False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  Callie felt her head nod, though she could still feel the sharp burn from the infection. She had to say something, but what could she say? How could she apologize for stealing from him? For jeopardizing his practice? For lying to his face?

  Dr. Jerry seemed unconcerned as he took a pair of gloves from the surgical pack. Before he started, he smiled at Callie, giving her the same soothing preamble that he would offer to a frightened whippet. “You’ll be fine, young lady. This will be a little uncomfortable for us both, but I’ll be as quick as I can, and soon, you will feel much better.”

  Callie looked at the refrigerator behind him as he sliced open the abscess. She felt his fingers pressing out the infection, wiping it away with the gauze, pressing again until the sac was empty. Cool saline dripped down her leg when he irrigated the opening. She couldn’t look down, but she knew that he was being thorough because he always took special care of every wretched animal that showed up at his door.

  “There we go, all done.” Dr. Jerry took off the gloves. He found the first-aid kit in the drawer and selected a medium-sized Band-Aid. He covered the incision, saying, “We should discuss antibiotics, if you’re amenable? I prefer mine hidden inside a piece of cheese.”

  Callie still couldn’t make herself speak. Instead, she lifted up in the chair so she could pull her jeans back on. The waist gapped around her stomach. She would need to find a belt.

  Belt.

  She looked down at her hands. She saw Buddy jerking the belt out of his pants, wrapping it tight around her wrists. Twenty-three years of forgetting had culminated in a flashing horror show that she couldn’t clear from her eyes.

  “Callie?”

  When she looked up, Dr. Jerry seemed to be patiently waiting for her attention.

  He said, “I normally don’t bring up weight, but, in your case, I think it would be appropriate for us to discuss the dispensing of treats. You’re clearly in need of more nutrition.”

  She opened her mouth, and the words flooded out. “I’m sorry, Dr. Jerry. I shouldn’t be here. I should’ve never come back. I’m a horrible person. I don’t deserve your help. Or your trust. I’ve been stealing from you and I’m—”

  “My friend,” he said. “That is what you are. You’re my friend, as you have been since you were seventeen years old.”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t his friend. She was a leech.

  He asked, “Do you remember that first time you knocked on my door? I’d put out a help wanted sign, but I had secretly hoped that the help would come from someone as special as you.”

  Callie couldn’t take his kindness. She started crying so hard that she had to gulp for breath.

  “Callie.” He held on to her hand. “Please don’t cry. There is nothing here that surprises or dismays me.”

  She should’ve felt relieved, but she felt more awful because he had never said anything. He had just played along like she was getting away with it.

  He said, “You’ve been very clever with the charts and covering your tracks, if that’s any consolation.”

  It was no consolation. It was an indictment.

  “The unexpected twist is, I might be losing my marbles, but even I would remember an Akita with hip dysplasia.” He winked at her, as if theft of controlled substances was nothing. “You know what bitchy little babies Akitas can be.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Jerry.” Tears poured down her face. Her nose was running. “I’ve got a gorilla on my back.”

  “Ah, then you know that lately, demographic shifts in the gorilla world have led to unusual behavior.”

  Callie felt her lips tremble into a smile. He didn’t want to lecture her. He wanted to tell her an animal story.

  She stuttered in a breath, asking, “Tell me.”

  “Gorillas are generally quite peaceable so long as you give them space. But that space has become limited because of man, and of course sometimes there are downsides to protecting species, mainly that those species begin to repopulate in greater numbers.” He asked, “Say, have you ever met a gorilla?”

  She shook her head. “Not to my recollection.”

  “Well, that’s good, because it used to be that one lucky fella was in charge of the troop, and he had all the gals to himself, and he was very, very happy.” Dr. Jerry paused for dramatic effect. “Now, instead of going off to form their own troops, young males are staying put and, absent the prospect of love, they’ve taken to attacking weaker, solitary males. Can you believe that?”

  Callie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “That’s terrible.”

  “Indeed it is,” Dr. Jerry said. “Young men without a purpose can be quite troublesome. My youngest son, for instance. He was bullied terribly at school. Did I ever tell you that he struggled with addiction?”

  Callie shook her head, because she had never heard of a younger son. She only knew about the one in Oregon.

  “Zachary was fourteen years old when he started using. It was a lack of friendship, you see. He was very lonely, but he found acceptance within a group of kids who were not the sort of kids we would’ve liked for him to be around.” Dr. Jerry explained, “They were the school stoners, if that’s a word that’s still used. And membership in the club was contingent upon experimenting with drugs.”

  Callie had been sucked into a similar group in high school. Now, they were all married with kids and driving nice cars and she was stealing narcotics from the only man who had ever shown her genuine fatherly love.

  “Zachary was a week away from his eighteenth birthday when he died.” Dr. Jerry walked around the breakroom, opening and closing cabinets until he found the fun-sized box of animal crackers. “I wasn’t keeping Zachary from you, my dear. I hope you’ll understand that there are some topics that are too difficult to discuss.”

  Callie nodded, because she understood more than he knew.

