The Euthanist

by Alex Dolan

  Leaning forward, she snatched at my scrubs again and reached my other wrist. She twisted harder this time, to let me know the first time hadn’t been an accident. The pain ripped through my arm as she pulled me into her. “Who sent you?”

  I chopped her radius with the meaty part of my hand. She was strong, so I had to whack her arm twice before she let go. If we arm wrestled, she’d give me a run for my money. I rose to my feet and shouted, “Psycho!” This would never have come out of Kali’s mouth. I gasped at my outburst.

  Helena repeated, “Who sent you?” Furious this time.

  Leland had requested that I not mention his name. She had problems remembering her family, and, according to her brother, she got angry when she couldn’t remember. In Clayton, I’d been willing to believe anything, but now I wondered how much of Leland’s story was bogus. “The hospital sent me.”

  “Which one?”

  I pulled from Leland’s script. “UCSF Lakeside.”

  She sensed I was lying. “Who really sent you?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. The woman wasn’t too addled to understand what was happening. She simply didn’t trust me. Had we bonded in the traditional Kali-client relationship, trust would have been forged through several meetings and phone conversations. This wouldn’t have been so awkward.

  “You’re not going to touch me until I know,” she said.

  I’d minimized how much I spoke. Leland had instructed me to keep as quiet as possible. But this was such a deviation from my traditional process, I wasn’t sure how to bullshit my way through it. Helena waited for a response. I didn’t see her opening up unless I built some trust. I said the first thing that violated Leland’s instructions. “Your brother sent me.”

  Her mouth stretched into a bullfrog frown. “I haven’t spoken to my brother in years.” I didn’t trust Leland, but she might have forgotten that her brother visited yesterday. Some people are good at faking recognition, and appraising the authenticity of delusions wasn’t part of my training. For that matter, I didn’t even know with certainty what diseases and disorders currently degraded her, so I didn’t know what would be symptoms of her degeneration, or simply personality quirks. As she considered the possibility that I’d been in touch with her brother, she asked, “What did he say about me?”

  “He briefed me about your condition—”

  “What did my brother say about me?”

  “We didn’t talk about your relationship.” Kali had never been this cold with a client. “It wasn’t my business.”

  “What was my brother’s name?”

  This one I didn’t know how to deflect. “Leland.”

  I could tell she recognized the name. The way she digested the word “Leland” looked as if she’d just found a bone in her food.

  “Sit down,” she said. I hesitated until she softened. “Please.” Slowly, I lowered myself to the edge of the coffee table, hands at my hips to keep my wrists out of reach. Piecing my story together, she said, “You’re my nurse?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your name again?”

  “Kali.”

  “That’s right.” She nodded to herself, lost in thought as she examined the rocking horses on the walls.

  I watched Helena’s hands as I unpacked the satchel. I brought out some rubbing alcohol to clean the arm. Kali would have explained every step of the process. For all I knew, Leland already had. I couldn’t tell what she thought was happening. Helena might have decided to die in a moment of lucidity, but now she might have been expecting her weekly injection of Byetta, which controls blood sugar for type 2 diabetics.

  Helena may not have been comfortable with me, but she resigned herself. The chair creaked as her body sank further into the recliner.

  “You’re here to stick me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, start sticking.” Checking the time on my cell phone miffed her. “You got some place you need to be?”

  “I’m trying to assess the timing of the medication.” That statement meant nothing. I needed to wait per Leland’s instructions, until he could be clear and in the company of whatever colleagues could vouch for his whereabouts. I had to stall.

  “You’re nervous,” Helena observed.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You new at this?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then why so jumpy?” She focused sharply on my face and deliberately rolled up her sleeve. “Kali, whatever your name is. I know you’re not my nurse. Dimitri doesn’t have a coconut ass, although I wish he did. He’s about my size, but a white Russian.” She offered me her arm like a gift. “I know what this is, and I’m fine with it. Everyone’s got to go sometime.”

