by Lauren Brown
“You’re kidding,” I said, setting down my fork. He now had our full attention.
“Yeah, come to find out, it was the landowner’s maintenance man who had overdosed on oxycodone.”
Hope gasped.
“Wow, that is a crazy story,” I managed as my appetite vanished.
“Yeah, said he was beyond scared. The man had been dead for some time. You’re working with some serious medicine, John.”
Janie interjected, “Yes, my sister said a lady at her work was fired recently for coming into the office in a complete daze. She was unable to stay awake at the computer.”
The peace I had been feeling vanished. Everyone was looking at me, wanting me, the pain specialist, to say something.
I cleared my throat briefly placing my dinner napkin to my mouth. “That’s the whole reason I went into the field, you know, to try and help.”
“Well, you’re a brave soul, John. I’ll tell you, the opiate seeking patients that come to me, they’re all just wigged out and, quite honestly, scary.”
“They can have a look about them.” I took a large gulp of beer. I wanted the conversation to end there.
Hope did it for me. “John, you hunted in Canada growing up, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I went when I was in high school.”
“Duck hunting?” Beau asked. He had offered for me to go hunting with him for years, but I always declined.
“My dad hunted ducks, geese, and deer mainly,” I replied, forcing myself to eat the food in front of me.
“My uncle was an avid hunter. He would sit in those tree stands for hours until his back gave out. Did you ever get a prize buck, John?” Janie asked mid-chew.
“Well…” I paused, remembering the first time I had gone deer hunting with my dad and his law partner. I reminisced for a moment, fixing my eyes on the center of the table. I forgot to answer Janie’s question.
“Honey?” Hope asked, touching my arm.
“Oh, sorry”—I shook my head—“we, uh, killed a two hundred fifty pound buck. About a twelve-pointer.”
“A twelve-point deer? You’re lyin’. You never told me that,” Beau said.
I shrugged. “I honestly had forgotten about it.”
Hope was looking at me. She could tell I was uncomfortable. “Our neighbor recently mentioned seeing a deer that size on the highway,” she said, saving me from the conversation again.
My uneasiness began to fade as we ate dessert and finished our drinks. At the conclusion of dinner, Beau and I helped wash the dishes while Hope and Janie talked about Hope’s auction.
“Well, it’s getting late,” I said as I dried my hands and started for the front door, meeting Hope on the way.
“Fun as always!” Janie exclaimed, hugging Hope and I in the doorway.
“Thank you, Janie, it was wonderful,” Hope yelled as she walked ahead of me.
“Call me and we’ll go fishing when you get the chance!” Beau shouted as I followed Hope.
I climbed in the truck with Hope and watched them wave as we pulled away.
We drove in silence until Hope asked, “So, what was up with the deer thing?”
“The deer thing?” I looked over at her. She was eyeing me suspiciously. “Oh, nothing. I just lost my train of thought was all. The story in Canada distracted me.”
“No,” she persisted, “something was bothering you during dinner. What was it?”
I took a deep breath in. “Well, I didn’t really kill the deer,” I confessed.
“So, you were lying?”
“No, no. I mean, I saw it. I had gone hunting right outside of Montreal with my dad and another guy in his firm when I was a freshman in high school.”
“What happened?” she persisted.
“Well, I remember it had snowed hard the night before, making everything perfectly white in the morning. There were a couple inches of snow on the ground and it was blistering cold, but we went hunting anyway. Dad went hunting all the time, but Mom wouldn’t let me go until I was in high school. Five minutes into the woods, we all parted ways. I followed a small creek for several miles until I stumbled upon a natural clearing encircled by trees. Kind of like the clearing I took you to in medical school.
