Doctor Perry

by Kirsten McKenzie

  And so she sat on her toilet, wrestling with the memory of the flirtatious moments they’d exchanged versus the sound of his troubled screams. She should have offered to help. She missed a golden opportunity to help him, her future husband. He was a better catch than anyone she’d connected with online; capable of actual conversation as a starter. So what if his pain tolerance was almost zero? She’d just have to make sure he never injured himself.

  Her foot went numb, a sign she’d been sitting on the toilet for far too long. It was time to ring him, because even here in her bathroom, with its mouldy shower curtain and an array of half used skincare products, her biological clock was ticking.

  Molly flushed the toilet and steeled her resolve. After checking her makeup in the mirror, her imaginary armour, she flung herself teenage-like onto her bed and hit the call button.

  The tinny sound of electronic ringing echoed in her ear. She pulled it away and pressed the speaker button, propping the phone against her pillow. The answerphone clicked on in the background.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Don Jury, leave a message and I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  Molly stabbed at the phone, ending the call. She hadn’t expected an answerphone. That required a different response than the one she’d prepared. Rolling onto her back she stared up at the ceiling, a ceiling she’d spent hundreds of nights staring at as she sketched out her life plan only to have it dashed by one man or another. Tonight would be another night on her own.

  And in a dented skip behind Doctor Perry’s clinic, the message window on Don Jury’s iPhone lit up, illuminating the whiskered face of a large rat who’d chewed his way into the black rubbish sack, after sniffing out Molly’s leftover lunch — tuna sandwiches garnished with cucumber. The iPhone went dark, a tiny beep showing he’d missed a call from an unknown number. A message Don Jury would never receive.

  39

  Elijah stretched his fingers towards the woman, her curly blonde hair a dull grey in the dark. His hands came away sticky as if someone had used too much of hair gel without combing it through. Confused, he pulled his hand away. The darkness hid the stain on his fingers.

  “Natalie? Natalie, are you okay?” his voice stumbled over the words.

  No answer.

  His nostrils flared as an unnatural wind shoved the mixed scents of rum and beer and oil and earth through the car.

  “Natalie?” his voice small.

  Still no answer.

  Dancing torchlight bobbed towards the car. Weird how it was coming sideways towards him, such a realistic dream but weird he couldn’t feel anything. He waited for his wife to wake him up with a nudge like she always did. But nothing happened.

  “Natalie?”

  Elijah awoke, Natalie’s face blurry in his mind. Her blonde curls set like concrete in her coffin his overriding memory of her now after they’d washed the blood from her hair. His heart beat slowed as he struggled out of his sleepy haze. His memory of the accident fractured and no matter how he tried to piece it together, there was a void in his mind. An emptiness where he should have remembered what happened.

  Experience told him there would be no more sleeping for him tonight. Since Natalie’s death, he’d not made it through a whole night without waking. Her face had faded but the pain and the self recrimination remained.

  Pulling his curtains aside, he searched the outside night for anything of interest. Even the road was devoid of traffic, normal people at home asleep at three o’clock in the morning. His body ached for a release from the pain consuming him. Not the pain from his arthritis but from being alive after causing the deaths of so many others. Sure, coming to the Rose Haven was a step below the luxury he’d enjoyed with Natalie, but it was more life than he deserved. Te papers called him a killer. The parents of the boys had called him that too. And his daughter, Libby. He was unlikely to hear from her again. Lost to him in a way more final than Natalie. Words were said which couldn’t be unsaid. Despite everything, he yearned for one more shot of rum. Or bourbon. Or gin. Anything to numb how he felt in the midnight hours of night.

  Shuffling back to bed, Elijah sipped on a glass of water bedside his bed. They didn’t even trust the residents with real glasses, but gave them disposable plastic ones which they had to wash and reuse — saving money on everything, everywhere. The stale water caught in his throat, and he coughed, and coughed, and coughed. Elijah massaged his chest, his broken rib aching with every cough. Again, the pain was nothing compared to losing Natalie. With his eyes closed, Elijah missed the flash of headlights of a dark sedan pulling into the driveway of the Rose Haven Retirement Resort, its engine silent as it coasted to a stop.

