The Ice Scream Man

by Salmon, J. F.

  Suzanne paused, recalling the details, she was crying. Alex put a little more pressure on her hand with his thumb.

  Suzanne sniffled. “It may sound silly, but it was a student card with a photo of Helen on it. A beautiful picture of her; it was a membership card for a science club at her school. The person in the photo was beautiful and the card clearly indicated her intelligence. But when I looked at the little girl in the bed, and what she had been turned into, her nose and lips, the scars on her face . . . I couldn’t believe it, it looked like no one was there, a shell, as if her mind simply got up and left her body behind.

  “I stayed professional and did what I had to do for the pre-op, and her poor mother was so lovely. But the second I left the room, I just broke down in tears. It is the saddest thing I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. What that psycho did to her for her to end up like that is just—”

  “There isn’t a word for it,” Alex said, “there just isn’t.”

  “Well, that was my morning, not good. I can’t seem to have a baby of my own and here I am sitting down to lunch having just helped to take a life from this young girl’s body.”

  Alex did his best to console his wife. “I know it stinks but you can’t in any way blame yourself for this. I know it’s a cliché, but you’re doing your job.”

  “I know, but I feel like God is punishing me, punishing us, for something we must’ve done in a past life.” Suzanne released her grip from Alex’s hand, took a paper napkin from the tray and blew her nose. She put the tissue back on the side of the tray and looked at her watch. “Look, I have to get back to work. I will see you back at home.” Suzanne pushed the chair back to get up to leave.

  “Are you not going to eat anything? You still have a long day ahead.”

  “No appetite, maybe later.”

  “I’ll make you something nice for dinner. Try not to think any more about it, honey, it’s not good.”

  “That would be nice. Okay, thanks, Alex. I’m glad you came.”

  “Okay, see you. And Suzanne,” Alex called after her as she left the table to return to work.

  Suzanne turned around. “What?”

  “I’ll help you to relax later.”

  Suzanne smiled at a speed that implied the timing was off, and left him wishing he could remove the sexual connotation. He picked up the fork and pierced a couple of chips with one disappointing thought on his mind: Tonight might not be such a good night after all.

  27:

  “Tinker, the fucking cat.”

  After finishing his lunch, and most of Suzanne’s, Alex went full-bellied to the Interim Storage Facility. He took the elevator to its location in the cellar with every intention of getting in and out as quickly as possible. It was the last scheduled pickup of the day and Alex was keen to get back home, wrap things up, and chill out on the sofa for an hour or so before starting dinner.

  This was by far the worst managed and least appealing interim storage facility in Alex’s repertoire of callouts, including the dental and veterinary clinics. A small hospital with an equally small budget meant cutbacks, and a room buried down in the cellar away from the general population was never going to be high on any spender’s list, regardless of its function. Then there was the small matter of Pat.

  Pat managed the storage facility alone. Much of the staff would regard him as a loner, always keeping himself to himself. A moderate case of Tourette’s helped to enhance Pat’s anomalous reputation. A phonic tic caused Pat’s neck to spasm and jolt outward, straining his face. This preceded the emergence of often offensive language, suggesting the process was as painful as it looked. There was no solace for Pat on the upper decks of the hospital floors and corridors, including the staff canteen. Even the incentive of a subsidised meal was not enough to tempt him up; too many ethnic groups with which to take offence to words they only found acceptable among themselves. Hence, Pat accepted the solitude of his den with fast food for company.

  After nearly six years managing the facility to the satisfaction of his employers, Pat still only knew the names of those who brought him the waste from the floors above. Unsurprisingly, the female staff tended to stay away and they were the ones who’d given Pat his nickname: “Quasi,” after Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, because of his less than fruitful looks and dedicated attachment to his meagre surroundings.

  Alex was not supportive of the title and never used it in reference to Pat. He felt the term to be unnecessarily cruel for such a harmless individual. As far as Alex was concerned, Pat was simply the most depressing man he ever had the misfortunate pleasure to meet.

  Pat lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment, with his cat, Tinker. Tinker was Pat’s world and besides his job, that was all he ever talked about, which was okay for the first five minutes when Alex first met him. Okay, so you have a cat named Tinker, how nice. But two, sometimes three times a week, over a six-year period, and the trials and tribulations of “Tinker the Fucking Cat” begin to grate. Hours of wasted, polite conversation on a cat, not big cats, or different types of cats, or the mythology of cats, or even cat women—that might have been nice—just one cat, “Tinker, Tinker, Tinker the Fucking at.”

  Alex didn’t even like cats. Nowadays, the mere thought of meeting with Pat caused his irritation level to rise. Appearing interested in menial conversations about a bloody cat did his head in. Had Alex been so inclined, he would have hung another sign on the door to accompany the existing Interim Storage Room and it would read:

  ENTER AT OWN RISK

  DRONING CIVILITY REQUIRED TO GET OUT

  P.S. DON’T ASK ABOUT THE FUCKEN CAT OR YOU’LL DIE IN HERE

  Who cared if the sign took up the entire front face of the door? Pat could drain the energy from a car battery if it had the ability to listen. It was a justifiable warning as far as Alex was concerned.

