WEBCAM

by Jack Kilborn

  The nurse didn’t leave.

  “The gowns are hanging up behind you,” Nurse Demeter repeated, sterner this time.

  Kendal turned and saw two drab, pale blue hospital gowns. She reached for one, took it off the hanger, and then glanced back at Nurse Demeter.

  The nurse folded her arms across her ample chest. Apparently she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Kendal hesitantly removed her jacket, laying it on the bench, hating herself for having to touch it three times.

  “Come on, now. Chop chop.”

  Kendal wasn’t sure that chop chop was an appropriate thing to say to a woman when she’d come in for a breast exam, but she figured Nurse Demeter was one of those naturally rude people who was oblivious to her effect on others. And a pervert, too. Did she want to watch Kendal get undressed? She sort of looked a bit mannish. Something about her posture. Or her big hands.

  If Linda were there, she would have made a joke about it. Linda was tough. A lot tougher than Kendal. She’d almost asked Linda to come with, but her roommate was still sleeping in her bed, and looked so peaceful Kendal hadn’t woken her up.

  Linda wouldn’t be embarrassed. Or nervous. She’d take off her top, and stare the creepy nurse right in the eyes.

  So that’s what Kendal did.

  And the creepy nurse smiled.

  “Boobies that big, and you’ve never had a mammogram before?” Nurse Demeter asked.

  Kendal felt her ears turn red, but she held the stare. “I’m only nineteen.”

  “Genetics don’t care about age. Have you heard of Kallmann Syndrome? Some people never hit puberty, naturally. They have to take hormone supplements their entire lives. Obviously, that’s not something you have to worry about. Now, the bra.”

  This had to be one of the most unprofessional nurses in the history of campus health care. Kendal considered walking out.

  Nurse Demeter smiled that fake smile. “You seem nervous. No need to be. I’ve been getting regular mammograms since I was sixteen.”

  The nurse straightened her shoulders, jutting out her chest. “Believe it or not, I can thank my father’s side of the family for these. Strange to think you got your boobies from your daddy, isn’t it? Little girls worry they’ll inherit traits like alcoholism.” The nurse’s smile faltered. “Or mental illness. Nature versus nurture. Genetic markers versus environmental factors. The parents are to blame, either way, aren’t they? But it’s the child who gets teased from fourth grade on, all because their pituitary gland is on a different clock than other children their age.”

  And then Nurse Demeter’s face broke, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  Kendal’s distaste for the woman was superseded by pity.

  “I’ll wait in the hall,” the nurse said. “Put the gown on backwards, so it opens in front. I’ll let the doctor know you’re here.”

  Nurse Demeter left.

  Kendal felt extremely alone.

  She closed her eyes. An assortment of thoughts fought with one another for space in her head.

  Strange nurse.

  I’m too young to need a mammogram.

  Why did she mention mental illness?

  Has anything that has happened to me lately been real?

  Is this even real?

  How can you tell, for sure, when you’re losing your mind?

  Kendal’s father was an alcoholic. And definitely mentally ill. But Kendal didn’t know enough about his mental history. Could she have inherited his crazy? Or had she become crazy because of the things he’d done to her?

  She took off her bra and reached for the closest gown.

  Ultimately, it didn’t matter what was real, and what wasn’t. Kendal was an expert at acting like everything was okay. That was her special skill. No matter how horrible things became, she could soldier on. Dish it out, she’d take it. A pink dragon could have burst into the dressing room, and it would still be just another day in the life.

  Survival, at its core, was all about rolling with the punches. Because life punches hard. Learn to accept that, or jump off a building.

  Kendal left the dressing room, and found Nurse Demeter in the hallway, touching up her thick foundation in the round mirror of a compact. Any bit of frailty she’d shown before was gone.

  “This way,” she said, her long strides leading Kendal down the hallway. Again Kendal struggled to keep up, her right arm over her breasts, keeping the gown closed. The nurse opened a door, holding it for Kendal. She walked inside.

  The room was cold, and smelled stale. At the far wall was a big machine that Kendal assumed was the mammogram.