  A hammering reverberated on the interconnecting wall and a muffled shout which Elijah ignored. Another light sleeper. They all were. You became old and suddenly a full nights sleep was as rare as a day off had been when you were working. Now he could sleep the whole day, but couldn’t. Was it a lifetime of misdeeds which kept them awake? Or was that the punishment for becoming old? He needed a rum, to help him sleep. A final shot to force his eyes to close and his mind to quiet.

  Just as his eyes drooped, Elijah’s door crashed open.

  “What the hell, old man? I told you yesterday to keep it quiet. You’re upsetting the other residents so that means you’re upsetting me. Just fucking hurry up and die old man, you worthless old cunt.”

  Dark stains ran down Preston’s white orderly shirt and the foul scent of filter coffee and body odour filled the small room. The coffee stains jolted something in Elijah’s mind, reminding him of the dark sticky stain on his fingers from Natalie’s hair — her blood. Drenched from a can of bourbon and cola, or was it rum and cola? He couldn’t remember, maybe straight rum, after all it had been a big celebration. State champions, seventh year in a row. The orderly kept up his rant, grabbing Elijah by the shoulders, but he wasn’t listening, he’d zoned out, remembering Natalie’s soft hand in his, the sounds of the boys in the back playing drinking games, being kicked out of the motel which meant they were on the road instead of partying in their rooms. A stain on his trousers, urine from the shock of the accident, the knowledge that Natalie had gone, that his life was over…

  “Are you bloody listening old man? Get up,” Preston said, yanking Elijah to his feet, shaking him.

  Elijah lost control. The arthritic pain he’d numbed for years with alcohol disappeared as he fought back. He fought against his treatment since moving into the old folks home. And against a society which demonised him after the accident. He fought against the friendships which vanished as he went through the court system, and he fought against the loss of a daughter who couldn’t forgive him. Elijah was a big man, Preston Sergeant was not.

  The men raged across the small room, knocking into the single bed, its quilt slipping to the ground. They banged into the wall, Preston grunting with the unexpected exertion. Elijah had been publicly vilified, crushed by the weight of public opinion, and broken by guilt, but he had a reserve of strength he hadn’t had to use before, until now.

  The sound of the fight echoed through the Rose Haven Retirement Resort, waking its residents from their slumber and sending the skeleton night staff running to investigate.

  Deep in the bowels of the Rose Haven, Doctor Perry tapped the thin glass of a test tube and watched the viscous liquid bubble above the delicate sliver of flame underneath, oblivious to the ruckus above him. It was a tricky task distilling his tonic, and it needed every ounce of his concentration.

  40

  The Doctor muttered as he checked his calculations. He’d never let his stocks run this low before. Don Jury had needed a larger dose than he’d initially calculated, and this business with Myra had sent him back to his lab to tweak the strength of the formula. Myra resembled an old hag at bedtime, so much so he’d slipped out of the house coming to the lab to work instead.

  In the chair, he closed his eyes, lulled by the humming of the high speed blender, the fine blades breaking up the fibrous membran
es of the sclerotic and cornea, both parts of the eyeball. He’d sliced off the muscles first, discarding those in the medical waste bin. So far he hadn’t found a use for the muscles, or the optic nerves, a frustrating but temporary waste. He was confident that with more analysis he’d find a use for them one day.

  Complex equations filled his notepad. He’d always been good at chemistry, and if he’d applied himself more at college, he would have graduated top of his class. As it was he’d been sidetracked early on with his private experiments using tissue from the both the living, and the dead specimens the college kept on site. Conducting unsanctioned research on live rabbits after hours, hadn’t gone down well with the college and they’d warned him to restrict his activities to the normal course work. That’s when Doctor Perry, or an early iteration of Doctor Perry, realised his professors didn’t want the competition. He’d been more circumspect after that first warning but the spark was lit and he spent the rest of his time at college only half listening to his tutors and conducting his own experiments off site after hours.

