The Practice Baby

by LM Ardor

  ‘Can you open the window too?’ she asked again. The constable was pale. There were beads of sweat across his forehead.

  ‘Sorry, it seems to be locked,’ he said with a grunt as he tried again. The window was stuck fast.

  Dee leant across the bed to listen for the sounds of Tom’s heart and breathing. It was just ritual, a pointless examination of an undoubtedly dead body but, irrationally, Dee wanted to hear a heartbeat. She listened hard—there was the crackly sound of the stethoscope on the skin, worse because her position on the bed was unstable. Other sounds, her movement on the mattress, the policeman’s trousers as he brushed against the bed, were magnified. Those adventitious sounds must also be present when she listened to live people’s hearts and breathing but she never heard them. She’d noticed it before with dead bodies. Sounds were magnified by her hope that the person was really just asleep and would take a sudden spluttering breath and be alive again. Of course, there was nothing: no breath sounds, no heartbeat.

  Dee moved back to the side of the bed. The dark purple staining she’d noticed on the underside of his neck and arms had formed under his chest too. She wasn’t used to seeing bodies so long after death but she knew the discolouration was broken-down blood that leaked from capillaries to settle in the lowest areas of the body once the heart stopped.

  That was enough. She’d established he was dead. She climbed off the bed and looked around. The room was neat, the bed made, sheets and blanket tucked in.

  ‘Stay with him, will you?’

  Nilsson nodded and continued to fix his gaze out the window.

  Miller was guarding the bedroom door. Good. Skye didn’t need to see Tom like that. She was slumped against the wall with Glen beside her. Leah sat at the desk with the computers. They all looked towards Dee without speaking.

  ‘It’s not good, I’m afraid.’ No one reacted. ‘He’s gone.’

  Dee was aware of a fullness behind her eyes, tears had formed ready to roll. She swallowed them away. It wasn’t her job to care; her job was to look after Skye. Tom didn’t need her anymore. Neither of them would benefit from Dee’s grief.

  Skye crumpled and slid down the wall to the floor. Dee hesitated then made herself squat down to be level with Tom’s mother.

  Skye seized Dee’s hand. ‘He’s okay, isn’t he? Just asleep. He’s always been a good sleeper.’

  ‘No.’ Dee held both Skye’s hands between her own.

  ‘No,’ Dee repeated, ‘he’s not okay.’

  Skye opened her mouth for a moment but no sound came out. Then she shook her head and snatched her hands out of Dee’s.

  ‘Don’t tell me that. Tom is my son—you can’t say that about my son.’

  ‘Do you want to see him?’ Glen said as tried to put his arm around her.

  ‘You’re in this too, are you?’ Skye shoved Glen away.

  Dee tried again to hold her hands. Skye flapped them in front of her face and pushed at her hair.

  ‘Stop it—he’s not dead—that’s ridiculous.’

  Dee tried to listen. Her knees were cramped. Skye’s denial that Tom was dead grew stronger each time they told her he was gone. After several minutes, it was too much. Dee let go of Skye’s hand, stood up and looked around. Constable Miller was talking on his radio. Leah had disappeared.

  Skye began to make a strangled sound between a scream and a cry.

  ‘We’ll need a death certificate,’ said Nilsson, coming out of the bedroom.

  ‘What do you suggest we write in as the cause of death?’ Dee’s voice was quiet; the unnatural quiet that warns of a cyclone.

  She looked at the child masquerading as a policeman. His aliveness affronted her. This great healthy mass—fuzz-covered skin curved over muscle and bone, wrapped in clothes washed and ironed by someone who loved him—stood in front of her ready to tell her how to do her job. What right did he have to exist while the dead flesh that once was Tom lay inert on the bed?

  ‘It’s got to be asthma?’

  ‘And tell me, constable, how you’ve made that diagnosis?’

  ‘Well there’s the asthma spray …’ The boy had the grace to stumble over his words.

  The other policeman intervened. ‘What do you think happened, doctor?’

  This one was less offensive—less perfect. He had a few pimples around his chin; a big shiny one ready to burst at the front. He’d squeezed it unsuccessfully. Dee liked him for that. People with perfect skin made her uncomfortable. A lack of blemishes signalled a deficit in self-doubt.

