Panacea

by Brad Murray

  “Doctor Minkowski I presume?”

  “Yes?”

  “Male or female?” he asked, hanging his dripping raincoat on the coatrack next to the door.

  “Male,” replied Minkowski, a rare tinge of excitement in his voice.

  “Take me to him.”

  Minkowski and the Man in Black rode the elevator to the fourth floor and immediately encountered Nurse Flax as they stepped into the corridor. She waddled busily down the hallway, eyes focused on the paperwork attached to her clipboard. She glanced up at the men and back down as she passed. Humming happily, she licked her index finger and flipped a page. Suddenly, Flax stopped dead in her tracks as if realizing something; her humming abruptly ceased. She spun around, carefully examining the men standing just outside the elevator doors. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth, dropping the clipboard in the process. Eyes as big as pie plates, she asked, “Are you Benoit Brumeux?”

  The man ignored the inquiry.

  “I knew it was you Mister Brumeux, I couldn’t help but notice your -” she had started to motion to his wounded eye but caught herself awkwardly. Flax tried to make up for her embarrassment by following with, “Oh my goodness, Benoit Brumeux, right here in my hospital! It’s such an honor sir, I can’t believe –“

  Minkowski cut her off by shoving the test tube in front of her face. Flax pulled her head back and lifted the spectacles that hung from her neck to her narrowed eyes. She focused on the name written in black marker on the side of the glass tube.

  “Where?” snapped Minkowski, his eyes wide and his forehead furled.

  Nurse Flax swallowed hard and pointed down the hall.

  “Room 416.”

  Benoit Brumeux and Minkowski abruptly paced to Room 416 and stopped just outside the threshold of the doorway, peering in on the sleeping family.

  “What is the name?” whispered the Brumeux.

  Minkowski lifted up the test tube. Brumeux studied the tube, and then fixated his stare on the sleeping infant.

  “Nice to meet you, James Porter.”

  3

  Today - May 29, 2011

  La’Roi Dawkins was nearly halfway through the final coat of wax on Parsons, Missouri’s only running ambulance when the call came in. He’d found waxing to be a therapeutic endeavor; there was something refreshingly mindless in the circular strokes that took him to another place, away from his life. He had worked as a paramedic for close to six years – the first four in St. Louis and the last two in this small town in the heart of Missouri. Over the years he had seen his share of tragedy. It wasn’t infrequent that he witnessed something that would make the average person lose his lunch, and in his first days on the job La’Roi lost more than his share. In the big city, he’d seen it all - gunshot victims, stab wounds, murders, attempted suicides, drug overdoses – you name it. Over time, his experiences had hardened him; what was once appalling had gradually become commonplace. One day, he realized he had grown numb to it all; that it had begun to take away his ability to feel, and with it, his connection to being human. He thought he would get away from St. Louis, away from the city that had never offered him anything but misery. He’d move to some quiet place and find himself. Perhaps even reinvent himself. But, though he had found a measure of peace in the sleepy town of 5,000, Parsons couldn’t erase the memories of a broken childhood that seemed to linger behind him, lurking to remind him that there would always be a degree of emptiness in his life.

  La’Roi was born the son of a father he’d never met, and of a mother who died of an overdose when he was four. His earliest memories were of an endless sequence of foster homes, cared for by temporary parents who were only in it for the paycheck. He found himself yearning for a home; a real home. One with parents who would care, who would teach, who would show him the way. A home with arguments and hugs and dinners spent laughing with each other at the kitchen table. All he had ever wanted was a family. All he had wanted was to be loved. Yet, for reasons only a psychologist with a wall full of picture-framed degrees could explain, La’Roi had spent his adulthood mired in the same lonely existence he’d dreamed so much of escaping as a child. He had walled himself off. Avoided love and being in love. He put on a good exterior, playing the happy-go-lucky jokester who the people of Parsons had come to enjoy. But underneath, he understood he would always feel abandoned; destined to live forever in isolation.

