Fixer

by Gene Doucette

  “I thought I could help!” he snapped.

  “You’re just a child! What did you think—”

  “Mom!” The unexpected use of her title in lieu of her given name stopped her in mid-lecture. He looked her in the eyes. “You know I’m not an ordinary twelve-year-old, don’t you? I’m not like other kids.”

  “Of course. You’re very special.”

  “Not special. Different,” he said. “Like in Maine. You remember what happened in Maine.”

  “I . . .” She went back to being afraid again. He was beginning to wonder if maybe she should find some meds for herself.

  “I didn’t make the gun go off, Mom.”

  “I know, it’s just—”

  “No, you don’t know. You won’t let me talk about it, so you never get to hear what really happened. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Oh, Corry—”

  “Charlie shot his own leg off. I heard it fire before you did, is all. I’m not some kinda devil child. I wanted to tell you . . .”

  Violet had begun weeping just as soon as he started talking about Maine, and Corry had to stop talking because he was crying, too. She pulled him to her breast, hugging him tighter than he could ever remember being hugged.

  “I never thought you were a devil child, baby,” she whispered. “And I will always be proud of you.”

  This made him cry even more. So they sat there for a few minutes, getting one another wet.

  “Well, there’s the little hero,” said someone from behind them. Violet loosened her grip, and Corry turned around to see that it was Dr. Ames.

  Ames was a short guy, only a little taller than Corry, with long white hair that stood almost straight up and thick glasses that made him look like the Mole Man from the Fantastic Four comic books. As amusing as that comparison was, he had Osgood Pierce’s blood on him, which was sobering.

  “How’s Mr. Pierce?” Corry asked.

  “The paramedics think he’ll pull through.”

  “Good. How about Mr. Nilsson?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about him. He won’t be hurting anyone anymore.”

  Corry wasn’t sure what that meant but was pretty positive it didn’t mean they were going to kill him or anything like that only because he didn’t think that sort of thing was done. “Good,” Corry said. “I guess.”

  Ames said, “Violet, is it? Is it all right if I talk to your son alone for a moment?”

  She looked at him. “Corry?”

  “It’s okay,” Corry said.

  Violet glanced at Dr. Ames, then back at her son, as if gauging whether it was a prudent thing to leave her son in the company of anybody other than her any time soon.

  “All right,” she said finally. “But we have to get someone to look at this hand. The paramedics—”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said, holding up the hand. His makeshift bandaging job was holding up well, and he was not looking forward to having it removed, as that would involve looking at the cut again. It could wait.

  “I’ll be right outside, then,” she said.

  “They’re clearing the building, Violet,” Dr. Ames said. “I’ll bring him out back in a minute, and then we can get his hand tended to.”

  “Okay?” she asked, looking at Corry again.

  “I know the way out, too,” he said helpfully.

  She smiled, staring at him for a few more seconds and then walked out, escorted by one of the cops who were still pacing around the room, waiting for one of the chairs to do something illegal or whatever.

  Dr. Ames stood in front of Corry and waited for Violet to be out of earshot.

  “So how are you feeling, Corry?” Ames asked. He had his hands behind his back and kept rocking on the balls of his feet, which was the same thing Corry’s fifth grade English teacher used to always do. It annoyed him.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “The hand?”

  “Cut it on some glass,” he said, fiddling absentmindedly with the bandage.

  “Starting to throb now, isn’t it?”

  As soon as Ames said that, Corry realized yes, that was exactly what his hand was doing. It was a dull pain, but every time he flexed his hand it became a sharp one, so he stopped doing that. “Yeah.” He winced.

  “That’s the adrenaline,” Ames said. “The adrenal gland’s secretions tend to override the pain, and now that you’ve calmed down, it’s going to start to hurt more, I’m afraid.”

  Corry didn’t understand about half of what Ames had just said, so he only nodded.

  Discussions of gland secretions were apparently what Ames considered small talk, and having gotten it out of the way, he moved on to the meat of the conversation. “The reason I wanted to talk to you . . . Corry, you saw a lot of pretty terrible things today, didn’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  Ames sat next to him on the table. “Sometimes, when we see terrible things, we put them away for a while. In here.” He tapped the side of his head. “Do you understand? It’s not that we pretend they never happened. We just put them someplace in our heads where we don’t have to think about them for a while.”

  “Sure,” Corry said. “That happens to me in history class.”

  “History?”

  “Yeah. I always forget the answers during the tests, but I remember them as soon as the test is over.”

  He nodded and patted Corry’s knee in a sort of grandfatherly way. “It’s almost like that.” He smiled. “You seem to have dealt with all of this very well. Better than most of us, and that’s a very rare thing.”

  “Oh,” Corry said, surprised. It had seemed at first like he was heading for a lesson about some other glands, but this was okay. “Thanks.”

  “But . . . there may come a time when these terrible things you have put away come out when you don’t want them to. And it will be very difficult to put them back again. Do you understand?”

  Corry nodded. “I think so. You’re saying I’m gonna go crazy.”

