Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  Lately, with the tourniquet pulled and the heroin hit plunging into my veins, my head flopping over on my shoulders like Christ on the cross, the drug took me on a real, magical carpet ride, to a place where silver clouds sparkled, and the sky glowed intergalactic blue, like shimmering ocean overhead. But coming off the shit? Russian Roulette. Ka-pow. My skull exploding with pain, stomach twisted like drenched towels, the walls bathed in the blood of my soul. You have to stop shooting this shit up before you fucking die. Before your husband Svidi finds out. I shook off the trance, pulled my dead ass over my feet, Chapter 12 pen ready, and began scanning a thick stack of unsigned medical charts. But I wavered in place and holding my palms flat on the counter to keep from collapsing. I pushed the intercom button on the wall.

  “Yes Dr. Malhotra?”

  “Louise, could you get me a coffee from downstairs?” I said, rubbing my palms hard against my face. I drank coffee like a truck driver. “Double espresso, straight up.”

  “Sure thing Carlina,” the voice sighed.

  I folded my arms on the desk and placed my head down, hanging on by the barest threads of consciousness. I wondered if death might feel similar to being suspended in animation. Mortality didn’t scare me. What terrified me was getting caught. What everyone might think of me. How it would destroy my reputation. My reputation. Most assuredly, I would soon get dead-ass busted. Medical license revoked, the failed gynecologist. The hatching of my greatest mortal fear: That the world would finally discover the real me, the authentic con-artist lurking within, a snake from the trailer park slithering amongst them. None of this was my fault. It’s like I’d drawn an unlucky number from the cosmos. Or done something really bad in my past life to deserve this affliction. No, I couldn’t help it at all. Chalk it up to bad DNA. I’d been born this way. While others attended school dances, celebrated graduations and participated in sports or the fine arts, I grew up in a trailer park. Which taught me that being easy on the eyes and exceling in perverted sex got me everything I ever desired from men. The trailer park also taught me how to do street drugs. The stronger the better. I never lacked self-awareness. Sex and narcotics lasered together into a pin-tight focal point centering on the face of the monster, inside the eye of a Cyclops. It was my own personal catch-22. I couldn’t have sex without the drugs and I couldn’t afford the drugs without the sex. Since my youth, this cycle had rotted me from the inside out. But I broke out. Churches. Foster families. And survived.

  A metallic voice began calling my name from inside my lab coat. I leaned against the counter and ass-dialed my psychotic, stalker, plastic-surgeon husband Svidi Malhotra. “Hello? Hello? Carlina? Are you okay?” I squeezed at the phone in my pocket until it disconnected. Now the intercom. “Dr. Malhotra?” I fell back into my chair. Limp. Helpless. Still slathered in heroin hangover. “Carlina, are you there?” I pushed down the button. “Yeah?”

  “You want me to bring it back to you?” I’d forgotten all about the coffee.

  “By all means.”

  This was a real predicament. I mulled it over. I couldn’t really decide which I hated more. My life sober or my life as a junkie. After a decade of sobriety, I’d smoked, or was it snorted, my way right back into the lifestyle. And frankly, now the consequences were piling on. The walls and the ceilings were bulging in with all my lies. Like they might cave in at once and crush me. I wiped sweat off my forehead, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink. The high-style, choppy blonde hair falling about the shoulders, prominent yet delicate brow bone, eyes to die for. But my complexion? Not a match. Pale. Ghostly. The white physician’s coat had grown baggy and loose about my shoulders, which gave the effect of wearing an over-sized pillowcase, and my neck had taken on that druggie, pencil-thin, looks-easy-to-snap-appearance. I glanced away, and my eyes fell right on the truth of it all: The box under my desk.

  A box of unpaid bills and threatening letters from creditors sat under my desk. The truth. None of my employees had a clue. Not the data entry secretary, not any of the nurses, not even the phlebotomist. None of my staff knew about my secret box. And all the unpaid utility bills, the double-billing of Medicare, the fraud, the deceit. All thanks to heroin. The pin pricks in my thighs, between my toes, or any place I could shoot up without being discovered, I could hide this. But the drug? It was eating everything around me. No one in the clinic realized we were on the brink of bankruptcy. That we should count ourselves lucky that when we came in today there weren’t chains on the doors. Or that the water and the lights worked. A soft tapping of heels in the hallway turned into loud knocking on my office door.