  I had to remember to breathe.

  Inebriated with thought, I swabbed her arm with alcohol and rubbed too hard.

  Helena admonished, “You’re not going to wipe the black off, sweetie.”

  I stopped. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you’re going to prick me, prick me. But don’t think I’m a vegetable. And don’t you believe Leland. He’s not what you think he is.”

  I didn’t want to derail us, but I needed more explanation. “He said you had delusions.”

  “I know what’s going on, don’t you worry.”

  “Is Leland your brother?”

  “He might as well be family.”

  “Are you ill?”

  This dispirited her, either because it reminded her that she was actually ill, or because she considered how Leland must have conspired to bring about her death in this way. “That I am. I’m sick in all sorts of ways.”

  “Are you dying?”

  “Probably have a few months, so this works. Might as well be now. Might as well be you.” She held out her forearm again. “Do what you’re here to do.”

  “You didn’t ask for this—”

  “No,” she confirmed. “But I deserve it.”

  I hesitated. Helena Mumm hadn’t chosen this. This didn’t fit Kali’s criteria, and it felt nefarious. Now I didn’t even know who Leland really was.

  “You want this?”

  She nodded. “I do. Stick me.” Sweetening her tone at last, she urged, “Please.”

  I fondled Leland’s black case in the satchel, still hidden from her. For me to get out of this house, I needed to move this along. “I have sedatives. They can take the edge off.”

  “Pills? What kind?”

  “Valium.”

  “Would you believe I’ve never taken those?”

  “If you really want to go through with this, they’ll ease your nerves.”

  “They’ll relax me. And then you’ll stick me.”

  “If you want me to.”

  “Give me the pills.”

  I dug out the orange bottle and rattled it. Calculating her weight, I tapped a few into her hands. I handed her a half-empty, three-liter jug and she washed them down with cola. “You’ll feel them in twenty minutes or so.”

  “What happens while we wait?”

  “Is there someone you’d like to call?”

  Helena gave it some thought. “No one who can come.”

  I tried to think of her like any other client. Now that the sedatives were in her body, we just needed to talk. The same way Kali would talk to anyone. “Who are you thinking about?”

  Helena’s eyes glossed over. She smiled, not Leland’s toothy grin, but a wistful widening of closed lips. As if enjoying a pleasure as simple as sunlight. “Walter.”

  “Your husband?”

  “We weren’t legally married. But he’s my soul mate.”

  That she used the present tense made me ask, “Where is he now?”

  “Near but far.”

  I didn’t ask for explanation. If Leland had been truthful about Helena’s lapses, she was thinking about an old boyfriend. Now she thought about him quietly and reached for my hand. I held her callused palm. Her index finger stroked the back of my hand too familiarly, but I didn’t pull away.
We watched her muted soap opera for a bit.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Walter? A pain in the ass.” Somehow, this came off good-naturedly. The drugs hadn’t kicked in, but she was loosening up. Helena was getting used to talking to the intruder in her house. “He was a wall climber.”

  “Is that a euphemism?”

  “No. He liked to climb walls. As in, up the sides of buildings. He wanted to be Spider-Man. He wasn’t any good at it. He broke both ankles. Pain in my ass.”

  “He did this as an adult?”

  “God no—he grew out of it. He was like that as a kid.” She joked to herself, “A grown man trying to be Spider-Man…”

  “How long did you know each other?”

  “Most of our lives.”

  “That’s romantic,” I offered.

  “Is it?” She shrugged. “He wasn’t pretty to most folks, but he was pretty to me, because I loved him. And he was smart—he had a mind like a boxer. We grew up watching the fights. You watch the fights?”

  “Not often.”

  “With all those muscles, I’d figure you were one of those female boxers. You like girls or boys?” She retracted her question. “Never mind. You don’t like boxing then?”

  “I’ve watched some fights. I like Ali.”

