Doctor Perry

by Kirsten McKenzie

  “Shoo,” he yelled, braver now they weren’t coming any closer. “Shoo, shoo!” He threw the heavy pestle at them and his aim was true because they scattered, and reassembled further away. There were other things on the desk he could throw, the stapler, the hole punch, the pens and pencils, and he was a fantastic thrower, and the bugs moved further and further away. The bugs were scared of Ricky Donovan. He’d showed them, which felt good, he was the master, and all the bugs and beetles would obey him. Should he have another snort of the pinky powdery flesh in his professional laboratory bowl? Probably not, but he should add it to the doctor’s glass beakers, like last time. He was a superb laboratory assistant. Tracey would probably give him a pay rise, and then he’d have enough money to fill his special pipe more often. Yes, that was a fantastical idea.

  Ricky tipped half the remains of the pink powder into the beaker in the middle of the chemical laboratory and the other half into the end beaker. The colour changed a little, so he grabbed a glass stirring rod, and gave both beakers a good stir, and the milky liquid went back to being just milky white, just the way the doctor liked it.

  “Get back,” he warned the bugs, who were getting closers, and they tip toed backwards. Good, this was the right way to treat them, Ricky wished he’d done this when they’d first crawled under his skin, nasty filthy bugs. But now he was tired, so tired. He’d slept on the old couch last night, the one at the back facing the wall, so he’d had to climb over it, no one could have seen him, but the couch smelled of urine, so didn’t fancy napping there now. There wasn’t anywhere else, except… The chiller wasn’t on, he knew because Tracey told him it used too much power, so if he slept in there, with the door shut, the bugs couldn’t get him.

  With his reasoning sound, Ricky pulled open the closest drawer, the empty one, and climbed in. Ricky didn’t know he knew he was sharing the space with anyone else, when he called out a merry “Goodnight,” to the bugs on the floor only he could see.

  56

  Pauline was desperate for a cigarette, almost as desperate as she was to give up, but it kept sucking her back. She’d cut right back, she’d promised her Mam. Her old Mam had done some complicated maths sums and worked out if she stopped smoking for four months, and saved all the money she normally spent on cigarettes, she’d be able to fly home. So she promised herself, after she’d finished this packet, she’d quit, go cold turkey. She’d done it before, loads of times, it was working in this place that did it, the stress of her budget being cut, and the poor people who lived here. She felt so bad for them and wanted to take half of them home with her.

  Taking her usual seat in the courtyard, Pauline pulled out her cigarettes, but the wind was well up today, racing through the courtyard, so she shuffled her chair round the corner, out of the wind and out of sight.

  With the unlit cigarette halfway up to her lips, her moment of peace and quiet interrupted by the sound of that lazy oaf, Stubbs and the bully Preston. What were they doing out here together? Preston didn’t smoke.

  The wind carried their words right into her Northern ears and chilled her heart.

  “I’ll never forget what I saw for the rest of my life,” Stubbs said.

  “Was it a seizure?” Preston asked.

  “I’ve worked here for a long time, and I’ve seen nothing like it. It wasn’t any seizure I’ve ever seen.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Could be, he’s got his big lab downstairs, don’t know what he does there, for all we know, he could be trying his own stuff,” Stubbs said.

  The men both took a long drag of their cigarettes and foul scent of nicotine and tar and a thousand other chemicals made Pauline gag.

  “What was in that bottle, can’t have been drugs—”

  “Or alcohol,” Preston interrupted.

  “It wasn’t natural, what his body did, moving that way.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  The door into the courtyard creaked, it always did, the maintenance schedule was loose at the best of times. And Pauline almost looked round the corner to check they’d gone, when another voice joined the conversation. The last voice she expected to hear.

  “I trust you’re following my last instruction to you both?” said Tracey Chappell.

  Pauline nearly fell off her garden chair. She couldn’t have been more surprised if the President himself had walked into the Rose Haven’s courtyard.

  “Just having a quick smoke before heading back to work,” Preston said.

  Stubbs had flicked his into the bushes the moment he realised it was Tracey coming through the door.

  “Stubbs, you need to start the morning medicine rounds. Tala’s rung to say she has a family emergency and won’t be coming in. Preston, I need you to do a small job for me, if you can find our friend, Miss Patel, and check her blood pressure. Doctor Perry will join you when he’s collected his medical bag. It’s possibly why she’s been playing up, drinking whatever was in that bottle. Doctor Perry suspects it contains a psilocybin, similar to magic mushrooms, hence why you saw Doctor Perry have such a strong reaction to it, he wasn’t used to it.”

  The men said nothing to refute her claims, although to Pauline, it sounded like Tracey was talking out of her arse, making it up as she went. And why on earth would she ask an orderly to check a resident’s blood pressure? That wasn’t right. It would be like asking her to do the catering for the next NASA mission, just because she knew how to cook, didn’t mean she knew how to feed astronauts in space. The woman was barking mad.

  “Here’s the blood pressure cuff. It’s automatic. Slip it on over her arm, and press the start button, simple. And remember, not a word to anyone,” Tracey said, handing the equipment to Preston before disappearing back inside.

