Void

by Cassy Roop

  “You have had your heart broken, no?” She asked as we both worked the roll of dough between our hands. The last few mornings found me waking up early to go in before opening to help her prepare everything for the day. I enjoyed it, and keeping my hands busy helped me keep my mind off Andris.

  “How do you know that, Letta?” I asked as I began to work the dough even harder.

  “Because I see it in you eyes every time the café bell ring and he don’t come. And in the way you working that dough hard at the mention of it.”

  I paused. Apparently I wasn’t that great at hiding my thoughts or feelings.

  “I don’t know what happen. You don’t have to tell Letta, but I know you still in love. There was brightness in you eyes the day you first came see me. It no longer shine as bright.”

  I leaned my flour covered hands against the table and hung my head. So much for trying to keep Andris off my mind, but I felt the need to talk to someone about everything that was festering inside of me.

  “He hurt me really badly, Letta. He turned out to be something, or rather someone he was pretending to be. I fell in love with him. I fell in love with both of them. Now, I don’t have either of them. It hurts. I’ve never known this feeling before.”

  “Did he give you reason?”

  “You mean reason for why he lied?”

  She nodded.

  “He did.”

  “Was it good reason?”

  I thought about it for a moment. Andris was a psychiatrist. His job was to help others who had demons or diseases, or other mental disabilities and disorders. Not once would anyone think that someone like him would be dealing with some of the same issues that his patients did. I guess even doctors themselves get sick sometimes.

  “Yes. It was a good reason. He had some issues that prevented him from revealing the truth to me, but he still continued to lie to me for weeks.”

  “Maybe he scared.”

  I arched my brows at her.

  “Of what?”

  “Of losing you. Being where you is now. Apart, instead of together like should be.”

  “It’s hard to explain, Letta. There are things about my, not so distance past, that you don’t know. I am not a good person. I took advantage of people. I destroyed families, and I didn’t care. I was a cold hearted bitch and didn’t care that I was.”

  “Maybe that who you pretended to be. Maybe you have been pretending long time.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Sometimes we faced with hard choices. But it is what we do with choices that determines our outcome in life. If you love him, and he love you. Don’t let that pass yous by. One day you wake up old woman kneading dough in a café every day at four in morning wishing you could go back in time.”

  “You talk like you are speaking from experience, Letta.”

  “Maybe I is.”

  I heard my cell phone go off in my purse and walked over to the sink to wash the flour off my hands. I scrubbed at my nails to remove the remnants of the dough before going to retrieve my phone from my purse. Who the hell would be texting me at nearly four thirty in the morning?

  When I pushed the button to light up the screen, I saw that I had a text message from Lexie.

  Lexie: Call me now!

  A few seconds went by as I stared at the urgent message on my screen. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Lexie to text me at this hour, nor was it strange to get one with urgency like this one, but for some reason I had a bad feeling.

  “Letta, I’ll be right back. I need to make a phone call.”

  “Okay. I put your bread in oven. Go ahead, child.”

  I swiped at the screen to remove the text and brought up Lexie’s name and hit dial. She answered on the second ring and when I heard her voice, I knew something is wrong.

  “Nic, where are you?” She asked through sniffles.

  “I’m at the café. What’s wrong? Is everything is okay?”

  “Kiki is dead.”

  I nearly dropped my phone. That couldn’t be possible. I saw her just a few days ago.

  “What? What happened? It wasn’t a client, was it?”

  “No. I pulled her off the books when she started to show signs. I couldn’t let her continue to work until she got help. Clients were complaining and she was starting to look really bad. I just wanted her to get help.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, when she hurt her foot, the doctor prescribed her painkillers. Apparently, she had become addicted to them. She hid it for a while, but then when I confronted her about it, she told me to stay out of her personal life.”

  “I’m still not quite understanding, Lexie.”

  “She overdosed, Nicola. On prescription painkillers. When the doctor wouldn’t prescribe her anymore, she went to the streets to find them. She was just taking them normally for the pain, but then she started getting high from them. I caught her doing a line off the back of the toilet at the flower shop. Fuck! I should have done something!”

  “I saw her a few days ago. She came into the café. She looked really bad. I knew something was wrong. If I had known, maybe I could have reached out to her. Wait a minute…did you say she went to the streets to get the drugs?”

  “Yeah,” I heard her sniffle through the phone.

  I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to help hold myself up against the wall. Dread filled me. It was only a coincidence. Wasn’t it? Surely Kiki wasn’t one of Cardinelli’s customers? She just couldn’t be. That meant that I could be responsible for her death.

  “Does her family know?”

  “She had no family. She was on her own. She was a troubled girl from the beginning, but never in my life did I ever think she would overdose on drugs. I’ve never lost a girl, Nicola.”

  “Lexie, you can’t blame yourself. Do I need to come over?”

  “Ah. No. Don’t leave work. I am going to call the other girls and let them know. I just wanted to let you know.”