  The blender whirred to a stop, leaving only the hiss of the gas heating the batch he’d prepared. Doctor Perry stood up, the wheels of his chair squeaking on the old linoleum. Swishing the liquid in its container to check the viscosity, he decanted it into a glass beaker and positioned it above another element. The whole configuration took up half the room and navigating the convoluted coils and connections required a ballet-like grace.

  Doctor Perry separated out the unwanted sediment when there was a knock on his door. He dropped the beaker, spilling the precious liquid on the floor. Anger rose behind his eyes. No one knocked on his door. A strict do no disturb policy was in place when he was working in the lab. The beaker and the liquid it had held were beyond recovery, with the mess on the floor representing over twelve hours of lab work. Processing, decanting, distilling, binding, and the biotransformation, all that effort, wasted. And Doctor Perry didn’t have time to waste.

  He flung open the door.

  “No one disturbs me,” he hissed.

  The scabby-faced orderly stepped away, and Doctor Perry stepped through the door, pulling it shut behind him. He didn’t recognise the staff member which made it worse. The fewer people who knew of his lab the better.

  “You’re needed upstairs, Doctor,” the orderly said, picking at a scab on his arm. Blood bloomed underneath the cracked skin.

  Doctor Perry checked the door locked behind him and indicated that the orderly should show him the way. The pair made their way up the narrow stairwell, the doctor’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the orderly glancing back towards the lab.

  Even if Doctor Perry couldn’t hear the commotion up ahead, the scared faces poking out from identical doors along the wide corridors lit the way. The stench of the elderly residents made his gut twist and his nose wrinkle. The patients he’d been cultivating called out a greeting, expressing their concern about the well being of whoever he needed to attend. Soon he’d leave all this behind him. And Myra. He had no need of the elderly any more, he had enough put away for a new identity somewhere not as old as Florida. Somewhere not at risk of being annihilated by the next extreme weather event. Changing countries was an option. With money, you could be anyone you liked. It was the one thought which kept him going every time he had to lance a boil or prescribe a fungicide for a hideous toenail infection. The memory made him shudder. He also needed to disappear because the demand for his private services was getting out of hand. There were too many people involved on the periphery now. His name too well known, which could end badly but backing out now wouldn’t work either. One didn’t just walk away from the people he supplied. Disappearing was his only choice. With no strings attached. No Myra.

  Outside Elijah’s room, he shook off the twitchy orderly, making a mental note to suggest Tracey fire him. Even with his forged medical degree, he could spot an addict a mile off. This guy was trouble waiting to happen.

  The crowd outside Elijah’s room parted, allowing Doctor Perry to see into the room. As first he saw nothing out of the ordinary until he saw an odd shape on the floor held secure by a pair of legs in flannel pyjamas.

  Benson squeezed past him, bending down to the strange installation on the floor, lifting an older man up under his armpits and propelling him to the armchair by the window, before pulling the bedspread off the other man panting on the floor. Only then did Doctor Perry enter the room.

  “What on earth happened here?”

  “He attacked me, that old coot. Madder than a rabid dog,” Preston Sergeant puffed, his eye half closed, the swelling obscuring his piggy-like eyes. An improvement Doctor Perry thought.

  Muriel Lincoln pushed her way into the room, pearls nestled in her bosom despite being in her nightclothes. “I heard it all from my room,” she announced. “He started it, he attacked Elijah,” she said, pointing a bony finger at Preston.

  “You’re as deaf as a bat, you bloody well didn’t hear a thing. Stupid old woman,” Preston spat.

  “Enough,” Benson said, offering a hand to the man on the floor.

  Preston ignored Benson and pushing himself up he addressed Doctor Perry, “That man’s a danger to himself, Doc. You should sedate him before he hurts someone else. Look at what he’s done.”

  Doctor Perry’s well practised mask concealed his thoughts about the situation. “It seems that way, thank you for your help, Preston” Doctor Perry said to the sulking orderly. If Preston had planned to retaliate, he lost the opportunity when Doctor Perry continued, “Take yourself off to the nurses station for someone to look at that eye.”

