The Family Doctor

by Debra Oswald

  She did notice one guy—a man with a receding hairline that slid into a pepper-and-salt ponytail tied with a strip of leather. He kept strolling past Paula’s booth, trying to catch her eye. She steadfastly avoided meeting his gaze, but that didn’t discourage him.

  On his fourth stroll past, ponytail guy said, ‘You look lonely.’

  ‘I’m waiting here for my boyfriend,’ she replied.

  ‘Yeah? That boyfriend’s been keeping you waiting a while, yeah? I could keep you company until he shows up, yeah?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’d rather wait on my own.’

  She flashed him a steely enough look that he tilted back on his heels then retreated to one of the round tables. But he sat facing her and she could feel his eyes still on her.

  Paula was thinking she should go home and never come back to this dismal place. She turned to rummage in her handbag on the seat beside her—partly to avoid the staring of ponytail guy and partly to find a roll of mints to counteract the cloying taste of the bourbon.

  ‘Is that clown bothering you?’

  It was John Santino, standing right next to her booth seat. The first thing Paula noticed was that his face was as shiny as Anita had described. Glossy enough that even the dim overhead lamps bounced brightly off his forehead and cheekbones. The man must exfoliate with sulphuric acid and coarse sandpaper to have a complexion like that. Paula couldn’t believe she was distracted in a moment like this, thinking about Santino’s skin care choices.

  ‘If that guy’s creeping you out …’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine,’ Paula replied. ‘I told him I’m waiting for my boyfriend.’

  Santino nodded and twisted slightly away from her. Paula worried that she’d discouraged him too much and squandered her chance. But a moment later, he swung back with a charming smile.

  ‘So are you really waiting for your boyfriend or are you waiting for a guy who isn’t a loser to say hello?’

  Santino turned the smile up full bore, like a naughty but adorable kid. This must be his standard manoeuvre and Paula could see how it might work on some people. She responded with a slight smile, wanting to keep him talking. But then she found that meeting this man’s gaze made her nauseous, so she quickly looked down at the tabletop.

  He interpreted that as a coy, flirtatious move by Paula—an invitation of sorts. So now he sounded even more confident. ‘I mean, I’ll cruise out of your way if you like … or I could buy you another drink.’

  Paula froze. This was exactly what she had hoped might happen, but now that she found herself here she felt too panicky to follow through.

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ muttered Santino, suddenly sulky, offended. ‘You saw me on TV. That’s why you won’t have a drink with me.’

  ‘Sorry? I don’t know what … Are you on TV? Sorry. I don’t really watch TV so I never recognise famous people.’

  Santino’s mood bounced back again, like a kid who flipped between petulance and exuberance in a flash. ‘Cool. You don’t watch TV, but I see you do drink—what is that? Bourbon?’

  Paula nodded.

  ‘I’ll get us a couple more.’

  She watched him walk over to the bar. Compared to other men in the place, Santino was attractive in a certain way, with a handsome enough face, meticulous haircut, good jeans, expensive leather jacket hanging off one shoulder, tailored shirt chosen to indicate the well-muscled physique underneath.

  He returned to the table with a bourbon for her, a double bourbon for himself. They clinked glasses and Paula sipped at it cautiously.

  ‘Can I just explain,’ Santino said, ‘that this low-grade place is not my usual style. But I’ve attracted a bit of media attention lately, so if I want a quiet drink, if I don’t want to be harassed, I have to come somewhere like this.’ He hooted a little laugh. ‘No one I know is going to show up here.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Paula.

  ‘Gotta say, I’m surprised to see a classy woman like you in Protozoa.’

  ‘Well, my reasons are similar to yours. Don’t want to run into anyone I know.’

  ‘I’ll pay that.’ Santino smiled. ‘I’m John, by the way.’

  ‘Hello, John.’

  ‘This is where you say your name.’

  ‘Oh. Well, uh, call me Doc.’

  ‘Short for … ?’ he asked. ‘Or because you’re a doctor?’

  Paula shrugged.

  ‘Mm. Intriguing,’ he said.