  He couldn’t escape the calling of being a paramedic – nothing else felt right. He had found consolation in his work – helping others. It was different in Parsons. Often times he found himself on emergency calls helping others he knew personally. And there was something fulfilling in that. In St. Louis, the emergency calls were a sea of faces he did not recognize, an endless flow of people he’d never see again, never knowing what became of them after he left them to their fates at the hospital. But in Parsons, though the frequency of tragedy was far less, it was always there. A handful of calls would never leave him; those select few would always linger somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, waiting to occasionally reappear in his nightmares. Like the summer of ’09 when Merton Hall’s 14-year-old nephew inadvertently bumped the tractor into gear while Merton was checking the PTO shaft, knocking him to the ground and pulling the plow over his body in the process. Or just a few months earlier when a car load of teenaged girls lost control on a rain-soaked country road north of town and rolled into a swollen Gasconade River. The memories of that night were still fresh; each of their dead blue faces still haunting his thoughts.

  In spite of his years of experience, the words “multi-car accident” and “interstate” announced by the dispatcher over the intercom still managed to get the adrenaline pumping and bumped his heart rate up a few notches. La’Roi immediately dropped his rag, tossed the wax aside, and jumped into the driver’s seat, yelling to his partner, “Let’s go!”

  Willie Buchanan came sprawling out of the restroom, still pulling his pants up over his rather large backside. He gulped down the last bite of the candy bar he’d been working on and lumbered his 280 pound frame to the passenger side. The pair were as different as different could be – polar opposites, in fact. La’Roi was a slightly built, athletic black man from the ghetto, while Willie was a heavyset white country boy who’d rarely set foot outside of Parsons and preferred it that way. They tolerated each other, though each would have been near the bottom of the other’s preferred partner list.

  Willie was an absolute pig; not only in the way he ate, with bits of food spewing out of his mouth in all directions, but in his slovenly appearance. Shirt half-untucked, ketchup, chocolate and who-knows-what-else stained his white paramedic’s uniform. But it was his incessant blabbering that drove La’Roi mad. The man could talk. And he could talk for hours. About nothing.

  Lights flashing and sirens blaring, the pair roared down the driveway, took a hard right onto Main Street, then a mile outside of Parsons took another right onto the interstate on-ramp. The accident was about six miles west of Parsons according to the dispatcher. Therefore, La’Roi calculated, they’d likely be the first paramedics on the scene. Multiple cars involved, moving at a high rate of speed - that meant a likelihood for multiple injuries and possibly casualties. They’d have their hands full until help arrived.

  “Hey La’Roi,” said Willie. “You seen the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie? I saw it last night.”

  La’Roi shook his head absent-mindedly.

  “Awesome movie,” said Willie, picking up the last remnants of candy bar that dotted his shirt. “Penelope Cruz is smokin’ hot, dude. You gotta go see it.”

  La’Roi said nothing, but instead narrowed his eyes on the road, hoping his partner would get the hint he wasn’t interested in small talk.

  “It’s about the Fountain of Youth,” continued Willie, undeterred. “Got me to thinkin’- if you found the Fountain of Youth, would you use it? I’m not sure I would, I don’t know. It’s not natural I think. I think I would probably…”

  “Will
ie,” La’Roi cut him off. “We’re about to roll up on some serious shit. Can’t you concentrate for one damn second?”

  La’Roi cussed under his breath, whipping the ambulance to the shoulder of the interstate and around slower vehicles that had begun to get backed up.

  “Look, no traffic,” Willie said, pointing to the other side of the interstate. “The wreck must be blocking both lanes.”

  “Dispatch reported ten to twelve vehicles, so I’m not surprised. Call Waynesboro and make sure they got the call too, we’ll need all the help we can get.” Waynesboro, Missouri was another five miles east of Parsons and the next closest town with an ambulance.

  “Will do.” Willie pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and began punching buttons. “Surely the State Troopers got the call by now.”

  “Yeah, I’d think so. We’re gonna need ambulances. Several of them…what the hell is that?”

  La’Roi slowed the ambulance on the shoulder of the interstate as it rolled slowly past the snarled traffic.

