DONE GONE WRONG

by Cathy Pickens

  “I’m glad you’re here, Avery. Could I buy you a cup of coffee? I wanted to explain, in case I seemed curt earlier.”

  He took me by the elbow and steered me into the room he’d just left, an employee break room, empty except for ice-cream parlor-sized tables, a coffee pot, and a couple of vending machines with loud compressors running. The sterile whiteness of it, as with most hospital areas, was not restful or comfortable. Not really designed to provide much of a break.

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Both. Lots.” I might as well get something that resembled food with my coffee, and cream and sugar were the first two of my four basic food groups: sugar, fat, salt, and preservatives. Maybe three of four, since caffeine could count as a preservative.

  He doctored up our coffees and delivered them to the table with a flourish. He did move with an astonishing grace. Quick but smooth, like a dancer.

  “Avery, I hope I didn’t come across as—uncaring when I saw you a few minutes ago. You ever have those conversations where you think back and smack yourself in the head, realizing something didn’t come out right? I just wanted to make sure we’d left things on a pleasant note.”

  I sipped carefully at my coffee and made an “mm-hm” sound. Where was this going? I wondered at his tan. Golf? Skiing? A tanning salon?

  He leaned closer to me, elbows on the tiny round table. “I hope I wasn’t abrupt about Ms. Johnson. It’s just,” he looked down at his cup, and then back at me, “you took me by surprise when you asked about her. You see, we’d had some issues with her and Mark Tilman, the resident you mentioned earlier.”

  “Issues?” I kept my tone even and sipped my coffee.

  “I don’t want to be indelicate, but, you know—questions about an improper relationship between doctor and patient. You’ve served as counsel for Barnard Medical. You know what that can mean.”

  I tried to keep my face composed and didn’t respond. Let him fill in the silence.

  “Something about you mentioning her, so soon after you’d asked about Mark. You’re a lawyer. I guess I had a flashback to that sexual harassment training they give us periodically.” He gave an awkward laugh. “You took me by surprise. I guess lawsuit popped into my head, and I came across as defensive.”

  “I understand. I assure you a lawsuit didn’t prompt my questions.”

  His awkward rambling surprised me a bit. I couldn’t get a handle on this guy. “You’re saying Dr. Tilman and Ms. Johnson were having an affair?”

  He looked uncomfortable. Probably he’d hoped Id let the subject drop. Guess again.

  “That was the implication. Sometimes young doctors get too close ...”

  I sipped more coffee and studied the Italian silk tie peeking from his lab coat collar, but my silence didn’t draw out further comment.

  “Dr. Demarcos, something I was wondering after our conversation this morning. For a physician, doesn’t opting out of private practice mean you’ve cut your earning potential?”

  In the South, religion, politics, even sex are acceptable topics of conversation. But money? How much somebody makes or what something costs? Uncouth. Uncultured. Rude beyond mention. I asked anyway. I’m a lawyer and our societal standards of behavior are commensurately lower.

  Demarcos isn’t a Southerner, so he replied without batting an eyelash. “Doesn’t have to. Depends on how hard you’re willing to work. A small but select private practice can augment a pleasantly steady faculty salary. Centers and hospitals want to make sure they attract the brightest and best, so we’re allowed to be entrepreneurial. It’s all within our contract, counselor.” He smiled, no longer miming his finger around the rim of his cup.

  “The drag companies pay you directly for supervising their projects?”

  “Depends on the grant, if the university is providing support, if federal funding is involved, if there are private investors.” He shrugged. “At Barnard, we’re also allowed to pursue our own projects, depending on whether we can make our business case to the medical center or to private investors.”

  “Venture capitalists?” I threw out Melvin’s phrase.

  Demarcos nodded. “This is a good place to get in on the ground floor of some potentially lucrative new drags and devices.”

  Passion and a willing audience are a seductive combination, and I’d obviously hit on a topic the professor-physician enjoyed talking about.

  “Like reproductive medicine?” I prompted, without mentioning Gatekeeper Deb. “I imagine the world market is very strong, particularly in places like China.”

  “Indeed.” He stared at me a beat too long before he pushed his chair back from the table. “I really need to get back to my rounds. I just wanted to—apologize if I seemed curt this morning.”

