Backroads Ch. 04

I nodded my head. "Right."

_____________________________

The road home; back on the Interstate. Why does time feel so compressed the closer we come to our journey's end? Are we so ready for the coming of night, for rest? Why does everything in those last hours feel so distorted, so out of place? Everywhere I looked I saw stunted things; withered trees and sun-scorched grass, and there was nothing in this landscape now even remotely interesting to me. I wanted the sound of shrill, droning tires to go away, leave me alone; I wanted to be home, to stand in the welcome glow of well-known light, lean back in the soft, round comfort of the familiar.

Jennie had been soft and round. But was she, really?

She had been hard and sharp too, not withered and stunted. What had I missed?

The road droned underneath these thoughts, taunting me, teasing me, ignoring me.

What was the road trying to tell me?

Why couldn't I hear such simple truth? Had it always been so? Was I looking at the world with open eyes, or had they always been closed to greater truths?

______________________________

There were a couple of messages waiting for me at home; a patient at the hospital had made a turn for the worse that morning and the chief resident wanted me to know. When I got this call could I check in? Some dry cleaning was ready and a movie I had ordered had come in.

I called in to the ward, asked to speak with the resident.

"Hey, Jim. How's the ride going?"

"It was good. I'm back."

"Oh. Well, about Madeleine Dunn. Her t-cells are off the chart, the white count is way off now, too. The LF panel is shot and her vitals are getting crappy."

"So fast?"

"Yeah. Weird."

"Mutation, then. Better prepare a scan and a copy for CDC."

"Jim? She wants to see you. If possible. I know you two have grown pretty close."

"Yeah, I've been her doc for ten years now, more maybe. Lose track, you know? I'll grab a shower and come down. Tell her if you get a chance."

"Sure thing."

I walked over to the window and looked out on city lights and the black river beyond. Madeleine was going to be a hard one. Fourteen years old when she had been date-raped by a kid at the local junior college, she had tested positive a year later. Now almost ten years on, despite her long running battles against the virus, she was losing the war. She was a sweet kid, very religious, very forgiving, and now I made a connection between her and Mary. They were cut from that same cloth in a way, and in more ways than I could ever know. Something was trying to get through to me... some thought. But what?

I knew only too well the old song 'only the good die young' was a load of crap; the boy who'd infected her had died two years ago, and I'd done everything I possibly could do to keep him alive, but even so in the end Madeleine was there with him when he passed. There was something almost holy about that girl, and for the record I'm not prone to thinking about existential crap very often. I felt lucky to know her, and I understood my life was better for it.

The feeling remained: something was trying to get through to me.

I had missed something. Something big.

__________________________

"Hey! It's the Wild Hog!" Madeleine said when I walked in her room.

"Nope. I'm the Chicken Wing."

"What?"

"The bike is a yellow Gold Wing... Chicken Wing... get it?"

"Doc?"

"Yeah?"

"You need to work on your humor, Doc."

"I know, I know. Let's get to work on that. Heard any good jokes?"

"Do blond jokes count?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't they?"

"Well, you're blond!"

"Really? Are you kidding me? I had no idea!"

She laughed. "My mom thinks you're cute."

"Madeleine, she wears glasses four inches thick."

"Are not!"

"Are to!"

"Fooey!"

"Fooey? Did you say fooey? I haven't heard that word since Andrew Jackson was in office."

"Now who's full of fooey?"

"You got me there. Where do I sign the confession?"

"How was the ride?"

"Long. Got a sore butt."

"Serves you right."

"For?"

"Leaving me."

"Ah."

"Doc?"

"Yeah, Mad?"

"Did you read my chart before you came in?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"Could be better, but there are a couple of things I want to try."

"How much time have I got?"

I looked away, didn't want her to see me, see my eyes.

"Doc? No one will tell me anything," she said softly. Her eyes were glassy and red, worn out from too many meds and from worrying nonstop for eleven years. "No one will give me a straight answer. It isn't right. Or fair."

"I know, Madeleine. Nothing's been fair, has it?"

"Why do you say that? This was God's life to use as he wanted."

I shrugged my shoulders. "I hope you're right, Mad. I really do."

"But something about all this seems sadistic to me, Doc; like all of you are trying to control my feelings, have everything your way. Like all of us are here for your benefit, not the other way around."

"Does it?" I said softly. Her words echoed all over the room, settled somewhere in the vicinity of my gut.