  “What?” said Willie, jerking his head up from his cell phone, looking up at his partner.

  The ambulance came to a full stop. La’Roi was staring at something behind Willie’s shoulder in the fields that lined the side of the road. A little girl in the passenger’s seat of a pickup truck was pointing in the same direction. Her little face scrunched up in fear, her eyes wide with terror. As Willie whirled around in his seat to see for himself, the cell phone thumped onto the floorboard.

  His jaw dropped.

  The two men stared in stunned silence. It didn’t make any sense. In the freshly plowed field to the north of the road was what could most simply be described as a massive herd of wild animals. Hundreds and hundreds of animals of all shapes and sizes. Deer, cattle, rabbits, coyotes, squirrels. Even a handful of skunks could be seen in the chaotic mix. They jerked around spastically, erratically; a sea of furious movement in all directions. Dust rolled upward from the center of pack as hooves bucked and paws clawed into the black soil. There was no rhythm to their movement; each living thing bounded around in its own unique convulsive dance.

  “What in the holy hell!” wondered a slack-jawed Willie. “Look at that one over there…the deer!”

  La’Roi followed the direction of Willie’s pointed finger and saw it. A deer had broken away from the pack and was awkwardly ambling towards the road, leaning heavily to one side. It suddenly fell to the ground like a ton of bricks and began writhing on its side, its hooves jerking in the air. Its mouth was wide open, gasping for breath. Its tongue drooping lifelessly from its mouth.

  “Outbreak of rabies or somethin’?” asked Willie, reaching for the electric window button. The ambulance’s air conditioning could not repel the summer heat, and Willie had broken out in a full fledged sweat attack. A stream of perspiration slithered down his cheek and coursed down his neck. As the top of the window slowly receded into the door frame, a refreshing breeze wafted through the cabin.

  But with the breeze came the screams.

  The screams were human-like in their pain. High-pitched. Agonized. Ear-splitting in the intensity of their torment.

  “Roll that up!” cried La’Roi, his face scrunched up in anguish. “I can’t take it!”

  In a flash, Willie had the window back up, muting the cries.

  “Maybe the accident scared the shit out of them,” speculated Willie, eyeing yet another deer that had keeled over onto its side.

  The mention of the word “accident” brought La’Roi out of his stupor. “Dammit, we gotta go,” said La’Roi. He slammed the accelerator to the floor and the ambulance roared to life. They continued down the shoulder, passing slow-moving traffic with blaring sirens and flashing lights.

  “I got a buddy at the Fish and Game,” said Willie. “I’ll ask him to check it out.”

  They only progressed a few hundred yards down the interstate before they were forced to slow again. Littered across the lanes of traffic, across the shoulder, and strewn throughout the ditch were the corpses of dozens of animals. Several motorists had parked their cars and gotten out in a useless attempt to save creatures that were beyond hope. La’Roi blared the horn in an attempt to clear the path of people.

  There were so many dead animals, it was impossible to move forward without running over a few. The wheels of the ambulance rolled over another one every few feet, sending La’Roi and Willie bouncing about in the cab like they were driving down a pothole-filled road. They slowly approached a large yellow dog that straddled the right-hand lane and the shoulder. It convulsed on its side as La’Roi carefully weaved and zigzagged the ambulance around it. He looked down from his driver’s side window as they passed. The dog suddenly began thrashing and twisting about violently, smearing blood on the white divider line. It locked eyes with La’Roi as it seized, trying in vain to stand but falling back to the pavement in a heap. Its once yellow snout was streaked a bright scarlet as blood poured from its eyes – eyes that were chillingly locked on La’Roi.

  “Jesus La’Roi, some are dead on my side. And there’s a rabbit over here bleeding out its friggin’ eyes!” exclaimed Willie.

  “Yeah,” said La’Roi dejectedly. “My side too.”

  The path now cleared, La’Roi slammed on the accelerator, focused once again on getting to the scene of the accident.

  “I bet it was the animals that caused the wreck,” surmised La’Roi as they raced to the scene. “Bet they ran across the road and caused a helluva mess.”