  “Not at all. Thank you for the coffee and the company.”

  He set our cups in the sink. I wondered what flunky came along behind to wash up. Maybe some nurses manage to give doctors the leveling experience lawyers tend to get from their secretaries, but I haven’t seen nearly enough of it.

  I left the hospital with the Johnsons’ medical records in my satchel, hoping belatedly that my mention of contraceptive research didn’t get Gatekeeper Deb in any trouble.

  The sun had heated the air in my car into shimmering waves. My hunger pangs had subsided into an echoing hollow; but now, fueled by the fiery bum of coffee, the pangs added to the dancing sensation before my eyes. I had to get something—anything—to eat before I got a full-blown migraine. Lydia’s always ribbing me about being hungry all the time, but this is what happens when I don’t eat.

  I pulled into a fast-food drive-through and refrained from ordering everything on the menu board. In a parking slot, I shook salt all over my fries—ah, fresh and hot—and forced myself to chew the hamburger rather than swallow it whole.

  Jake hadn’t left another message. They must still be seating the jury, so no point in trying to reach him until later.

  No company the size of Perforce Pharmaceuticals could be perfect. Somewhere, something had to give me a loose thread I could pull. I just had to keep picking around the edges until I found it. Or until Jake lost his case.

  Meanwhile, I’d make a quick detour over to Mt. Pleasant. Demarcos and Ellin hadn’t wanted to talk about Tunisia Johnson, which made me even more curious. It wouldn’t take long to check her address.

  I finished my hamburger and pulled maps from my glove box, discarded the South Carolina map because it lacked enough detail of Mt. Pleasant, then found a Charleston map in a tattered road atlas. Cooper Street, just off Johnnie Dodds Boulevard. That shouldn’t be hard to find. If Tunisia worked regular hours, she’d be home or getting there soon.

  Worth a shot, even though it meant crossing the twin humps of the Cooper River bridges in rash-hour traffic. I was getting a bit more nostalgic about them, now that they were being replaced, but I’ve never much liked crossing those bridges—too rickety-looking and narrow, not solid like a mountain road.

  The hamburger filled my stomach, but my brain hadn’t gotten the message. In the glare of the oncoming headlights, my eyeballs wobbled in their sockets.

  Gray clouds had rolled in from the Atlantic, blotting out the sunlight and closing in the winter evening sooner than usual. I gripped the steering wheel and focused tightly on the taillights of the pickup track full of blue crab shells in front of me. I hate this bridge even without maniacs rushing home from work flying past or crowding my rear.

  The bridge dumped its load on the sand spit that begins Mt. Pleasant. As I changed lanes, my left signal apparently didn’t give the Honda behind me enough warning. He laid on his horn and sped around me while I eased into the double lane of traffic toward Mt. Pleasant.

  Streetlights flickered on in the early twilight, and the kaleidoscope of headlights and fast-food signs popped and expanded behind my eyes. Great. The aura for a migraine headache. I’d really waited too late to eat.

  In the left-turn lane, I sat in rash hour traffic through two light cha
nges, massaging my temples and hoping I had packed some of those new pills Dr. Redfearn had given me for these damned headaches. This was a strange one, coming on faster than usual. Tunisia’s couldn’t be more than a few blocks from here, and the hard part of the trip was already over—I’d made it across the bridges.

  The light changed and I turned left. An oncoming car’s brakes squalled loudly as I turned too close in front of him. The side street changed abruptly from the melee on multilaned Johnnie Dodds Boulevard. Within a block, fast-food and shopping centers gave way to a desolate, tree-shrouded, rough-patched road.

  Another turn took me past a church with the face of a fair-skinned Jesus worked into the roof shingles. The street was darker than the boulevard had been, the streetlights scarcer and fainter than the block-lighting halogens. I spotted the sign for Cooper Street and turned.

  The houses were a variety of styles and states of repair. I couldn’t make out most of the house numbers. My brain throbbed behind my eyes and my hands on the steering wheel were on a delayed-reaction timer. My head hadn’t gotten the message that I wasn’t still hungry. Maybe I should turn around and try again tomorrow.