  The door to the storage facility was ajar when Alex stuck his head through and knocked to announce his arrival. The room was cold and murky without the shutters open to the outside ramp. Two halogen lights hung from the ceiling on precariously thin chains. He made a point when entering not to stand directly under either one of them in order to not tempt faith; the weight of a single fly might be enough to see one come down and slap him square in the face. Today only the one light worked, which spread uneven shadows that emphasized the shoddy plastered walls. It did nothing to help the ambiance of the already dreary place.

  Pat was in his usual place, a red-backed swivel chair behind an old wooden table —furniture castoffs from a more affluent part of the hospital where refurbishment was deemed necessary. He was staring at some paperwork on his desk, probably corresponding to the latest deliveries of waste from up above. A small heater fan hummed lowly on the bare concrete floor behind his chair, providing the only source of heat to the room. Alex felt the cold as soon as he entered—it was warmer outside in the fresh air.

  Pat looked up to the sound of the knock and immediately greeted Alex with the usual grin on his blemished, potholed face. Alex also noticed the glisten of grease around Pat’s mouth and the blue uniformed shirt that was two sizes too big for his undernourished frame. He could not think of a more suited person to undertake such an ominous job in such depressed surroundings.

  “Ah, here he is, the main man, Alex,” Pat said with a mouthful of chicken, the words barely audible to Alex.

  Before he had the chance to close his mouth, his neck twitched and jutted forward, forcing a piece of the chewed-up white flesh out of his mouth and onto the sheet of paper he had just been looking at.

  “Phoouckaphoouckaphooucka,” Pat discharged with his mouth part-full.

  Alex watched his neck retract and he scooped up the coagulated piece of chicken with two fingers and a thumb and sucked the white putty back into his mouth. With the cuff of one sleeve, he rubbed the residue across the page, took a moment to i
nspect it, and appeared satisfied.

  “Almost done,” Pat said as if nothing unusual just happened.

  Pat gnawed the last remaining morsels off the bone and tossed the puny carcass into a fast-food container. Alex surmised that greasy chicken was his staple diet. He never saw Pat eat anything else and silently wondered what his insides must be like, given the state of his outside.

  “Tinker’s dinner,” Pat said looking at Alex and then toward the snack box.

  Alex expected the contents of his mouth to spill once more.

  “Lucky Tinker,” Alex said as he approached the desk with both hands in his pockets and raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement.

  Pat missed sarcasm, too busy cleaning the inside of his mouth with his tongue and wiping the grease from around his lips and hands with the paper towel that accompanied the lunch box.

  “So, Pat, what have you got for me today?”

  Alex already knew the answer to this because the collection was staring him in the face from the corner of the black cage next to Pat’s desk. Twenty yellow containers, stacked in four rows of five, ten yellow bags and seven red bags equalled the total amount of hazardous waste generated by the hospital in the last three days. Yellow containers housed Sharps Waste; items such as used syringes, needles, scalpels, and blades, etc. Yellow bags contained infectious waste, which included all waste items contaminated with or suspected of contamination with body fluids such as blood and blood products, used catheters and gloves, cultures, and stocks of infectious agents, waste from dialysis and dentistry units, from isolation units, wound dressings, nappies, discarded diagnostic samples, contaminated materials (swabs, bandages, and gauze), and equipment (disposable medical devices, e.g., IV fluid lines and disposable spatulas). Yellow bags from his veterinary clients included waste from infected animals.

  The Red bags (the same bag that had punctured and spilled in the back of Alex’s van, leaving a horrific and pungent mess for Alex to deal with), contained anatomic waste, body parts and bodily tissues e.g., placentas, lobulated blood, waste from clinical labs, and animal carcasses from his veterinary partners—the bags were the same.

  Alex did not examine the spillage to see if he recognised anything familiar or if the bag came from a hospital or one of the five Veterinary Clinics. All Alex knew was he needed to clean up the mess and do it quickly; get his waterproofs on, tie a scarf around his nose and mouth, power wash the inside down, and finally look—without seeing—to pick up the remaining pieces that washed to the ground without dissolving within the tall grass. If he had stopped, even for a second, to think about its contents, he would have added the insides of his stomach to the mix.

  “Well, let me see now.” Pat looked to the cage and then back around at his desk as if he had lost something important.

  Alex read him well and knew that things were moving far too quickly for Pat’s liking. He was trying to delay his inevitable departure.

  “Ah, wait until I tell you,” Pat said as if he had just thought of something very important. Whatever he was looking for had suddenly slipped his mind. “Tinker caught a mouse the other night, clever little thing. I was sitting in the chair watching something on the television and you’ll never guess what happened.”

  “Tell me,” Alex said, looking at his watch to drop a hopeless hint, “I’m in a bit of a rush today.”

  “Have a guess,” Pat said, leaning back in the chair and folding his arms.

  “Eh, Tinker caught a mouse,” Alex said, repeating Pat’s opening announcement.