"Yeah, Doc, it does. Sometimes it feels like you guys are more concerned with your own feelings than with mine. Why is so important to control feelings, anyway? Does it always have to be your way?"

"I'm not sure I have an answer for you."

"Know what, Doc, maybe you do. At least I think you do. Just not one you think I want to hear yet."

"How'd you get to be so smart, anyway?"

"From dealing with patronizing assholes half my life!"

I looked away, didn't know what to say in the face of her truth.

"I'm sorry, Doc. Real sorry. I am. I didn't mean to say that."

"It's alright, Madeleine. It goes with the territory."

"I know you care, know what this job costs you -- all of you. I don't know how you do it."

"Well, I had a pretty interesting job offer this morning."

"Oh?" She looked worried when she heard that, and that hurt too. She'd panicked when she'd heard I was going on vacation.

"Dishwasher. At a little diner in Eastern Washington."

"Hey, a promotion!"

"Yeah. It's been a long time coming."

"She must be something special."

"You know, when I grow up I wanna be just like you."

"Won't happen."

"Why not?"

"Doc, you aren't ever going to grow up."

We laughed for a long time. Sometimes the truth is funny. So funny it hurts.

__________________________

I went back to the nurses' station and flipped through her chart, made some notes and changed a couple of orders, then decided to walk down to my office and go through what promised to be a monumental stack of mail. Although it was getting late the corridors were still pretty busy, the elevator full of anxious parents and distraught kids. I made it to my office and flipped on the light, looked at the huge stack of journals in one box and overflowing correspondence in another.

"Jesus H Christ on a skateboard!"

Knock knock knock: "You say so, Oh Mighty Chief, so it must be so!"

"Hey! Sarah, how are you? Come in. Take a load off."

"Can't, Jim. Got an admit in the E.R., but I saw your door open. How was the ride?"

"Shitty."

"Yeah?"

"Naw. It was fun."

My phone rang. Weird, this time of night. I don't know why but I didn't let the service take it; I picked it up on the second ring.

"Winchenbach," I said.

"Jim?"

At first I couldn't make out the voice, but the accent hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer. Her voice was suddenly, painfully familiar. "Who's calling, please?"

"Jim? It's me. Jennie."

Silence. Sarah was looking at me, wordlessly asking if everything was okay.

"Jim?"

"Yeah."

"I need to talk to you."

"Uh-huh."

"Tonight. I want to talk tonight."

Silence.

"Jim? I'm at the train station, out front. Could you come pick me up?"

Silence.

"Jim?"

"Yeah. Take me about fifteen minutes." I hung up the phone.

"Jim, are you alright? You look like you've just seen a ghost."

"Yeah? That would be The Ghost of Christmas Past. She just dropped in for a visit."

___________________________

And there she was, standing in a pool of light just outside the main entrance of the old brick station. I pulled up to the curb, reached across and flipped her door open. She came over, lugging her backpack and helmet, and stepped up to the car. I got out and put the stuff in the trunk, then shut the door behind her.

"Is there any place to eat around here?" she said. "I need something."

"Oh, one or two."

"Anything. I'm so hungry I'm nauseated! Anything at all would do nicely."

"Didn't they feed you on the train?"

"No dining car from Spokane onward. It went to Seattle; then we sat on a siding for eight hours with engine trouble. I haven't had food for about a day. I could eat a bear."

"No doubt."

I drove to a little sushi place a block from my building; it was quiet there and they were open late. The place was full of candles flickering on shoji screens and varnished pine beams, round paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling and an atrium looking out on a Zen garden. I knew the owner well; I was treating his teenage daughter. We went to a quiet corner and slipped into the shadows; I ordered some green tea and passed the menu card and a pencil to Jennie.

She seemed stern, a little cross, as we settled in. "What sounds good to you?"

"Sleep. When does your train leave. Subtle, huh?"

"I haven't booked anything yet."

"Why not? I didn't think Portland was on your must see list."

"I'm not leaving until I get to the bottom of this."

"News flash! You got to the bottom, and you ain't going there again!"

"You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?"

I smiled broadly, insincerely. "Okay. Spit it out. What's on your mind?"

Silence.

I shrugged, opened my hands palm up, ever the smart-ass. "Well?"

"I can't believe you're acting this way."

"That so? Why's that?"

