“The first class you take is gross anatomy. That means it’s about all the parts of the human body. There’s fancy textbooks and large diagrams and pictures, all in wonderfully detailed color, but you can’t learn what you are truly made of from pictures in books. So, you go to anatomy lab, which is really an on-campus morgue. In fact, we medical students called it Cadaver City.
“Over the course of a semester, you dissect an entire human. You learn where the organs are, how the different parts of the body are connected. You learn more this way than you ever could through books. Besides, a doctor has to be made of sterner stuff; he has to not get sick at sea, which I’m sure you can appreciate right now.”
Is he trying to make me ill?
“These cadaver labs are run by the professors and the labs are taken very seriously. But the labs stay open late so the students can do additional work, improve their skills. People would normally go to these after-hours sessions in groups or pairs but not me. I preferred to be alone with the bodies. I liked the quiet. I liked the serenity.
“People spend much, if not all, of their lives complaining or weeping or cursing or just being loud and unpleasant. When we die, however, we are completely silent--inert. Our bodies are utterly vulnerable to the elements and to human hands, of course.
“It was during that first semester that I discovered not only did I enjoy being in Cadaver City with all those half-dissected corpses, but that I could find complete peace with them. I used to lay next to them on the dissection table. I would hold their hand, if it hadn’t been dissected yet. Sometimes I’d pet their hair, like you would a cat.”
The doc ran a hand from the top of Brendan’s head slowly down to his neck, where his fingers lightly tapped like a spider inspecting a new area.
“It’s standard that they keep the faces of the donated bodies covered for much of the semester. It’s easy to cut open arms, legs, stomachs, but most people find it particularly challenging to cut the face. It’s usually the last thing you do.”
Genuine nausea had gathered in Brendan’s gut and now he gripped the sides of the toilet harder and
needed
to vomit. That would stop this horrible story from this horrible man.
“In my solitary sessions, I would uncover all the faces. I liked seeing the peacefulness that Death had left there. Sometimes, I would strip naked and stand before those bodies like an equal member, only living of course. I’d lay down naked with those bodies and then I’d start cutting up their faces.
“I cried for many of them as I did it, but it got easier and easier as I went along. Stripping the skin back, revealing layer and layer of fine m iter of fuscle. The human face is extremely complicated. I’d work sometimes all night and only get half a face finished. But each slice of my scalpel and every new layer of discovery was an epiphany. I wasn’t merely discovering human anatomy, I was discovering God.”
What would Ellis and Dwayne say about that? How did the psycho doc’s medical school behavior fit into God’s Grand Plan?
He sounds empowered.
And totally fucking nuts
.
Dr. Carroll squeezed him with both hands, shoulder and neck. His beard prickled Brendan’s neck like pieces of dry hay. “I learned, son, that in the darkest corners of our minds there is a gateway to the illumination of the soul.” He let that piece of wisdom sit for a moment. His breath stuck to Brendan’s skin like slime. “Let that give you comfort if nothing else.”
He had to vomit, had to force out whatever was in his stomach, if anything, because he had to get out of this situation, get this weird fucker off of him and get the hell out of the house if that’s what it took.
The doc was almost on top of him, practically humping him. What if he was getting turned on? The doc’s crotch was right by Brendan’s ass; the doc could slip a hand down to Brendan’s belt buckle and then slide his pants right off. Bile came into his throat.
“Let me comfort you,” the doc whispered. “You’re a very special boy.”
Brendan couldn’t stop the tremors shaking his body. He gripped the edge of the bowl harder and imagined chunks of orange and red vomit floating before him.
“You remember when I gave you that myth book? Remember what I told you?”
It had been something about being strange and being a Greek or something.
“I told you not to worry about being weird. The Greeks would have thought you special, a gift--they would have made you a priest, a keeper of the peace between man and God. You are very special, indeed. Don’t be afraid.”
He saw maggots squirming in the chunks. Yet vomit did not usher up from his stomach. “That book is stupid,” Brendan said.
“Did you finish it?”
“I don’t need to.”
The doc’s hand gripped Brendan’s neck more tightly and then relaxed, his fingers sliding over the skin like worms. “That’s my boy,” he said.
Three thunderous knocks sent Dr. Carroll to his feet and quickly to the door. He wasn’t going to let Tyler in, no, he meant to lock the door and stay in here until Brendan finally spewed his guts or until the doc had his way with Brendan’s “dark hole,” as his friends called it. Tyler, however, had come to save the day; he burst into the bathroom and caught the doc mid-stride, arm extended toward the knob with a lost expression on his face as if he had forgotten where he was.
