Dead Med, page 9
“I, uh… I have an appointment to get to,” I explain.
“An appointment?”
“With Patrice.”
He sucks in a breath when I tell him this. Despite the fact that we have all been encouraged to have regular visits with Patrice, he looks distinctly unhappy to hear that I am going to see her. Except why?
Is he worried about something I might say to her?
My gut is telling me Dr. Conlon is the one pushing students in the direction of Kovak’s clinic. After all, I heard about the clinic from the sign posted on the bulletin board outside the anatomy lab. And now, right after I confronted Kovak, he’s suddenly giving me a hard time. Maybe Kovak has shared my feelings about the clinic.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want me to talk to Patrice. He’s afraid of what I might reveal to her.
“Fine,” he finally says. “Go. Just don’t forget next time.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
Even though I’m in a rush, there is no way I am going to Patrice’s office without changing first. I swap out my scrubs for the T-shirt and jeans I had been wearing before, and I stuff my tainted sneakers in my locker. By the time I make it to Patrice’s office, she is waiting by the door, looking pointedly at her watch.
“Sorry,” I say breathlessly. “It was… I got… held up.”
She nods and steps aside to let me enter the office. I plop down on her sofa, and same as last time, the cushions collapse under my weight. A spring pops under my butt, and I sink even a little deeper.
Patrice takes her place in a chair across from me and folds one of her long legs over the other. Like last time, she’s got that pad of paper on her lap, and for a moment, I wonder if I have made a mistake coming here. I don’t like the idea of her writing down everything that I’m saying.
“I’m so glad you contacted me, Abe,” she says. “So few students have reached out this year. But I am here to help you.”
“Right.” I run my fingers through my hair, clutching at the strands hard enough that it hurts. “I know.”
“Is there something in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Uh…” I lean forward, my head now cupped between my giant hands. “I just…”
“What’s wrong? Tell me.”
Is this a bad idea? Once I tell Patrice, she’s going to go to the administration and tell them everything. She has to. “If I were to tell you something that was… not entirely legal, would you have to report it to the dean? Or, uh… the police?”
She arches an eyebrow. “It depends what it is. But yes, if you inform me of a crime that might put other people in danger, I am obligated to report you.”
Does this qualify as a crime that puts other people in danger? Several students have already died from drug overdoses. So I’m going to say yes.
“Abe? Do you have something to tell me?”
I don’t want to put my entire medical career at risk. I’m not like Mason, who has parents who can lawyer up and save him. But at the same time, I can’t do nothing. If there’s a chance that the clinic is at fault for the student overdoses, I have to say something.
Even if it puts my life at risk.
“I think…” I heave a deep breath. “I think I know where the drugs are coming from.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh?”
“Yes.” I try to shift on the sofa, and it groans ominously. “I work at a clinic that a lot of students go to. I… I think the clinic is distributing drugs to students.”
“You think?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
She nods, her pen poised on that notebook of hers. “Where is this clinic?”
I give her the address, all the while trying to push away a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I have started the wheels rolling on something that could end up destroying my life. I don’t know if I made a terrible mistake, but on the other hand, what else could I do?
“I’ll look into it,” she says.
“What are you going to do?”
She crosses her legs, her eyes on mine. “Don’t worry. I’ll be discreet.”
I debate if I should tell her my suspicions about Dr. Conlon. The more I think about it, the more certain I feel that he is the one pushing students in the direction of that clinic. But I’ve seen Patrice talking to him many times, and I am pretty sure that they are friends. Maybe even more than friends. She might not appreciate the unfounded accusations, so I decide to keep my fool mouth shut.
22
Heather wanted me to come to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving, but I begged off because Kovak offered to pay me double to work on Black Friday. I need money even more badly now that I’ve got a girlfriend. She always offers to pay, but I hate letting her do that.
Yes, I’m still working at the clinic. Patrice told me that the school is investigating the clinic but hasn’t come up with anything yet. That’s comforting, I suppose. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe the whole operation is on the up-and-up.
Yeah, right.
The clinic is especially busy—a lot of people coming in and out. A lot of patients who have a “cough that won’t go away.” I try not to think about it. If Patrice said they’re investigating, it’s out of my hands.
It’s close to midnight when we finish up with the last patient of the evening. Dr. Kovak is in very good spirits, which makes sense because we pulled in a fortune in cash tonight. He unlocks the desk drawer that contains all of the money, and he grins as he flips through the thick wad. He peels off a bunch of bills and thrusts them in my direction. “Thanks for your help tonight, Abe.”
He might not be thanking me if he knew that I reported him to my school. But I’m no dummy, so I take the money.
Just as I’m stuffing the bills into my wallet, there is a loud banging on the door to the clinic. A hoarse voice on the other side of the door yells, “You in there, Kovak? Let me in!”
“Shit,” Kovak mutters under his breath.
I look at him, confused. “Should we let him in?”
“We definitely should not.”
The banging continues, growing louder by the second. Whoever is behind the door is not going away. “Let me in! You can’t cut me off that way!”
