The Black Witch of Mexico

by Colin Falconer

  Come with me, she had whispered in bed the night before she left. Come and join me. We can’t let this thing go.

  I can’t do it, he said, and she must have thought till the last that he would change his mind, to the moment they said goodbye at the airport. They had clung to each other at the terminal gates like they were drowning.

  The next day he went back to work. He didn’t talk about it with anyone, and within a month he was dating again.

  Lynne said he got his emotional make-up from his father. ‘Bloodless’ was how she had once described him. He protested that he was simply honest: he had never led any woman to think he was anything other than what he was. He had never cheated on a woman in his life and he had never lied.

  The irony was that Elena was the only woman who had taken him at his word. He told her he didn’t want kids and she didn’t wait around to see if he meant it. When the time came she just moved on.

  This wasn’t him. He didn’t believe in The One, or in soulmates. He didn’t watch romantic comedies and he didn’t think You’ve Got Mail was the greatest movie ever made and he didn’t send his girlfriends Valentine’s Day cards or roses. His sister said he was the most cynical man she had ever met, and he took it as a compliment, a testament to his masculinity.

  So why could he not let Elena go?

  * * *

  At Sagamore he changed his mind about driving all the way to Cape Cod. He turned off the Pilgrim Highway and headed down Scusset Beach Road. Fatigue hit him hard, too many long hours in the ER, too many nights without sleep, and too many calming swigs of rye on the way down. Suddenly the car was bumping over the hard track at the side of the road and into a stand of beech. He slammed on the brakes, swerved to miss a tree and the tyres lost traction in the dirt and the rear-end swung around and hit side-on and stove in the passenger side.

  He sat there for a long time, listening to the water steaming out of the radiator. Finally he turned off the engine and got out. Christ, what a mess. He wouldn’t be going anywhere in that tonight.

  He remembered the bottle of Templeton, found it on the floor well on the passenger side. He hurled it as far as he could into the gathering dark.

  If the cops found him like this he’d end up in jail. He left the car and trudged back toward the road.

  Chapter 17

  He woke to the insistent clamour of the buzzer downstairs. Adam jerked awake, found himself still on the sofa. He hadn’t even made it as far as the bed last night.

  He looked at his watch. Fuck, he’d overslept.

  Whoever was downstairs, they were just about leaning on the buzzer.

  “Yes?”

  “Is that Adam Prescott?”

  “Yes.”

  “Patrolman O’Brien, from the BPD. I need to have a word with you, sir, regarding your vehicle.”

  That was fast. He buzzed him up.

  He waited by the door rehearsing his story in his head.

  * * *

  Patrolman O’Brien was a typical Boston cop: Irish ginger and shoulders like a meat packer. Adam opened the door in his t-shirt and shorts and asked him if he’d like coffee. He said “no thank you, sir, this shouldn’t take that long,” he was there to follow up on a call from his colleagues down in Plymouth. They’d found a BMW X-5 in a ditch and towed it. It was registered in his name.

  “It’s mine. I had an accident.”

  “You didn’t report it?”

  “I must have blacked out. I guess I just wandered off. I vaguely remember getting a cab. It’s all pretty hazy. I think I hit my head on the steering wheel.” He pulled back his hair to show the cop the cut on his hairline.

  “Yeah, you should get a doctor to look at that.”

  “I am a doctor.”

  “That a fact? Then you should know to take better care of yourself. You been to the hospital?”

  “I was headed there now. Like I said, I think I must have had a concussion. I don’t remember much of anything.”

  “Well, the guys down in Sandwich wrote out this infringement notice here, for abandoning a vehicle and failing to report. You can talk to your lawyer or you can just pay it if you want.” He handed him the infringement notice and had him sign the paperwork. “It’s going to cost you to get the car back, too.”

  “Okay.”

  The cop looked him up and down. He was young but he wasn’t stupid. “You have anything to drink last night?”

  “A couple of beers after work.”

  “That all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “What kind of doctor did you say you were?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, memory’s working good right now.”

  “I work in the emergency room at Saint Mary’s.”

  “So you know about saving lives.”

  “I do it every day.”

  “Here’s a tip then, Doctor Prescott. You want to save even more lives, never get behind the wheel of a car if you’ve been drinking. Next time you run off the road there may be someone standing in the way. You have a good day.”

  * * *

  Adam looked up at the clock: 7:43 a.m. His relief would be there in a quarter hour. If he could coast and do nothing for the next five minutes he would have made it through another night shift. There had not been a lull all night; his feet hurt and his back ached, he had spent the better part of an hour bent over suturing a scalp wound.

  He was writing up his files at the nurse’s station when he heard the squawking of the EMS radio. “St Mary’s, this is Medic Two.”

  Fiona pushed the hands-free button. “Go ahead, Medic Two. This is Saint Mary’s ER.” She noted the time.

  “ER, we’re on the Turnpike with a 10-50, one PI, thirty-year-old female. Non-responsive, head injury, possible pneumothorax. Pulse thready 130, BP 80/60, we’re bringing her in on a backboard. ETA five minutes.”