  A turnaround spot didn’t immediately present itself. Within half a block of the last house, thick oaks and underbrush swallowed the roadside. Ahead loomed a billboard-sized warning sign, its glow-in-the-dark arrow showing a sharp right turn. I told my arms to turn right, but the car didn’t obey.

  Instead, it missed the sharp turn and plowed straight ahead, barely cutting beside the sign that warned me the road didn’t go in this direction.

  I felt a neck-jarring bump. The tires lurched off the pavement into the mushy marsh grass. Every jolt played itself out in slow motion, the sharp grass screeching interminably against the driver’s door. I hoped it wasn’t scratching the paint.

  The mud grabbed the front tires and jerked the steering wheel from my hands. The car stopped. My first response was Isn’t this interesting, but a quick panic replaced my lethargy. I remembered—more clearly later than at the time—thinking of Mark Tilman and how I didn’t want to die where no one would find me.

  Propelled by that thought, I straggled to open the door. The car was stuck in the mud, the front wheels under water at the edge of the lake-sized Cooper River. My car had crossed a wide, seamless sea of grass. The waist-high grass shimmering silver-black in the dusk hid a thick muck of marsh mud. Could I wade through the thick grass back to the road without sinking out of sight? Where was the road?

  I don’t know how much time passed before I realized the reason I could see the stars: I was flat on my back. I’d slipped at the river’s edge and lay with my feet in the sludgy water, staring upward at the now star-speckled sky.

  I reached out for the reassuring cold metal of my Mustang and couldn’t find it. It must have moved. Or maybe I had. Then I heard voices.

  I tried to call out, but even in the magnitude of my own head, I squeezed out no more than a low croak. God, my head hurt.

  I focused on the voices. Maybe they would come without any more effort on my part.

  “... If you hadn’t driven halfway to Myrtle Beach lookin’ for a place to turn around. Somebody else could’a found her before we got back, long as you took.”

  “How the hell could somebody find her? Dang car ended up a football field away from the road. You’re not careful, you’ll end up to your ass in mud.”

  “Look at that bumper, you shithead. I TOP’ you, you hit her too hard. No shithead cop’s gonna miss that. Jeez.”

  My Mustang. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

  “Shithead yerself. You coulda drove. But no. You had to finish off yer nachos. You got breath like some spic sewer, all the time eatin’ that crap. That bumper coulda been crunched any time. Now shut yer smelly face and get her outta that car.”

  Grunts and labored breathing came from off to the right. I couldn’t tell how far away. The tall grass blocked my view all around and I couldn’t convince my head to lift itself, even though the sucking mud was cold and oozing into my ears. I kept staring at the stars through the thick grass waving far overhead.

  “Damn door’s unlocked but it’s stuck. Look out. Fuckin’ car keeps shifting. Help me open it enough to get the inside light on. Gahdam.”

  “Where the hell is she?”

  I lay quiet and still for what seemed an eternity, listening to rustling sounds and murmurs. Then a splash and a metallic thump followed a piercing shriek.

  “Something crawled my leg. Shit, hell, and damn. That’s it. I’ve mucked around out here long enough. I’m outta here. Gahdam snake or somethin’. You’re the one rammed her, you find her.”

  Even though I was having trouble getting my body to respond to anything, the mention of snakes and of finding her awakened some primitive alert. An erratic beam of light danced across the grass above me, then the other voice—the shithead rammer—whined, “Hemp, she ain’t even in the car. Lookit it. Grass is so deep, you could lose a bird dog in it.”

  I didn’t hear anything for a while but water and mud sounds. I couldn’t tell how much time passed. Were they getting closer? Had I passed out again?

  Farther away, from the direction slogging footsteps had taken, Hemp’s voice came in an angry half-whisper, half-bark. “Find her yerself. Gahdam, I hate snakes. I hate water in my shoes. I hate you, you dumb shithead. And I hate that motherfucker. I don’t care what he promised. Nothing’s worth a snake crawlin’ up my ass.” The voice got farther away, but the vehemence increased.

  “She probably fell in the river. She’ll wash out to sea with the tide, don’t you think?” the winner’s voice asked, closer to me than Hemp’s voice.

