Doctor Perry

by Kirsten McKenzie

  “Yeah, well, we haven’t been able to track him down yet. We went back to his surgery, and the receptionist said he was at the old folks home. That’s the Rose Haven Retirement Resort, he has another clinic there. The receptionist at the Rose Haven said he was at work. His wife said he was visiting a patient. It’s been lousy timing. He hasn’t answered his cell either,” Tony said.

  “Bring him in for a chat, make that your priority,” Clive directed. “Right, everyone else, we need statements from their friends. Ask around, they must have friends. Maybe try back at the Rose Haven, they could have some friends there. So everyone knows what they’re doing then? Good?”

  Dismissing his team, he checked his cellphone. His own mother hadn’t rung him back. He supposed she was living it large with her elderly but socially active friends, he couldn’t help but feel put out she hadn’t bothered ringing him. If he’d thought about it a little deeper, he would have been able to draw parallels to how he’d treated her over the years, always too busy to give her more than a harried minute on the phone or an awkward family dinner where he couldn’t wait to leave, too caught up in his own life to worry about her needs.

  Clive wanted to call her back, but he had work to do. She’d call when she was ready.

  42

  Benson lowered Elijah into a high-backed chair in Doctor Perry’s consulting room at the Rose Haven. It wasn’t as comfortable as the Doctor’s public consulting rooms because the patients he saw from the Rose Haven Retirement Resort didn’t matter. They had no money and no choice. Doctor Perry provided care for almost ninety percent of the residents. The others still had medical insurance or a relationship with a former doctor they maintained. Doctor Perry had spoken with Tracey about making it a condition of living at the Rose Haven that every resident sign up to be on his patient books, but she’d refused the idea, considering it a step too far. He still thought it the best solution but had let it go for now. If he ever went back into this line of work, he’d definitely implement it at the next place. It made things tidier.

  Doctor Perry arrived a short while later, and ushered Benson out of the room, before closing the door behind him. He sat on the desk in front of Elijah and stared at the other man.

  They looked to be of a similar age, Doctor Perry and Elijah Cone, but Doctor Perry’s face was mostly smooth, although he’d allowed a few lines to peep through over time and had enough crinkle at the corners of his eyes for his patients to trust he knew his stuff. His cheeks sagged ever so slightly as if he’d once been fat and was waiting for his skin to regain its elasticity. His eyes were a deep blue and had the ability to charm, but tonight they showed nothing — only a blankness, as if the doctor was mere flesh with no soul, a walking cadaver.

  Doctor Perry showed no emotion perched on the edge of the desk staring at Elijah, biding his time. Silence worked a treat and old people couldn’t abide silence. It was as if they lived with the silence so much that they jumped at any opportunity to open their denture-filled mouths and share the minutiae of their lives. This man would be the same, he’d wait.

  The room settled around them, the walls clicking in the cool night and from somewhere came the muffled sound of a phone ringing. Footsteps came closer, then receded. And still Elijah didn’t speak.

  The desk under Doctor Perry’s backside was knifelike beneath his khakis and he leveraged himself off and around to the other side of his desk before sitting in his cushioned office chair. Concerned about the cooling experiments in the basement, he’d slipped back to the lab to turn everything off before coming to his consulting room. It shouldn’t matter too much if the substance cooled as long as it didn’t cool down completely. He needed to get back to this latest batch, and this patient wasn’t playing by the rules. Time to get this over with.

  “Mister Cone, you’ve caused a bit of disruption since coming to the Rose Haven. The staff are here to help you. To provide you the best twilight years. But you have to help yourself,” Doctor Perry said.

  Elijah had tucked his chin into his chest, lips pursed shut. Doctor Perry had forgotten all about Elijah’s arthritis and didn’t realise that it was all Elijah could do to stay upright in the chair; that even the smallest of movements sent slivers of glass through every joint and ligament in Elijah’s hands.