Quietly, Novak lifts up a potted plant in the corner of the room, revealing a key hidden beneath. He brings the key back to the desk and unlocks the bottom drawer. He pulls out the gun nestled within and lays it down on the table.
My heart is ratcheting in my chest. “You don’t need a gun. I’m here.”
“Trust me,” he says. “You won’t be able to handle him on your own.”
Just as he says the words, the lock on the door splinters as it bursts open. The man standing before us is almost as big as I am, reeking of sweat, with his pupils so large that his eyes look black. His face is bright red, nearly purple.
And there’s a knife clutched in his right hand.
Kovak is right. I can’t take this guy on my own, not with a knife in his hand. But when Kovak raises the gun and points it at him, I am desperate to keep this from happening.
“You need to walk away, Hooper,” Kovak says.
But the man isn’t stopping. He barrels forward, his teeth bared. It’s clear that Kovak doesn’t want to shoot him, though, and that hesitation costs him. In a split second, the man, Hooper—unclear if that’s his first or last name—has crossed the room and twisted the gun out of Kovak’s hand. The gun falls to the floor as Hooper presses the blade of the knife against Kovak’s throat.
“I want everything you’ve got,” he snarls. “All the money and all the drugs.” He looks up at me with his black pupils. “Get it right now, or he dies.”
“The kid doesn’t know where all that stuff is,” Kovak manages. “I can get it for you if you let me go.”
“Stop stalling!” the man snaps at him. “I want it now!”
Hooper presses the knife into Kovak’s neck, slicing through his skin so that a drop of blood trickles down his throat. This guy is not listening to reason. He is going to murder my boss right here and right now.
Unless I do something to stop him.
The gun that fell out of Kovak’s hand is still on the floor. Hooper is too high to even register that it’s there. I have to be quick because if he figures out what I’m doing, he will kill Kovak. But if I don’t grab that gun, he might kill us both.
I do it fast. I scrape the gun up off the floor and wrap my fingers around it, pointing the muzzle in Hooper’s direction. All I meant to do was threaten him so he’d let go of Kovak, but the second he sees the gun in my hand, he loses his shit. He pushes Kovak to the floor and turns his attention to me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he growls at me. “You don’t even know how to use that thing!”
Well, he’s right about that. I’ve never shot a gun before. But it seems pretty self-explanatory.
Either way, I’m about to find out. Because this man is coming at me. And he is not stopping.
I pull the trigger on the gun. The shot that rings out is startlingly loud, and the kickback is strong enough that I almost feel like I’ve been shot. But the effect is instant. Hooper stops moving, his body goes limp, and he drops to the floor like a ragdoll.
I’ve never shot anyone before, but I was right—it wasn’t hard. On my very first try, I nailed Hooper right in the chest. He’s now lying on the floor, his eyes open but his body very still, and there is a pool of blood rapidly growing beneath him.
Oh Christ.
“He… he’s dead,” I choke out.
“No shit,” Kovak breathes.
I thought I was in trouble before, when I was simply working at a clinic where I suspected drugs were being sold. But now, things are much, much worse. I have murdered a man. I shot him, and now he’s dead at my feet.
I’m finished.
My legs give out beneath me, and I fall to my knees, burying my face in my hands. What the hell am I going to do? I am royally screwed. There is no coming back from this. My life is over.
“Kaufman,” Kovak snaps at me. “No time for prayers. Get back on your feet.”
I manage to raise my eyes from my hands to look up at him. Unlike me, Kovak doesn’t look the slightest bit shaken by the dead man on the floor of the clinic. He has squared his jaw, and he’s ready to get to business.
He’s acting like this has happened to him before.
“Abe,” he says in a voice that is gentler than before but still firm. “You need to pull yourself together—now. If somebody discovers a dead body in this clinic, we are both in a world of trouble.”
He’s right.
“But…” I shake my head. “What do we do?”
“First of all,” he says, “get off the floor.”
Obediently, I scramble to my feet. There’s blood all over my scrub pants and my hands. There’s blood everywhere.
“Good,” Kovak says. “Now we need to get rid of the body.”
“What?”
“Look,” he says impatiently, “this guy was a lowlife—nothing but trouble. That’s why I cut him off. Nobody will ever miss him. And the ones who do will be glad he’s gone. But if the police find him here, both of us are screwed. So we need to get him out of here. We need to make sure nothing connects us to his murder.”
I stumble backward, my bloodstained hands in the air. “I’m not helping you get rid of a dead body.”
“Fine. Do you want to call the police and spend the next ten to fifteen years in jail?”
“It was self-defense! He was coming at me!”
Kovak smirks. “And what do you think is going to happen when they dig deeper and find out what goes on at this clinic?”
“I… that has nothing to do with me.”
“Yeah? Well, good luck trying to prove that with the court-appointed attorney.”
He’s right. I look so guilty right now. I’m the one who shot the guy, and I was working at a clinic that sells drugs to students. Not just that, but I told Patrice about it, so it’s obvious that I knew what was going on. There is no way I will get out of this with my reputation unscathed.