  “No.” He laughed. “Not crazy. Upset. Just upset. And I’m telling you now because I want you to know that when this happens, you may need to talk to someone. In fact, I think you should start talking to someone right away, just in case.”

  “I talk to people all the time,” Corry said.

  “I know. That isn’t the kind of talking I mean. I mean more like the kind of talks we have here with the patients.”

  “So I am going to go crazy.”

  “No,” he repeated slowly, like he was trying to train a puppy. “But you may become a bit confused. Corry, most adults would be seeking therapy after enduring what you survived today. Many of the ones here probably will. I’m suggesting you let me help you cope with all of this. Put it into perspective.” He looked about ready to put his hand on Corry’s shoulder before deciding against it.

  Ames continued. “When we leave here, I’m going to be speaking to your mother and recommending that you and I sit down once a week for at least a little while just to talk, like we are right now. But I’m telling you first—asking you, I should say—because it strikes me that you are a young man who makes his own decisions about things. So how about it?”

  “I wasn’t planning to come back here again,” Corry said. “Even before—”

  “We don’t have to come here,” Ames said. “I have an office in Lexington. We can meet there.”

  Corry said, “I guess that’d be all right. I mean, for a little while.”

  “Good. And you know, if you’d rather talk to someone else, I would be happy to make the arrangements.”

  “Nah, you seem okay.”

  He smiled, taking it as a compliment. “That’s set, then.”

  That should have been the end of their conversation, but Ames hesitated. He was looking down at his shoes for some reason.

  “Can I leave now?” Corry asked.

  “Yes, of course . . . is it all right if I ask you one more question? Before we go?”

  “Sure.”

  “Harve
y’s reaction to you was . . . interesting.”

  “Well, he was kinda crazy.”

  “Disassociated, Corry. We prefer the term disassociated.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I was just wondering how often you interacted with him in the past. I know you’ve been visiting here for some time—”

  “I dunno,” Corry lied. “I didn’t hardly know him at all.”

  “Curious. Because of all the people he could have chosen, you were the one he thought . . . never mind.” He smiled. “I guess I’m a little rattled myself. He was my patient, you know.” He slipped off the table and held out his hand for Corry. “Come on. Let’s go find your mother.”

  Corry slid off the table without any help and headed for the door with Dr. Ames.

  Around the room, police were still milling about, and a photographer was taking pictures, which Corry guessed was important, but he couldn’t imagine why.

  And there was someone else there, too. Corry didn’t spot him until he was nearly to the door. It was a short bald guy dressed in overalls. He didn’t look like a cop, or like anybody Corry had ever seen in the hospital before.

  The most curious thing about him was that he was sitting down against the wall and just . . . trying to breathe or something. He had his hand—a funny hand, with really long fingers—over his stomach at first, but then he moved it, and Corry saw that he was wounded. Having now seen a fair number of like wounds in his short lifetime, Corry could attest to the fact that it was from a gunshot. It looked really bad, like the guy was about to die. Nobody was helping him, and Corry was about to say something to that effect until he realized nobody else knew the man was there.

  Don’t let them know you can see them.

  “Everything okay, Corry?” asked Dr. Ames, noting the young man’s hesitation.

  “Yeah,” Corry said. “You know, I think talking will be good for me.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  “I don’t want to end up like Mr. Nilsson.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ames said, putting a reassuring hand on Corry’s shoulder. “That won’t ever happen.”

  PART THREE

  RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW

  Chapter Eighteen

  Now

  It was five in the morning, the sun was not yet up, and Corrigan Bain stood naked before his wall map of the City of Boston, his hand extended, eyes closed, and lips prepared to utter the first location of the day. He was trembling slightly, a direct consequence of having had almost no sleep for the past week, coupled with the beer he’d had the night before that had not entirely left his system. The beer may have had something to do with why he was cold and sweating simultaneously and why his head had an entire percussion band inside of it slamming on the sides of his skull. But no, that was probably the vodka.

  “You know you’re not gonna get anything,” said the boy from the hallway.

  “Shut up. You’re not here.”

  “Nope. Not here,” the kid agreed.

  He waited. There were flashes of heat but not in his hand, just his face and shoulders. He would have to go throw up soon.

  Nothing. Nobody needed his help any more. It had been nine days. He lowered his hand.

  “Close program,” he said. The computer chirruped.

  “Told ya,” the kid said.

  Corrigan ignored the apparition, as there were other matters that needed his immediate attention. He took care of those matters by running to the bathroom and vomiting extensively, mostly into the toilet.

  * * *

  An hour later, he was camped on his overstuffed couch, chewing on a piece of dry toast and trying to decide if he should bother to put on any clothing today, while his gorgeous, big flat-screen television was showing him all the people he didn’t save the day before. Most of them had died in a four-alarm fire in Allston he thought he probably could have done something about had he known ahead of time.

  “Those poor people,” Emily Jensen commented. She was an elderly woman who fell down the stairs in her apartment building on a snowy morning five winters ago while Corrigan was busy racing into the wrong building. She was sitting next to him on the couch. Except, of course, she wasn’t.