  Sighing, Doctor Perry pulled a prescription pad from his top drawer. He had none of his tonic available, none which he trusted, so the best he could do was to medicate the problematic man until he could dose him properly. He had no time for this carryon. Tracey needed to keep better control of her staff because he knew Preston caused the fracas, Cone just didn’t have it in him. You only needed to look at Elijah to know he was broken.

  “I’m not the enemy here Mister Cone, I’m your doctor and you can trust me. I’ve prescribed you a mild sedative. Benson is waiting outside and he’ll take you to the nurses station for them to dispense the drugs,” said Doctor Perry.

  “What about the tonic you gave me last time, can I have more of that?”

  Doctor Perry froze, Without his patient folders, or Molly to schedule his appointments, he was flying blind. Had he given this man some of his tonic before? He looked anew at Elijah, how much had he given him? And from which batch?

  “Did you feel any relief after taking it?” Doctor Perry asked.

  “For a night, maybe a little longer,” Elijah said.

  Doctor Perry’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. His tonic was losing its potency but he wouldn’t waste any of it on this man, at least not without his notes to refer to. Didn’t want to give him too much, and he needed his medical history - such an important part of the deal he had going with his other clients. Only healthy stock allowed.

  He pulled open the door and waved the orderly inside. “Benson, this will tide Mister Cone over until I have had a proper chance to examine him, which will need scheduling, so if you could just…” Doctor Perry motioned towards Elijah, who hadn’t moved.

  “Of course, Doctor Perry,” Benson said.

  Doctor Perry strode off down the corridor, striking Elijah from his mind. He had an experiment to finish. That was his priority, not a man losing control of his mind.

  Benson stood in the doorway shaking his head at the Doctor’s retreat. “Come on, Mister Cone, let’s get you back to your room, and then I’ll fill the script.”

  “Not sure I can go anywhere, Benson,” Elijah winced.

  “I’ll get a wheelchair,” Benson said, expecting Elijah to tell him to stop being so ridiculous, but Elijah didn’t respond, other that to tuck his head further into his chest. It was as if the man was ageing in front of him. Sometimes it happened that way. When you worked with the elderly as long as he had, you could predict when they gave up on life. And that’s what Elijah was doing.

  43

  Myra sat on the toilet, her eyes on the door handle, which she’d locked, but since the twins had been in the house, it didn’t always engage and she didn’t want any little blonde faces surprising her.

  She wasn’t using the toilet, instead she was making notes, getting her thoughts down on paper. She’d kept a record of the babies they’d fostered right from the beginning, and as she scratched against the paper it wasn’t hard to notice she’d almost filled the notebook. Myra had given every child their own page and kept notes detailing their age, gender, disposition, likes and dislikes, in case anyone ever came back to ask about the baby they’d adopted. There was always a chance health questions might arise. They’d never fostered any children with health issues, only the last baby came to mind, baby Don with his funny sloping shoulder. Undoubtedly his new parents would get that seen to by an orthopaedic surgeon.

  Myra’s heart ached with the loss of Don. He’d been her dream baby and her heart broke handing him over to Social Services. Her husband said nothing about the child. He hadn’t even noticed that the baby had gone. He’d spent increasingly more time at the Rose Haven doing who knows what, but there was one thing she knew, her husband had stopped coming to b
ed. And when he looked at her, it was with such a level of disgust on his face she assumed he was having an affair which didn’t bother her as much as she expected. He hadn’t given her the one thing she wanted, so losing him was no big deal. They were financially comfortable, so she knew she wouldn’t want for anything if, when, he left her. The worst part was she was too old to have a baby herself or even adopt one on her own. She’d wasted the best years of her life raising babies for other people.

  Tears stung Myra’s eye as she noted everything she could remember about baby Don and as an afterthought, she made detailed the handover. She hadn’t thought to do that before as her husband dealt with that part. She’d been there in the past, but mostly she was upstairs in the nursery, crying at the loss of yet another baby she loved.

  Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she said, her voice cracking. Myra shoved the tattered notebook into her toiletries bag, the old one she kept her sanitary towels and tampons in. She knew her husband wouldn’t look in there but still left the zip open so anyone rummaging through would see an array of industrial looking tampons staring back and back off.

  “Can we have something to eat,” came a voice from behind the door.

  “Please?” added an identical voice.

  Myra expected they were standing side by side outside the door, their features set in the same expressionless way. Staying in the bathroom was more appealing.

  The boys knocked a second time.

  “We can’t hear you peeing. Are you really going to the toilet?”

  “Are you hiding from us?”

  Myra swallowed. She was hiding from them. The boys scared her.

  “No, I’m not hiding from you. I’ve just finished, see,” she said flushing the toilet. Then ran the taps and washed her hands vigorously. Anything to delay having to interact with the boys for any longer than she needed.

  Drying her hands, she examined her face in the mirror. The signs of advancing age were coming thick and fast. She didn’t blame her husband for looking elsewhere, her face was a route map to the nearest interchange with a dozen different lines crisscrossing her face. Her forehead more like the Golden Glades Interchange. She traced the lines with her fingertip. Her skin felt soft and supple, but looked wrinkled and old.

  They knocked on the door, again.

  They might need her but the feeling persisted that something wasn’t right about the twins.

  With the boys devouring slices of peeled apple and a blueberry muffin at the kitchen bench, Myra unpacked the dishwasher and dried the stuff the dishwasher hadn’t, almost half the load. She looked out over the garden which formed the boundary of her world these days. When they’d first married, they’d go for long walks around Amelia Earhart Park, and eat out at the Garcia Seafood Grille, but it was years since they’d done that. Once they’d established the medical practice, and started fostering babies, her life shrank into the reclusive situation she found herself in now. As she dried the dishes, seeking refuge in old memories, her eyes swept across the garden, pausing now and then as she added things to her to do list — prune the Spiral Ginger and check the Crinum Lily for rust spots. It wasn’t one of her favourite flowers but not long after their wedding, her husband had edged the whole garden with them. In some light they looked beautiful, but the red centres looked as though the lilies were slicked with blood. She preferred its official name instead of what the locals called it — the cemetery plant. Myra was oblivious how poisonous the lily was.

  Myra’s eyes moved on from the glorious display of lilies and passed over a small mound in the grass. They flicked back. The object on the grass made no sense, it didn’t belong. Laying down the tea towel she opened the back door and stepped onto the manicured lawn.

  On the grass was the carcass of a cat, or what used to be a cat. Unmoving. the ginger tomcat lay motionless with its paws oddly unattached to its body, as if it had taken off a pair of gloves, laying them neatly on the ground. Myra stopped breathing. The feisty cat had been with her for fifteen years. He’d comforted her and joy and kept her company on the longs days she spent alone at home. And now she was alone.

  Myra threw herself beside the motionless animal and a scream escaped from her throat. Bundling the cat up into her arms as if that would reanimate it, oblivious to the faces pressing against the kitchen window, a smear of ketchup under the fingers of one boy.

  The garden filled with ragged sobs and the metallic scent of blood as Myra stumbled to her feet, the tomcat limp in her arms, Myra’s grief blocking out the mutilation — the horror of that would come later.

  From the bushes, a rat scuttled from its hiding place and faster than lightning it stole one of the cat’s paws, hurrying away with its prize before anyone else saw. Before it too became a living specimen to be experimented on.

  The eyes at the kitchen window saw the rat though. They saw the rat and nodding to each other they hurried back to their seats at the kitchen bench, staring at Myra as she reentered the house, inconsolable with her grief. She disappeared down the hall, into the garage where the door closed behind her, cutting off the crying which filled the unusual silence the twins created wherever they were.