“My mom needs you,” Tyler said.
After a moment of indecision, Dr. Carroll told Brendan he’d be back to check on him and then went off to Mom’s bedroom.
“Sorry that took so long,” Tyler said. “But it’s done. You alright? You’re pale.”
Brendan couldn’t answer him. Was he alright? How could such an easy question be so hard to answer?
“You really sick?”
“I don’t know.”
They stayed like that for almost a minute before the grionfore thnding wine of the automatic garage door vibrated beneath them. Dad was finally home.
7
Tyler was on the phone (it was Delaney’s cell, all pink with shiny rhinestones that formed a “D” on the front) with Paul--hung over now, nursing “a bitch of a head throb”--when Dr. Carroll’s black Town Car pulled into the driveway. The short man got out of his car, that same stupid tie with pink flowers on it dangling beneath a drooping face.
“Christ, now the family doc is here.”
“You’re living in a fucked-up world these days, my friend,” Paul said.
The branded arrowhead on his hand had started to throb a few hours ago and hadn’t let up. “No shit.”
“You running out of options.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, what the fuck were you thinking last night? We were trying to send a message and you go all hero on me.”
“Stupid, I know.” He had taken two Tylenol but it wasn’t helping with the pain.
“There are other bitches,
better
bitches, you can go after, fuck, and then drop if you want, ones without psycho witches for mothers. The first time, I mean, I can understand but why go back?
Why?
”
“You going to keep telling me what a fuck up I am or are you going to give me some advice?”
Paul snorted. “Advice? We tried that, wreck the bitch’s place--you fucked that up.”
“I don’t know. If she’s really pregnant . . .”
“You’re fucked.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Tyler laughed because it was better than getting more and more anxious or pissed off or even start crying. How had all of this happened? A week ago things had been, if not normal, then at least palatable, but since then he had raped and impregnated a girl who had a witch for a mother, Delaney had been killed, and Mom and Dad had checked out. And Brendan had been talking strange, too, since some religious freaks brain-washed him or something, so who knew where that would lead.
Back to the funeral home
.
Paul started eating something, possibly cereal from the crunching sound. “You know what you should do,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
Paul made him wait. Even with a hangover, Paul still appreciated a good dramatic pause. His idea better not be to burn Sasha’s house down, though with Paul that was always a possibility. An honors student, a jokester, and sometimes a violent guy, Paul had once lit a book of matches on fire in the cafeteria because Ed Greene said he didn’t have the balls. Paul got one day out of school--everyone else got a two-hour fire drill.
“You should get that ol‘ family doc to give you some meds to help remedy your situation.”
Tyler was struck silent by the simplicity and, yes, the brilliance of this idea.
“You could get some really potent shit, get Sasha to help you drug her mom, make her think it’s just to get the crone to shut up for a while and then before she even realizes her mother is in some deep shit, she’s fucked, too. Ground up some painkillers or something, drop it in some champagne and you can toast to the end of your problems.”
Paul was half joking, of course, though in his case it would be better to say he was
partly
joking. A half was too much credit.
“I’m not going to kill them,” Tyler said and thought:
but it would be simpler
.
“Fine, fine, let’s do it your way and
talk
to them. Yes, we’ll have some chitchat with the girl you raped and her mother, the self-proclaimed Wicked Witch of Trailer Trash Town.”
“I think this calls for a little from Plan A and a little from Plan B.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m not going to kill anyone, sorry to disappoint, but I may need your help regardless.”
Paul snorted down more cereal. “Whatever you need, you know that. But make it later because my head is fucking killing me.”
“No problem,” Tyler said. “Keep your cell close.”
* * *
When Dr. Carroll shut the bathroom door behind him, Tyler went straight for the doctor’s black bag, which he had left on Brendan’s bed. It was an old-fashioned doctor’s bag, the type with the clasp on the top and the two sides that parted like the mouth of a large fish. Inside the bag were several fabric dividers stitched into the lining. Prescription bottles filled these pouches. Along the bottom of the bag, more dividers, these made of sturdy cardboard, sectioned off six squares. The contents varied from more bottles of pills to a prescription pad to rolled-up gauze to a thermometer to a blood pressure gauge to a stethoscope that had been wrapped around itself and stuffed into one of the squares and now protruded from it like a black flower blooming in a dark cave.