  “Of course you do. Not liking Ali is like not liking Santa Claus. But my point is, if you watch enough of them, you can tell a smart boxer from a stupid one by how quick they are. The body doesn’t do anything the mind doesn’t tell it to. Quick body, quick mind.” In her own appraisal, I wondered what she thought of herself.

  I withdrew my hand from hers. Now that we were talking about fighting, I readied myself in case she tried to grab me again. “Even Mike Tyson.”

  “Not an educated man, but smarter than you think he is. If he grew up in your neighborhood instead of Brownsville, Brooklyn, I bet he would’ve turned out different.” Her eyes fell on her forearm, possibly wondering where the needle would puncture the skin. Her voice slowed down. “That was Walter. Quick like a cheetah. You could tell by how he moved he was going to grow up smart.” The croak in her voice told me the sedatives were working their magic.

  “I can call him.” We still had time.

  “No you can’t.” She was emphatic. “And I wouldn’t want you to.”

  Her chin lolled, and she cat stretched in the recliner. I’d given her a healthy dose of diazepam, and it now streamed through her blood. She asked drowsily, “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course.”

  She looked about the room. We were alone but she still made sure this would be private. “We had a boy, Walter and me.”

  This did stun me since she didn’t display family photos. I wondered if Leland might have been right about the delusions.

  She slurred now, loopy as a spring breaker taste testing Long Island Iced Teas. “We never had our own kids. We couldn’t, the two of us. But we took some in. We kept a little garden with those kids. A little garden in the woods.”

  “Kindergarten,” I thought aloud.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kindergarten. In German it means, ‘children’s garden.’”

  “Funny. You’d think I’d have learned that along the way. But that’s what we had together with those kids. A children’s garden. It was a beautiful thing. The boy, he was like a son. Like a little Walter. He was the special one.”

  “Are you still in touch with him?”

  “We lost him. And that was the end of us.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I lifted Leland’s leather case out of my satchel, cracking it open so she could see the needle. “Are you sure you want this?”

  Some clients gagged when they saw the needle, but not her. “Yes, I do.”

  “You don’t want to say good-bye to Walter?”

  “We said our good-byes a thousand times.” She was choking up now. A tear—something I didn’t expect from this woman—rolled down a cheek. “And we were rotten together.”

  In what I presumed was a regretful wince, Helena froze her face for a long time. She stared into the television. The TV blinked to a black screen. She discarded the remote control onto the carpet. The blur of daytime drama had given the illusion of activity in the room. Without it, we seemed very still.

  Her forearm extended to me once more, and I stroked it lightly. “I’ll wait until you’re asleep. Then you’ll keep sleeping.”

  “You won’t do anything wicked to me when I’m out?”

  I shook my head. “Promise. You won’t feel anything. Just rest.”

  My hand rested on hers, sensing a slow pulse. She breathed in soggy heaves. Eventually, the air swelled in and out with less effort. Her stomach rhythmically billowed, and Helena’s chin nestled into her shoulder. Her eyes fluttered as she lapsed into sleep.

  While listening to her snore, I packed up my equipment. I closely examined Leland’s syringe before I repacked it into its case. Whatever chemicals he’d put in there, not a drop would be injected into Helena Mumm. On the way out I snatched a few pieces of mail, and left the woman to sleep off her benzodiazepines.

  Chapter 6

  Without packing, I drove straight up to Shallot, Oregon, and got there by the next morning. The town clustered around a short main street dotted with vintage diners and brawl bars. If it weren’t for the redwoods, I could fool myself into thinking this was somewhere in the US heartland.

  A half hour past the town center, I came to a junkyard hidden from the street by a chain link fence with plastic slats, where a hard sun blasted a sea of crumpled cars. Once proud automobiles tamped down to bricks of wrinkled steel and those bricks stacked up in a formidable wall. A chained Rottweiler barked outside a vinyl-sided office trailer. A pristine white minivan stood out as the lone vehicle that survived the wreckage. Beside it, Dr. Jeffrey Holt spoke with some guy I didn’t know.