"Yes. I took you rather as a man of compassion, and of some maturity."

"Ah. So you routinely take compassionate, mature men and tie them up? Is that about right? Then ritually sodomize them?"

"I wanted..."

"Hold it right there, would you? I'm getting tired of this song. Every line starts with I, me, mine, and you know, the Beatles did that one already. I don't need to hear your version because frankly, Jennie, it's a little too twisted for my taste, and I don't really give a damn. Why don't you try Let It Be?"

I suppose if you accept the idea that I'd just tried to eviscerate the woman, you'd probably have to admit I had done a pretty convincing job of it. Her body wasn't trembling; it was rattling. Her eyes turned red and wet, her pale skin turned to whitest snow.

It was, I saw, time to move in for the kill.

"I talked about this with a friend today; she was interested, I have to say, in what was behind this. What was driving this whole thing. Do you have any idea?"

"I, uh..." Her voice was a crackled, tortured thing; she had lost complete control now and appeared witheringly disoriented. In short, she was just where I wanted her.

"We came up with three possibilities. Want to hear them?"

"Uh..."

"First, you're simply a sadist, and maybe just a wee bit psychotic. That seems right on the mark to me, even if a little simplistic and overwrought. I'm afraid you may simply be a mere psychopath. Second, you could be a narcissistic control freak but still you genuinely wanted to share with me the terror that turns you on so much. That gift you keep talking about. If you like pain then surely everyone else will too; that kind of thing. An inability, then, to see beyond your own needs and feelings. But you know, even that one seems a little too off-the-wall, too ordinary, I suppose. What do you think?

"I don't know, Jim." She was looking down at her hands somewhere in her lap, I think, and her voice was just a whisper now. She was on the ropes now, bleeding. I felt like beating my chest in triumph.

"The third option? You were trying to turn me, convert me. You're a masochist, turned on by your own pain, and you thought that by sharing this little gift, as you endearingly call it, I'd willingly, even happily follow suit. In time you would have me hurting you to your heart's desire. Is that it?

"So, what's it going to be, Jennie? Behind door number one, maybe? Or number two? Which will it be. The whole world is waiting to know what turns you on, what we can do to scratch this itch you've got."

I leaned back in my chair, rocked back on the rear legs and clasped my hands behind my head, satisfied I had torn the bitch to shreds. I grinned at her expectantly, triumphantly, dared her to contradict the truth of my words.

"I guess you've thought of everything, haven't you?"

"Not quite. I still don't know the role played by the man. What he did to you..."

"He never did a thing to me I didn't want him to do..."

"Or beg him to do, as the case may be?"

"Semantics, Jim, and irrelevant."

"Okay. Fine. So which is it? Psychopath, narcissist, or simply callous and manipulative?"

"I keep forgetting you're a physician; that you have such a strong need to classify things you fight. You won't be comfortable until you can slap a label on me, will you? Then you'll smile, give everyone that smug, know it all look, and shove me back in the dark corner from which I came. Isn't that about it, Jim? Do you treat your patients that way too, Jim? That's only served to make this more ironic than I ever thought possible."

"Irony? You mean there's a forth choice? You mean then that all along this was meant to be an exercise in ironic manipulation? What a thrilling concept!"

"Not the words I'd choose, and nothing about this has ever been intentional, Jim."

"Oh. So everything was just a happy little experience in practical irony. That's rich, Jennie. I like that. Really, I do." This was an odd game, unpredictable, but I sat there leaning back in my chair, looking at her, feeling smug, yes, but I was beginning to feel a little uncertain of my ground. "So, where's the irony, Jennie. I can't seem to quite pick that up. Where you're going with this."

"The irony? Remember I said there are no coincidences?"

"I believe I do. Yes. Very mystical. So, I take it you think it was no coincidence I found you, that we met. I must, then, in this cosmic ordering, have needed your hand up my asshole. Is that what you're saying?"

"No. I take it as no coincidence that I would meet a physician, and fall in love with him, three weeks after being diagnosed with gastric cancer."

"What?"

"You know. Metastasizing neoplasm. Stage Two. Shitty prognosis. The middle-aged spinster out for one last fling. Can you put a label on that one, you Goddamn bastard."

I lost my balance, the chair fell back. I remember the falling, the disorientation, the expecting to hit and holding my breath, but I never expected it to hurt so badly.

No one ever really does, you know?