  ‘I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing without an autopsy. I can declare him dead but I can’t certify why he died. That means I can’t write a death certificate. You’ll need to get in touch with the station.’

  Skye’s keening in the background grew louder. ‘Leave him alone, let him be.’

  The constable with the pimple was on his radio to the sergeant. ‘No, the doctor says she can’t sign one.’ It sounded like he was having trouble. No Go Joe must still be on the front desk. He went outside to where it was quieter.

  Dee and Glen got Skye up onto a chair. Dee tried to talk to her. Thank goodness Charlie wasn’t here, she thought.

  Glen drifted over to Tom’s desk, sat down and pressed the on button. He wiggled the mouse. ‘Nothing happening here,’ he said and picked up Tom’s phone. ‘This is dead too.’

  Nilsson looked on obliviously.

  ‘You know there has to be an autopsy? We have to find out what happened,’ Dee said. ‘This is a crime scene, isn’t it?’

  The constable got the hint and ushered Glen away from the desk.

  ‘You can’t cut up my boy!’ Skye screamed. She wouldn’t look at Dee and pushed Glen away furiously when he tried to put his arm around her shoulders.

  Nilsson approached, squatted in front of Skye and said, ‘Mrs Harris, can I help you up? We’ll drive you back home.’

  Skye didn’t acknowledge him; sat, eyes fixed on her lap, and continued to scream the same phrase over and over.

  ‘What about all his stuff?’ asked Glen. ‘It’s not safe here. I can pack up the computers and take them home.’

  ‘We’ll take care of things till we get a new door on,’ said Constable Miller. ‘Please don’t touch anything in case we need fingerprints.’

  Dee was already late for her afternoon appointments. She assumed one of the policemen had to stay till the forensics team arrived. She was ready to go.

  ‘You can’t cut up my boy,’ Skye cried.

  Dee picked up her bag.

  The constables looked at her. ‘What about Mrs Harris?’

  Dee turned to Glen. ‘I’ll give you a script for a sedative for her. Make an appointment at the surgery in the next couple of days. Tell reception I said to fit you in.’

  Glen nodded and Dee wrote the prescription. She handed it to him and moved towards the door.

  Glen sat beside Skye. ‘Come on. We have to pick up Charlie; he needs you too,’ he said.

  Skye blew her nose, got up and followed him down the stairs.

  9.

  Back at the surgery, Dee debated whether to send Raj, Tom’s old boss, a text. Raj was the only person who knew Tom and who wasn’t her patient or his relative. The only person she could allow to see her own grief.

  Raj’s phone had gone straight to voicemail, twice. It wasn’t urgent really. Tom would still be dead by the time Raj got back to her. She logged into the computer. Five patients waiting and fifteen messages. Six of them winked urgent at her.

  First up was Joy Matthews. Joy refused to see any of the other doctors even when Dee was away. Her last visit had been a thirty-minute monologue about how her daughter-in-law didn’t want to see her and had turned the grandchildren against her. She was a sad, lonely old woman. Dee tried to see Joy’s nastiness as an expression of her inner pain. It made it easier to listen. Joy had driven away everyone else. Dee usually coped.

  ‘… and then she said Finn couldn’t come over—just because I gave the poor starving mite
one little biscuit.’

  ‘Joy, you know he’s got coeliac disease—you know wheat will make him sick.’

  ‘One little biscuit, he loves Nana Joy’s Anzac biscuits. One biscuit never hurt anyone. That mother of his, poor little mite never has any fun. Vindictive minx, she’s just using the child to punish me. They all love my cooking and she’s jealous—that modern health rubbish she feeds them isn’t proper food …’

  Dee watched Joy’s mean mouth opening and closing like a goldfish in a bowl. The nasty words normally washed over her but didn’t stick. Today she couldn’t ignore them; they penetrated. She felt contaminated. She cut off into a fantasy of how to get the woman to stop making sounds—a firm hand over Joy’s mean mouth perhaps?

  The sun had reached the window at the other end of the desk. The curtain, white with bold brushstrokes of black, glowed bright with the summer afternoon outside. Flowers moved in the breeze, young people walked hand in hand, life pulsed and burgeoned. But not for Tom.