  “Psyclo-what?” Stubbs asked, lighting up another cigarette and drawing the smoke deep into his lungs.

  “Magic mushrooms, you must have tried those?”

  “Never in my life. Cigarettes are the only poison I put into my body; that and Pauline’s food.”

  The men laughed and Pauline felt her own blood pressure rising as she tried to refrain from giving them both a knuckle sandwich. Calling them wankers was too kind a word to waste on them. The situation called for something stronger, but she was more worried about what might be in store for Sulia Patel to risk letting them know she’d overheard their conversation. Damn it all to hell, now she had to get involved.

  She waited them out, and after Stubbs had finished his second cigarette, the men disappeared back inside, Preston with Doctor Perry’s blood pressure machine. Pauline didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do next and dithered a bit before putting her shoulders back and reentering the Rose Haven. She had every right to be walking these corridors, no one knew she knew anything, and she didn’t, but Tala and Benson’s inconceivable accusations were growing some legs.

  Pauline rarely ventured anywhere other than the kitchen, dining room, the courtyard, so didn’t know where to find the Indian woman’s room. She wandered the halls peering in doorways, too nervous to give anyone more than a little wave instead of her usual boisterous greeting. She stumbled past Sulia’s room by accident and had to double back to see Preston manhandling the blood pressure cuff onto the large woman’s arm. Sulia was protesting, but Preston relished his role as the enforcer, making up poppycock about how the residents had their blood pressure checked every month, and it was that time of the month for her.

  She waited outside the door, hidden from Preston’s view, listening to Sulia complain before Preston told her to shut the hell up, and that he would press the button now. The unmistakable sound of the inflating cuff was followed by a loud beep and then the hissing of the deflating cuff, and then by a massive thump. Pauline peeked round the doorway, stifling her shock, as she saw Sulia’s unconscious body half on and half off the bed, with Preston swearing like a bloody trooper manhandling her bulk onto the bed.

  Pauline turned tail, hurrying away, ignoring the calls from the residents she passed.


  What to do? Who to go see? It wasn’t the weekend, so Benson wasn’t here, and Tala had called in sick, should she call the coppers? What were they going to say? That the woman had passed out from nerves? Maybe medical tests made her nervous? Oh hell and damnation and bloody Nora. Who else was trustworthy in this place? No one. All, except Tala and Benson, were tossers, with no bloody compassion. Who was Sulia friendly with? She’d been here such a short time, Cone, she’d seen her hanging out with Elijah Cone. She hadn’t believed half the stuff they’d printed in the papers about him. Poor guy had lost his wife, and some kids from his team, but he wasn’t over the limit, and still they found him guilty. He had been drinking, and the hospital said he wasn’t over the limit, that’s what she remembered reading. He’d made someone jealous enough to have him prosecuted for what was an unfortunate accident. Sadly most people believed what they read the papers.

  So she walked the rest of the corridors, looking for Elijah’s room, and sank onto his bed when she found it, the one room without a bloody tv blaring.

  Elijah was sitting at his window reading but had closed his book when she’d rushed in, an Agatha Christie novel aptly titled Appointment With Death.

  “It’s Sulia, they’ve done something to her,” Pauline got out. Christ she sounded like a madwoman.

  “And why are you telling me?” Elijah asked.

  “Don’t be a bloody plonker, you’re her friend. She needs your help,” Pauline said.

  “I don’t know if I’d call her my friend, we’ve sat together twice for meals. You should tell someone in management.”

  “Don’t play that game with me. I’ve been round the block just as many times as you have, and I’m telling you, the woman needs your help. Now git your arse out of that chair and gimme a hand sorting it out before it’s too late.” Pauline heaved herself off the bed and stood in front of Elijah with her hands on her hips and a battle-axe look on her face.

  Elijah put his book to one side, and stood up, with none of the grimacing and incremental pauses he usually did. She didn’t comment because it wasn’t her place to pass judgement on someone else’s health, or self medication, she was happy she’d got the urgency through to his thick skull.

  “So talk me through it,” Elijah said as Pauline hurried him along the corridor.

  “There’s no time, but it’s got something to do with Doctor Perry, and Tracey Chappell, she’s the manager here, and then Preston checked her blood pressure, even though he’s only an orderly and not a nurse, so that’s bloody dodgy and then she collapsed or fainted. Anyway, she was unconscious on the damn bed, and then I came here to get you.”

  They got to Sulia’s room, but there was no sign of her. Elijah walked to the window and pulled open the curtains.

  “What are you doing man? There’s no time to be fussing over curtains. Come on, they’re probably cutting her open now and stealing her heart and lungs and stuff.”

  Elijah ignored her, and she didn’t know if her blood pressure could take much more of this. Men were all the bloody same, only listened to what they wanted to hear. What was he doing behind the curtains? Pauline watched as Elijah pulled the curtains right away from the wall, and reached into the corners of both sides of the window, coming up empty handed.

  “Did you see anyone with an old bottle, or talk about something in a bottle?” Elijah asked.

  Pauline racked her brain, the whole thing had rattled her. “One of them said something about something being in a bottle, Stubbs or Preston, can’t remember which one,” she said.

