The Ice Scream Man

by Salmon, J. F.

  “How the fuck did you come to know all about this stuff?”

  “Anything that causes a person to feel the need to do bad things I tend to know a lot about. Ask me something about cars and I wouldn’t have a clue.”

  40:

  “Doctor, Doctor, I think I broke a nail.”

  Brad Mullins would not have looked out of place up a tree, chained to a gate, or squatting in a tent outside the central bank, protesting against an environmental issue, or financial corruption. At fifty-three he was aging superbly, supporting a long, silver ponytail and matching beard, which he tied into a single plait and decorated with a bead that he colour-coordinated to one of his brightly worn tee-shirts. Jeans and open top sandals with blue, black, or white socks finished off his attire for work and any other part of the day where he might find himself. Brad was not famed for his fashion, which he saw nothing wrong with, and although his appearance suggested otherwise, Doctor Mullins was a damned good practitioner who would bite at the bit to get results.

  He was a charming man who liked to be called Brad and not Doctor by patients and staff, which created a very personable atmosphere within the clinic. He had the uncanny knack of making patients feel welcome and once they came to terms with his appearance, most believed that the whole reason for his existence was to ensure their wellbeing. Some patients tended to visit more often than medically necessary just to sit and chat but once weeded out, follow-up telephone calls became a necessity to prevent them clogging up his system. Prescriptions were filled-out by well-trained staff requiring Brad’s signature, and well-spaced appointments resulted in focused consultations and considerably shortened waiting times. His practice ran with great efficiency and few left his care or employment of their own accord.

  Brad arranged the appointment over the phone for Saturday morning, having received reconfirmation of the results late Friday afternoon; there was no mistake. He made the appointment himself to assure Suzanne that Sardis had nothing seriously wrong, but he kept back some news and asked for Alex to join them, thinking it best to break it to them as a couple. They’d grown fond of each other during the pivotal times when Brad helped Suzanne and Alex through each of the four miscarriages, and was understandably delighted to find out about their adoption.

  He had met Sardis a few times over the past twelve months when they’d first brought her to see him for a minor medical matter, and the subsequent check-ups that followed. He was therefore familiar with Sardis’ “perfect imperfections,” as Suzanne liked to call them. If he was surprised by the appearance of her cat-like nails and corrugated formation of sharp teeth where there should have been sprouting pearly white heads he hid it well. His immediate concern had been for her wellbeing. But the news he had to share with them today, and although not life-threatening, would probably come as a shock.

  Suzanne and Alex had become convincing liars with regard to Sardis. It was easy to be convincing because adoption was plausible. How else would they have ended up with a child they so desperately wanted? Only close family and friends knew of Sardis’ malformations; none knew of her feeding habits. These blemishes, these perfect imperfections, were probably the reason Sardis had been given up for adoption. It was a credible lie that required no further justification.

  Suzanne felt protective of Sardis’ flaws with others less trusted, and preferred to keep her away from public scrutiny whenever possible. She could not bear the thought of anyone thinking less of her beautiful baby daughter. At Sardis’ christening, one of the few times a congregation of more than four people gathered in her company, no one made comment about her mitten-covered hands. Her teeth only became noticeable when she cried and thankfully she was placid that day. She did cry once, though, when the priest poured the holy water over her forehead and absolved her from original sin. Alex and Suzanne felt a little uneasy watching the priest’s facial expression stain of transient fright, then seamlessly contort to one of uncertainty. The priest did well to regain his composure and carry on the sermon with only a brief pause. It was a fine line of dread and laughter between Suzanne and Alex, the slightest snigger from either of them would have set off an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. The priest gave his customary congratulations at the end of the service and they again spied him peeking nonchalantly at her mouth. Sardis had stopped crying by then. They didn’t tender an explanation for his imagination, and the priest did not pry further. The rest of the day went smoothly and Suzanne ensured Sardis was well fed from her wrapped-up bottle. All of those in attendance commented on her beauty.