I can kiss being a doctor goodbye. I can kiss Heather goodbye.
“I can’t do this without you,” Kovak says quietly. “I can’t even lift him without your help.”
That much is clear. This guy would be hard for me to handle on my own, and Kovak is a lot smaller than I am. It’s going to take two of us to get rid of him.
Am I actually considering this? Am I contemplating disposing of a dead body?
“What…” I swallow a lump in my throat. “What do we do with him?”
A slow smile spreads across Kovak’s face. “Don’t worry. I’ve handled situations like this before. I know just the place.”
23
We spend the rest of the night getting rid of the dead body.
By morning, Hooper is at the bottom of the lake about two hours away from here. We have cleaned all the blood off the floor of the waiting room, although if the police showed up, I’m sure they would be able to find traces of it. Probably big globs of it if they look hard enough. But Kovak says that when they do find Hooper’s body, it’s unlikely they will ever connect him with the clinic.
I just have to hope that he’s right.
The sun has already risen in the sky by the time I get home from the worst night of my life. My scrubs are covered in Hooper’s dried blood, and there is still some blood caked on my hands, but thankfully, I’ve got a coat to cover the worst of it. Mason is home, but he’s a heavy sleeper.
The first thing I do when I get back to our dorm room is head straight for the shower. I strip off my bloody scrubs and abandon them on the floor of the bathroom. I don’t know what exactly I’m going to do with them. I should probably burn them, except I’m not sure how. Anyway, I’ll worry about it later.
I step into the shower and turn the heat up as high as it will go. As it turns out, it goes up pretty high. But I welcome the steaming hot water streaming down on my sore body. The scalding pain takes my mind off of what I just did.
I killed a man. I threw his body into a lake.
I will never be the same.
Okay, I can’t let this drive me out of my mind. I’ll get rid of the scrubs, and eventually, this will all be a distant memory. Things are going great with Heather, and I’m going to keep it that way. I’m going to marry her and spend the rest of my life making her happy. She doesn’t have to ever know the terrible thing I did tonight.
I’m lathering my short red hair with shampoo when a sudden noise in the bathroom startles me. At first, I think it must be Mason, but then I realize that it’s Heather. Naked Heather. In the bathroom. With me.
And my bloody scrubs are on the floor.
I rip back the curtain to discover her standing in the middle of the bathroom, her eyes widening at the sight of the pile of bloody scrubs. “What are you doing?” I cry.
The shock on her face breaks my heart. “I…”
“I’m in the shower!” I shout at her, as if that fact weren’t painfully obvious. “You need to… to get out!”
I am screwing things up really badly. I have been desperate to go to the next level with Heather, and under any other circumstances, I would be celebrating. But I’m too scared to think straight. I need her to leave—now. Before she looks down at the floor.
I finish showering as quickly as I possibly can. Of course, the dirty scrubs are still on the floor, and I don’t know what to do with them. I roll them into a ball, wrap them in a towel, wrap a second towel around my waist, and then I come out of the bathroom.
When I enter the common area, Heather is sitting quietly on the couch. That seems like a good thing—she didn’t storm out in a fury—but I can tell she’s shaken. I also know that there’s no way she’s going to let me get away with this. Heather may be a pushover, but this is a big deal. I just kicked her out of the bathroom. Naked.
“Give me a second to get dressed,” I tell her. “Okay?”
She nods wordlessly. But her gaze is focused on the towel I’m clutching in my hands.
I throw on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I don’t know what to do with the scrubs, so I just stuff them under my mattress. I need a more permanent solution, but this will have to do for now. When I finally emerge from my bedroom, Heather is sitting on the sofa, hugging her arms to her chest. Her face is very white.
“What’s going on, Abe?” she asks.
I sink onto the couch next to her. I need to gauge exactly what she saw and what she’s thinking. Maybe she didn’t see the bloodstains and all she’s upset about is that I yelled at her. “What do you mean?”
Heather had been staring down at her lap, and she lifts her eyes. “What were those stains on your scrubs?”
Shit.
“What?” I say, stalling for time.
“It looked like blood.”
What else looks like bloodstains? Nothing comes to mind, so I tell her a partial truth: “I was helping Dr. Kovak with a procedure at the clinic. It got a little messy.”
Does she believe me? That wasn’t just a few squirts of blood. Those scrubs had been saturated. And now, she is looking at something, and I’m not sure what it is until I follow her gaze.
She’s looking at my fingernails. They still have blood caked into them.
“You weren’t wearing gloves during the procedure?” she asks me.
I rub my neck with the back of my hand. “I changed them at one point. I guess…”
This is not an adequate explanation by any means, and I can tell from Heather’s face that I’m not fooling anyone. But what the hell am I supposed to tell her? I can’t tell her the truth, that’s for sure. I wish I were a better liar.
She looks me straight in the eyes. “What were you doing last night, Abe?”
Great question.
“Just working,” I say in a hoarse voice.
“You swear?”
Why is she forcing me to lie to her? Why can’t she just freaking let this go? “I swear.”
