“Knock on the door, get him to come out and talk for a minute. Tell him you’ve been having headaches or something, something requires medicine. He’ll bring that black bag with him. Then you’ve got to do some real imaginative work.”
“What?”
“Get sick.”
“As in … ?”
“Vomit.”
“I can’t make myself vomit.”
“You won’t have to. Just say you’ve been having stomach pains too and then have one, a pain so bad you have to run to the bathroom. The good doc will follow you in, leaving his bag behind.”
“If you want any drugs, he’ll write you a prescription.”
“No time. I need them now.”
“Why don’t you take Mom’s? She’s got a ton and she won’t notice.”
“I need something strong, real strong.”
Brendan didn’t bother to ask how he knew Dr. Carroll carried anything real strong with him because they had both seen the doc open that black bag a few months ago and remove a slew of prescription bottles, placing them in a line up on the kitchen table in front of Dad. The doc gave Dad the choice of whatever “line of treatment” he felt comfortable with Mom following. Dad took Dr. Carroll’s recommendation and ever since Mom had been like the barely walking dead. There was strong stuff in that black bag, one prescription so potent that Dad smirked at the bottle and asked if Dr. Carroll wanted to help her or kill her.
Brendan asked if the latter was Tyler’s intention as well.
Something passed over Tyler’s face again, not quite the cloud as before but something similar, something suggesting Brendan was right. “I’m not going to kill her. I’m trying to help her.”
It was pointless to once again offer his own services (and Dwayne’s), so Brendan didn’t say anything. He would do what Tyler wanted because Tyler was his brother and because Brendan needed him to think everything was on the up and up, that Brendan wasn’t hiding anything. Dwayne said this mission required secrecy. Brendan had tried to offer his help openly to Tyler because he knew that though Dwayne said the mission was “hush-hush,” he would applaud Tyler’s conversion to accept help because that would bring him one step closer to accepting God.
“You’ll do it?” Tyler asked.
Brendan said he would as long as he didn’t have to pretend to vomit in the bathroom for very long. There was something weird about Dr. Carroll and Brendan didn’t like the idea of having him so close in such a confined space.
“Yeah,” Tyler said, “he is sort of a creeper.”
* * *
The plan worked much better than expected and the doc ended up much creepier than feared.
* * *
Brendan knocked on the door, waited for Dr. Carroll to open it—he didn’t, Aunt Stephanie did—and asked if he could talk to the doc. Aunt Steph (that nickname made her sound like a teenager) said the doctor was busy helping mommy. Brendan went all-in, saying he felt sick and might have to throw up. Aunt Steph, never a mother herself, backed off immediately and called the doc away from the crying woman on the bed. That’s my Mom, Brendan thought with a strange sort of detachment. Not that that means much anymore.
Brendan got the doc into his bedroom, started telling him about these headaches he’d been having and, while he was saying this, a headache started to take root in his head. Dr. Carroll placed a thin hand on Brendan’s shoulder; it was the hand of someone who didn’t go out much, just stayed in a basement away from the sun. Like a vampire.
“I can give you something for the pain,” he said in that nasally voice. “Would you like that?”
Tyler stood in the doorway playing The Concerned Brother. He offered a slight nod of encouragement.
“My stomach is sick, too.”
The doc bent down, more eye level with Brendan. The black in his beard might have been pieces of dirt. Brendan imagined the doctor on all fours crawling around in a garden somewhere eating weeds. The image was not funny; it left Brendan cold and actually sort of ill.
“I have to … have to go,” Brendan said, rushing the last few words to really sell the urgency.
He ran to the bathroom and the doctor followed. Brendan lifted the toilet lid and seat and stood hunched over the bowl. Dr. Carroll gently shut the bathroom door and then stood before it, appreciating Brendan. Goosebumps sprouted along Brendan’s arms. He felt naked, trapped. He was only a few feet away from Tyler and Aunt Steph but here in the bathroom, Brendan might as well have been in a different house entirely. The good doc could do whatever he wanted.
“It helps if you get on your knees,” Dr. Carroll said. “It’s safer that way.”
Brendan did, bowing before the toilet, and stared into the water, which actually started to make him feel sick, as though being in this position was a trick to induce vomiting.
The doc approached him with soft footsteps. “Regurgitation can be troublesome for many people. It is preceded by a racing heartbeat, extreme nausea, of course, and fear. The actual vomiting can be painful, especially if the sick one is dehydrated. But once it is over, most people invariably feel much better. Throwing up is a defense mechanism, designed by God to protect our bodies. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Brendan turned back to the water and then the doc’s hand was on his shoulder. “I’ll be right here next to you. Then, after you’re done, I’ll give you something for your headaches and you can sleep a while.”
How long is a while? Brendan thought of Mom.
Tyler should have gotten whatever he was after from the doc’s bag at this point. Now all Brendan had to do was pretend the discomfort had passed and they could get out of this bathroom, but his body started to shake. The cold tile got into his legs and the subsequent chill rippled throughout his body like an electric current. He willed his body to stop shaking and that only made it worse. He grabbed the sides of the toilet bowl to stop the trembling but the bowl was cold too.
“It’s alright, son,” Dr. Carroll said. He got to one knee, very close to Brendan and then slipped his hand from Brendan’s near shoulder to his other, in effect hugging him. “Don’t fight it.”
“I’m okay.” Brendan’s voice betrayed him.
“There’s something I learned many years ago, something that has helped me through tough times.”
Brendan expected the typical adult rigamarole about enduring pain and maturing, but what he got was something so unexpected that he nearly made himself vomit just to end the awkwardness.
“The first year of medical school is tough, as you can probably imagine. There’s a lot of books to read and notes to take but that isn’t all of it. You see, the first semester of medical school is when the college tries to weed out the weak from the strong, to sort out who should really be there and who should go do something else.
“The first class you take is gross anatomy. That means it’s about all the parts of the human body. There’s fancy textbooks and large diagrams and pictures, all in wonderfully detailed color, but you can’t learn what you are truly made of from pictures in books. So, you go to anatomy lab, which is really an on-campus morgue. In fact, we medical students called it Cadaver City.
“Over the course of a semester, you dissect an entire human. You learn where the organs are, how the different parts of the body are connected. You learn more this way than you ever could through books. Besides, a doctor has to be made of sterner stuff; he has to not get sick at sea, which I’m sure you can appreciate right now.”
Is he trying to make me ill?
“These cadaver labs are run by the professors and the labs are taken very seriously. But the labs stay open late so the students can do additional work, improve their skills. People would normally go to these after-hours sessions in groups or pairs but not me. I preferred to be alone with the bodies. I liked the quiet. I liked the serenity.