  Pat smiled and nodded at Alex. “I told you that already, didn’t I?” and looked away to gather his thoughts. “Okay, so I was sitting there watching a movie or something on the TV, I can’t remember what. But that doesn’t really matter, I suppose. And then, the next thing I know, Tinker strolls by me with her tail up and a mouse in her mouth. Then as cool as you like, I’m tellin ya, she lay down right in front of me.

  “Proud as punch she was, not a care in the world did she have. It was the cutest thing I ever did see. Laughed I did when I saw her with that little mouse in her mouth. It was like a little cuddly toy with the tail dangling off to one side. She looked so proud of herself. Although, I don’t know where the mouse came from; we live on the third floor. Tinker’s great she is, my sweetheart, very clever for a cat you know. They’re not all—”

  Tic.

  His neck twitched, jaw jutted forward, “Fuckenniggerlover Bop.”

  “Well that’s great, Pat, you’re a very lucky man,” Alex said, ignoring the interruption. “You even have your very own pest-controller.” Alex turned toward the cage and slapped his hands together with as much energy as he could muster. “Right, what have you got for me today, then? I need to make a move if I am going to catch the next pick-up before rush-hour traffic.”

  “Yeah, you should get a cat of your own. You live out in the country, don’t you?”

  “Well, sort of, just outside the city.”

  “Cats keep the mice at bay and it would love playing out in the fields. Plenty of mice out there in that big back garden of yours. It would have a field day,” Pat said and laughed aloud at his own pun.

  Alex laughed, too, more out of politeness than actually thinking Pat was in any way funny.

  “Unfortunately, we have a dog and as I’ve said to you before, Suzanne is allergic to cats. Otherwise we would,” Alex lied.

  “Too bad.”

  Tic.

  “WankafuckenniggerWhoooopsBop.”

  Alex took advantage of the involuntary interruption. “So what have you got for me today, then, Pat? I really have to get going,” he repeated.

  Pat shook the tic out of his neck. “All that there in the cage, it’s all for you, Alex, all the good stuff.” Beside the cage, and to Alex’s relief, Pat pressed the switch and the corrugated shutter began to rattle and rise. Welcome light and fresh air sped in from outside.

  “And while I think about it, could you try and get me some of whatever they use to disinfect the floors and gurneys after operations? You know, for the back of the van, still stinks like hell.”

  “You’ll need something a little stronger than the sterilants and disinfectants I use down here. Chlorine compounds are good for the clean-up of body fluid and bio hazardous spills, which I suspect messed up your van. Stinks like hell after a while, doesn’t it?”

  Alex began to wonder how he might know such a thing, then thought better of it. “Sure does.”

  “The bad news is I don’t have any at the moment, unless you can wait another half hour? Otherwise, I’ll keep some aside for your next visit. That will sort it out all right.”

  “Next time will be fine.”

  With the van finally loaded, Alex finished the paperwork in the cockpit of his van with the window part open. He was just getting ready to pull away when Pat knocked on the door a little harder than was necessary. Alex jerked in his seat and pressed on the brake pedal.

  “Don’t go without this one. It just came down,” Pat said, and held up the red bag.

  Tic.

  “MotherfuckendeadbitsWhoopWhoopBop.”

  Alex left Pat to meander back into his den and pondered the next hour and a half of his day. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 4:05, and surmised that by five-thirty he would be prepping the herbs and veggies for dinner. How he wished it were five-thirty. This part of his job was messy, not to mention highly illegal.

  28:

  “Recession bites”

  When the recession took hold, the public Health sector was the first to be hit with extensive austerity cuts. Cutting costs became paramount for all hospitals and, some would argue, at the expense of the patients’ care. Suzanne kept Alex abreast of the planned changes to be implemented at St. Augusta and although he managed to hold his contract, largely thanks to his wife, it was no great surpr
ise when he began to lose out to the larger, more competitive waste management companies.

  Alex realised he had to make cuts of his own if he was to have any chance of holding onto his remaining clients. Four vans became one to accommodate the loss of business but it was not enough. The only dominant cost left to his business was the disposal of the waste he collected, and with less waste to dispose of that became more expensive. Unless he could cut those costs, his business was all but finished. Negotiations with the waste management company he used proved less than fruitful. After several meetings, Alex felt he was left with no choice but to wind the business down.

  That night, while Suzanne was working a nightshift and with the failed negotiations still ringing in his ears, he went onto the veranda at the back of the cottage with two open bottles of beer held by the neck in one hand. The full moon speckled the land with a shimmer of silver. Bentley loyally followed him out, never taking his eyes off his master. Alex sat on the red wooden bench Suzanne had affectionately restored five months earlier while she was pregnant. Bentley hopped up and duly nuzzled his moist nose under his arm and rested his head on his lap. Alex did well to keep the beers in hand.

  “Easy, Bentley,” he said as he swapped the bottles over and stood one upright on the decking.

  He stroked Bentley’s tanned coat and looked down at his squashed face. He could see where the Boxing breed got its name. Bentley closed his eyes and Alex stared out over the rails of the veranda onto the expansive back garden. The plumes of his breath dissipated into the dark, frosty air. He was thinking how to break the news to Suzanne.