  Dee turned back to Joy. The only sign that she realised Dee wasn’t with her were tiny folds between her eyebrows. Perhaps she had noticed.

  Dee moved her phone out of Joy’s line of sight and typed a message ‘Ring me, urgent’ and pressed send.

  ‘Now, scripts?’ Dee cut Joy off. ‘No, I gave them to you last time so that’s it.’

  ‘What about my blood pressure?’ Joy sounded surprised.

  ‘We have three perfect readings in the last three months so not necessary.’

  ‘But my back?’

  ‘Did you start the exercises?’

  Dee was sure she hadn’t. All Joy wanted was an opportunity to complain. Dee knew she wasn’t playing along this time, but the mean, self-induced misery was beyond her capacity to absorb today.

  ‘Well, they’re not helping.’

  ’Did you try, at all?’

  ‘Well, not so much. But I know,’ Joy sputtered.

  Dee’s phone rang—Raj.

  ‘I have to take this—just a minute, Raj.’ She turned back to Joy and said, ‘See you in six months’ as she picked up Joy’s bag and put it into her hand.

  ‘But what about—’

  Her hands were white against Joy’s blood-suffused neck. She’d just squeeze till the mouth stopped making sounds …

  Dee shook her head to break up the image then stood up and left the room while Joy sputtered on. It was that or lunge at her throat.

  *

  Dee walked to the staffroom and closed the door. It was empty, mercifully. Raj was still on the line.

  ‘Raj, thanks. I have to tell you something … you know Tom Harris?’

  ‘Of course I know Tom; that’s how I know you.’ Dee heard the smile in his voice.

  ‘Well it’s not good news.’

  ‘Okay?’ He made it a question.

  ‘Sorry, Raj, but he’s dead.’

  ‘What? When? I’m sorry, this isn’t making sense—do you know for sure?’

  ‘I declared him dead.’

  Dee tried to keep her voice calm as the image of the fly rubbing its legs together on Tom’s open eye flashed in front of her. Then she heard someone sobbing; big shuddering sobs. After a moment she realised it was her.

  ‘Dee, where are you? Who’s there? I’m coming over.’

  ‘I’m working. I’m okay.’ Her voice betrayed her by trembling as she spoke the word ‘okay’. She swallowed, pulled herself together. ‘It’s my job to cope when people die. If I fall apart when something happens I’m not much good to anyone. What about you? Sorry to break the news over the phone but I’ll have to go. There are people waiting.’

  ‘Dee, you’re not okay. I’m already in the car heading to the surgery,’ Raj said and hung up as Dee objected.

  She typed ‘Raj, too busy to see you. Will ring after work. D’ and pressed send.

  *

  The next patient was calm and undemanding; just a script for psoriasis and a re-referral to his skin specialist for a check-up. She closed the door on him, sat down at her desk and pulled a handful of tissues from the box. She’d allow herself to weep for a minute or two in private. That was her rule: it was okay to cry if no one with a genuine claim to grief was witness. She was careful her own emotions didn’t intrude on those of relatives, friends or partners. She worked at not letting her emotions show, at not letting her feelings affect her patients.

  Sometimes she felt like a vampire, high on the emotions of others. It all got too complicated as she thought it through.

  There was a brief knock. The door opened as she scrambled to throw the damp tissues into the wastepaper basket. Raj walked into the room—a kaleidoscope on legs. Dee had her head down to hide her eyes. She saw his feet first—watermelon-coloured boat shoes with long hairless brown calves sticking out of them, then pistachio green shorts, a lime green T-shirt and a midnight blue canvas jacket with red stitching. He was tall, around two metres, and was one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen—chiselled-from-stone handsome, with glowing chocolate skin, dense black hair and square black glasses to frame his mascara ad eyelashes. His beauty surprised her every time and pressed a reset button on her attention.

  When she thought of Tom it seemed wrong to feel anything other than grief but Raj’s beauty was irresistible as a tidal surge. She was carried away.

  Raj always appeared to be unaware of the shift in people’s attention when he entered a room. Perhaps he assumed that people always reacted to others in that way.

  ‘Take off that jacket so I can eat you,’ said Dee; the sobs gone.