  Santino wasn’t intrigued for long. Being an A-grade narcissist, he preferred to talk about himself and Paula let him rattle on with a self-pitying rave for thirty minutes. The guy was puffed up with outrage at the way he’d been persecuted. Without mentioning the actual crime, he gave Paula his version of the last few months—the way he’d been falsely accused, put through a trial, forced to spend buckets of money, upset to see his family traumatised. Even now he’d been acquitted, people were still giving him shit. And it wasn’t just cops and journalists. His own girlfriend was shooting him filthy looks, as if he was some terrible monster, even though he’d been acquitted.

  Paula made sympathetic noises. She sipped on her one drink and declined a refill, claiming she’d already had several. But Santino went to the bar and brought back two double bourbons for himself. On top of whatever he’d drunk earlier, the guy was clearly well pissed by now.

  As he complained about the way he’d been wronged, Santino drifted away from slick charmer and closer to angry guy.

  ‘There are women out there,’ he said, skewering Paula with his hard brown eyes, ‘I mean, present company excluded—but there are bitches out there who want to tear your balls off.’ He smirked. ‘Well, those bitches can try but they don’t always get away with it.’

  Then he frowned at Paula, registering the look on her face. She realised she must have let some disgust creep into her expression.

  ‘Bad unfair shit can happen,’ he insisted. ‘Don’t believe me? It can happen.’

  ‘I know unfair shit can happen.’

  ‘Too fucking right it can. You were looking at me just now like …’

  ‘No, no, sorry if I seemed—it’s not …’ Paula sighed. ‘Listening to you got me thinking about some of the stuff I’ve been going through.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Paula had rehearsed the next part in her mind and now seemed the right moment to drop it in.

  ‘My husband died of cancer eighteen months ago,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry to hear that. My condolences.’

  ‘Thanks. It was hard. Afterwards, I had killer insomnia.’

  ‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ moaned Santino.

  ‘I thought if I didn’t get some sleep, I’d go crazy.’

  ‘I know that feeling,’ he said. ‘All the shit in your head whirling round and fucking round. What’s your fix for that? Valium?’

  ‘Wasn’t strong enough for me.’

  ‘So what else?’

  ‘Well, because I’m a doctor, I have access to serious drugs. Oxycontin, Vicodin.’

  ‘Handy.’

  ‘Hmm, yes but no. I got addicted—well, dangerously close. In the end, I hauled myself off the opioids entirely. All good.’

  Santino nodded, but then he squinted at Paula. He obviously fancied himself as an astute reader of people. ‘But what’s going on now?’

  ‘Oh …’ Paula sighed, reluctant, as if he was drawing this out of her. ‘A few months ago, my best friend died and I kind of lost the plot. In my bag, right now, I’ve got a syringe loaded up with Dilaudid.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘It’s hydromorphone.’

  ‘Sounds intense.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a Schedule 8 painkiller. The thing is, I know if I use it, I’ll feel mighty good for a while …’

  ‘Like, you’re saying it’s an excellent high?’

  ‘Ooh yeah,’ Paula said with a sly smile. ‘Especially if you inject it. You feel so fucking wonderful and then you have the best sleep.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But
I don’t want to slide back into that. If I go home now, I can’t trust myself not to use it. That’s why I’m staying out, so I’m not tempted. Hoping I can talk some sense into myself.’

  ‘Right. Right. I get you.’ Santino’s gaze flicked to Paula’s handbag, like a hungry child envisaging a cupcake.

  ‘Excuse me a sec,’ said Paula, dabbing at her eyes as if she were on the verge of tears. ‘I need to go to the ladies.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll be right here,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep talking.’

  Paula took her handbag with her as she hurried to the toilets. She hoped her clumsy rushed manner would be explained by the sad tale of loss and addiction she’d just told Santino. It brought her a perverse kind of satisfaction that she was using the truth of her life to draw this man in.

  The ladies room of Protozoa was as putrid as you would expect—cramped, with grimy broken tiling, a pervasive smell made up of mildew, urine and acrid cleaning products, rustcoloured leaks down the walls and mysterious puddles on the floor.