  “My lovely wife and I desperately tried to help our boy. It’s why his brother moved across the country. For nearly four years, the entirety of our focus was on Zachary.” Dr. Jerry chewed on a handful of crackers. “But there was nothing we could do, was there? The poor young fella was helplessly caught up in the throes of his addiction.”

  Callie’s junkie brain ran the numbers. A younger son would’ve come of age in the eighties, which meant crack. If cocaine was addictive, crack was annihilating. Callie had watched Crackhead Sammy scratch the skin off his arm because he was certain that parasites were burrowing underneath.

  “During Zachary’s short lifetime, the science of addiction was well-documented, but it’s different when it’s your own child. You assume they know better, or are somehow different, when the fact is that as special as they are, they are just like everyone else.” Dr. Jerry confided, “I’m ashamed when I think back on my behavior. Had I the ability to redo those last few months, I would spend those precious hours telling Zachary that I loved him, not screaming at the top of my lungs that he must’ve had some kind of moral failure, an absence of character, a hatred for his family, that made him choose not to stop.”

  He shook the box of treats. Callie didn’t want any, but she held out her hand, watched him pour out tigers and camels and rhinoceroses.

  Dr. Jerry took another handful for himself before sitting back down. “June was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after we buried Zachary.”

  Callie seldom heard him say his wife’s name out loud. She had never met June. The woman was already dead the first time Callie had seen the sign in the clinic window. There was no junkie math needed this time. Callie had been seventeen, the same age that Zachary was when he’d OD’d, when she had knocked on Dr. Jerry’s door.

  “Oddly, the pandemic reminds me of that time in my life. First Zachary was gone and, before we had time to mourn that loss, June was in the hospital. Then of course June passed very quickly. A blessing, but also a shock.” He explained, “How I compare it to now is, at this moment we are all living through, everyone on earth is experiencing a suspension of loss. Over half a million
people dead in the United States alone. The number is too overwhelming to accept, so we go on with our lives and we do what we can but, in the end, the staggering loss will be waiting for us. It always catches up to you, doesn’t it?”

  Callie took more animal crackers when he offered her the box.

  He said, “You don’t look well, my friend.”

  She couldn’t disagree with him, so she did not try.

  He said, “I had the strangest dream a while ago. It was about a heroin addict. Have you ever met one?”

  Callie’s heart dropped. She didn’t belong in one of his funny stories.

  “They live in the darkest, loneliest places, which is very sad, because they are universally known to be wonderfully caring creatures.” He cupped his hand to his mouth as if to convey a confidence. “Especially the ladies.”

  Callie held back a sob. She didn’t deserve this.

  “Did I mention they have a particular affinity for cats? Not as dinner, but rather as dining companions.” Dr. Jerry held up his hands. “And oh, but they are notoriously loveable. It’s almost impossible to not love them. You would have to have a very hard-hearted individual to resist the compunction.”

  Callie shook her head. She couldn’t let him redeem her.

  “Also, they are legendary for their munificence!” Dr. Jerry looked delighted by the word. “They have been known to leave hundreds of dollars in the cash box for the benefit of other, more vulnerable creatures.”

  Callie’s nose was running so badly that she couldn’t keep up.

  Dr. Jerry took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and offered it to her.

  Callie blew her nose. She thought about his hanger-on, dissolving fish dream and the rats who stored toxin in their needly fur story and considered for the first time that maybe Dr. Jerry wasn’t a metaphor guy after all.

  He said, “The thing about addicts is, once you open your heart to one of these rascals, you will never, ever stop loving them. No matter what.”

  She shook her head, again because she didn’t deserve his love.

  He asked, “Pulmonary cachexia?”

  Callie blew her nose to give her hands something to do. She had been so damn transparent this entire time. “I didn’t know you knew people-doctor things, too.”

  He sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “You are using more calories to breathe than you are taking in through food. That’s why you’re losing so much weight. Cachexia is a wasting disease. But you know that, don’t you?”

  Callie nodded again, because another doctor had already explained this to her. She had to eat more, but not too much protein because her kidneys were shot, and not too much processed food because her liver was barely functioning. Then there were the crackles he could hear in her lungs and the white ground glass opacity that appeared in her X-rays, and the disintegrating vertebrae in her neck, and the precocious arthritis in her knee, and there was more but by that time she had stopped listening.

  Dr. Jerry asked, “It’s not much longer, is it? Not if you continue down this path.”

  Callie chewed her lip until she tasted blood again. She thought about chasing the high in the shooting gallery, the dawning realization that she had plateaued to a point where heroin alone wasn’t going to take away the pain.

  He said, “My oldest son, my only remaining son, wants me to live with him.”

  “In Oregon?”

  “He’s been asking since the mini-strokes. I told him I was worried if I moved to Portland, Antifa would force me to stop eating gluten, but …” He let out a long sigh. “May I tell you something in confidence?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve been here since you left yesterday afternoon. Meowma Cass has enjoyed the attention, but …” He shrugged. “I forgot my way home.”

  Callie bit down on her lip. She had left three days ago. “I can write it down for you.”

  “I looked it up on my phone. Did you know you can do that?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s amazing.”