  She processed what she’d said and felt mortally embarrassed. ‘Sorry, Raj, that just popped out. You look so gorgeous, almost edible. I didn’t mean …’ her voice trailed off.

  ‘You’re upset,’ Raj said and, with his palms towards the floor, flicked his fingers upwards. Neither of them would mention her slip again.

  He sat down in the patient chair. They were friends now. Initially Raj had asked her to go with him to La Traviata at the Opera House when he had come to the practice to set up their security system. This year he’d given her a subscription for the season. At the opera and fancy restaurants, heads turned towards them. Did people wonder why the beautiful man was with an older woman who was obviously not his mother? Most would assume he was gay and she a convenient non-threatening partner—a reasonable conclusion and one Dee was happy with. Spending time with Raj was comfortable, uncomplicated by the sexual politics that made dating so fraught.

  Dee wiped her eyes and nose. Raj pulled his chair around next to hers and sat with his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Sorry, it’s ridiculous. I’m being silly. It was just a shock and I’ve known him his entire life. He was a great kid.’ She stopped so as not to set herself off again.

  ‘What happened?’

  Dee told him the story minus the details of the smell and the fly.

  ‘Why’s he dead?’

  ‘Everyone seems to assume it’s asthma—that does seem the only reasonable possibility … but he was so good at managing it. I can’t believe it got out of hand. He’s too young for a heart attack or a stroke. There’ll have to be a post mortem. I couldn’t sign a death certificate—without a death certificate an autopsy is mandatory.’

  Raj put his hand on hers as he listened.

  ‘It’s complicated. Why did he decide he needed life insurance? And what was the hacking about? He was excited, on to something.’ Dee shook her head. ‘I just can’t believe he wouldn’t have started his preventer medication or at least called an ambulance. He’s had bad attacks before but he knew what to do now and he was the perfect asthma patient—you know how obsessional he was—none of it fits.’

  The bedroom scene was with her as she spoke. She looked down and saw Raj’s shoes. His cyclist’s hairless legs, smooth dark brown, the perfect colour for his pink suede shoes.

  Stop the self-indulgence—Raj knew Tom, he must have some feelings too.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Dee asked him.

 
; ‘Yeah—it doesn’t seem real yet. I only knew him for two years. He was one of my best investigators. I was disappointed when he left. But I knew he wouldn’t stay. All the qualities that made him brilliant also meant he worked better freelance. That puppy-like enthusiasm and that smile—everyone who knew him fell in love with him, didn’t they?’ Raj looked at Dee, head tilted to the left. ‘Even when he had no idea about other people and got the interpersonal stuff wrong, no one cared. Such a darling.’

  ‘Thanks, Raj, it really helped that you came over. I feel better. I have to get back to work.’

  Dee sighed and put her hands on the armrests of her chair. People and their problems were waiting. She clicked waiting room view on her computer—there were no patients on her list.

  Raj broke in, ‘Janelle and I decided to sort everyone out. They’re all happy.’

  ‘But you can’t do that.’

  ‘I can and I have. They’ve all been rescheduled. Grief needs alcohol.’

  Dee flirted with being furious. It wasn’t Raj’s place or Janelle’s to send patients off. How was Raj chummy enough with Janelle to sort out the appointments together? Then Dee was too exhausted to think anymore. A rush of relief overtook her. She wasn’t fit for caring for others. Poor Joy, she didn’t deserve to have her doctor walk out on her. Still, the faint hope Joy would never come back was wonderful—more than adequate relief for Dee’s guilt.

  ‘Thanks, Raj,’ she said and collapsed back down into her chair.

  ‘Don’t sit. We’re going out.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Dee grabbed her handbag and Raj magicked them away in his yellow Mercedes convertible. In minutes they were on the Harbour Bridge, Raj’s low-slung banana yellow boy’s toy surrounded by serious working vehicles, vans and trucks or sober sedans. Dee found herself humming ‘Yellow Submarine’ as the wind tangled her hair and whipped all thoughts out of her brain.

  10.

  The restaurant next to Raj’s office at Milsons Point overlooked an Olympic pool and the harbour. The waiter poured the last of their bottle of an aged Hunter Semillon into their glasses and Raj ordered another.