  “10-4, Medic Two. Major trauma one on arrival. We’ll be waiting,”

  Looked like he wouldn’t be getting away on time.

  He activated the trauma response team and put on gloves and an apron.

  He was barely ready when the ambulance entrance doors barrelled open. The paramedics hurried through with their Jane Doe, one of them at the head of the gurney ventilating her, the other steadied the side, one hand on the ECG. Their patient was strapped securely to a backboard, head held firmly to it by Velcro straps.

  They moved her to the bed and he stepped in. She had one IV in place and Fiona started another. Jackie was drawing blood from the other arm while two X-ray techs started shooting film of her neck and chest.

  “Truck changed lanes in front of her,” one of the paramedics said, “she swerved and hit the barrier and flipped. Serious head trauma and a developing pneumothorax right side. BP’s sixty over zip.”

  They had secured her airway with an endo-tracheal tube. Fiona took over ventilation, but it was clear from her colour that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen and there was a clear deviation of the trachea.

  One of her pupils was dilated and deviated to the right, not good. Her face was badly swollen and the paramedics had bandaged her head wound. The cervical collar and the bag mask obscured most of her face. “Did you get an ID?” he asked.

  “The car was too messed up.”

  “You didn’t get an ID?”

  The paramedic shrugged. Hadn’t he just said that? Jackie was cutting off her clothes and he ignored Fiona’s pleas to start a chest drain. Instead he looked for the strawberry coloured birthmark on her left hip. No, it wasn’t her.

  “Doctor Prescott!”

  It wasn’t Elena.

  “Doctor Prescott!”

  One of the interns had already stepped in and had started the incision. Jackie handed him a clamp and he inserted a chest tube to re-inflate her left lung.

  “Call Radiology for an urgent CT,” he said, and Fiona nodded and went to make the call.

  Jackie said the on-call neurosurgeon was on his way down.

  He caught the ha
rd stares in his direction. Even the intern looked embarrassed.

  “Oxy-sats up to eighty-nine percent” Jackie said.

  “Good work,” he said because there was nothing else to say. He wondered how long he had spent looking for the birthmark, but he couldn’t remember. Long enough to scare the rest of the team. Christ, he was coming undone.

  Chapter 18

  The next day Bill found him at the nurse’s station. “When you’ve got a minute,” he said.

  “Sure,” he said, and he pushed the discharge file to one side.

  “Not here. My office,” Bill said and stalked away towards the elevators.

  * * *

  “I’m worried about you,” he said.

  “Is this about what happened in the ER yesterday? Look, I’m sorry, Bill, it was just one of those things, it won’t happen again.”

  “No, it won’t,” he said, and Adam wondered just what he meant by that. “It’s not just yesterday’s fiasco. You’re showing signs of strain. I hear you broke up with your girlfriend.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “A couple of months ago.”

  “How long had you two been together?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “Hear you’ve been drinking.”

  Fuck, Adam thought, where did that come from? “Sure I’ve been drowning my sorrows a little on my days off. But I’d never let it affect my performance.”

  “But it has affected your performance.” Bill sat back, crossed his arms. “I know it’s not quite the same as what happened to Frank, but I think I understand what you’re going through. You’re wired pretty tight, aren’t you, Adam?”

  Was he? Was that what they thought about him?

  “I’m all right. I’ll get over it.”

  “From what I hear ... don’t look so surprised, nurses talk and sometimes they forget who’s listening ... from what I hear you’re pretty beat up over what happened.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “We never know what’s going to hit us or where from. We can be going along just fine and then trouble comes out of a clear blue sky.”

  Philosophy from Bill Marshall. Things must be worse than he thought. “It was just a lapse. Like I said, it won’t happen again.”

  “They tell me you just stood there, staring into space, while they shouted at you to put in a chest drain. You can’t daydream in an emergency unit, you know that better than anyone. Our saves are built on vital seconds, not comfortable half hours.”

  “Bill, it’ll never happen again.” He stood up. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yeah, one other thing: I want you to take some time off. Why don’t you do what Frank did it, sign on for that program down in Mexico? It will do you good to get away from things for a while, get your mojo back.

  “I don’t feel like I ever lost my mojo.”

  “Well it’s not something I want to discuss. I’m giving you a sabbatical. It’s up to you what you do with it.”

  “I don’t need time off, Bill.”

  “Well I’m giving it to you anyway. Think about Mexico. They need good people down there. You would be doing some people a lot of good. Thanks, Adam. I better get back to work.”

  The interview was over.

  * * *

  To hell with him, to hell with all of them. There was nothing wrong with him, he had a moment in the ER, that was all. It happened to everyone some time or another. Okay, he had been drinking a little lately, he’d just had a major break up, a few nights with the bottle didn’t mean he was losing his grip.

  He would go in and hand Bill his resignation, if that was what he wanted, find some other hospital that appreciated his talent. He had wanted to spread his wings for a while, perhaps a smaller unit where he had more chance of making chairman. Bill was out of order. He didn’t need a break.