Though there was almost no chance of anyone catching him, Tyler began to sweat. What if Aunt Stephanie decided to check on Brendan or wanted to call the doctor back to Mom’s side? What if he grew so engrossed in gleaning through the doctor’s bag that he didn’t hear Dr. Carroll walk up from behind him and . . . what? Didn’t doctors carry syringes? Tyler didn’t see any in the bag; perhaps the good doc kept those on his person. He’d sneak up behind Tyler and shoot him up with some sedative right in the neck where the blood rushing to his brain would take the medicine right up and he’d be right out before hitting the bed.
He pulled bottles out one by one, read them, and placed them back. He did this with several bottles before realizing that he had no idea, and would have no idea regardless how many he scanned, what most of these medicines did. Dr. Carroll wasn’t some cancer doctor or plastic surgeon or eye, nose, and throat specialist. Dr. Carroll’s specialty was in eradicating pain through as many painkillers as were necessary.
Paul had tried many times to convince Tyler to steal from his mother’s stash. Kids at school would pay good bucks for some Xanax (“Xanny Bars,” Paul called them) or anything she might have that was stronger. What could be stronger? Dr. Carroll may be weird but he was a doctor; he wasn’t going to give a patient heroin.
The bottles of pills displayed foreign names that revealed nothing about them: Pamelor, Sinequan, Vivactil, Remeron, Ludiomil. After the initial confusion of what to do with all these bottles, Tyler began removing two or three (sometimes four, even five) pills from every plastic container he examined. He shoved these pills in his pocket. Some were dry pills that would melt on your tongue; others were capsules that disintegrated in your stomach. No matter what they were, each one could be broken down to a powdery substance and used.
He’d mix them all together, make some horrendous cocktail of barbiturates. As long as they couldn’t be tasted, this would work and with enough of Tyler’s Powdery Mixture, the drugs would take effect fast and last longer than Tyler needed.
Aunt Stephanie was cooing to Mom in the adjacent room. It reminded Tyler of how everyone used to talk to Brendan when he was a baby.
That’s what this stuff does to you
, he thought,
turns you back into an infant
.
He worked as fast as he could without spilling any pills. He fell into a pattern the way people working at assembly lines probably did: remove bottle, Elavil, open, dump two to five pills in hand, drop pills in pocket, close bottle, return to compartment in black bag. This approach continued for several seconds before he finally found a drug name he recognized: Codeine.
Ed Greene (the same kid who dared Paul to lit some matches over a pile of school chili) had broken his hip during an ill-advised snowboarding ramp jump over Christmas break and when he returned to school on crutches, he started selling pills of Codeine he had stashed away. He sold those for twenty bucks a pill. Paul purchased a few and one Friday he and Tyler took the pills while playing PS3--they awoke nine hours later completely confused by the paused Madden 2010 football game on the TV. Tyler now held a bottle full. He dumped a handful into his palm, thought better of it and returned a few to the bottle, dumped the rest in his pocket, which was starting to bulge from its contents.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been doing this--a few minutes or closer to ten? It was time to stop; he had more than enough pills to do what he wanted. Still . . . There were so many damn bottles in this bag. Each compartment gave way to a new one, which held more possibly dangerous, possibly addictive, definitely strong pain killers. He knew he should stop, Brendan was going to have to really vomit to sell this whole plan if it continued any longer, but Tyler had to see the next bottle and the next and--
The Holy Grail of pills: OxyContin. This was the stuff doctors found in the veins of dead celebrities. This was stuff that could sell for fifty bucks a pill in school. This was stuff that could seriously get you high, or totally plastered if you swallowed some with a few beers. This was all he had needed to begin with.
“Thank you, Doc.” He took a slew of these pills, probably too many, but he felt no remorse. If he didn’t take them, they’d just go to his mother or someone else’s mother who preferred to sleep all day than have to face whatever terrible loss she had suffered. Tyler was saving someone from themselves. And also saving himself.
* * *
Dr. Carroll gave his bag a second glance (or was Tyler imagining that?) before picking it up and returning to Tyler’s parents’ bedroom. Could the doc feel the bag had gotten lighter? He carried that bag everywhere with him so he probably knew its weight and feel like he knew his own body. If he got curious and started opening bottles, he was bound to notice. After that it wouldn’t take long to figure out what happened. Hell, he could be in the bedroom right now searching for just the right pills to keep Mom in her perpetual stupor.
This bottle seems a bit light
. Then he’d notice another one that wasn’t as full as it should be. And another.
Brendan’s face had paled considerably. Now he really could pass for ill. “You really sick?” Tyler asked.
“I don’t know,” Brendan said.
