He sat in the car, parked in the garage, and waited. Dr. Carroll had parked outside the other garage door; he knew the car parked there wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. Anthony flexed his hands on the wheel, stretching his fingers. He couldn’t recall telling the doctor that he’d brought the mangled car back, so perhaps it was just a coincidence that Dr. Carroll parked there.
There are no coincidences, only God’s work in action.
A small part of Anthony still didn’t completely buy this God stuff. That small part used to be bigger, much bigger, but now it was only a tiny section, something easily crammed under a bed or tucked in a closet corner. He didn’t need to hear anything that voice, one he used to call the Logical Voice, had to say about the current situations or the motives pushing Anthony to go upstairs and rescue his family, by force in all likelihood. He’d keep that voice under the bed, locked in the closet.
But the voice was loud and when it screamed, Anthony heard it.
He started for the door to the house and stopped, returned to Chloe’s car, opened the trunk and, after some fumbling, retrieved the tire iron stored back there with the donut. Now, tire iron held in one hand down at his side, Anthony entered his house prepared to prove that no drug-pushing doc was going to destroy his family.
He paused at the top of the stairs. The kitchen was empty. Tyler and Brendan stood in the open doorway to Brendan’s room. They shared identical expressions of anxiety and surprise. Anthony and Chloe’s door, of course, was shut. The good doc was in there administering his brand of medicine—guaranteed to take the pain away and ruin your life.
He should say something to his sons. They were probably worried—he had been gone all night—but Anthony couldn’t think of anything to say that would sound fatherly and simultaneously calm their fears and prevent further inquiries. He never would have thought years ago that he wouldn’t want to acknowledge his children’s presence, not want to answer any of their questions. He always believed he was a good dad, but this wasn’t a moment that the Dad of the Year Award committee would review. He’d been given a reprieve, an advance get-out-of-jail card for what he was about to do. God wanted him to do this because God wanted his disciples to be empowered, not live as prey for drug-pushing predators.
He walked down the hall, nodded to his boys, and swung wide the door to his bedroom.
* * *
Another small internal voice, this one more bluntly referred to as the Don’t Be Stupid Voice, tried in vain to stop him, to stymie his words and stay his hand but that voice ended up crying in the corner of the closet, the Logical Voice shaking its head in disgust. This was the second time in a matter of days Anthony had stained his knuckles with blood.
The events happened so quickly, the violence arising rapidly and then dying off just as suddenly, that it was difficult to piece the events into logical order. Anthony might never be sure what happened, though he knew where responsibility lay. It was firmly in his two hands, shaking and cramping, while he sat against the far bedroom wall and stared at the blood soaking into the bed sheets. What the hell had he done?
* * *
Dr. Carroll was sitting on the side of the bed. He was caressing Chloe’s pale cheek with one hand and searching through his black doctor’s bag with the other. Chloe was murmuring, maybe sleeping. Stephanie was asleep, or knocked out from sedatives, next to her.
Anthony slammed the door shut behind him. “Get offa her!”
Dr. Carroll looked up and started. Hadn’t expected the King of the Castle to come barging in. Did he see the tire iron?
“Anthony, I’m … surprised you’re here.”
He took several steps into the bedroom. “No more drugs, doc. Take all your fucking pills and get out of here. Now!”
Dr. Carroll smiled, actually smiled. “You could use some yourself.” He fumbled around inside his bag, removed a plastic container, held it out. “Here, these will calm you considerably.”
“I’m not trading my soul for sleep.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Get away from my wife.”
Stephanie squirmed in her sleep. She’d always had an addictive personality: she once had quite a gambling problem, which successfully destroyed her marriage, but it had taken a doctor to get her hooked on drugs. Maybe she wanted to be just like her sis. Chloe continued mumbling, eyelids flickering as they did when she suffered the nightmares.
Dr. Carroll dropped the bottle back in his bag, closed it, clasped it. “I’m only trying to help. Your family is in pieces.”
Pieces. Like those the state troopers found of Delaney’s face. A piece of her cheek bone had skidded across the road into a ditch. Pieces of skin dangled off it.
“Leave. Now!”
“You’re having a nervous breakdown, Anthony,” Dr. Carroll said calmly.
He raised the tire iron. “No, I’m seeing everything clearly.” That damn Logical Voice screamed in disagreement: The doc is right! You’re losing your mind, going off the bend! You need help!
“Your family has suffered tremendously in only a matter of weeks. Your reaction is perfectly understandable.”
That Talking Heads lyric again: Stop making sense, making sense.
“You don’t know anything I’ve suffered.”
Chloe’s whole body spasmed as if she were fighting off a beast in her dreams, her arms gesticulating weak punches in the air. One of her hands fell onto the doctor’s leg, close to his crotch. That probably made Dr. Carroll very happy, this drugged-up woman practically groping him in her sleep. Maybe he’d already groped her. Maybe he’d done worse.
“Your wife cannot be simply removed from these drugs. I have prescribed a delicate balance for her treatment and you can’t just stop it without consequences.”
“You haven’t treated her, you’ve created a junkie.”
“Anthony, please. She was severely depressed, suicidal.”
“Why do you carry so much damn medicine with you? Doctor’s don’t do that—they write prescriptions.”
“I carry what I need.”
Anthony stepped closer. “No pharmacist would fill all the prescriptions you’d have to give her. Where do you even get your medicine? Are you even a real doctor?”
Where had Anthony first heard of Dr. Carroll? Someone at work had mentioned him, a few others joining in to agree that Dr. Carroll was a good psychiatrist. Gives you what you want, someone remarked. What you want. Not what you need, but what you want. Anthony hadn’t cared about the distinction last year when Brendan was failing several subjects or when the baby died and Chloe started talking to the empty place setting at the dinner table.
“You get some sick jollies from drugging people?” Anthony asked, stepping closer, tire iron at hip level.
Dr. Carroll took a deep breath. “You aren’t going to attack me, Anthony, so why don’t you put that down?”
“Were you happy when my daughter died? Did you find yourself elated because you knew Chloe’d need more drugs? Were you secretly smiling at her funeral?” He stepped closer, just a few feet away.
“Anthony, you need to put that down and let me give you something to help you rest.” For the first time, Dr. Carroll’s voice adopted a nervous tweak, an anxious tremor.
Chloe stirred again, her whole body enacting in slow motion some form of hand-to-hand combat.
“You see my eyes, doc?”
He didn’t respond, just stared. Doc’s hands were on his bag, probably thought he could use it as a weapon.