“I found a tree that looked promising and sat behind it for hours, watching and growing restless. My toes grew colder and colder. I decided to call it a day and go back to the cabin, but as I stood, I froze. I saw him. I saw the twelve-point buck. His antlers were massive, the largest I had ever seen. I could see the breath from his nostrils warming the air. I watched him walk gracefully out into the clearing. His fur was golden. I was so in awe of the creature that I hadn’t noticed my friend’s father behind me. Then all of the sudden, POW! But the deer was too fast for the gun and had started running.”
“Did he die?”
“No, not at first. He had been shot in his leg, causing him to fall. It was the most surreal and terrifying moment of my life. My father came running at the sound and ordered me to follow him. When we found the deer, I stood at a distance and watched my father’s friend pull out his rifle and shoot the buck. I had to pretend like nothing had happened, but in reality, everything had happened. While they celebrated the kill, I secretly took the bullet casing and stuffed it in my pocket. Later that day, I snuck back out to the clearing where the blood stained the snow and buried the shell.”
“You’ve never told me that story before. That’s a hard thing to witness.”
“Really, it wasn’t the death that was so hard. It was the way the buck cried out in pain, the way it struggled. I haven’t been hunting since. I decided then and there that killing wasn’t really for me.”
“Good thing,” she said as we pulled into our driveway. She took my hand and squeezed it before exiting the truck. “Because you’re a doctor.”
Chapter 7
June 16, 2004
Before I knew it, a year had passed since my first meeting with Allyn. I gripped my coffee cup and propped my feet on my desk one Tuesday in mid-June. I skimmed the local paper to see if any of my patients had been busted for drug handling, drunk driving, or heaven forbid, murder. My first patient, Miss Ray, hadn’t arrived yet. I let out a sigh of relief when I didn’t see a familiar face on the list. I had seen a patient in the “Right to Know” section for the first time a month before. The patient had actually been Miss Ray. She was the very reason I hated my job some days, but also the very reason I loved it.
The day before she was featured in the paper, she had come into my office.
“Oh oh oh!” She was wriggling to dodge my hands on her back. “That’s the spot. That right there. In my back. It’s a hurtin’ real bad, Dr. Livingston.”
I was standing behind her. I had one hand on her shoulder trying to hold her still, the other hand pushing into her lumbar vertebrae. I rolled my eyes at the wall in front of her.
“What about when I do this?”
I pushed her shoulders forward and waited for her classic reaction.
“Ahhh!” Followed by tears. Oh, the tears. They never failed. If I had been any other physician I would have told her to cut it out, but I tolerated it for the money.
“The MRI is still showing a protruding disc, and it seems as if it could be getting worse. How about I write you another month of hydrocodone? You’ll just take it as needed. Then you have to promise to go to the spine center appointment that Marty has scheduled for you for the third time.” I looked at the wrinkled, middle-aged smoker with bleached hair and watched as she dried her fake tears.
“Oh, that would be great. And yes, I promise I’ll go this time.”
I handed her the prescription and watched as she pulled out a wad of twenty-dollar bills from the purse that rested on her blue jeans.
“Thank you so much, Dr. Livingston,” she said in a raspy voice.
“You’re quite welcome, Miss Ray. See you in a month,” I said as I took the wad of twenties from her hand and stuffed it into my white coat pocket.
&nbs
p; And just like that, I had given her what she wanted and she had given me what I wanted. So, when I had seen her face in the paper the next morning, I almost fainted. I had known that would be the end, she would have been busted for selling painkillers, cracked under pressure in an investigation, and blamed me for writing her the prescription. I might not get arrested or prosecuted, but I would have to lie low for a while, and I just couldn’t afford to do that at the moment. I hadn’t had a patient of mine arrested yet, and seeing her straight-faced mug shot with dark bags and bleached yellow hair had scared me. But I had been lucky as she had been arrested for drunk driving.
“Dr. Livingston, Rick is here to see you,” Beth said through my door.
Rick?
I opened my door to find Beth with a chart in hand. “Rick is on the schedule? I must be confused, I thought Miss Ray was coming in today.”
She shook her head. “No. Miss Ray got another DUI.”