  “Man, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Willie. “I bet you’re right. What in the hell is going on? Jesus, that was like some end of the world shit.”

  La’Roi nodded, his mind spinning.

  “Oh damn,” bellowed Willie. “What if something’s in the water and we’re next? What if the water supply is poisoned or something?”

  “Relax, you watch too many stupid movies,” La’Roi reassured him, though he wasn’t feeling so reassured himself. “We got a job to do now. Do your best to put it in the back of your mind. We’ll report it to the Troopers later but for now, you gotta focus on your job.”

  Just then, something dark and heavy smashed against the windshield. In unison, La’Roi and Willie let out high-pitched squeals, and Willie instinctively held his arms over his head. The windshield splintered at the point of impact, and tiny cracks reached out from the center in every direction. La’Roi peered between the cracks at the black mass that had come to rest on the hood of the ambulance.

  “What is that?” cried Willie in voice that sounded way too pre-pubescent for a grown man.

  “It’s a crow,” La’Roi said, stunned. “Goddamn birds falling outta the sky.”

  La’Roi continued to accelerate and watched apprehensively as the dead bird bounced its way off the hood. Two minutes later, the ambulance roared around the bend in the interstate where a narrow stream of gray smoke emanating from a pile of cars came into view. A black helicopter hovered in the distance, observing the scene.

  “That’s weird - news chopper here already?” asked Willie. “How the hell did they beat us?”

  “No idea,” said La’Roi numbly.

  At the front of the scattered wreckage was an early 1970’s vintage white Chevy pickup, lying upside down near the ditch. About twenty feet behind it, a red Explorer sat cockeyed in one lane, its windshield shattered. Behind that was a tangled assortment of approximately ten vehicles - most prominently a semi-truck, its cab halfway in the grassy median, its trailer occupying one lane. The glint of hundreds of windshields extended at least a mile behind the accident; holiday traffic had quickly become a log jam of frustrated drivers with nothing to do but wait. A smattering of people had gathered near the front of the wreckage, and a separate, larger congregation was encircled near the front of the semi-truck, looking down at the ground. As the sirens from the ambulance came within earshot, many turned their heads to watch it approach. One man broke from the smaller group in the front and began jogging towards the ambulance, waving his
arms frantically and pointing back towards the wrecked cars behind him.

  La’Roi steered the ambulance down through the grassy median, up onto the eastbound lanes, and parked near the white Chevy pickup. In an instant, the pair had turned off the lights and sirens, grabbed their gear, and were assessing the scene. The man who had been waving to the paramedics greeted them as they opened their doors. He had some minor abrasions – the left sleeve of his gray sweat-soaked Missouri Tigers shirt was ripped, and tiny streams of blood meandered down his arm from his shoulder. The man’s eyes were the size of silver dollars.

  “Some dumb sumbitch on a motorcycle ran into a deer. Chain reaction.”

  La’Roi and Willie locked knowing eyes briefly.

  “Take me to the man on the motorcyle,” snapped Willie.

  “Which part?”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, the body is over there but the head is back up that way.”

  Willie looked at the man incredulously. “Take us to the still-breathing. We can’t do much for someone missing a head.”

  “Sure thing.”

  He jogged through the grass median, towards the large gathering near the semi-truck. “Everybody back! Let ‘em through!” shouted the man authoritatively. The group parted, revealing an elderly woman lying on her back in the grass.

  “Back up, give us some room!” barked La’Roi.

  The woman was moaning continuously. A deep, guttural groan that hung eerily in the air. Arms extended, her hands clenched and opened, then spun in a circular motion as if climbing a ladder. Her eyes were rolled back in her head and her mouth hung wide open, her feet twitched sporadically. Several in the semi-circle hovering above the woman were aghast; they stared down glassy-eyed and covered their mouths with their hands, gasping audibly.

  “Head trauma,” whispered La’Roi, who was kneeling above the woman. “Must have been ejected from her vehicle and hit her head.” La’Roi opened up his kit and began putting on latex gloves.