  After pleasantries in the surgery, Brad waited for Suzanne and Alex to take their seats before he sat down in front of them next to his desk. To the right stood the black examination couch that had been used to examine a distressed Sardis less than a week ago. Sardis now bounced happily in rhythm on Alex’s knee and her eyes instinctively wandered the unfamiliar setting. Suzanne appeared tense, bracing for the unknown, blowing a lose sheaf of hair off her face from the corner of her mouth and not knowing what to do with her hands. Her eyes drifted over the flecked wood that exposed a well-worn desk, tidy but for a number of coffee-mug stains confined to one tight area and a single bay x-ray box that stood menacingly upright. The x-ray film clipped to the screen revealed nothing but black, but held answers. Suzanne pointlessly eyed it half a dozen times in as many seconds. She was bursting for the answers for Sardis’ “perfect imperfections.”

  Alex eyed the x-ray, too.

  Brad noticed their mounting curiosity and habitually decided not to dilly-dally.

  “How’s she been since I last saw her?” he asked, sitting forward and stretching a surgical glove up his wrist and flexing his long fingers.

  “She’s been good, really good,” Suzanne answered, stirring to find comfort in the chair.

  “I see she scratched herself,” Brad said, tracing the hook-shaped scab with his latex finger that started below Sardis’ eye and ran halfway down her cheek.

  “Yes, a few nights ago,” Alex said. “A mitten came off in the cot while she was sleeping.”

  “It’s quite a cut but it’s healing nicely. It won’t leave a scar,” Brad assured them.

  “Now she sleeps in an all-in-one with the hands protected,” Suzanne said as much to clarify that her mothering skills were back under control. “The last few days she’s not suffered any pain.”

  Brad gently pulled down on Sardis’ bottom lip and stared inquisitively into her mouth. A faint scent of mint came from her breath. He cautiously rubbed the tip of his finger back and forth along the bottom ridge of teeth and pressed in on them to physically check if there was any movement, there wasn’t, and if they caused Sardis any unnecessary discomfort. Sardis did not mind the intrusion into her mouth but Suzanne felt an annoying sense of pathetic relief when he finally removed his finger, the nightmare never forgotten.

  Brad held his finger up, inspected it, hummed, and then turned his finger to show Suzanne and Alex the significant tear at the tip of the finger. “I’d strongly advise against the urge to breastfeed,” he said lightly. The joke sounded better in his head.

  “No, not a good idea,” Suzanne agreed, knowing it wasn’t possible, but got the joke.

  “She punctures the nipple of the bottle all the time, even the most durable ones,” Alex said. “She’d make one hell of a nipple clamp, wouldn’t you, darling.” He planted a kiss on Sardis’ cheek.

  “Oh, please, Alex, do you have to go there?”

  “What?” Alex laughed. “She’s a biter, what can I say?”

  “Okay,” Brad said, grinning, “let’s take a look and see how her finger is doing. Can you undo the other one, please, Alex?”

  Brad took her arm, undid the knot and removed the mitten. Alex removed the other one and put it on the desk. More precisely, it was the fingernail Brad wanted to take a look at and the reason for their last visit to the surgery.

 
; The tears had been incessant, Sardis’ cheeks red and puffed. She’d looked like a baby version of Popeye without the pipe. And when her mouth opened and exposed the two tiny rows of teeth, she reminded Suzanne of the chubby demonic baby in the dream, not like Sardis. All Suzanne had done was to clip one little fingernail and you’d swear she’d just chopped Sardis’ arm off.

  She’d waited well over a year to do it. Seventeen months to be exact. The nail was surprisingly strong. She had tried before with a regular nail clipper but it wouldn’t cut. And when she’d seen Sardis’ agitation, the way she kept pulling her hand back as if she knew what to expect, Suzanne gave up. But the nails had grown over the months so she had to do something. She used a toenail clipper. That worked. It took considerable force to snip, more than it should have done. Then all hell broke loose. Before the nail clipping hit the floor, the screams and tears began. Suzanne thought she might have severed the tip of the finger because blood began to drip and splatter the hem of her pink dress.

