday, June 7
IN MED SCHOOL, DURING A rotation in addiction medicine, Peter had attended a series of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Members had gathered around long tables, introduced themselves one at a time, then said a few words about how their recovery was going. People drew on each other’s experience, strength, and hope, and honesty was a mainstay of the program. Listening to their stories, Peter had judged the process astonishing. Here were people whose addictions had dragged them to the very brink, robbing them of everything they held dear while riding roughshod over their often tragic efforts to free themselves of their compulsions. And yet, with the help of the group, they gave up drinking with apparent ease, many of them living out the balance of their lives without ever touching—or desiring—another drop of alcohol.
From what Peter could tell, the bereavement group functioned along similar principles. The meetings were moderated by a big, balding man who seemed familiar to Peter. He introduced himself as Roger Mullen—and again Peter felt that twitch of familiarity, the details lingering just out of reach—then went through what Peter assumed was a standard preamble: stating the group’s aims, outlining the benefits members could expect from honest and patient participation, finishing up with a reminder to turn off all beepers and cell phones. Then, in the fashion of the AA meetings Peter had attended, Mullen told everyone why he believed he was qualified to chair the meeting.
“Though the circumstances of my participation in this group may be fundamentally different from yours,” he said in a voice that was deep and hollow, “I’ve attended dozens of these gatherings in the three years since my son’s disappearance,”—and in that moment Peter made the connection— “and I believe I can function as a guide to the healing benefits I mentioned earlier.”
It came to Peter in a rush. Roger Mullen’s six-year-old boy had been abducted from his home. The details were sketchy, but Peter recalled that David and Mullen’s boy had attended the same daycare for a few months when David was about five. Dana had usually driven David back and forth, but Peter had done it a few times before they switched to a different center. That was where he’d seen Roger Mullen. The man had looked twenty years younger then, but Peter remembered those striking blue eyes. Thinking of it now, he seemed to recall Dana telling him that David and the Mullen boy—Jason, that was his name—had been close. Yeah, Dave had been upset when they switched him to the new place. Poor kid, really got attached to people.
“I have no proof that my son is dead,” Mullen was saying, “but common sense, and my heart, tell me that he is. Though I’ve never given up hope, to continue believing he’ll turn up one day has become unbearable. So I grieve for him.”
The room was silent, all eyes on Mullen, standing at the head of a single long table surrounded by the eight other participants that included Peter in this small, cement-floored church basement with the stations of the cross on the wall.
Now Mullen sat, the scrape of his metal chair breaking the spell. He looked at Peter and said, “For the benefit of our new member, Peter Croft, why don’t we introduce ourselves and fill him in briefly on why we’re all here.” He shifted his gaze to the woman seated to his right, giving her a somber smile.
Peter could feel the pain in this room in his chest, a low G-force pressing in on him, making it difficult to breathe.
The woman looked across the table at him. “My name is Emily McGowan,” she told him. “Welcome to the group, Peter.” Peter thanked her and she said, “My son Sheldon was visiting a friend’s house last August. I told him to be home in an hour. There was another boy there, an older boy, and he found a handgun in a closet. For fun he aimed it at Sheldon and pulled the trigger. The gun was loaded. Sheldon was eight.” Her eyes welled with tears and the woman next to her clutched her hand. Then that woman looked at Peter and told her story.
Before they were halfway around the table, Peter decided he’d made a terrible mistake. He could see nothing healing in this public exhumation of grief, a process that could yield only more grief, and he wanted to leave, was on the verge of doing so, when Mullen said, “Maybe that’s enough for now,” looking directly at Peter as he said it. Then: “Peter, why don’t you tell us about your boy.”
Peter felt caught, the tension in his muscles refusing to abate.
“You’re here now,” Mullen said. “Why not give it a shot?”
Peter swallowed hard. His feelings for his son were deeply personal. He had no idea what he’d expected to achieve in coming here, but breaking down in front of a bunch of strangers was not a part of it.
“Please,” Mullen said. “The first time’s the hardest. Just take your time.”