  Alone in the garage, Myra laid the tomcat gently on the laundry bench, her mind refusing to process what was in front of her. Wiping her eyes on her sleeves, Myra searched the shelves for a suitable box for her dear old friend.

  The shelves featured an assortment of gardening supplies, suitcases and a lifetime collection of containers, boxes and bottles — the detritus of the things her husband had owned before their marriage.

  Myra viewed everything through a veil of tears, blurring the names on the containers as she searched for a box for Tom’s burial. Despite the tears, her desire for order overwhelmed her and as she searched the shelves she couldn’t help but stack the boxes in height order and twist bottles till their labels lined up. Myra picked up an ancient bag of powder, so old the label had worn away, and refolded the bag’s top releasing a plume of white powder as she replaced in on the shelf. A fine dusting of powder settled on the floor.

  Myra spied a perfect sized box jammed in behind a rusty tin of infant formula and an assorted lot of car windscreen cleaners and upholstery polish. As she reached through the jumble, Myra knocked the formula tin, tipping it off the shelf and onto the concrete floor. The tin landed with a deafening crack and the lid flew off, spilling the contents out onto the oil-stained floor, hundreds of tiny white pebbles.

  Myra scooped the mess back into the tin, cursing her husband for storing such random trash. She cursed her life and the loss of her beloved pet. All she wanted to do was bury him and now she had to clean up another mess, someone else’s mess. This was her life, cleaning up after other people.

  “Myra?”

  Myra looked up to see the twins framed in the doorway.

  “We’re still hungry. Can we have something else to eat?”

  “Please?”

  “Not now, please go away, just go away,” she yelled, and the boys vanished.

  Myra sank to the garage floor, crying among the detritus of the one room in the house she had nothing to do with. There was never any reason for her to come out here. She never used the car. Never needed to use the stuff stored in the garage. Like the surgery, this was her husband’s domain.

  Her responsibilities overcame her, and she wiped away the tears, shoving the remaining pebbles back into the tin, jamming the lid on tight and placing it back onto the shelf. She carried the cardboard box over to the bench, placing it next to old Tom. He wasn’t a small animal, he was the cat you needed two hands to pick up or risk breaking your wrist if you only used one, but now he looked small, diminished. As she scooped him up and nuzzled his ginger fur one last time, his leg fell loose from her arms and the reality of his injuries struck home.

  The world stilled and her heart thumped in her ears drowning out every other sound. Outside, the crickets put aside their chirping, and the birds muz
zled their song and the twins huddled together in their room, their communication as silent as it always had been. She knew.

  44

  Snot dripped from Sarah Miller’s nose. She’d run out of tissues, so used the crusty sleeve of her sweater, a sweater stained with ketchup, pizza oil and several days worth of tears as she hibernated on the couch.

  The doorbell chimed, and for a fraction of a second, Sarah thought he’d come back, before the tinny voice of her doctor echoed through the intercom. The euphoric lift to her mood popped like a balloon on a thorny cactus and tore a fraction more at her damaged heart.

  Sarah struggled off the couch to let the doctor in. Hopefully, he’d come with more medicine because she imagined the infection in her lungs trying to take hold again. And then, as if the infection heard her thoughts, her chest spasmed triggering another coughing fit.

  Doctor Perry came in just in time to support her, as she doubled over next to the intercom, coughing up her lungs. She should give him the entry code, having to get up off the couch to let him in was far too tiring.

  “Now, now, we can’t have you hopping up and down, back to the couch,” Doctor Perry said and pushed through the mountain of home delivery takeaway cartons, easing her onto the couch.

  Doctor Perry tried not to consider the state of Sarah’s arteries as his stomach twisted at the sight of the empty soda cans in the bin and the takeaway filth littering her apartment. He held back the recriminations as he should have taken better care of her because she had no one else. He had too much on his plate at this late juncture. You had to take the good with the bad, and he hoped there was no irreparable damage. Fast food delivery companies would be the death of America if the trash littering Sarah’s apartment was any sign.