Tyler started to ask what the hell that meant when the garage door beneath them opigheath thened for Mom’s car. Dad was home finally and his timing couldn’t be better.
8
The moment he saw Dr. Carroll’s black Town Car, Anthony smiled. He was pissed, oh, yes, furious beyond belief. If Chloe thought yesterday’s pill-throwing foolery was bad, she could just wait to see what was about to happen. But it was okay. Though anger surged through him and he clutched the steering wheel hard enough to make his hands cramp, Anthony was okay with it. This was
supposed
to happen. Ellis was right. Anthony had returned home to save his family and he meant to do exactly that.
He sat in the car, parked in the garage, and waited. Dr. Carroll had parked outside the other garage door; he knew the car parked there wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. Anthony flexed his hands on the wheel, stretching his fingers. He couldn’t recall telling the doctor that he’d brought the mangled car back, so perhaps it was just a coincidence that Dr. Carroll parked there.
There are no coincidences
,
only God’s work in action
.
A small part of Anthony still didn’t completely buy this God stuff. That small part used to be bigger,
much
bigger, but now it was only a tiny section, something easily crammed under a bed or tucked in a closet corner. He didn’t need to hear anything that voice, one he used to call the Logical Voice, had to say about the current situations or the motives pushing Anthony to go upstairs and rescue his family, by force in all likelihood. He’d keep that voice under the bed, locked in the closet.
But the voice was loud and when it screamed, Anthony heard it.
He started for the door to the house and stopped, returned to Chloe’s car, opened the trunk and, after some fumbling, retrieved the tire iron stored back there with the donut. Now, tire iron held in one hand down at his side, Anthony entered his house prepared to prove that no drug-pushing doc was going to destroy his family.
He paused at the top of the stairs. The kitchen was empty. Tyler and Brendan stood in the open doorway to Brendan’s room. They shared identical expressions of anxiety and surprise. Anthony and Chloe’s door, of course, was shut. The good doc was in there administering his brand of medicine--guaranteed to take the pain away and ruin your life.
He should say something to his sons. They were probably worried--he had been gone all night--but Anthony couldn’t think of anything to say that would sound fatherly and simultaneously calm their fears and prevent further inquiries. He never would have thought years ago that he wouldn’t want to acknowledge his children’s presence, not want to answer any of their questions. He always believed he was a good dad, but this wasn’t a moment that the Dad of the Year Award committee would review. He’d been given a reprieve, an advance get-out-of-jail card for what he was about to do. God wanted him to do this because God wanted his disciples to be empowered, not live as prey for drug-pushing predators.
He walked down the hall, nodded to his boys, and swung wide the door to his bedroom.
* * *
Another small internal voice, this one more bluntly referred to as the Don’t Be Stupid Voice, tried in vain to stop him, to stymie his words and stay his hand but that voice ended up crying in the corner of the closet, the Logical Voice shaking its head in disgust. This was the second time in a matter of days Anthony had stained his knuckles with blood.
The events happened so quickly, the vi stckly, tolence arising rapidly and then dying off just as suddenly, that it was difficult to piece the events into logical order. Anthony might never be sure what happened, though he knew where responsibility lay. It was firmly in his two hands, shaking and cramping, while he sat against the far bedroom wall and stared at the blood soaking into the bed sheets. What the hell had he done?
* * *
Dr. Carroll was sitting on the side of the bed. He was caressing Chloe’s pale cheek with one hand and searching through his black doctor’s bag with the other. Chloe was murmuring, maybe sleeping. Stephanie was asleep, or knocked out from sedatives, next to her.
Anthony slammed the door shut behind him. “
Get offa her!
”
Dr. Carroll looked up and started. Hadn’t expected the King of the Castle to come barging in. Did he see the tire iron?
“Anthony, I’m . . . surprised you’re here.”
He took several steps into the bedroom. “No more drugs, doc. Take all your fucking pills and get out of here.
Now!
”
Dr. Carroll smiled,
actually
smiled. “You could use some yourself.” He fumbled around inside his bag, removed a plastic container, held it out. “Here, these will calm you considerably.”
“I’m not trading my soul for sleep.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Get away from my wife.”
Stephanie squirmed in her sleep. She’d always had an addictive personality: she once had quite a gambling problem, which successfully destroyed her marriage, but it had taken a doctor to get her hooked on drugs. Maybe she wanted to be just like her sis. Chloe continued mumbling, eyelids flickering as they did when she suffered the nightmares.