  He headed down Chandler Street, crossed between two parked cars, heard a horn and leaped back, a guy in a Lexus slammed on his brakes and swerved, just millimetres away. He stood on the sidewalk, his heart racing.

  The guy got out of the car, looked back at him, spread his hands. “Where’s your head, buddy? You could have got yourself killed.”

  Adam held up a hand to apologize. The guy shook his head, got back in the car and drove away.

  He was still shaking when he got home. He poured himself three fingers of Templeton, turned on the TV news. He stared at a picture of a couple smiling at the camera, some vacation photo, arm in arm on a beach somewhere. The editor cut away to video footage of a parking lot, a bloodstain on the ground and a body covered with a sheet. There was footage of a young man being led out of an apartment block with his hands cuffed, surrounded by police. The couple in the photograph had been married just six months when she walked out. A week later he followed her home and shot her three times.

  “I can’t understand it,” one of his colleagues told the interviewer. “He was such a nice guy, he was real popular.”

  What was wrong with these guys, couldn’t keep their emotions in check? How many times did you hear it, people supposed to be in love once, end up killing each other.

  He went up to the roof, stared at the Boston skyline. Bill was right, he was coming undone. This wasn’t how he rolled. What the fuck? Your brain told you what to feel, that was the way it worked, right? If you let impulse and emotion run your life, you were headed for a train wreck.

  Not her. She had put him aside like an old pair of shoes. He was angry that he couldn’t do that too. He couldn’t let one fucking woman jeopardize his whole fucking career.

  He was embarrassed; he was unnerved.

  He took his mobile out of his pocket and picked out a number on the speed dial. “Hey, sis ... how you doing? ... yeah, I got some news ... I’m going to Mexico.”

  Chapter 19

  He stared at the lights of the concrete towers on Back Bay. A chill wind off the river stirred Old Glory. The muted hum of the city seemed to come from a very long way away.

  The moon rose over the city, pale and red. “Mexico?” Lynne shouted into the phone. “Why the deuce are you going to Mexico?”

  “I want to give something back to the world.”

  “Really?”

  “Is that so surprising?”

  “It’s because of her, isn’t it?”

  “It has nothing to do with her. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  “Where in Mexico?”

  “I don’t know. They told me the name. I’ve forgotten.”

  “Cancun,” she said.

  “No, there’s no women, no beaches. It’s some place down in the boondocks.”

  “Mexico…at least there’ll be no blondes to get you into trouble.”

  “There’s nothing of anything down there.”

  “I’m worried about you, little brother.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said with more conviction than he felt, and then made some lame excuse about his dinner burning and hung up. His dinner was not burning; not unless the pizza boy’s delivery van caught fire.

  He closed his eyes. He needed something to kill the pain; time to find Mister Templeton again.

  * * *

  He went upstairs to Bill’s office; the door was open, he went in. Bill was huddled behind a mountain of paperwork. “Can I see you?”

  He nodded towards the chair on the other side of his desk. “Want coffee?” he said and went to the percolator in the corner.

  Adam said “no thanks, no coffee.” He just wanted to get this over with. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’re right, I’ve been working too hard and maybe I need some time ... away. Need to refocus.”

  “You want to go down to Mexico?”

  “I rang Frank last night to talk about it. He just got back and he thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Good, I’ll make some phone calls. Your job
will be here waiting when you get back. I wouldn’t want to lose you, you’re one of the best we have.”

  “Well, you never know, maybe I’ll stay. I like Mexican food.”

  It was a lame joke and it fell flat. “If you like Mexican food, then you don’t want to go to Santa Marta. It’s tortillas and beans, that’s about it.”

  “Not even any guacamole dip?”

  Bill pointed to the door. “I’ll get the paperwork started. You better get back to work, Doctor Prescott.”

  Adam strolled back to the elevators. Mexico.

  What the hell have I done?

  Chapter 20

  Benito Juarez International Airport, Mexico City

  Jamie Fox Garrido was waiting for him at the airport. She was wearing a power suit and Jean Paul Gaulthier - Elena’s signature fragrance - and holding a white board with “Adam Prescott’ written on it in Texta. She was texting as he came out of customs, and when he walked over she raised a finger to indicate that he should wait until she’d finished.

  When she finally hung up she looked at his luggage, not at him. “I should have brought a bigger car. What is this, fashion week?”

  “I’m here for six months.”

  “If you emigrated you wouldn’t need all that.”

  She turned and headed toward the doors and Adam followed, trying to keep up. She was texting again when they got outside.

  “You’re Jamie?”

  “I am she.”

  “It’s just that, you know, I was expecting ...”

  “You thought I’d be a man.”

  “You’re not the pastor?”

  “That’s my father. He runs the clinic.”

  There was a car waiting, an SUV. She got in. Her driver helped him put his cases in the back. His name was José, and he was a good deal friendlier than Jamie Fox Garrido.