  “Come in.” The door lever twisted and my new hire entered, a bright eyed and smiling nurse fresh from a two-year LPN program. Her face was perky, young, undamaged, holding my espresso with the eager expression of a contestant about to accept a prize on a stage.

  “Good morning Dr. Malhotra.”

  “To you too,” I mumbled.

  “Here,” she blinked, grinning. “And Mrs. Biers is ready to be seen.”

  I took it. “Audrey, please call me by my first name, it makes me feel old when you hit me with formality. We go for “language-casual” around the joint. Okay?” I hated the presumption of authority that came along with titles or badges. Call it a weakness from being raised in poverty with Child Protective Services being a staple of my upbringing.

  “You got it,” she clutched a medical chart to her chest, strolled to the door and turned. “I love being part of your team.”

  I wonder if you’d still feel that way if you knew the two girls before you quit because I could no longer pay them. “Great to hear,” I said studying my cell phone.

  But she didn’t leave, begging me for some encouragement. “You think I’m still doing okay? I mean, my performance is professional so far, right?”

  I looked up, becoming annoyed now. “Audrey, you’re a perfect fit, that’s why we hired you. You’re meeting all my expectations.” I went back to my phone but she hovered in the doorway swayed, clinging to the chart like a life preserver, and broke into an uneasy smile.

  “Carlina, this is off-topic, but why did the last nurse quit again?”

  Who the hell have you been talking to? In small towns, people talk big. In fact, they don’t know how to shut up. The only reason I’d hired Audrey was because her county zip code didn’t match ours, so she wouldn’t know what she was getting herself into. I cleared my throat, rose to my feet, and walked on toward her on heavy feet.

  “You know Audrey,” I said stepping close to her. “I typically don’t talk about those matters. I respect all my former employees’ privacy and discretion.” My voice fell to a whisper. “But look,” I put my hand on her shoulder, scanning the hallway suspiciously, pretending to be worried someone else might hear what I was about to say. “You can’t tell anyone this, okay?” She nodded her head eagerly, eyes widening, clutching the medical chart tighter. “The nurse before you, how do I put this? She left one day without notice. Later we heard her husband was cheating on her.”

  “No,” Audrey gasped wide-eyed.

  “Yes.”

  “With who?”

  “Maybe with a woman still working in this office.” I brought my finger up to my lips, like shhh. “If you value your nursing career in Story Mount, and especially inside this office, I wouldn’t go around asking questions? Okay?”

  “Oh yes Carlina, absolutely,” she shook her head vigorously, the hank of black ponytail shaking behind her back.

  “Good,” I said. “Now, show Ms. Biers to exam room number three and I’ll be right out.” I shut the door gently in her face.

  The cell phone in my pocket vibrated again. Svidi. I hit the reject button. Ever since Charles Greymore had appeared in my life, my husband had gone bat-shit crazy, calling me at all hours of the day, demanding my whereabouts right then and there. But then again, Svidi had the right to go a little crazy.
Charles Greymore’s shit wasn’t just good; it was the best. He had me smoking it. Shooting it. Plus, I was fucking him for it. A few other guys at Chumley’s were even getting into the action. Now Svidi, with his military operations experience, going a little crazy could mean an explosive episode. In the better days of marriage, I’d gotten the courage and asked if he’d ever killed anyone. He’d become agitated and refused to answer.

  A pair of feet scuffled at the office door and I glanced at my watch, realizing I’d time-machined through fifteen minutes in what felt like two. A knock echoed on my door. A faint voice called from the other side.

  “Carlina, it’s Audrey again.” She paused. “Mrs. Biers is in the exam room. She’s wondering if you forgot about her.”

  “Coming,” I sang. “Coming now.”