“Again? She wasn’t in the Right to Know.”
“Happened late last night, hasn’t made it to the paper yet. Her daughter called to tell me. Rick had been calling to get an appointment with you a few days earlier, but we’ve been slammed. I called and told him we had an opening this morning and he came right in to see you.”
“Huh. All right then.”
I tossed Miss Ray’s chart aside at the nurse station and picked up Rick’s. His vital signs and blood tests read normal. His urine test revealed only the presence of oxycodone as we had discussed.
I knocked before entering. He had on a brown zip-up jacket, jeans, his usual baseball cap, and muddy work boots. He was sitting on the end of the table swinging his legs with his hands folded in his lap. The ongoing battle with cancer and alcohol had created deep, unattractive contours in his face. The smell of nicotine filled the room.
“Well, hello, Rick, how are you?”
“Hey Doc. I’m doin’ okay.”
“Your chart tells me otherwise, Rick. Looks like you really aren’t doing all that well.”
“Well, I guess I’m not. The cancer has spread some more, ya know, to some of my lymph nodes. I’ve been in some serious pain.” He touched his neck and winced.
“I’ve read over your oncologist’s report, and I agree with him. I think we need to up your dose of pain medication. How does that sound?”
At that time, I continued to act like a doctor with Rick, having a genuine concern for him and his wellbeing. But this didn’t last long.
His eyes lit up, as they always did. “That sounds good, real good, Doc.”
He fished the money out of his jeans.
“Uh, hey, Doc. I gotta ask you something else.” There was an edginess in his voice. I took in a sharp breath. I didn’t like when patient’s tried to bargain with me further once the deal had been made. Several buyers had tried to do this shortly after I’d started writing more prescriptions, and I had ended their bargaining attempts immediately.
“Yes?”
“Well, you see, you’ve been real good to me for awhile now. I don’t think I could live without you. And, um, I have a friend, who—”
“I don’t see patients without a referral.”
“Oh I know. This is different. You see, I know you’re a smart man. You’re a doctor.” He was talking quickly. “I know that you know I’m not really taking all of these pain meds. And you know that I know that you’re really making money off of me not taking the meds. I’m actually working for a man. Real nice man, just like yourself, who helps me get by, just like yourself. He takes the pills I don’t use and, well, gives them to people who really want them.”
I was looking at Rick with a confused expression. I had never outright discussed the truth of what I was doing with a patient. It was always just known, understood between us, but never talked about. Plus, I really could care less what the patients were doing with their pills. I glanced at the door, at the sound of Beth outside.
“What are you saying?” I asked, pursing my lips and raising my eyebrows.
“I know you’re making good money, and this man, well, he knows it too.”
“This man? Who is ‘this man’?”
“He doesn’t want me to tell you his name. But we, all the people that work for him, most of your patients actually, we all know him. We work for him. We take the pills and sell to him. He pays me double what some person on the street would pay.”
“Okay, I don’t want to know what you do with them. You see me, I write you the prescription, you leave. That’s it. No more.” I waved my hand for him to stop and began to open the door.
“Well, he wants to see you.” I halted in my step and turned around. Rick continued, “He wants your help. Trust me, there’s a lot of money to be made if you agree to it.”
“Who is this man?” I repeated.
“He goes by…the Bear.”
“The Bear?” I snorted at the name. “No, Rick,” I said as he tucked a wad of tobacco into his bottom lip.
“That’s all right. Hey, you make the calls, Doc. But just think about it. We could all be happy and all be makin’ good money.”
I straightened my white coat, handed him his checkout form for the front desk, and motioned for him to leave with my index finger.
“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be back in soon. You’ve got my number too,” he said in an undertone.
The sight of Beth ended the conversation. Rick tipped his hat at me as he walked out.