  “Yeah, breaks your heart, doesn’t it? That’s why I never watch the news.”

  “Oh, I never missed it.”

  “Figured you were more of a soap opera and game show-type.”

  “Maybe I was,” she said, leaning back. Her head lolled to one side unnaturally, such that when she spoke to Corrigan she had to look up past her forehead. “I don’t rightly remember.”

  “I could find out,” he said. “Call your daughter or something. Would you like that? I’m not busy.”

  “You’d never do that,” she said.

  “No, you’re probably right,” he agreed, adding, “and now, the weather.” Corrigan said it a good three seconds before anybody on the news did and used it to clarify where he was temporally. His voice was the only useful tool he had because his ghost companions were still absent any futures. It made living with them unsettling, but on the plus side, it was an excellent way to prove they weren’t really there. Which, of course, they weren’t.

  “This is what happened to you, isn’t it, Harvey?” he asked.

  His words came back to him twice, which was bad.

  “Who’s Harvey?” the boy asked. He was sitting behind the chair and throwing a ball against the wall.

  “That’s that old crazy dude he used to know,” answered Ndeki, formerly a dreadlocked, club-hopping biker with a bad habit of taking his bicycle on Storrow Drive, and now a somewhat amiable ghost lying on the coffee table of the guy who got hung up in traffic that day. The right side of his body was compressed toward the center of him, like a locked accordion.

  Of the nine days Corrigan had gone without a work schedule, the last three had been spent dealing with the routine appearances of the ghosts during his waking hours. They had been appearing to him here and there even before his recent meltdown, but silently. Now they talked all the time, and no matter how much he yelled at them, they refused to leave. He hated to admit it, but he was sort of enjoying the company. Plus, in the daytime they hardly ever gave him a hard time about not having saved them, reserving that horror show for when he tried to sleep. The only real drawback to having them all there was that he was pretty sure he’d gone mad.

  He got up off the couch. He was still sitting on the couch thinking about getting up. He stepped around the pizza boxes and over the woman in the blue suit, who was sleeping on the floor. He got up off the couch.

  Focus!

  He stepped around the pizza boxes, over the blue suit, and into the kitchen.

  “You look kinda pale,” the boy noted.

  “Can’t find the present, kid,” he said, and now his words were coming back to him three times, like he was standing in an echo chamber. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. He didn’t grab a beer. He grabbed a bottle of water. That was what he needed, not beer. No more beer. He drank the water, which tasted like beer until his decision to drink a beer vanished into the nonexistence of a future that didn’t happen, going to wherever it was those hypothetical futures always went.

  He closed the fridge door. He closed it again. He left the kitchen.

  “I’m not Harvey Nilsson,” he declared, closing his eyes. Finding the present was like trying to dock a boat on a fast-moving river.

  “Of course you’re not,” said someone from his easy chair. Corrigan walked back into the living room and noticed all the ghosts were gone. No, that wasn’t right. Someone with no future had said something from the chair. He stepped around the coffee table and got a good look.

  “Harvey?” he asked.

  “In the flesh,” Harvey Nilsson said. “More or less. How good it is to see you again, young master Corry.”

  “Oh no,” Corrigan whispered. He sat down on the edge of the couch—recently occupied by Emily—and stared at the face of a man who died more than tw
enty-five years ago.

  Corrigan Bain has gone insane.

  “You don’t look happy to see me,” Harvey said. “After all this time, do I still frighten you?”

  “It’s not that, Mr. Nilsson,” Corrigan said, reverting without realizing it to the title he used for the old man back when he was twelve. “It’s that . . . if you’re here, then it’s really true; I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Possibly so.”

  * * *

  Dr. Frederick Allan Ames, former assistant director of McClaren Hospital, former professor in residence at Boston University, former husband of the now-deceased Molly Ames née Blackwell, and current resident of the Norris Retirement Community, did not have B7. He very much wanted to have B7, and stared longingly at the six Bingo cards on the table before him on the off chance one of the numbers he did have had transformed magically into B7, but this did not work. To make matters worse, Estelle Wilson, two rows up and one chair to the right, did have B7. He knew this because whenever she had a match, she thanked Jesus for it, loudly and fervently, as if Jesus gave a flying fuck.

  Ames chewed on the edge of the chip he’d been hoping for the past few minutes he’d get to put down somewhere and waited for the next number to be called. Because this was what his life had become—waiting impatiently for a little spark of excitement. Only a little. Too much and his heart might just shrug and give up, something it had done twice in the past fourteen months before paramedics convinced it to get going again. Sometimes he caught himself just sitting still and feeling his heart beat in his chest to see if added scrutiny would cause it to stop again.

  Unhealthy was what it was. He knew that as well as anyone. But, as he’d heard thousands of times before from people far worse off, he just couldn’t help himself.

  “Dr. Ames,” said one of the young interns, whispering in his ear. She’d snuck right up on him while he was busy listening for the next number or for his heart to stop, whichever came first.

  “Yes?” he asked. He turned and noted that when she leaned forward, he could see right down the neck of her blouse. She was trying to kill him—that’s what it was.