  Jeffrey was a tall older man with round spectacles and a white beard trimmed like a baseball infield. A hundred and fifty years ago he’d have made a good pioneer. He ran marathons, ate vegan, and, I suspected, had crystalline bowel movements. His breezy linen clothes magically repelled grime, even in a dusty lot like this.

  The man who stood with him had a black chin beard and a keg torso. Heavier than Helena Mumm, but also taller. His rolled flannel cuffs revealed a dense thicket of tattoos that spread down to his wrists. Their body language suggested that Jeffrey knew him well, but Jeffrey made friends quickly.

  I skurched to a stop in the gravel. When I approached them, my mouth twitched more than it smiled.

  “Come here.” Jeffrey waved me in close and hugged me, more stiffly than he’d ever hugged me. He was going through the motions, but without any affection. “Kali, this is Henry.”

  The other man wasn’t so happy to see me, but perfunctorily gripped my hand. They’d waited in the sun long enough for his palms to moisten.

  “Henry’s going to help us out. We can trust him.”

  Jeffrey had never given me reason not to trust him, but I scanned the lot, checking for human humps in the gaps between compressed steel. I needed to apologize. “I didn’t know who else to call.” To Henry, a man I’d never met, I said, “I’m very grateful.” At least that made him smile.

  “We prepared for this kind of emergency. It’s not the first time the police have looked in our direction.”

  “You ready for this?” Henry asked. “Lots of people get attached to their cars.”

  “It’s not my car.” I didn’t relish destroying a car that I didn’t own, but Henry smirked with a sickly elation.

  Jeffrey asked, “Did you bring any bags? Any clothes?”

  “I didn’t have time. I just took cash out of the bank and drove. I don’t have anything with me.”

  “Except your cell phone,” said Henry.

  “Except that.”

  “Give it,” Henry ordered. Jeffrey gave the man a reproving glance, and he amended his request, “Please.”

  I handed it over. Hen
ry pulled out the SIM card and stomped on it, then tossed the fragments into the hatchback before squeezing inside and starting the engine. Jeffrey and I watched as my compact rolled over to a giant red steel bin, something that looked like a disjointed car from a mammoth Ferris wheel. Scrapes marred the bin’s interior from where steel had resisted being crushed. Henry abandoned my car and locked himself in a glass booth across the yard, where he maneuvered a giant claw that lifted and then dropped the hatchback into the bin with a thunderous toll. The process had a carnival feel to it, without the fun.

  “So that’s how a car crusher works,” I muttered.

  “Car baler, technically.”

  “Car gallows.”

  “We’ll get you another car. That’s the beauty of stuff. Somewhere, someone’s always making more of it.”

  We stood far enough so flying debris wouldn’t hit us, but the noise still rattled me. The press collapsed the car with the same effort my firehouse boys exerted crunching empty cans between their palms. The hatchback offered weakling resistance. With the shrieking of crumpling metal too loud to talk, Jeffrey and I silently watched as the car and my cell phone compressed to a tight box the size of a footlocker. I wanted him to look at me. Without a real father for most of my life, I wasn’t familiar with the feeling of disappointing one. I assumed this closely approximated it. As the hydraulics dwarfed us all with its magnificent show of strength, I shrank to the size of a titmouse waiting for my mentor to speak. Even another hug would have done it. I swayed in the dust waiting.

  When it was done, Jeffrey compensated Henry with a fold of money thicker than my own emergency cash.

  We got into his minivan, and as he drove off, he finally asked, “Are you hurt?” I hadn’t told him all the details of what had happened in Clayton, but he eyed the gauze peeking out from my sleeves. “I can take a look at you back at the house.”

  I addressed what I suspected Jeffrey was most concerned about. “I don’t think anyone followed me.”

  “Seriously. Were you injured?”