Authors: Elizabeth Brundage
The Doctor's Wife (3 page)
“Let’s medicate the poor bastard.” Someone yanks back his head and pries open his mouth, dropping in pills. He doesn’t swallow, but then he gags and chokes and the bitter powder burns his throat. Water comes next, and more pills, and he can’t breathe.
Surrender,
he tells himself,
you have no choice!
His body lax as butter, everything blurred and slow and jangling with silence.
I can’t fucking hear you!
he thinks dully. Their big hands, quivering faces, mouths open in laughter.
I can’t hear anything.
Surrender,
he tells himself,
you have no choice!
His body lax as butter, everything blurred and slow and jangling with silence.
I can’t fucking hear you!
he thinks dully. Their big hands, quivering faces, mouths open in laughter.
I can’t hear anything.
They put him in the trunk. The road vibrates under his head like a jackhammer. For the moment he is relieved to be left alone; he is relieved to be alive. And then it comes to him, suddenly, vividly, that he is going to die.
For months he has waited for this moment, feared it, and now that it is here, finally, now that it is happening to him,
yes, to him,
it is all the terror he imagined and worse.
yes, to him,
it is all the terror he imagined and worse.
Snowflakes on his face.
The sky is kissing you, Daddy,
he hears his daughter whispering. The men are talking but he cannot make out a word of it. He feels the prick of a needle, the warm drug rushing through him, bringing a taste into his mouth,
cotton candy,
and a feeling throughout his limbs that is not entirely unpleasant. The men smell of whiskey and triumph as they grip his body and pull him out of the dark place. Staggering with his weight, they bring him in their arms to a car and they put him into it, behind the wheel. Even in his dementia he knows it’s his own car, he recognizes the smell, Rosie’s paddock boots in the back, Henry’s chocolate bars for Cub Scouts, and they strap him in and turn the key and the engine screams. He wants to tell them that he can’t see, he’s in no shape to drive, but his mouth won’t work, his tongue is too big, and now the car is moving, it floats for a moment in midair, then tumbles through the dark like a clumsy animal. Suddenly he understands what they have done and he doesn’t care, really, it doesn’t matter anymore, and he forgets it, he forgives them all their stupidity, and he can only remember her face, her beautiful mouth.
Annie!
He screams inside his head. He is screaming and screaming.
Annie!
But it is too late. And his wife can’t hear him.
2
THEY WAIT UNDER the marquee of the X-rated movie house. There are six or seven of them, mostly men. The women like wilted flowers. Some of them carry signs, emblems of their helplessness. She does not know if they have just come out, or if they have been waiting all night. It is almost five, the sky still dark. It could be day or night to these people, she thinks; it is all the same. Sleep is a luxury none of them can afford. Inadequately dressed, they shake and dance in the cold, waiting for an opportunity. You’ll see cars driving up slow. Negotiating. Sometimes they get in, sometimes they don’t. Depends on the job. Depends what it entails. Mostly sex favors, things of that nature. That’s what happens when you’re desperate, Lydia thinks. You’ll do anything for money. Well, she knows about desperate. No one has to tell her. And she needs somebody desperate now.
She parks the rented Taurus across the street and watches for several minutes, trying to decide which one she wants. She’s been down here plenty with her church. A part of the city where no woman feels safe, even in daylight. The street lamps are already decorated with Christmas ornaments, but there’s no sign of merriment here. Just broken-down people with nothing to lose. Shaking in the cold. She considers the random poetry of their signs. She doesn’t want the one with AIDS, with her luck she’ll probably catch something, and
Hungry
just stands there, forlorn as a scarecrow.
Will Work for Food
smiles at her and gives a little wave. Looks like we have a winner, she thinks almost gleefully, and pulls out fast to the other side of the street. The man shuffles over, toking on his cigarette. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, trousers, black boots. She leans across the seat and puts the window down. “I need somebody strong. You strong?”
Hungry
just stands there, forlorn as a scarecrow.
Will Work for Food
smiles at her and gives a little wave. Looks like we have a winner, she thinks almost gleefully, and pulls out fast to the other side of the street. The man shuffles over, toking on his cigarette. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, trousers, black boots. She leans across the seat and puts the window down. “I need somebody strong. You strong?”
“Depends what for?”
“I need something moved.”
The man hesitates.
“It won’t take long. And it pays.”
“Pays what?”
“Fifty.”
“Don’t want no trouble.”