  The door slammed behind Kendal, making her jump.

  “Do you give yourself regular self-exams?”

  “What?” Kendal asked.

  “Do you check for lumps?”

  “I don’t have lumps,” Kendal said. “I don’t even know why I’m—”

  “Your blood test showed traces of cancer antigen 15-3,” Nurse Demeter said.

  “I haven’t had a blood test in—”

  “Raise both hands over your head,” the nurse said.

  Kendal followed orders, her hospital gown opening in front. Nurse Demeter put one hand on Kendal’s right shoulder, and began to palpate her left breast.

  The nurse was surprisingly gentle, given her rough demeanor. Her touch was decidedly non-sexual, but it didn’t feel entirely clinical, either.

  It was almost as if the nurse was trying to figure out what to do. Like she’d never examined a breast before.

  This whole situation had gone from weird and uncomfortable, to warning bells ringing in Kendal’s head. Maybe she was a paranoid schizophrenic with severe hallucinations, but she wanted to get the hell out of that clinic, immediately.

  “Oh my God, I just realized I’m missing a major exam,” Kendal began to pull away. “I really have to—”

  “There’s a mass.”

  “What?”

  Nurse Demeter took Kendal’s hand and placed it against the top of her breast. “There. Press. Can you feel it?”

  Kendal pushed down.

  And felt something. A bump of some kind.

  “Isn’t that my rib?”

  “We need to get the doctor,” the nurse said. She turned to leave and then stopped. “Wait, we should get you in the X-ray machine.”

  She maneuvered Kendal over to an ugly, beige piece of medical equipment at the back of the room. It looked like an oversized microscope, complete with a rectangular stage at shoulder-level. The nurse cupped Kendal’s breast and slapped it up onto the platform.

  “Hold still. We need to lower the camera.”

  Nurse Demeter kept one hand on Kendal’s back, pushing her against the machine, and with the other she pressed a button at the end of a cord. The camera lowered, until it was smooshing the top of Kendal’s breast.

  Then it kept going.

  “Ow!”

  “We need to compress the tissue as thinly as possible.”

  Kendal watched, horrified, and the camera squeezed down until her boob was sandwiched tight.

  “It hurts!”

  “Hold still. I’ll be right back with the doctor.”

  Nurse Demeter left.

  Kendal began to cry. She tried to pull away, but that hurt even worse. This wasn’t right. That crazy nurse had compressed her too tightly.

  “Hey! Anybody!” Kendal yelled, her voice cracking. “I’m in here! Help!”

  This has gone beyond mere discomfort, and Kendal didn’t care about the embarrassment of some stranger coming in. She wanted out. Now.

  She cast a frantic look around for the button the nurse had used to lower the top part that was squishing her, and saw it was a meter away, hanging from its cord.

  Kendal reached for it.

  Too far.

  She tried to push against the machine, feeling like her breast was going to tear off her body, trying to get it to budge. The heavy piece of equipment didn’t move a centimeter.

  “SOMEBODY! HEL
P!”

  No help came.

  A minute passed. Maybe more than a minute. She’d left her phone in her jacket, back in the dressing room. An irrational fear descended upon her. Being stuck there for hours. What if the crazy nurse left? What if the doctor never came? What would happen if Kendal passed out? Would it rip her breast right off of her body?

  Kendal fought against the fear. Refused to let it win.

  She knew worst case scenarios. And the worst that could happen here was her being stuck for a bit. The nurse would get fired. Maybe Kendal could even sue. The concept was actually funny. She’d finally be able to leave HotSororityGirlsLive.com, even pay for college with the settlement. Sure, one tit would just hang there like a pancake, but that was a small price to pay for financial freedom.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she told herself. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  “No,” said a male voice behind her. “It’s not.”

  Kendal tried to turn and look, but she couldn’t see whomever had come into the room.

  “Doctor?”

  “I’m not a doctor, Kendal.”

  She heard footsteps come closer.

  “Help me,” she begged.

  No one replied.

