Broken Hope, page 6
This person is fishing. That’s all. Maybe he or she does know who I am. Maybe they’ve even been one of my patients. How hard is it to find someone’s personal email? Probably not hard at all. Same with my address. But if the sender had something incriminating, they would be more specific, and if they think I’m going to fall for these tactics, they’ll be sorely disappointed.
Just as the elevator arrives, I stab out a definitive: Fuck off.
Then I step inside the lift, click a few tabs on my phone, and block iseeyou1003@bxmail.com from ever contacting me again.
8
The following morning begins early with a 7:00 a.m. meeting at Boston General. Although my four colleagues and I no longer round on inpatients—the facility has hospitalists for that—we still need to stay up to date with hospital developments, so we take turns to attend. This month’s meeting falls on me, after which I’ll carry back any relevant news. It was supposed to be Rishi’s turn, but given his come-and-go MS symptoms, I offered to attend in his place.
I arrive a few minutes early and head to the continental breakfast buffet. After filling my coffee cup, I pile a small plate with fruit and yogurt and take a seat behind one of the long conference tables in the auditorium. All the while, my thoughts hash out tonight’s revenge act.
The glimpse I caught of the dog abuser on Saturday confirmed he’s not much bigger than me. A routine dose of an intramuscular sedative should be enough. I have a small supply at home, pilfered here and there from our treatment room, where we keep the drugs on hand for any procedures that need a bit of calming. The vials’ left-over volumes are less monitored than the drug-dispensing cabinets in the hospital.
I rarely use injections in my drug and lugs, though. One, because I don’t like stealing from our supply, and two, because roofies usually do the trick. But entering the dog abuser’s home and seducing him probably won’t be an option, unlike the wife beater who was easy. Once I’d learned the Armani-suited guy’s after-work routine, I hit on him in his preferred bar, his ego never allowing the possibility that I could be anything but attracted to him. As I pressed up against him, acting all lovesick, I dropped a couple of pills into his drink. Plop plop, fizz fizz. I’m not proud to have a contact who can get me rohypnol, but without it, there’d be no trips to my barn, and thus, no justice.
Tonight, however, a syringe will be needed. Along with a quick zap of my Taser.
My revenge thoughts are broken as Kim Lombardi, one of the hospitalists, sits down next to me in the auditorium. I chew a spoonful of yogurt and raspberries and try to force the dog abuser from my mind.
“Any Fourth of July plans?” Kim asks in her flat cadence.
The holiday is still over two weeks away. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I shake my head and am about to respond when Dan Knudson, another hospitalist, plops down on the other side of me and cuts me off.
“How’s it hanging, ladies?” Before either of us can respond, he speaks over me and says, “Hey, Kim, I saw your sister won some big award in transplant surgery up there at the Mayo Clinic.”
“Her brother was named CEO of Jenzell Pharmaceuticals too,” I pipe in.
Dan looks impressed. “Wow, you working on your Nobel Prize yet?”
Kim shrugs noncommittally, her toffee-blond hair pulled back in a messy bun, her blouse a boxy linen. She doesn’t like talking about her accomplished family, but Dan does it anyway. I know this because the three of us were residents together, Kim two years behind me and Dan one. The two of them dated briefly, and the whole thing got messy. I tried to stay out of it, but that was difficult considering we were an enmeshed family during our training, whether we liked it or not. Dan is a competent doctor but surprisingly childish and cluelessly entitled. He thinks his side jokes don’t rub the wrong way, but they often do. Like now. He’s a horndog, too, finding double entendres in everything. Back in residency, he would joke about threesomes—as if any of us female residents would ever take him up on it.
He shifts to me. “So, Hope, what’s going on in your life?”
The way he emphasizes the word your makes me uncomfortable, as if he knows something I don’t. Paranoia on my part? Probably. But that email exchange yesterday put me on edge. I hope I did the right thing in blocking the sender.