“Won’t have any.”
“All right, then,” he says, “I’ll go along with it.” He gets in and smiles, reaches out his big hand. “Name’s Ooms. Walter Ooms.”
“Hello, Mr. Ooms.”
His clothes carry the smell of cheap rum, a tawdry medicinal smell. It puts her in mind of her father, when she was just a girl in the oppressive silence of their house.
“You from around here?” she asks him.
“Up north. My daddy had a cow farm. But that’s all gone now. Anyway, he’s dead.”
The wind sweeps the snow along the street. Snowbanks, gray from exhaust, hunker like inert animals. It begins to sleet and the streets clear of people. Even the hookers disappear, their faces smeared by the hard wind. Cars twist and scatter on the ice.
Ooms adjusts the vent so the heat hits him in the face. “I got rolled last week; they took my coat. I got a sister down in Florida. I ought to just go down there, but we ain’t spoke in years. Don’t need no coat down there, don’t need no heat.” He snorts into a scrap of newspaper and coughs a few times.
“There’s some whiskey down there if you want it.”
“All right.”
“In the bag down there. That’ll warm you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He takes out the bottle, gulps it down. “That’s good,” he says. “That’ll do the trick.”
“Have as much as you like.”
“All right, then. Don’t mind if I do. Course I don’t drink much as a habit. Don’t have the taste for it.”
She knows this is a lie. “Unlike my husband, who can’t get enough of it. But he can’t get enough of most things.” She smiles. “It’s a personality disorder. He’s just a big spoiled baby.”
“I got married once. Long time ago. She left me. That’s when my life took a turn.”
Walter Ooms coughs and wheezes, spits out the window. It is a distraction, she realizes. His way of changing the subject. Stopped at a traffic light she spots a squad car in the Stewart’s lot. Two cops drinking coffee, laughing over some joke.
The circumstances were beyond my control,
she imagines telling them. The light changes and she turns onto the interstate ramp. The highway is dark, thick with snow.
The circumstances were beyond my control,
she imagines telling them. The light changes and she turns onto the interstate ramp. The highway is dark, thick with snow.
“Cigarette?” she offers, and he takes it readily, lights it up, drags deep. Ooms is a man who takes what is offered him, no matter what. He is shorter than her husband, wiry and nimble, a man accustomed to being on his feet. His face is smooth, glossy. He has the lazy eyes of a crook.
“Won’t be much longer now,” she tells him.
He smokes and nods, watching the road, his face going light and dark under the drooping highway lights. Riding in the car through the darkness with the strange man, she begins to feel a deepening sense of dread. It hums in her ear like a ghost. It makes her weak, her belly taut with fear. There’s no turning back now.
She gets off the interstate and heads down Valley Road, where they’d staged the accident. Now the car is dark and silent except for the distraction of the wipers, and her heart begins to pound with anticipation. The road runs parallel to the highway, an obscure shortcut with no posted speed limit, overlooked by police. Winding, heart-squealing curves and no guardrail, a thirty-foot drop on one side into a valley of trees so thick you can scarcely see the cars flying by on the interstate. One or two houses high on the hill, secluded in dense pockets of overgrowth. The houses are dark, and the road is empty. Three miles into it she pulls over and cuts the lights. Shadows swirl and scatter on the windshield. “Out,” she says.
“What for?” He looks around blandly. “Hey, lady, what is this?”
“You want your money or not?”
“I already done said I did.”
“I got five hundred dollars in my wallet, you interested in that?”
“Well, now, that depends.” He looks around at the wild darkness. “I hadn’t counted on working outside, out in the cold and whatnot.” His eyes graze her breasts, her legs. “I think that’s worth a little something extra, don’t you?”
For the first time she notices tattoos up his forearms, barbed wire around both wrists. A keen whine begins to churn in her chest. She thinks of reaching under the seat for her pistol, but she does not want him to see it just now. “You’ll get what you want, Ooms,” she promises, putting her hand on his leg. They get out. The wind pants and churns. Freezing rain falls from the sky like slivers of glass. She starts to shake. She gets the blanket from the trunk and hands him the flashlight and together they start down the hill, sliding in the snow, fighting the onslaught of branches that attack like some medieval infantry. The doctor’s car is nose down, obscured by the heavy trees and the opaque curtain of sleet.
“What in hell is that?” Ooms shouts.
“An accident. Hurry!”