  “Who’s there?”

  The seconds ticked by, and Kendal began to wonder if she’d imagined the voice. Maybe this whole episode was a delusion. What made more sense? Some psycho nurse who clamped her boob in a mammogram machine and left? Or having another psychotic break?

  Or maybe it was some combination of the two. Maybe Kendal was here, at the campus clinic, and she’d somehow done this to herself. Some kind of Beautiful Mind/Fight Club insanity where Kendal had put herself in this situation. Why wasn’t anyone else here? Why was that silk plant in the waiting room so dusty?

  Kendal remembered an app she and Linda had joked about, months before. It got you out of bad dates by autodialing your number, so you could say you were having an emergency. Had Kendal autodialed the sorority house yesterday, and set up this fake doctor’s appointment with herself?

  Maybe no one had been in her room last night. Or on her computer. Or her Kindle. Maybe her stalker was really her own broken mind, still crazy after all these years thanks to what her father did…

  “It’s strange,” the male voice said, making her jump. “But this is the first time I’ve seen you naked.”

  Kendal again tried to turn around. She couldn’t see anything.

  “Who are you?”

  “Don’t be coy, Kendal. You know who I am.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Do you always forget the boys you’ve had in your room? I actually came out of the closet for you.”

  Kendal began to sob. Hallucination or not, this was scaring the shit out of her.

  “What… what do you want?”

  “We both want the same thing. You’re a sinner. You need Penance. Erinyes is here to give it to you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  There was no reply.

  “Hello?”

  No answer.

  “Hello!”

  “We’re still here,” the man said, his mouth right next to Kendal’s ear. “And we’re just getting started.”

  Kendal felt something cold and wet press against her mouth. Something that burned her nostrils. Instinct took over, training from a self-defense class taken years ago.

  Lift your foot.

  Bring your heel down on the attacker’s instep.

  The man howled, pulling the chemical rag away from Kendal’s mouth, and she began to scream for all she was worth.

  CHAPTER 32

  “We won’t know for certain until we get your blood culture results back, but we’re treating you for necrotizing fasciitis,” said the specialist doctor standing next to Tom’s bed. He looked like a casting company’s stereotype; white, forties, balding, glasses, lab coat. His nametag read Dr. Jones.

  “So give me a shot and let me leave.”

  Joan hadn’t picked up her cell. Tom even tried calling Trish, thinking she might have gone there, but Trish didn’t pick up either. And Roy, still at the perp’s house collecting evidence, was no help in tracking down his girlfriend.

  “Mr. Mankowski, I’m not sure you appreciate the seriousness of this condition. I’ve only seen one case of this in my career, and it was from the individual who bit you. The hospital has just alerted the CDC.”

  “You called the Center for Disease Control because some guy chewed on my arm?”

  “We called the CDC because an outbreak of necrotizing fasciitis would be very serious indeed. It’s also known as the flesh-eating bacteria.”

  “That does sound serious,” Tom said.

  “It is serious. We need to keep you under observation and on intravenous antibiotics. I also strongly recommend surgery to remove the tissue around your wound. The bacteria spreads very quickly.”

  “How quickly?”

  “Immediately.”

  “The man who attacked me—”

  “I’m frankly surprised that he even had the strength to attack you. Streptococcus is no doubt only one of the diseases he’s carrying. The extent of his injuries is… extraordinary. Malnourished. Repeatedly beaten. He had spiders living in his hair. And some of his scars look to be years old. His captor had apparently been giving him antibiotics to keep him alive.”

  “Is he awake?”

  “I got out of surgery half an hour ago. The amount of infected tissue I had to remove… it was extensive.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “No, you cannot. What you can do is sign the consent form. Unless you’d like to risk losing your arm.”

  Tom knew a pain-in-the-ass ex-cop who’d lost his hand. He had no idea if the man’s personality had deteriorated with the loss of the limb, or if he’d always been that way, but Tom didn’t want to risk becoming that irritating. “I’d prefer to keep the arm. Will I just get a local? I don’t want to be put under.”