“Fine. Stay mysterious.” Dan winks as the president of the Medical Staff takes her position behind the podium four rows below us. “Oh, by the way,” he adds quickly, “a patient I discharged is transferring to your clinic. It’s within walking distance from his home, so I gave him your name. I think he’s coming in this week to see you, but watch out. He’s a difficult one.”
I don’t get a chance to ask in what way the patient is difficult—demeanor? medical problems? communication issues?—because the med-staff president starts the meeting.
Guess it’ll be a surprise.
Ninety minutes later, I’m back on Congress Street, hurrying into our clinic’s building. My brow is damp with perspiration from the brisk mile walk, and my lightweight sweater sticks to my skin. Once inside, I tug at the fabric and stride up to the lobby’s coffee kiosk. Interacting with the big-haired, judgmental barista is the last thing I care to do, but I want—need—more caffeine.
True to form, she’s already trashing someone.
“And you should see how fat she’s gotten,” Miss Judgie says to her fellow barista, who straightens when I approach. Her expression suggests she doesn’t enjoy her coworker’s gossip any more than I do.
After getting my coffee, I pass by the law office on the ground floor and head up to the clinic on the fourth, my mind back on the dog abuser. Usually I’m better at compartmentalizing, better at focusing on the task at hand, but the ogre’s behavior has me on edge. Every moment I delay on getting to him is an extra moment of misery for the dog. I can only hope the presence of houseguests led to a temporary improvement in the German shepherd’s treatment.
Tonight. Just make it through to tonight.
To avoid encountering the day’s first patients, who will be in our waiting room by now, I sidestep the glass front of our clinic and enter through the back hallway. The only people I see on my trek through our maze of exam rooms are our nurse Alice, who’s weighing a patient, and my colleague, Dr. Irene Montgomery. She’s chatting on the phone at her cubby, describing her cah’s engine troubles, her Boston accent thicker than the rubber tires on that cah. We wave to each other in greeting.
According to my EMR schedule, my first appointment of the day is a new patient: a forty-three-year-old man with a skin boil. I click open the tab that holds his outside medical records, which have already been scanned in for me to peruse. As soon as I see his recent hospitalization for pneumonia, I realize this is the patient Dan Knudson mentioned to me at the hospital meeting. Judging by the man’s lengthy problem list, it is now understandable what Dan meant by the patient being difficult. High blood pressure, autoimmune disease, recurrent infections. Multiple drug allergies too. At least today’s skin boil should be easy to manage.
When I enter the room and introduce myself, the first thing I notice aside from him wearing a mask, which, considering his medical history, is a wise choice, is that his height and build are similar to the dog abuser’s. I calculate the sedative dose I’ll need for tonight.
Focus, Hope. Focus.
After reviewing the patient’s past medical history with him, he says, “My pneumonia is all better. The only thing I’m here for today is this.” He lifts the side of his Homer Simpson T-shirt and points to a walnut-size boil on his abdomen, its red base topped by a tense, yellowish hue.
Despite my best efforts to concentrate on his problem, I picture the German shepherd in the junk-filled backyard. Does she have any boils that need to be lanced?
“…could’ve gone to urgent care for it,” the patient is saying, “but I figured it would be good to get established with you anyway. You can drain a boil, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” A clump of his gelled hair flops over his eyes and lands on his mask. He pushes it back. “But I can’t have any penicillins or cephalosporins. Too allergic.”
With my laptop in hand, I usher him back to the treatment room, where I numb and prep the tissue area. All the while he tells me about his numerous hospitalizations (“kidney infection back in March”) and his allergic reactions (“such bad throat swelling they almost had to intubate me”), but my thoughts keep drifting to the German shepherd, who I’ve taken to calling Shelly in my mind.
Is she thirsty right now?
“…my thyroid was all out of whack…”
How hot is it supposed to get today?
“…and my God, the hives, so many hives…”
Is her chain wound up again?
“…doxy and clinda too…”
Not much longer, Shelly, not much longer.
“You okay, Doctor?”
I snap back to the patient on the table and realize I’m still compressing his boil, even though no pus remains. Alice, who entered the treatment room a few minutes ago to collect the culture swab I swiped over the wound, stares at me from behind her jeweled eyeglasses.