  There was no way I could see patients in this condition. Not without a fix-me-up. I scooped my hand into my lab coat and pulled out Greymore’s parting gift from last night, the cocaine. Greymore. I was fucking the devil for my drugs and I couldn’t stop. I nabbed a credit card from my purse, poured out the coke, scraped together a couple smooth lines of the white powder like jet contrails and snorted them up. Instantly, my eyes tightened like rubber bands and my brain swung back into alignment. With a clipboard folded under my arm, I clicked on crisp heels down the hallway and called out to the receptionist before entering the exam room. “Louise, how many do we have out front?”

  “Two.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Two.”

  “Only two?” I rubbed my nostrils and sniffed. The coke was good. The receptionist rolled her eyes dismissively and took an incoming call. I popped my head into the waiting room. My once burgeoning practice hardly ever offered a spare seat. Now it sat empty except for two older women staring slack-jawed at daytime television. They had that free clinic look to them, one chewing hangnails, the other coughing into her hands. And this place, the carpet torn in a few spots, the walls were scraped with black scuff marks toward the floors. The tawny odor of ammonia hung in the air. The drugs were eating up my marriage, devouring my clinic, ingesting my career and crapping it out. I felt like the passenger in a slow car crash.

  All three patients seen by noon, my head thumped, the paranoia bubbled up and the involuntary muscle contractions began. The first stages of dope sickness kicking in. And I snorted all the coke. Personally, the paranoia was the worst. The musician Kurt Cobain had borrowed it from the famous writer Joseph Heller: Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re really not out to get you. A new illusion bubbled into my brain, that a couple of strangers were huddled together in the hallway, just outside my door, waiting for me. But I still had a half-hit of heroin in my purse to level myself, maybe enough to hold out until I saw Greymore at Chumley’s. I put my ear against the wall, listening for the invisible crowd that might burst into my office any second. Sweat breaking down my back, paranoia boiling over, I jumped for the intercom button.

  “Audrey?”

  “Yes Dr. Malhotra?”

  “Come to my office. Bring the key in case the door’s locked. No need to knock, just let yourself in.”

  “Be right there.”

  I flipped open a chart and pretended to write, steadying myself by rocking in place. The door knob jiggled and Audrey popped her head in, smiling.

  “Is there anybody out there?” I asked her, craning from my seat to see for myself.

  “Just me and Louise,” she said looking over her shoulder, glancing down the hall to double-check.

  “Are you positive?” I said leaning to the side, looking.

  “There’s no one out here.” Her smile faded into mild concern. “Are you okay?”

  I swung my purse on my shoulder, hustled past her, bolted down the steps, and stepped into the strong sunlight on the brick sidewalk of Exodus Avenue.

  The noon-day heat warmed my air-conditioned skin, massaging away the idea that unknown gangs of people were hunting me. Sunglasses on, I clutched my purse, pining for the heroin inside. Strolling briskly along, my phone rang: Svidi. Fucking again. I hit the reject button. Between my marriage, my profession, and the drugs, it was my 115 pound that smothered me the most. His unwanted attention had weight. Like a truck parked on my chest. And fooling with Greymore and some of the guys at the club made it worse. Much worse. He’d been stung with a near homicidal jealousy. But I could hide anything. The first thing a trailer park teaches a kid is not to get caught. And I was good at it. But he just wouldn’t give up. He’d shortened the leash. Pestered me all hours during day and night. Sometimes even ringing several times an hour. He was foreign. A traditional, scared, little boy from India. He couldn’t understand. Never would understand. Similar to most addicts, sex for me was just a social transaction. Like a handshake. Just a little deeper. And it also got me off. But what went down at the club last night was little more than teasing. Hell, there wasn’t even any real heavy petting. And I’d backed the boys off.

  Stopping onto the sidewalk, I found myself standing in front of my go to lunchtime eatery, The Daffodil Tea Room. A familiar waiter stood on the cobblestone walkway, sandy-blonde hair, freckled nose, a short black apron tied around his narrow waist holding a pen and pad with muscular, tanned arms. What a fine ass.