  On closer examination when Suzanne ran Sardis’ hand under the tap, she noticed it wasn’t the finger that was bleeding, it was the nail. Alex was just as mystified and after a brief discussion and no letup from Sardis, they drove her to the surgery. Alex drove and judiciously brought the dense nail clipping wrapped in a piece of tissue. The mood in the car was tense between trying to comfort Sardis and their apprehension about what Brad might suggest. What if he wanted to send her for countless testing? They both agreed there and then that they simply wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  Brad had given her a sedative and Sardis had calmed, which allowed Brad to loosely dress the finger, primarily to protect it from any knocks before having it x-rayed. He recommended her teeth be x-rayed too, because he considered there might be a correlation between the two. Suzanne and Alex agreed to take her to St. Mary’s hospital on the other side of the city. She did not want anyone at St. Augusta’s to know of their business; they already knew quite enough about their past, thank you very much. They also agreed to have the nail clipping sent for testing at Farnham University but they made it clear that whatever came back, this would be the one and only time they would give their permission. Their daughter would not become an exhibition of biological rarities with medical students and doctors as bedside visitors. Brad did not question their decision. They all wanted the same answers, curious to find the reason behind the nail bleeding. And now the results were in.

  The protective dressing Suzanne had put on since the x-ray had been downgraded to a plaster that held to her second knuckle. Brad delicately peeled it off and studied the tip of the nail closely before glossing over it with one finger. Sardis did not mind the intrusion.

  “Well, it seems to be healing nicely, growing again. I think we can leave that off now,” Brad said, snapping the glove off his hand.

  “What’s happened?” Suzanne asked. “How could the nail bleed like that and cause her so much pain?”

  Brad flicked a switch and the screen of the x-ray box blinked on. The x-ray exposed the bones in Sardis’ hand from two positions, flat with fingers spread apart, and a cross section of her index and middle fingers. Brad adjusted the box, giving Suzanne and Alex a clear view. Alex tilted his head as though the movement would award him greater understanding of what he was looking at. Even to his untrained eye the images looked peculiar, as if they had been falsified.

  Suzanne knew fingernails did not show up on an x-ray—she’d reviewed enough at the hospital—but in these images, there they were. Where Sardis’ hand lay flat, the nails looked like extensions of the distal phalanges, the bones at the top of the finger. In the cross section the horn-like envelopes appeared exaggerated, clumpy, dense, and still sharp to points.

  Suzanne diverted her attention from the glaring discrepancy on the screen and fixated on Sardis’ hands. They held on tightly to Alex’s erect thumbs while she continued to bob quietly on his knee, oblivious to the discussion concerning her. The tiny nails had a cuteness about them, partly because they were still underdeveloped, but Suzanne couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if Alex suddenly allowed her to fall through his legs. How much pain would those petite nails accomplish if they were to snatch and scrabble at the skin underneath his trouser legs? Sardis had only brushed a finger across her cheek when asleep and had torn the skin open to leave a healthy cut that was only now beginning to heal. They were deceivingly strong and evidently sharp and judging by the x-ray, normalising them with the toe clippers was unlikely. She paused tetchily and looked to Brad to provide an explanation.

  “How do I best put this without getting too technical?” Brad said mainly for Alex’s benefit. “When a gene mutation occurs after fertilization some of the rapidly dividing cells in the developing foetus mutate; it is known as a new, or de novo, mutation. And that is basically what we see here with Sardis.” Brad pointed his pen to the x-ray and circled the air around the fingertips. “The skeleton of the human hand consists of twenty-seven bones, but we count thirty-two in both of Sardis’ hands. Instead of having fourteen phalanx bones that make up each one of our fingers and thumb—“

  “Sardis has nineteen,” Suzanne finished unapologetically, suddenly queasy to her stomach. She wondered if it was because of what Brad was telling her, or just more of the queasiness she had experienced on and off for a number of days. If the feelings were confined to the mornings she would have thought she was—

  “Yes,” Brad confirmed.