“Um, yes. Yes, I’m fine.” My face warms in embarrassment at my mind-wandering. “Just want to make sure I got it all. Let me prescribe you an antibiotic, and we’ll get you on your way.”
I step to my laptop on the counter near the sink and return to his electronic chart. Alice leaves with the culture tube and its pus-drenched swab. While I review the patient’s home instructions with him—wound care, dressing change, what to watch for—I type in a prescription for clindamycin (no penicillins or cephalosporins—check) that will go to the patient’s pharmacy, which Alice has already entered into the EMR.
Then, with my mind back on poor Shelly the shepherd, I hit Send.
9
Not far from my barn, I grab the chain attached to the collar around the dog abuser’s neck and yank it. The wiry man flops over sideways onto the grass, and a wheeze sprays from his mouth. Maybe the collar is too tight. I don’t take pleasure in that, but at least I gave him more than twelve inches of wiggle room from the flagpole, unlike what he gives his poor dog.
In my long-sleeved, padded unitard, which plumps up my linen suit like Spandex in reverse, I squat down next to him. A knife rests in my hand in case he gets grabby, but given I’ve duct-taped his wrists behind his back, that seems unlikely. I bound his ankles too. My disguise, including my prosthetic nose and chin, are too warm for the mid-June evening. Rivulets of sweat drip down my crevices.
On the horizon, the sun sets in glimmering rays of orange. Without another soul for miles, there’s no one to hear us. If he tried crying for help during the night or while I was at work, it was pointless.
I fan my arm toward the hilly and wooded terrain. “How are you enjoying yourself? Are my accommodations up to your standards?” I give another sharp tug on his chain. “At least it’s pretty. That’s more than your dog gets. Nothing but old tires and corroded engines for her.”
The abuser is too weak to offer much, but he does manage to rasp that he’ll kill me and then calls me a crazy—insert C word—just like the wife beater did last month. His neck cords jut out beneath the leather collar, and his face, which is burned and chapped from being in the sun all day, bloats like an overripe tomato. Although lean and short, his muscle definition is impressive for a man in his fifties, and I imagine him pumping out a couple hundred push-ups a day. If he were my patient, I’d commend his commitment to fitness.
I check my watch. Unlike with the wife beater, my hands aren’t shaking. Is that because I am beyond furious with this man for abusing his dog or is it because I am getting unhealthily comfortable with all this?
“Twenty-three hours and thirty-four minutes,” I say. “I guess that’s long enough to make my point, don’t you think?”
He doesn’t respond, just lies on his side in his T-shirt and grass-stained jeans, breaths heavy, wrists taped together behind him. Although he might not want to give me the satisfaction of a response, it’s obvious his anger is only a cover. A wariness sharpens his eyes, and his gaze flits back and forth between the six-inch blade in my hand and my altered face, as if he is fearful of what I might do.
“Then again, maybe I should just leave you here. It’s not like Shelly”—I hold up my knife-free hand—“Sorry, that’s my name for your German shepherd. It’s not like Shelly gets to pack up her crate and go home.”
The uncertainty in his eyes grows.
The moment I finished clinic yesterday, I hurried back to my loft and drove to the dog abuser’s house. Dressed in the same costume I’m wearing now, with the fake realtor badge pinned to my blazer and a syringe full of sedative in my pocket, I rang the guy’s doorbell. After giving him some nonsense talk about a property evaluation, I showed myself in and shot him with my Taser.
Once he was twitching on the floor, I jabbed the sedative into his arm, put him on the green tarp I keep in my SUV for these occasions, and dragged him out his side garage door and into the back seat of my car. Took a fair amount of heaving and huffing, but he’s not much heavier than me, and my upper body strength is first-rate. It’s the bigger ones who give me grief. I have to dope them up lightly first and then coerce them into my car by a number of means—seduction, a personal threat to out their behavior, a knife—whatever is best suited for the occasion. It’s not until they are in the vehicle that I can fully sedate them.