  Muriel Lincoln clasped at her pearls as Preston glared at her on his way past.

  “Do you want me to take Elijah to your office, Doctor Perry?” Benson asked.

  Doctor Perry considered the question, conscious of the beakers and test tubes he’d left unattended in his lab, and smiled as he considered the attributes of the man in the chair. Elijah Cone’s arthritis notwithstanding, another physically fit patient would be perfect to test the latest batch on. The last batch of tonic had been too weak, meaning he had to administer a second dose to the poor unfortunate Don Jury, delaying Don’s biotransformation, and apparently making it more painful that Doctor Perry could endure listening to. Whether his patients coped with the pain was of no consequence.

  “Thank you, Benson. Take him to my consulting room and I’ll meet you there, just have to go downstairs to my…,” Doctor Perry hesitated, a corridor full of rheumy eyes following his every word. “I’ll join you,” he finished saying, swivelling on his polished heels and walking through the crowd of onlookers.

  Doctor Perry didn’t notice the large Indian woman in the corridor. There was no reason for him to. Even if he had noticed her, he wouldn’t have recognised her or spared her a moments thought. Her milky eyes changing her into a different person from the girl she had once been, a long, long time ago.

  41

  “So team, our missing geriatrics, where are they?” queried Clive Jeffries. No answer came from the room, the heads in front of him bowed over hardcover notebooks and feet jiggled under chairs. “Anyone?” Clive tried again, his volume rising until he caught Gary and Tony exchange glances and Gary shrugging at Tony’s raised eyebrows, as if to say, you go.

  “Gary? You got something for us?”

  Gary checked his notes before addressing the room which had brightened considerably once Clive pounced on someone else.

  “We found that both men share the same doctor — a Doctor Perry, who has his clinic in Boynton Beach. He wasn’t at his clinic, so we swung by his home. No sign of any missing grandfathers, but we found his wife there with a baby they’re fostering.”

  Clive’s brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth to interrupt but Tony continued the story.

  “The wife didn’t know the name of the Doc’s receptionist, she thought it was Lily, but the nameplate on the desk at the clinic says Molly, and Molly looks the same age as my aunt, not the young woman Mrs
Perry described. Then Gary got antsy about the car picking up the foster child — the wife said it was Social Services, so we ran the plates. And unless the Child Welfare ladies borrowing cars from the Cavalletto Cartel, I don’t believe it was Social Services ringing that doorbell. You could not make this stuff up,” he concluded.

  Clive’s frown had turned into slack-jawed amazement.

  “Have you two been helping yourselves to the drugs in the evidence locker?” he said, running his hands through his hair. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “They’ve got twins there,” Gary replied, as if that were the answer Clive needed.

  “That’s not a crime is it?” Emily Jesmond piped up from the back of the room.

  “That’s something we need to establish. Gary, check with the welfare people regarding Doctor Perry’s status as a foster parent. I want to know how long he and his wife have been fostering in Florida, and how many kids they’ve fostered. And who adopted this last baby?”

  “I understood we were looking for granddads, not grandkids. Shouldn’t the priority be interviewing the doctor?” Emily asked.

  Clive’s rolled his fists into tight balls on the desk. Emily Jesmond would be the death of him or of his career.

  “We are Emily, you and the rest of us too. But as you are more than aware, sometimes during an investigation, the evidence of other offences comes to light and we action that, Police 101. Your task will be to follow the Cavalletto angle, I’m adding that to your taskings.”

  Emily protested.

  “And Emily, be careful, they can be pretty dirty to deal with,” Clive said, satisfied he’d allocated her a line of enquiry to keep her busy and out of the way. The bloody Cavalletto Cartel, he doubted it. It was probably bad intelligence, a mixup with the plates or something. But that would be for Jesmond to work out. “We need to have a chat with Perry. He’s the doctor of the missing men so out of anyone he’d have a better understanding of their mental wellbeing than their families.”