Descending the hill, she slips on a sheet of ice and skids down on her back. Snow in her mouth, in her fists. Walter Ooms pulls her up and they move on, breathing hard, their bodies wet and brittle in the cold. The battered car ticks and shifts under the sighing trees, the smell of gasoline like a threat. “It’s leaking out of the tank,” Ooms warns.
She opens the driver’s door and grapples for a pulse, feels the beat of life in the doctor’s veins. Tears rush to her eyes. Prayers fall from her lips, soft as flower petals.
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
The doctor mutters for her help, his head lolling deliriously, his shirt saturated with vomit, a cumulus gust that makes her reel. She pushes him back against the seat, wincing at the gash on his forehead. “Please, mister, help me get him out.”
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
The doctor mutters for her help, his head lolling deliriously, his shirt saturated with vomit, a cumulus gust that makes her reel. She pushes him back against the seat, wincing at the gash on his forehead. “Please, mister, help me get him out.”
Ooms gathers the man in his arms, pulls him from the wreck, and unfolds him on the blanket. The doctor whines in pain like a suffering animal and her heart winds up with remorse.
Please don’t die on me now, Dr. Knowles.
They wrap him in the blanket like a mummy and start to drag him up. The hill is steep, the ground uneven and reckless, and they struggle with the burden, the wet wool of the blanket slipping in their hands. The plan in her head starts to dissipate. The plan was good, but now she doesn’t know. It’s so much harder in real life and it weakens her and she doesn’t think she can go through with it to the end. “I can’t,” she says, letting go, the blunt sting of ice on her fingertips. Ooms groans with effort as he drags the doctor up and she scrambles after him, shouting until her lungs ache for him to wait, if he will just please wait she will help him. He turns irritably and she trains the flashlight on him, his face ablaze in the spotlight, and she can see him for who he is, and she knows that he will want something from her now, far more than she is willing to give, and he will not let her alone until he gets it.
Please don’t die on me now, Dr. Knowles.
They wrap him in the blanket like a mummy and start to drag him up. The hill is steep, the ground uneven and reckless, and they struggle with the burden, the wet wool of the blanket slipping in their hands. The plan in her head starts to dissipate. The plan was good, but now she doesn’t know. It’s so much harder in real life and it weakens her and she doesn’t think she can go through with it to the end. “I can’t,” she says, letting go, the blunt sting of ice on her fingertips. Ooms groans with effort as he drags the doctor up and she scrambles after him, shouting until her lungs ache for him to wait, if he will just please wait she will help him. He turns irritably and she trains the flashlight on him, his face ablaze in the spotlight, and she can see him for who he is, and she knows that he will want something from her now, far more than she is willing to give, and he will not let her alone until he gets it.
3
ANNIE WAKES in a quandary at half past seven: the alarm didn’t go off; the children will miss their bus and she will have to drive them to school, which will undoubtedly make her late for her morning class—she is
always
late for her morning class—and she still has a stack of midterms to correct. She finds Michael’s note and crumples it up. She’d been awake when he came in last night but had feigned sleep, afraid to see his face. It had been cowardly of her, and it has left an ache in her heart like a thorn. She picks up the phone and tries to page him, picturing him rushing through the hospital corridors, or coaxing a swollen infant out of the womb, but she doubts that he will call her back and part of her hopes that he won’t. She feels weak with ambivalence, unable to imagine what he will say to her when he finally comes home. Yet she refuses to take all the blame for what’s happened. She’d warned him, after all. She’d given him plenty of time. At one point she’d even suggested a therapist, but Michael wouldn’t have any of that—
he
was a doctor, he didn’t need some stranger,
some fucking shrink
solving his goddamn problems.
always
late for her morning class—and she still has a stack of midterms to correct. She finds Michael’s note and crumples it up. She’d been awake when he came in last night but had feigned sleep, afraid to see his face. It had been cowardly of her, and it has left an ache in her heart like a thorn. She picks up the phone and tries to page him, picturing him rushing through the hospital corridors, or coaxing a swollen infant out of the womb, but she doubts that he will call her back and part of her hopes that he won’t. She feels weak with ambivalence, unable to imagine what he will say to her when he finally comes home. Yet she refuses to take all the blame for what’s happened. She’d warned him, after all. She’d given him plenty of time. At one point she’d even suggested a therapist, but Michael wouldn’t have any of that—
he
was a doctor, he didn’t need some stranger,
some fucking shrink
solving his goddamn problems.
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