  “Indeed. It gives directions and everything, but I find it very troubling that people are so easy to find. I miss anonymity. People have a right to disappear if they want to. It’s a personal decision, isn’t it? Everyone should have autonomy. We owe it to them as fellow human beings to support their decisions, even if we do not agree with them.”

  Callie knew they weren’t talking about the internet anymore. “Where’s your truck?”

  “It’s parked in the back,” he said. “Can you believe that?”

  “That’s crazy,” she said, though Dr. Jerry always parked his truck in the back. “I could go with you to make sure you find your way home.”

  “That’s very generous, but unnecessary.” He held on to her hand again. “You’re the only reason I’ve been able to work these last few months. And I do understand the sacrifice on your part. What it takes for you to be able to do this.”

  He was looking at her dope kit on the table. She told him, “I’m sorry.”

  “You will never, ever need to apologize to me.” He held her hand to his mouth, giving her a quick kiss before letting her go. “Now, what are we trying to achieve here? I’d hate for you to go awry.”

  Callie looked at the pentobarbital. The label identified it as Euthasol, and they used it for exactly what the name implied. Dr. Jerry thought he understood her motive for taking it out of the cabinet, but he was wrong.

  She said, “I’ve run across a very dangerous Great Dane.”

  He scratched his chin, considering the implications. “That’s unusual. I would say the blame lies squarely with the owner. Danes are normally very friendly and compassionate mates. They are called gentle giants for a reason.”

  “There’s nothing gentle about this one,” Callie said. “He’s hurting women. Raping them, torturing them. And he’s threatening to hurt people I care about. Like my sister. And my—my sister’s daughter. Maddy. She’s only sixteen. She’s got her whole life ahead of her.”

  Dr. Jerry understood now. He picked up the vial. “How much does this animal weigh?”

  “About one hundred seventy-five pounds.”

  He studied the bottle. “Freddy, the magnificent Great Dane who held the world record for largest dog, came in at one hundred ninety-six pounds.”

  “That’s a big dog.”

  He went silent. She could tell he was doing the calculation in his head.

  He finally decided, “I would say to be certain, you’d need at least twenty ml’s.”

  Callie puffed air between her lips. “That’s a big syringe.”

  “That’s a big dog.”

  Callie considered her next question. They normally ran an IV and sedated an animal before they put it down. “How would you administer it?”

  “The jugular would be good.” He thought about it some more. “Intracardial would be the quickest route. Directly into the heart. You’ve done that before, yes?”

  She’d done it at the clinic, but before Narcan was so readily available, she’d also done it in the streets.

  Callie asked, “What else?”

  “The heart sits at an axis inside the body, so the left atrium would be the most posterior, thus easier to access, correct?”

  Callie took a moment to visualize the anatomy. “Correct.”

  “The sedative effect should take hold within seconds, but the entire dose would be required to pass the creature on to the next life. And of course the muscles would tense. You’d hear agonal breathing.” He smiled, but there was a sadness in his eyes. “If you don’t mind my saying, it seems to me that it would be very dangerous for someone of your petite stature to take on this task.”

  “Dr. Jerry,” Callie said. “Don’t you know by now that I live for danger?”

  He grinned, but the sadness was still there.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What happened with your son, you need to know that he always loved you. He wanted to stop. Part of him, at least. He wanted a normal life where y
ou could be proud of him.”

  “I appreciate your words more than I can express,” Dr. Jerry said. “As for you, my friend, you have been a delightful presence in my life. There is nothing about our relationship that has ever, ever not brought me joy. You remember that, okay?”

  “Promise,” she said. “And the same goes for you.”

  “Ah.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “That is something I will never forget.”

  After that, there was nothing else for him to do but leave.

  Callie found Meowma Cass curled up on the couch in Dr. Jerry’s office. The cat was too sleepy to protest the insult of being placed inside of a carrier. She even allowed Callie to reach down and kiss her round belly. The bottle-feeding had paid off. Cass was stronger now. She was going to make it.

  Dr. Jerry expressed some surprise to find his truck parked behind the building, but Callie admired his ability to adapt to novel situations. She helped him strap the seatbelt around the cat carrier, then around himself. Neither one of them said anything as he turned on the engine. She put her hand to his face. And then she reached down and kissed his scruffy cheek before letting him leave. His truck rolled slowly down the alley. The left-side blinker started flashing.

  “Fuck,” Callie muttered, waving for his attention. She saw him wave back. The left blinker went off. The right blinker turned on.

  Once he disappeared around the corner, she went back inside the building. She double checked the door to make sure the lock had engaged. Fucking junkies would hit the clinic the moment they let their guard down.

  The 20-ml syringes were kept in the kennel. They were rarely used. Holding one in her hand, all that Callie could think was that it was much bigger than she’d thought. She took it back with her to the breakroom. She uncapped the needle. She drew out the dose of pentobarbital from the vial. The plunger was almost all of the way out. When she put the cap back, the syringe from end to end was probably as big as a paperback novel.

  Callie tucked the loaded syringe in her jacket pocket. It fit snugly into the corners.

  She put her hand in her other pocket. Her fingers brushed up against the knife.