  We hung up after muttering a few small goodbyes and I stood there against the wall of the café trying to sort through my thoughts. Cardinelli was one of the largest drug traffickers in the city. Hell, probably in the whole state. With a death, that meant that there would be an investigation. With an investigation, that mean that Andris could be involved. I finished the bread that Letta and I had been working on until I knew that the clinic would be open. I needed to get to Andris.

  I needed to warn him.

  I WENT INTO THE CLINIC early on Thursday morning to try and get caught up on all the paperwork that I had neglected over the last few days. As busy as it would keep me, my only desire was to go home at the end of the day and lose myself in a bottle of Jack. It was the only thing that helped me to let go of the memories that haunted me on nearly a twenty-four hour basis. I needed to get Nicola back. I needed to find a way to make her understand why I did what I did. Not having her in my life wasn’t an option—not one I was willing to accept, anyway.

  I had been seated at my desk for a little over an hour when I heard the automatic bell go off on the clinic front door. I looked over at the clock and noticed it was only eight in the morning and knew that Laura Lee and the other doctors wouldn’t be arriving for at least another hour. I rose from my chair and headed out towards reception to let whoever had come in know that we didn’t open until nine.

  I froze when I saw Nicola standing in reception. She had on a uniform covered in flour. Her cheeks bore some of the same flour on her shirt. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail and her face was void of makeup. She had never looked more beautiful.

  “Hi,” I said as I took a few tentative steps in her direction.

  “Hi,” she said a little meekly, not really meeting my eyes. God it felt good to see her.

  “You have flour all over you, you know?” I pointed out. She looked down at her shirt and patted it a few times and the dust from the flour floated into the air.

  “Yeah. Some of Letta’s bread making lessons kind
a stuck with me, I guess.”

  There was a hint of amusement in her voice and we both smiled, yet it didn’t quite reach our eyes.

  “What are you doing here? I mean, not that it isn’t okay, I just…fuck. I’m rambling.”

  She smiled briefly again and it hit me square in the chest. It hurt like a mother fucker to be in the same room with her, yet not be able to touch her or hold her.

  “I can’t stay. I just came by to warn you about something.”

  “Warn me?” I asked, looking at her strangely.

  “Someone I know died today. She overdosed on prescription drugs.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I offered in sympathy, but still kept my distance even though I wanted nothing more than to fold her in my arms.

  “I have a feeling that she got them from Cardinelli and that it is going to get traced back to you.”

  My gut couldn’t have twisted any harder if she had physically punched me.

  “How do you know about Cardinelli and me?”

  “I—I can’t say. Just know and be prepared, Andris. I have a feeling the police will be stopping by.”

  She stepped closer to where we were only a few feet apart. I could smell the familiar scent of honeysuckle filter through the air mixed with the smell of warm baked bread. It was a deadly combination for my senses.

  “What the fuck do you mean you can’t say? What do you know that I don’t know, Nicola?” I asked, raising my voice, trying to not let her smell or her presence get to me.

  “I just know that you need to be careful. Promise you will be careful.”

  “I can’t if you don’t tell me about what is going on, Nicola.”

  She turned to walk away and I chased after her and grabbed her by the arms and spun her around so that she had to face me again. Gripping both of her arms, I held her in place.

  “You need to tell me what the fuck is going on. Right now. I have a clinic to keep open. Doctors and families to protect. Did Cardinelli do something to you? I’ll fucking kill him if he touched you.”

  She yanked loose of my grip and took a few steps away from me.

  “He didn’t touch me. I have to go.”

  “No, tell me!” I yelled, but it was too late. She was already halfway out the door.

  MY MIND RACED with all the possibilities of what could have happened between Nicola and Cardinelli. If I didn’t have patients, I would have taken off from work and chased her down and demand that she answered me.

  I had just finished with my third appointment of the day when Laura Lee rang my intercom.

  “Dr. Gunn?”

  “Yes, Laura Lee?”

  “Uh, there are several officers from the NYPD here to see you.”

  Shit!

  “I’ll be right there, Laura Lee.”

  With unsteady legs, I walked out to reception to greet the two officers.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Andris Gunn. What can I do for you today?” I asked as I shook each of their hands in greeting.

  “Is there some place where we could speak privately?” One of the officers asked. He was tall to where his partner was shorter. They both wore plain clothes and seemed to be in their mid to late forties.

  “Of course. We can use my office. Follow me please. Laura Lee, hold all of my calls and please apologize to any patients that may come in and just tell them appointments are running behind.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  We all three made our way to my office. I couldn’t help the unease I felt as Nicola’s warning flashed freshly in my mind.

  Be careful.

  “Have a seat gentlemen. What can I do for you today?”

  One of the officers reached for a pad of paper in the breast pocket of his jacket and a pen from the pocket in the front. They both flashed their badges to me to prove who they were.

  “Dr. Gunn, do you know an Antonio Cardinelli?” The tall officer asked me as he poised his pen over the top of the pad of paper.

  “Of course. Who hasn’t heard of him? His wife is a patient of mine.”