Peter glanced at the exit, then back at Mullen. “David had leukemia—”
“I’m sorry,” Mullen said. “That’s not what I meant. I meant, tell us about your son.”
Something warm welled up in Peter. He looked down at his hands and said, “David was born by emergency Cesarean section. I was a mess. Knowing as much as I did about Obstetrics—I’m an anesthesiologist—I was beside myself. I should have been barred from the whole process. He was coming out the wrong way, facing up instead of down, and they tried to get him flipped around with forceps. But his heart rate dropped and they decided to operate.” Peter could feel himself flushing. “We had to change rooms and things weren’t moving fast enough for me. Suddenly I found myself alone in the delivery suite with my wife, the poor thing in agony and terrified, and I decided I’d lift her onto the stretcher to save a little time. But I forgot about the catheter in her bladder, and when I shifted her over, it popped out. The balloon on the end tore her urethra. Then everything went into overdrive. She had an epidural they topped up for the surgery, and I sat by Dana at the head of the table with my face buried in her neck and I wept and prayed and made promises to whatever gods might be listening. I didn’t look up again until I heard that precious little cry. And when they handed him to me wrapped in a blanket and he opened his eyes and looked at me, I knew why I was alive.” Peter glanced at all the smiling faces and said, “Now I’m not so sure.”
But he felt better.
And when Mullen said, “Tell us more,” Peter did, his words scarcely able to keep up with the rush of memories.
He spent another ten minutes talking about his son, then a couple of other people shared some of the ways in which they were attempting to move on. In contrast to the introductions, the balance of the session was mostly upbeat, and Peter found himself settling in, a comfortable feeling of belonging blooming inside him.
* * *
Mullen approached him at the break, offering his hand to be shaken. Peter took it, surprised by its gentle warmth. Mullen was a tall man with the powerful build of a laborer, his huge hand swallowing Peter’s whole. Peter recalled Dana saying he was a miner, working underground at Inco. He offered Peter a coffee and Peter declined, telling Mullen he’d never developed a taste for it.
“A doctor who doesn’t drink coffee,” Mullen said.
“Or golf.”
Mullen smiled, deep dimples showing now, giving him a boyish look. “So what do you think?” he said.
“To be honest,” Peter said, “I was ready to bolt.”
“I caught that.”
“But it’s alright. I can see how it might help.”
“Glad to hear it,” Mullen said. “Everyone has something unique to bring to the process. I know it’s helped me a lot.”
“It’s got to be tough,” Peter said. “Your situation.”
Mullen nodded and looked away, his smile dimming. “I still hope I’ll find him,” he said. “It’s impossible not to. Just last Sunday I spent the whole day driving around town just...looking for him. I can’t count the number of times I’ve done that.”
“I’m sure I’d do the same thing.”
“Every once i
n a while I’ll think I’ve spotted him,” Mullen said, the smile gone now. “What a feeling that is. I’ve embarrassed myself more than once with that one.” He returned his gaze to Peter. “The thing is, the times I think I’ve found him? He’s still six years old. The way I remember him. He’d be almost ten now.”
“It must be hard.”
“No harder than what you’re going through.”
“I believe it is. I was just thinking about that the other day. I feel for you, Roger. I really do.”
“Thanks, Peter. And thanks for hanging in. Your listening just now has already helped me.”
“Any time.”
Mullen set his empty coffee cup on the table by the chrome urn. “Shall we get back to it?”
“Sounds good to me.”
* * *
On the drive home that night, Peter tried to recall the details of the Mullen abduction. At the time it had been big news, the first incident of its kind in Sudbury that hadn’t eventually turned out to be just a deadbeat dad or a simple runaway. According to the FBI, who’d been called in to assist, this had been a bold, calculated abduction most likely perpetrated by an intelligent white male between the ages of twenty and thirty-five who had no connection to the Mullen family.
It occurred to Peter as he pulled into the driveway that he hadn’t forgotten as much as he’d thought about Jason Mullen’s disappearance; he’d simply put it out of his mind. Just like the MISSING posters he’d walked past so many times at the hospital. It was sad, it was horrible, but thank God it was somebody else’s kid.
Here After Page 3