  Paula stood at the basins and dabbed cold water on her temples and neck to calm down. Faced with herself in the mirror, seeing the blonde hair, she was jolted by images of Brooke and Kendra and then of Rochelle. As she stared at her reflection, her own long hair became Stacey’s beautiful hair splayed out on Paula’s living room floor soaked in blood. Her heart rate shot up and her breathing accelerated. This was PTSD. This was a kind of insanity. She was in no fit state to make extreme choices. She needed to find some professional psych help. And right now, she needed to go straight home and avoid doing anything crazy.

  By the time she’d settled herself enough to head back out into the bar, John Santino was standing up beside the booth where they’d been sitting.

  ‘Hey, listen, while you were gone, I did some thinking,’ he said with a seductive smile. ‘Staying in this dump is making both of us depressed. Let’s go to my place.’

  Paula was on the edge of saying no, making an excuse to slide out of there quickly and never come back. Then she saw Santino lift his glass to drain the last of the bourbon, and she noticed the ropy tendons in his wrist. His shirtsleeves were folded back to the elbow to reveal his powerful forearms. Paula imagined those arms heaving Kendra Bartlett over the guardrail and slamming Brooke Lester against a table. She imagined him picking up baby Ava with his strong hands and shaking that tiny body until her head flailed back and forth on her fragile neck.

  ‘Sounds good,’ Paula said.

  Santino slid his arms into his leather jacket and handed Paula her coat, smiling as if he’d always known she would accept his invitation.

  ‘Is it far?’ asked Paula. ‘Can we walk? Be good to sober up a bit.’

  As they walked the half kilometre to his apartment, Paula found she could manage surprisingly well on the high heels, having grown accustomed to them over the last three nights.

  Santino was clearly drunk and at one point he had to grip the edge of a bus shelter to steady himself. He talked nonstop. It was destiny that the two of them had met tonight because they had so much in common. He understood her grief because his girlfriend died around the same time as Paula’s husband. Like her, he was nowhere near over it. And then, with all the pressure from the police and the court case and some other shit that was going on in his life right now, he was feeling the pain of it hard.

  ‘You know what I believe, Doc?’ He lowered the pitch of his voice, going for a combination of intimacy and profundity. ‘I believe there are times when people like you and me—people who’ve been through a lot—we should go easy on ourselves. You know what I’m saying?’

  His gaze kept shooting towards her handbag, as if he could X-ray through the leather to see the Dilaudid inside. Presumably he wasn’t aware of how obvious he was being about his fixation on the contents of the bag.

  ‘You do whatever you need to do to get through the dark times, you know?’ he continued. ‘And if that means sometimes you rely on alcohol or a drug to make you feel good, give you a little bit of peace—well, hey, that’s okay.’

  He smiled at Paula and she returned the smile. His mind was moving exactly where she had envisaged it would.

  It was almost midnight on a Sunday, so there weren’t many people around when they turned into the Darlinghurst side street. As Santino punched in the code at the entrance to his apartment building, Paula was relieved to see there was no one around to notice him go inside with a blonde woman.

  They travelled up in the lift to the fifteenth floor and Santino unlocked the front door of his apartment, ushering Paula inside with a welcoming flourish.

  There was an entrance hall with a chrome and glass side table and a mirror with a chrome frame. The hallway was otherwise a dark tunnel, swathed in charcoal carpet and black-on-black wallpaper—matte black background with shiny black embossed circles on top.

  Turning the corner out of the hall, the apartment opened up into a huge space, with the kitchen and living room looking out over the night cityscape through floor-to-ceiling windows. The place must be worth a packet—paid for by his family, according to Anita.

  The interior was a symphony in black, white and chrome. Two white leather sofas, black high-gloss kitchen, glass-and-chrome dining table with white leather chairs. There was another large mirror—how clichéd a narcissist could this guy be?—and the only artworks were a couple of enormous chiaroscuro photos of naked women.

  Santino’s face, its surface as glossy as his apartment, had settled into an expression of expectant smugness about his home. Paula made the impressed ‘mm’ noise she knew he was expecting.