  In the distance, a car door opened, creaking in protest. The whiner screamed in alarm. “Dammit, Hemp. Don’chu leave me here.”

  Footsteps sucked away fast and heavy. “Hemp! He ain’t gonna help Sis,” he squeaked. The car engine started. Hemp apparently wasn’t listening.

  I wasn’t sure if I heard another car door open, but I heard one slam. Tires spun in mud, then rattled on graveled pavement. The tire noises whined off into silence, leaving only the shushing of the grass, the slurp of slow, rhythmic water around my legs and waist, and the deafening chorus of frogs reclaiming the night.

  13

  FRIDAY NIGHT/SATURDAY MORNING

  Staring without blinking at the stars, I thought I’d lain there for only seconds. But it might have been hours, because the moon had moved into view over my waterlogged toes and the tide rose so that the marsh creek tickled me under the chin.

  As I unstuck myself from my marsh mud tomb, I began shivering uncontrollably in the night air.

  I cautiously peered over the tall grass. My poor car sat fifteen or twenty yards to my right, the trunk reflecting the moonlight above the thick, sharp grass. The front end must have continued to settle after I’d gotten out, squelching itself into the riverbank. The rear end poked awkwardly into the air. I gave a couple of dry, tearless sobs.

  I hoped the door had closed before any mud got inside. And I hoped Mustangs were watertight, since I was discovering, as my mud-caked self dried in the dull air, that marsh mud stinks. My poor car.

  My legs moved with the agility of a foam rubber Gumby, but the slick mud grew firmer as I moved away from the river. I waded through the sharp grass, hoping I’d picked the shortest distance to the road. No streetlights to guide me. How had the car come so far?

  Somehow I wobbled the distance to the road and collapsed against the road sign that had vainly tried to warn me of danger. How long ago? The moon didn’t supply enough light to read my watch, which had probably stopped ticking under its slimy coat of mud. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered.

  Like a simpleminded imbecile, I leaned on the sign, head bowed, studying a watch I couldn’t see. The headlights of an approaching car picked me out.

  At first, I was bewildered, then hopeful. Then panic-stricken. But my brain, my muscles, my emotions moved too slowly to do me much good.

&nb
sp; The fear that Hemp and the shithead whiner had returned for another look-see jolted me. I pushed myself away from the comfort of the warning sign. I would run back in the marsh grass to hide.

  Instead, I toppled over like an ankle-bound loser in a three-legged race.

  The headlights stopped, reflecting off the luminescent orange of the sign over my head. A door opened. It sounded heavy, like a pick-up track. A voice, slightly slurry, called, “Hey, you all right?”

  The ludicrousness of the scene struck me. I giggled. I’d fallen over like a hundred-pound sack of dog food and lay stretched beneath the carnival orange glow of a road sign, and some half-potted reveler—what night was this, anyway?—wanted to know if I was all right.

  He must have been reassured by my hilarity, taking it as a sign that my blood alcohol level matched his. Shoe leather scuffed across the asphalt, onto the roadside gravel. Snakeskin boots came to a halt in front of my face.

  “Lordy, what happened to you?” His beery breath enhanced his drawl, but I wasn’t about to question the providence or the proclivities of my Good Samaritan.

  “Car accident.” I managed through clenched teeth. I was shaking again, more violently now. No wonder patients fall in love with doctors who save their lives. I would’ve kissed him then and married him immediately—if a peroxide vision wearing tight jeans and a scowl hadn’t appeared over his shoulder as he hunkered next to me.

  “Eddie, you gonna get us killed. First you gotta drive through shanty town in the middle of the night and then you gotta stop for who knows what. I swear—” Drinking obviously made her bitchy. Least, I hoped she’d been drinking. Sober, that screech of hers would be hard to take.

  “Shut up, Deely. She’s hurt bad.” He turned to wipe his mouth against his shoulder. My marsh mud stench must be getting to him. “We gotta git her to a doctor. Do-you-want-to-go-to-a-doctor?”

  He talked to me as though to a half-wit. I didn’t really want to go to a doctor. I just wanted to get away from here and get warm. In that order. Through my vicious, freezing fatigue, I muttered, “Uh-huh.”