Dr. Carroll dropped the bottle back in his bag, closed it, clasped it. “I’m only trying to help. Your family is in pieces.”
Pieces
. Like those the state troopers found of Delaney’s face. A piece of her cheek bone had skidded across the road into a ditch. Pieces of skin dangled off it.
“Leave.
Now!
”
“You’re having a nervous breakdown, Anthony,” Dr. Carroll said calmly.
He raised the tire iron. “No, I’m seeing everything clearly.” That damn Logical Voice screamed in disagreement:
The doc is right! You’re losing your mind, going off the bend! You need help!
“Your family has suffered tremendously in only a matter of weeks. Your reaction is perfectly understandable.”
That Talking Heads lyric again:
Stop making sense, making sense
.
“You don’t know anything I’ve suffered.”
Chloe’s whole body spasmed as if she were fighting off a beast in her dreams, her arms gesticulating weak punches in the air. One of her hands fell onto the doctor’s leg, close to his crotch. That probably made Dr. Carroll very happy, this drugged-up woman practically groping him in her sleep. Maybe he’d already groped her. Maybe he’d done worse.
“Your wife cannot be simply removed from these drugs. I have prescribed a delicate balance for her treatment and you can’t just stop it without consequences.”
“You haven’t treated her, you’ve created a junkie.”
“Anthony">">“An, please. She was severely depressed, suicidal.”
“Why do you carry so much damn medicine with you? Doctor’s don’t do that--they write prescriptions.”
“I carry what I need.”
Anthony stepped closer. “No pharmacist would fill all the prescriptions you’d have to give her. Where do you even get your medicine? Are you even a real doctor?”
Where had Anthony first heard of Dr. Carroll? Someone at work had mentioned him, a few others joining in to agree that Dr. Carroll was a good psychiatrist.
Gives you what you want
, someone remarked. What you want. Not what you need, but what you want. Anthony hadn’t cared about the distinction last year when Brendan was failing several subjects or when the baby died and Chloe started talking to the empty place setting at the dinner table.
“You get some sick jollies from drugging people?” Anthony asked, stepping closer, tire iron at hip level.
Dr. Carroll took a deep breath. “You aren’t going to attack me, Anthony, so why don’t you put that down?”
“Were you happy when my daughter died? Did you find yourself elated because you knew Chloe’d need more drugs? Were you secretly smiling at her funeral?” He stepped closer, just a few feet away.
“Anthony, you need to put that down and let me give you something to help you rest.” For the first time, Dr. Carroll’s voice adopted a nervous tweak, an anxious tremor.
Chloe stirred again, her whole body enacting in slow motion some form of hand-to-hand combat.
“You see my eyes, doc?”
He didn’t respond, just stared. Doc’s hands were on his bag, probably thought he could use it as a weapon.
“
These
eyes. What do you see?”
“Anthony, you need to--”
“You see my pain, my misery, my fucking
anguish?!
Do you see that doctor?
DO YOU?!
”
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, his high-pitched voice that of a scared child.
“You think these eyes give a shit about anything you have to say?”
“No, but--”
“I want my wife back. I want my daughter back. I want my damned baby back! Can you do that? Can any of your fucking pills do
that?!
”
“No.”
The Giant Jesus was watching over him, his drooping eyes staring down as Anthony asserted himself and sought the empowerment of God. This was what He wanted. This was what
had
to happen.
The Logical Voice hollered and begged and pleaded but its voice was scratched and strained and resembled the mumbling nonsense emanating from his wife.
Anthony raised the tire iron over his head.
Dr. Carroll let go of the doctor’s bag and tried to back up, pawing at the sheets. He hit the headboard but still tried to push himself away, hoping the wall would vanish and he’d tumble outside onto the grass. One of his hands landed on Chloe’s stomach. She grunted. The doctor didn’t notice. Anthony stepped closer, striking distance. The doc’s hand clamped down on Chloe’s breast and she shrieked in her sleep, swatting at his arm.
Anthony swung.
The
thwank
of metal against bone andAntnst bon then the hollow clank of bone against the headboard.
* * *
Sometime later, Anthony tried to wash off the blood that had splattered on his hand but the soap did nothing and he managed to stain two washcloths. Neither Chloe or Stephanie had awoke. The good doc had given them something heavy indeed. The poor doc had gotten some medicine of his own, unfortunately, and was not going to wake. Ever.
What have I done?
* * *
Slowly, the realization that he had killed a man began to take root. Even so, it wasn’t yet something tangible, something that made sense; it was only something that had happened and now had to be handled.