  ‘Cleaners haven’t been this week,’ he said as he darted about, kicking a few items of clothing into a corner and sweeping takeaway containers into a cupboard. Otherwise the place was pretty neat, or at least uncluttered, with lots of hard, bare surfaces. The opposite of homey. Paula tried to imagine bringing a baby into this apartment.

  ‘Another bourbon?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she replied.

  Santino dumped his leather jacket onto a bench and said, ‘Want to take your coat off?’

  ‘Might keep it on for now, thanks. Feeling a bit frozen through from the walk.’

  He shrugged. He didn’t care about taking another look at her body under her coat. In fact, there was no sexual tension in the room, thankfully—that was pretty clear. His only interest was the Dilaudid. Paula held on tight to her handbag, the shoulder strap slung across her torso.

  ‘I see you hanging on to your bag there, Doc,’ he said with a little hoot of laughter.

  ‘Ha. Yeah. Do you live here alone?’

  ‘Well, my current girlfriend’s been living here. She’s away right now.’

  Away in hospital having been assaulted, suffering an abruption, requiring a blood transfusion, now nursing a newborn and too afraid to tell the truth about her predicament.

  Santino handed Paula a glass with a generous splosh of bourbon.

  ‘To be totally honest with you, I’m not sure how much longer I can put up with her bullshit,’ he said. ‘She was sweet when we first got together but, fuck me, she’s turning out to be a crazy fucking bitch. Do you mind me saying that?’

  She shrugged and Santino chose to interpret that as her being fine with it. He was very drunk now, running off at the mouth.

  ‘Now she’s sicking the cops onto me all over again. I mean, fuck … I don’t wanna go into the whole thing with you, but my girlfriend, she’s meant to be on my side, right? But now she keeps looking at me like I’m going to kill her or something. And that’s because of the bullshit the cops and those other losers put in her stupid head. She’s driving me crazy, just when everything should be good, you know? Like, last week, we got into a bit of an argument. Because she was giving me the, y’know, the “You’re a bad guy” look—and she got me so riled up …’

  He flicked his gaze in the direction of the glass-and-chrome dining table. He didn’t say anything, but Paula understood why: he had slammed his pregna
nt girlfriend against the hard edge of that table repeatedly.

  Again, there were two compelling thoughts suspended in Paula’s head:

  This was crazy, and she should make some excuse to leave this place before she did something she would almost certainly regret for the rest of her life.

  If she was going to do something, it would have to be now. The time pressure was clear. Because Brooke was still in hospital, no suspicion would fall on her if Santino were to die tonight. If Paula did nothing, it was probable that Brooke would move back in here with him. There was a high likelihood that he would hurt her, maybe kill her. He might also hurt the baby. And then it would be too late for Paula to do anything to keep them safe. She would have missed her chance.

  Santino shook his head. ‘No way I’m letting that brainless slut tell me what I can and can’t do with my own kid. I never know what she’s gonna do to me next. The point is, accidents can happen. Accidents fucking happen.’ He bunged on a smile, to mark the end of that rant.

  ‘Anyway, let’s sit down,’ he said. ‘Good to chill out, have a drink, not be around losers. Yeah?’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  Paula sat on one of the white leather sofas and Santino sat on the other, facing her. He tipped his head towards the handbag Paula was holding by her side. ‘Because you’re a doctor, you can procure the really good stuff, am I right? You can do it nice and safe, pure, proper dose, the whole bit.’

  ‘Well, that’s true. But …’

  ‘Look, I’m in a place right now where I really need a little bit of the good stuff. But because I’ve had the cops breathing down my neck, it’s been tricky to get my hands on anything. Anything high quality, I mean. And fuck it, I deserve something good after what I’ve been through.’

  Paula nodded and let him keep talking.

  ‘This is what I’m thinking, Doc: you want to resist temptation, you don’t want to use that—what’s the name again?’

  ‘Dilaudid.’

  ‘Here’s an idea: we could share what you’ve got in there. Half each.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think … I mean, the dose I’ve got is—’

  ‘Okay. Okay. Not worth splitting. Here’s another idea: I buy it from you, take the temptation away. I get some of the good stuff, prescribed by a doctor—ha!—and you keep yourself lovely and clean? Everyone’s happy.’