Was I nervous someone might be watching me last night? Yes. Especially since the email sender appears to know my condo number. But I was careful and vigilant, and that includes putting a fake license plate on my car like I always do during my tune-ups. I’m confident I was alone. Even if those emails do mean someone is on to me, I had no choice but to act on the dog’s behalf. I had to risk it. Otherwise Shelly would still be tied up outside instead of being cared for at a shelter. To be safe, though, I will put future tune-ups on hold. At least for now.
When we reached my barn, I fitted the dog abuser with a collar ($29.99 from Petco) and a chain ($44.99 from Ace Hardware) and hooked him up to the flagpole. I slipped a padlock between two chain links near the pole and did the same around his collar’s attachment. It seemed unlikely he’d free his hands while I was gone, but if he did, I wanted to make sure he couldn’t remove the chain and break away.
And then I left.
For twenty-three hours and thirty-four minutes.
No food. No water. No shelter. Just him, the overnight insects and wildlife, and the daytime sun. Same as his dog gets.
He must have freaked out when he woke up from the sedative last night and found himself chained to a flagpole, wrists and ankles bound.
“Thank goodness it didn’t rain,” I say to him. I place a hand over my padded bosom in mock relief and sit back on my padded butt. “Then again, if it had, you would have been able to enjoy the full sensory experience your dog gets.” My tone hardens. “Day in and day out.”
I reach over to touch his burnt cheek, but he flicks his head away.
“Guess I should’ve left you some sunscreen. Maybe some lip balm too. Shelly doesn’t get any comforts, though, so why should you?”
I stare at his moist crotch and the ground around him.
“You wet yourself, and I’m sorry for that, but at least you’re not sitting in your own shit like Shelly.”
I scoot back and reach into the backpack I brought with me. I pull out my water bottle, a big thirty-two-ounce container. Uncapping it, my eyes never leaving his, I take a long, cool drink. Then I yank out a chocolate nut bar and start eating.
“You’re insane,” the dog abuser sputters. He manages to push himself back up into a seated position and leans against the flagpole.
My forced calm vanishes. “Insane? Me? You want to know what’s insane? Having a dog when all you do is ignore and mistreat it.”
I duckwalk back toward him, his gaze glued to my knife. I hadn’t planned on cutting him, but I’m tempted. His dog has wounds and scabs all over. Why shouldn’t the abuser too? But I hold myself back. With every tune-up, I fear the line between the brutes and me grows thinner. I have to be careful not to cross it.
“Shelly is fine, by the way,” I spit out. “Thanks for asking.”
He squints his eyes but offers nothing.
“I dropped her off at a rescue shelter and told them I found her wandering in a field. I would have kept her myself, but it’s not practical.”
I would have, too, if not for my HOA forbidding large dogs and the terror a German shepherd might instill in Diva. I don’t want my cat leaping out the window into Massachusetts Bay.
“They promised they would patch Shelly up and find her a good home,” I say. “She’s a beautiful dog and too beaten down by life to be much of a threat. They checked her for a microchip, but I was pretty confident a bully like you wouldn’t have put one in. Who knows when Shelly was last seen by a vet?”
The man’s squint intensifies, and a deep groove forms between his wiry eyebrows, half of which have gone gray. “Who. The hell. Are you?”
I don’t begrudge him the question. It’s the one I hear most often. I also don’t give him an answer. Instead, I crouch close to him and run the tip of my blade down his cheek. His narrowed eyes grow wide, and I feel his body tense. He has no idea what I will do, and honestly, I don’t either. I’m too caught up in the rush of revenge.
“If you ever,” I whisper into his ear, “ever, ever, ever, even think about getting another pet, I will gut you. I will drag you back out here and gut you.”
My knife drops to his trim belly. This time, he can’t hold back his sharp inhalation of fear.
“Because I’ll be watching you. Do you understand?” When he doesn’t respond, I shout into his ear, “Do you understand?”
He bobs his head yes so frantically it thumps against the flagpole. On contact, the metal reverberates like a gong.