  “Howdy Dr. Malhotra.”

  “Scott,” I laughed, swinging my purse behind me, flipping my blonde hair from my eyes. “Howdy back.”

  “Outside okay today?” he winked at me, face a broad grin.

  “This heat,” I wiped my neck. “Yes, just keep me out of the sunlight.”

  He seated me at a black iron table beneath a thick Dogwood at the edge of the patio where I ordered a Benedictine baguette cucumber spread, parmesan cheese, with chopped tomato and coarsely crushed black peppercorn.

  “Sweet tea with that?” Scott asked, bending over to scribble, the pad on his thigh.

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way sweet-heart.” Scott flashed his green eyes at me, grinning.

  I could destroy the kid if I wanted. I knew how to slay a man. Take his money, break his heart and leave him with nothing- inside three or four weeks. It sounds evil. But that doesn’t quite capture it. I wasn’t born this way. I had help. As a young teen, my mother, a well-known prostitute, turned me out at a young age, passing me around to different men in the trailer slums. Initially, I loved the intensity of it, the raw nakedness, strangers suddenly inside me, and rewarded with fast money and drugs. A lot of it. The trailer park, mother-daughter hooker tag-team. I told her I could quit anytime I wanted. She laughed at me. She said I couldn’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber. At the time, I didn’t get it. Didn’t realize that orgies and sex had already taken their toll, and permanently shattered all my social boundaries. The drugs got harder and the men more aggressive. They tied me up, doing things to my body with objects not intended for that use. They showed up in groups. A few even brought girlfriends and wives who participated. It could last for hours at a time, my mother standing by to participate. Then came that night she brought a couple home from the bar. A husband and wife. I was in bed when they woke me up, took me into the living room, shades drawn. My mother nodded to the woman, who took off my clothes and spread me open sitting on the couch seducing me while the husband put a tourniquet around my arm, stabbed me with a needle and launched me into the next galaxy.

  Mom swore there was no way out. But she had a big horse in the race. Me. I was making her a lot of money, and boy was she spending all of it. So one night I slipped out the window and fled. On the outskirts of Lexington, I found a Christian halfway-house for abused women and teens. The place helped me shake off the drugs, and transferred me to a churchgoing, foster family willing to sponsor me. Over the next four years, I lived with them while I went through college on a work-study grant. A few days before I graduated with Bachelor of Science in biology, my church-parents came home early one day to find me and their eighteen-yea
r-old son having sex in bathroom. There were no drugs involved. We were just taking care of each other’s needs. It’d been going on for years. I chalked it up to bad timing. I explained to my foster parents that this was an isolated incident. That it wasn’t as bad as it appeared since we weren’t actually related. They threatened to call the police as I bounded down the front steps with all my belongings stuffed in a pillowcase. I never saw them again. But I stayed the course, stayed sober, kept a low-profile on campus, secretly worked as a stripper on the side, and put myself through medical school. I’d successfully erased my past and proved my mother wrong. No one had any notion of my trailer-shit childhood, or that I’d been a whore’s abused child. And meeting Svidi, being culturally challenged and typically confused, made it even easier to hide my history. To him I was just a foster child from Lexington.

  I didn’t know if she was still alive, but my mother had been right after all. You couldn’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber. Six months ago, loving all my success, all the money, the attention of all the men at the club, and missing my magic-carpet rides, once again I wanted more. And once again, more was never enough. I began writing fake patients prescriptions for heavy narcotics and then the game was on. The quick spiral downward found me all tangled up with Greymore. Found me losing everything. Found me going farther than ever before. Now even possibly facing serious prison time. I shuddered. But I could get out of this. I would get out of this. But for now? I needed to inject the shit in my purse. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Fucking Svidi. If I didn’t pick up, he would just keep hounding me all day.

  “Wow,” I said. “I’m trying to see patients here. What’s the emergency honey?”

  His voice choked. “I saw you last night.”

  I waved a fly out of my face. He always said that. I saw you last night. Using lies. Trying to get me to incriminate myself. “You saw me at my office charting?”