  “Have you now, or have you ever, written any illegal prescriptions to Antonio Cardinelli?”

  “What? No.”

  And it was the truth. I wasn’t lying to the officers. I hadn’t ever written any prescriptions to him per se, just his goons and his wife.”

  “We are led to believe that either Cardinelli himself, his wife, or someone who works for him is obtaining your prescription pads and writing out forged prescriptions under your name. Several pharmacies around the area have reported an excess amount of narcotic subscriptions as well as other controlled drugs like those used for ADD and ADHD that looked to be written by you.”

  “Are any of these your signatures?” The other officer asked as he handed me a stack of what looked like my prescription papers from my pad.

  I sorted through the thirteen or so pieces of paper that all had my name on the header. Out of the thirteen, only three contained my actual signature.

  “These three, yes. The others no.”

  “Would you be willing to sign your name in front of a notary public to authenticate your signature?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “Have you noticed any of your prescription pads missing?”

  I thought back to the other day when I went to write the prescription for my patient Jacob, and I couldn’t find the pad in my drawer. I could have sworn that I had more in there, but my head had been in such a fucking fog since Nicola left me, that I couldn’t remember if I had used them all or not. I told the officers as such.

  “If you could meet us downtown at the courthouse around two this afternoon, we can go ahead and get your signature authenticated. Do you have any idea who might have taken your prescription pads, Dr. Gunn?”

  “No clue. I don’t allow patients to be in my office unattended. There is always myself, or another doctor present at all times. This goes for any of the other doctors as well. It is just a practice we have always stuck to. We have people who suffer from serious mental health issues. Leaving them unsupervised wouldn’t be a good thing.”

  “Understood, Dr. Gunn. Here is my card. If you can think of anything, give us a call. We’ll see you downtown in a few hours.”

  “Thank you,” I replied as I showed the officers out of the door to my office.

  When I returned to my desk, I tried to think about who could have snuck into my office to get those prescription pads. I’ve never left anyone alone in my office before. No one.

  No one except Nicola.

  Fuck me.

  I OFFICIALLY HATE FUNERALS. The only one I had attended prior to Kiki’s was my own parents. Then, I didn’t care. Then, I was all dark and empty and didn’t have a reaction as I sat stoically on the bench of that church as the preacher talked about what great friends, family, and parents they were.

  Bullshit.

  Kiki’s was different. The church was nearly vacant except for a few homeless people who came in to try and get out of the cold, me, Lexie, and a handful of the other girls from the agency. Kiki was always known for her snarky and bitchy attitude, so a majority of the girls didn’t take much of a liking to her.

  Next to me Lexie was a mess, still blaming herself for Kiki’s death.

  The preacher said a few words about Kiki, but who really wanted to get enthusiastic about celebrating the life of a drug addicted whore? Everyone one went about their business after the funeral and I headed to the café. I had picked up a shift from one of the girls who needed the evening off, and truth be told I needed to keep my mind busy.

  I had been sick with worry ever since I had seen Andris a few days ago at the clinic. I was terrified that my actions, although intended to do good and protect him, were actually going to hurt him even more in the long run. There wasn’t anything I could do about Cardinelli, and I hadn’t heard from or seen him since I found out about Kiki’s death. I was pretty sure he was trying to lay low for all of this to blow over before he was back out on the streets, peddling to the
next addict.

  The café was slow for a Monday afternoon so I kept myself busy by refilling the salt and pepper shakers as well as replenishing the sugar and Splenda packets. I was mindlessly wiping off one of the tables when one of the three televisions in the café showed a breaking news report. I looked up and it caught my attention immediately, pausing me in my tracks. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  ANTONIO CARDINELLI INDICTED ON DRUG TRAFFICING CHARGES

  My heart dropped. I threw the towel down on the table, knocking over an open salt shaker in the process and walked over to be closer to the TV. Reaching up, I adjusted the volume, just so that I could be certain that I could hear what I was seeing.

  “The overdosing death of a woman late last week, who was positively identified as thirty-one year old Kiki Chestfield of New York City, prompted the instigation leading up to Cardinelli’s arrest. When investigators discovered that Chestfield had obtained the prescription pain killers in which sadly took her life, they followed a lead of information that led them to believe that Cardinelli had stolen prescription pads from his psychiatrist Dr. Andris Gunn and was then forging his signature to sell to buyers on the street. When pharmacists began receiving an influx of prescriptions from Dr. Gunn’s office, it led police to the clinic where they met with Dr. Gunn. His signature was verified for several of the written prescriptions, but the vast majority of them were written either by Cardinelli himself, or someone employed by him.

  At this time, Dr. Gunn and the clinic will not receive any charges, but the investigation is still pending as to how Cardinelli obtained the prescription pads.

  We’ll bring you more information as the story develops.”

  My hands flew to my mouth as the breath caught in my chest. Cardinelli was caught. He was caught!

  “They finally got thata bastard,” Letta said, coming up behind me as she wiped her hands with a towel.

  I only nodded, shock apparently keeping me from finding my voice.