Confused and agitated, I returned to my office and sank my weight into my chair. I had other patients waiting, but I couldn’t help thinking about what had just happened. Rick, a cancer patient, was actually working for an even bigger drug dealer, who wanted to contact me about helping him.
I sat for fifteen minutes, sipping my cold coffee from that morning, staring out the window to the parking lot.
“Dr. Livingston, Mr. Olrich is in Room Two.” Beth interrupted my thoughts.
I made my way back to the clinical rooms, this time with a heavy mind.
I couldn’t think clearly for the rest of the day. I accidentally called a patient by the wrong name and ran into the nurses’ station so hard it left a bruise. Keeping the secret of taking cash for drugs had been hard enough, and now I had a patient who was telling me there was a man in Johnson City who wanted to involve me in his drug affairs, make me a narcotics business partner. The fact that this went further, beyond the office, was intriguing and frightening. I recalled Rick’s comment about being paid double for a pill and I can remember thinking, Who in the world would pay double for a tiny white pill? Impossible.
After my last patient of the day, I stayed at the office until dark, finishing paperwork. Beth and Marty were gone and only the janitor and I remained. I replayed the scenario with Rick in my head in between signing papers.
I hadn’t known that a hierarchy of dealers and drug lords existed in Johnson City. Sure, I was surprised when I found out that prescribing pain medication to patients and taking extra money from them was quite beneficial, but not as surprised as I was to know that there was a bigger picture to all of it. My patients weren’t necessarily my patients, but employees, liaisons between this so-called Bear and the even bigger drug lords above him. I had always known there was a difference between the truly pain-inflicted patients, you know, the ones that deserved the opiates, and the “fake,” addicted patients. In my mind I had created a divide. I had always thought that my “fake” patients were just half-witted opiate addicts, but now I realized they were smarter. They were selling their narcotics to pay bills, buy more drugs, more alcohol, and I truly was their saving grace. I was their lifeline.
Days passed, and I could not get the encounter with Rick out of my mind. Hope asked me if everything was all right. She said I had been turning in my sleep.
“Everything is fine. Don’t worry,” I reassured her.
But in reality, everything wasn’t fine. Suddenly, I was worrying about a lot of things. I was worried I was making a mistake by not calling Rick, by no
t agreeing to work with the Bear. I was worried that, if I agreed, I would get too involved with third parties and slip up and reveal my secret. I battled these internal thoughts for days following my meeting with Rick.
But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized there really wasn’t that much harm in it. I didn’t know this man, but Rick had said he was nice and, more importantly, he could make us more money.
I picked up the phone several times with Rick’s file in front of me with intentions to know more about meeting the man. I even dialed his phone number once but hung up after the second ring.
A week after seeing Rick, I twirled my pen in my hand as I sat in my office. It was Thursday and Hope and I planned to go to our beach share for a long weekend. A trip with her to collect my thoughts was what I needed.
I checked my watch. Hope would be wondering where I was.
I packed up my briefcase, straightened the papers on my desk, and was about to turn off the lights when Marty stopped me.
“Dr. Livingston, this piece of mail got lost in all our paperwork today.”
She walked briskly to me and handed me a standard, white envelope addressed to Dr. Livingston. There was a return address on Mayflower Road and, at first glance, I thought it might be from Beau.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said as she turned off the computers at the nurses’ station.
“I’ll be back on Tuesday. Have a nice weekend, Marty,” I said. I got in my truck and tore open the envelope.
Reading the lines, my stomach sank. It wasn’t signed, but it was clear to me who had written it.
It was from the Bear.
Chapter 8
June 27, 2004
Hope and I spent the long weekend in our beach condo. I tried not to let the letter interfere with our peace, but I couldn’t resist. My mind wandered during sex, during dinner. I would occasionally glance at my suitcase, which housed the letter and feel myself hold my breath, eager to open it. I finally awoke Sunday morning and snuck out to a rocking chair to read over the Bear’s letter. I skimmed the lines over and over again, imagining the man who was addressing me.