  “What?” Alex asked. “Let me get this right, you’re telling us the extra bones you’re accounting for are actually her fingernails?”

  Brad excused the interruptions. He knew the news concerning their daughter would be difficult to comprehend. “Well, not exactly, it’s a little more complicated than that. The results from the university say it’s a nail all right, but it belongs to a tetrapod.”

  “A tetrapod?” Alex repeated with his face stuck in a frown that began to ache.

  “A tetrapod comes from the Greek word Tetrapoda. It means four feet, referring to land animals. The university say the sample you gave me and I gave them belonged to a claw. I had the results checked twice. Animals commonly use them to grasp or kill prey, to dig and to climb and hang.”

  Suzanne and Alex were stunned to silence, which allowed Brad to continue his assumption.

  “Without getting into too much detail, the nail consists of two layers, the harder external layer, which is made up of keratin fibres, and a softer, flaky underside layer.” Brad gently took Sardis’ hand from Alex’s thumb, allowing her to close it around his finger. “What happens is the nail grows outward from the matrix—the tissue beneath the nail”—he pointed to the base of her nail with the tip of his pen and traced along its length—“and grows thicker while travelling across the nail bed. It also grows faster than the underside to produce the curvature you see here, and the thinner sides of the claw wear away faster than their thicker middle to produce a sharp point.”

  “It is an actual claw?” Alex asked, looking down at Sardis’ fingers. “An actual claw, as in cats- and dogs-type claw?”

  The nails did look claw-like, they knew that, but to have it medically confirmed made Alex wince and Suzanne flinch.

  “And what about the bleeding, a ‘nail’ does not normally bleed,” Suzanne said, avoiding the word “claw,” and sending a clear message to the two men not to refer to them as such again.

  “They’re not nails, though,” Alex interrupted without thinking.

  Suzanne darted him an unappreciative glance.

  Brad ignored the build-up of tension. “I gave the university a shaving of the nail, the outer-most part. Not enough for a full analysis. I think that would have drawn a little too much attention Sardis’ way.” Alex and Suzanne looked at each other, pleased with his remark and due diligence. “However, I have done some research of my own and there is only one explanation that I can come u
p with for the bleeding and discomfort. To be sure, we would need an MRI scan but I feel pretty certain.”

  They both knew Brad chose his words carefully; it was a whole lot worse than mere discomfort that Sardis felt when Suzanne clipped the nail. Discomfort was a word that just about described how Suzanne felt right now.

  “That probably won’t be necessary, Doc,” Alex said referring to the MRI.

  “I’ll give you my opinion. You can always have an MRI scan carried out if you are not satisfied. The periosteum is a membrane that lines the outer surface of all bones and it has what’s called nociceptive nerve endings, making it very sensitive to manipulation. It also provides nourishment by feeding the blood supply. For reasons I cannot fully explain nor understand, except to say that a gene mutation has occurred, the nail and skeletal bone have merged.” Brad pointed his pen to the cross section. “The nail merges from just underneath the cuticle here. It’s almost as if the fingernails were in such a rush to grow that the bone has been tricked into believing that it is supposed to be part of the nail structure. As a result, the nails have nerve endings and a blood supply provided by the periosteum that lies between the two. This is why the nail was so difficult to cut, the reason why the nail bled when you cut it, and the resulting pain experienced by Sardis.”

  “So basically, cutting that nail was like breaking bone,” Alex said, careful not to lay blame.

  “Pretty much, yes. That’s what it would have felt like.”

  “Ouch,” Alex said, his face mimicking pain.

  “Really, Alex, do you have to be such a prat? I feel bad enough as it is. How was I supposed to know? Give her here, my poor baby.” Suzanne shook her head as she took Sardis onto her lap. She still didn’t feel well and her eyes moistened while she kissed Sardis on the top of her head.