  In case Joan called back.

  “We can begin with a local. But I can’t predict what kind of damage I’m going to find until I start digging in there with a scalpel.”

  The doctor seemed excited by the idea, which was more than a little disturbing. He left, a nurse came in with papers, and Tom tried Joan and Trish again. No luck. But he did manage to get Roy.

  “Tommy, you ain’t gonna believe what we found in the garage. We got barrels of bodies. Barrels. Son of a bitch pickled them like… like pickles. Got a hazmat team counting heads. Eight so far. You watching the news?”

  “Roy, do you know where Trish is? I’m trying to find Joan.”

  “I haven’t talked to her since this morning. You should see some of the freaky shit we’ve found here, Tommy. You remember that crazy whip from The Passion of the Christ? The one with all the spikes on the ends? This son of a bitch has got one. Also got a whole pharmacy here. Drugs up the ass. We could put him away for life just for illegal steroids. And I found this giant key ring of master keys. They’ll open almost any lock. So now we know how he’s getting into the vic’s homes.”

  “Roy, listen to me. I need you to call Trish to try to find Joan. Trish thinks you’re cheating on her, so they may be together.”

  “Trish thinks what? Say that again, Tom.”

  “Your woman found a credit card bill from the Sheraton. Eight hundred bucks.”

  “Man, I can’t afford the Sheraton. Eight hundred bucks! Wait, Tom. That computer guy, Firoz, wants to talk to you. Just a sec.”

  “Roy…”

  “Hello? Detective Mankowski? It’s Detective Firoz Nafisi. The suspect’s computer, as expected, is password protected. Before I try a blunt force attack, I was wondering if you had any ideas. Detective Lewis mentioned there was something about Greek demons that may be relevant to the case.”

  Greek demons? “I don’t know what Roy is… wait. Roy was talking about the Furies. Greek deities of vengeance. Wikipedia it.”

  “I�
�ll try. Thank you.”

  “Can you put Roy back on?”

  Firoz didn’t reply.

  “Hello? You there?”

  Apparently he wasn’t. Firoz had hung up.

  Tom was tempted to call Joan again, resisted, and located the remote control attached to the bed rail. He switched on the local news and saw the stack of barrels Roy had mentioned.

  Jesus. They’d found a real bad one this time.

  Found. Not caught. He was still on the loose.

  Tom turned off the TV and considered Joan’s words.

  You can’t quit until you catch him. Admit it.

  Was she right? Tom thought he was willing to walk away from The Job for her. But watching the news, he couldn’t deny his overwhelming feeling of…

  Of what?

  Responsibility? Civic duty? Joan teased Tom about being genetically wired for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Could that joke be true? Did Tom’s need for justice and drive to make the world a better place outweigh his love for Joan?

  Fighting monsters was a worthy cause. But it took a toll. Tom’s former boss, a retired Lieutenant named Jacqueline Daniels, had suffered greatly by dedicating her life to chasing bad guys. Tom didn’t believe in good and evil; those were absolutes meant to be debated in philosophy class, not applied to imperfect human beings. But Jack had done a lot of good in the world, and stopped a lot of bad, and she ranked up there with the unhappiest people Tom knew.

  Was that Tom’s future? Serve the greater good, but be miserable?

  He glanced at the doorway to his room, and his navel-gazing was quickly replaced by curiosity.

  The man who had bitten Tom in the basement. What did he know?

  Tom swung his legs out of bed, gripped his portable IV stand, and wheeled it over to the tiny closet. He found his pants, fished out his badge, and then padded out into the hallway. The tile was cool under his bare feet, and he only wore boxer-briefs under his hospital gown, but he was strangely warm. Excitement from questioning a witness and possibly getting some answers? Or necrotizing fasciitis coursing through his bloodstream?

  “You shouldn’t be out of bed, Mr. Mankowski.”

  Tom turned, saw the male nurse who’d been in his room earlier. “Detective Mankowski,” Tom said, flipping open his badge case. “Dr. Jones gave me permission to question the man brought in with me.”