  “They’ve found her bottle then, the one she had hidden behind the curtain. It was there before breakfast. Where would they take her?”

  “Um, to the doctor’s office? Or to Tracey’s office?”

  Elijah shook his head. It was the first time in a decade he’d been able to do that without being in pain. “No, it’ll be somewhere more private.”

  “They mentioned Doctor Perry’s lab, a big lab downstairs somewhere. I didn’t even bloody know we had a downstairs, shows how often they let me out of me kitchen,” Pauline said, her attempt at humour falling flat as Elijah hurried forward.

  He paused next to the motel’s old fire escape diagram, running his finger along the sections of the motel, before stabbing at a symbol next to the motel’s office.

  “There, is that Tracey’s office?”

  Pauline adjusted her glasses, peering at the tiny writing.

  “Yip. Is that a staircase next to her office then? That little block of lines?”

  “It is, when you’ve stayed at as many hotels, motels, budget inns and airport accommodation as I have, reading the fire escape plan before you go to bed at night is a routine you get into if you want to live through the night.”

  Pauline nodded at Elijah’s homily. She could count the number of motels she stayed in on one hand. Wasn’t any spare cash around for that carryon in her life, although she went to Spain once, with her Mam. She’d got bloody sunburnt, and they hated the food, so not the best experience.

  “Do we go to the lab now? Sneaking into a lab sounds very James Bondish, eh?” Pauline said.

  “I’ll have a look, see what’s happening. Be best if you rang the police, you’re an employee here, they’ll believe you. No one ever believes me,” Elijah said.

  “I believe you, eh I do, I never believed what they wrote about you in them papers,” Pauline said, her hand on Elijah’s arm.

  Elijah stared at her, “Thank you.”

  “Right, I’ll ring the coppers, and you only have a look mind, no heroics. If they’re cutting her up for body parts, they’ll have knives, so you watch yourself, you mind, eh?” and she hurried back to her kitchen. She’d ring from there, and then at least she’d have her kitchen knives if she needed to protect herself.

  57

  Being called into the Rose Haven by Tracey, and told the police were looking for him and that they wanted to question the other residents about two of his patients, sent Doctor Perry’s world spinning out of control. Tracey was livid that his activities outside the Rose Haven might jeopardise their financial arrangement and he’d been incredulous at that. Tracey lived a life of luxury because of what he delivered although she frittered her cash away and he squirrelled his away. Despite all the best-laid plans that rainy day was here.

  He’d delayed the Cavalletto Cartel boys with a creative message about him picking up something infectious from a patient, they wouldn’t know it was a lie, and would take the pressure off for a few days, not that he would be here to care. He had a flash of concern for Myra if they turned up at the house and he wasn’t there, but shrugged it off. It wasn’t his problem, and he was sure they’d deal with her in their special way, the twins too.

  Losing identical twins was a shame, he’d been looking forward to experimenting on them with some different formulas he’d developed. He’d have to find another set after he moved, it couldn’t be that hard.

  But then, to face a bottle of tonic missing for sixty odd years, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. After the disaster with Clarita Swann, he didn’t trust the last batch of tonic, and had emptied it down the sink, starting a new batch which should be ready by now. Doctor Perry hadn’t analysed what could have gone wrong. But now he had this bottle of his original tonic, the one he’d used back before he reduced the potency to avoid any more accidental deaths, which had been getting out of hand. One sip was enough to take three years off his age. Tracey was so wrapped up in worrying about herself, she hadn’t even noticed. Doctor Perry wasn’t tempted to offer her any; let her spend her money on Botox and collagen and the rest of the false beauty she pumped into her body to keep herself young. He had his tonic.

  He’d spent the whole night at his clinic cleaning up the remnants of Miss Swann, who was now in the dumpster out back, although some of her teeth were in his pocket. There was a nice collection of teeth in the garage and he must remember to grab the tin before he left. It would be a comfort to have those little memories near him,
to show him how far he’d come.

  Doctor Perry told Tracey he needed to gather some things to deal with the patient who had his tonic. He couldn’t recall ever interacting with her, but they must have met in Chicago, because that was the only time bottles of tonic went missing. He’d never figured out how it had happened, and the first person he took his frustration out on was the receptionist — stupid girl, she mustn’t have locked up properly, or a boy distracted her.

  There was only one reason he’d gone back to his office, self preservation.

  Doctor Perry pulled file after file off the shelves, shoving any file with a red circle in the top right-hand corner, into a sports bag. The bag bulged at the seams, threatening to split with every additional file stuffed inside. He couldn’t remember having this many patients and stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. The air conditioning was off, along with the lights. Molly would be here soon and he needed to go before she arrived. He’d lock his office behind him and call in sick. That’d give him another day or two before anyone asked questions here.

  Doctor Perry paused, he’d been at the clinic all night, yet Myra hadn’t rung to find out what time he’d be home. Should he worry? No, Myra wasn’t worth the worry, she had the twins to look after, and was probably too tired to care about his whereabouts. As she so often told him, she was always tired these days, and looked it too.