Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (14 page)

“Dr. Sri? I have crucial information to transmit.”

“This is Allied Paging,” says the chipper female voice.

“Calling Dr. Sri.”

“I can page him. Is this a medical emergency?” Her voice bobs up and down in a xylophonic manner.

“Yes.”

“Your number?”

“My what?”

“Phone number, please.”

“I'm not giving you my phone number.”

“Dr. Sri will need it to call you, sir.”

“Would you give your phone number to just anyone?”

“I'm sorry, sir, but I could send a text message if you prefer.”

“Answer me. Someone calls you and asks for your phone number. Would you just give it?” says Winston.

“But sir…if someone called you, they already have your phone number.”

“Your point?”

“Also, sir, I didn't call you, so there's no need to be alarmed. You called us.”

“That's why you don't have my number.”

“I'm not sure I can help you,” says the female voice, bouncing octaves up and down.

“Doesn't Dr. Sri have my phone number?” asks Winston, seeing that this woman (too cheerful) is also part of the string bag drawing tight around him.

The woman says, “I doubt he has your phone number handy.”

He will outsmart them. “Send a text message.”

“Thank you, sir, go ahead.”

“Say that Winston is taking his pills, and doing very well.”

“Thank you, sir, good night.”

A narrow miss.

 

He smokes.

Winston inhales the buzz and the calm, smokes the cigarettes down to the filters, holds one until it smoulders and singes a brown line on his index and middle fingers. Lights another. Each cigarette more jittery, more tight, each puff fails more and more to soothe.

He opens the window, feels the damp, cool air in the circles around his eyes.

A meowing sound, the private moan. Winston wants to listen, then thinks that he should not. Then the creaking, the flexing of his ceiling, their floor—the dry wood fibres made to twist. Claude's low grumble, the warp of him into her, the soft slapping sound—at this distance like the clock ticking—again Adrienne's insistent cry like something being pulled from her. Winston decides that he should not listen.
They want to see if I'll listen, see if I'm guilty enough to kill me.

He wants to listen.

Ultimately it is habit, the habit of pleasure, of cigarettes, of inhaling and exhaling the promise of alertness and calm, that overcomes his panicked resistance, that wins him over so that, in habit, he crouches and then lies down next to the jammed-open, painted-over ventilation grate that it is not his fault he cannot close, listens to the growing noise of their fuck.

He unzips his pants.

Afterwards, Winston wipes his lower belly with a tea towel but the skin remains sticky. Their animal time has faded into jungle breathing, and he smokes the last cigarette in guilty panic.
Now I'm dead.

He writes.

 

November 7, 3 a.m.

Soon, will be over soon.

Eluded green and white pill poison, but the tea poison is in me. No sleep. Super neurotoxic drug enhances my super hearing. The voices clear now, the plan. Pack my suitcase. Hope. We may kill Claude.

 

Adrienne says, “Don't eat all the chow mein. Leave some for Winston.”

Claude says, “He spies on us.”

“You only know that because you listen to
him.
Claude, I love him. I'm sorry, but the other night, the party, I poisoned him to be with him.”

“Tomorrow I slice him open. Stem to stern.”

“Maybe I'll kill you to be with him. Don't eat it all. Winston will be hungry.”

Winston's mother says, “You think I don't feed him?”

“You're his mother. I should tell you that tomorrow either I'll kill Claude or we'll kill Winston. Depends how I sleep.”

Claude says, “I listen to him because he's spying on us. Right now.”

“He used to listen to his father and me,” says Winston's mother. “We knew.”

“He'll be hungry. Stop eating like that, Claude. You're full.”

“I feed him, you know,” says Winston's mother.

Adrienne says, “He's taking his pills. He's a good boy, and I love him.”

“He never used to take his pills,” says Winston's mother. “Used to hide them in plants.”

Claude says, “That flower.”

“Winston,” says Adrienne, “take your pills. Do you know that I love you? If I kill Claude, I'll need you to hold him. Wasn't the other night wonderful? We may kill you though, then you'll have to hold still.”

“Will you keep on poisoning me?”

“Take the pills, my love.”

“When will you decide who should die?”

“Oh, it depends how I sleep, dear.”

“Will you keep on poisoning me?”

This conversation repeats three times, four times, five times, again.

All night they talk. Later, Adrienne admits that, yes, it is her poison that has made his hearing so sensitive.

 

In the morning, Sri arrives at the clinic an hour before the first patients are scheduled. He writes missing details on the call forms, the records of his nighttime conversations. The forms are relatively complete until around midnight, and after that consist of dates of birth, jotted thoughts, a few phone numbers, words that seemed striking at the time. On one sheet he has written,
Right ear pain.
On another, he has scrawled,
Child screams twenty minutes then settles.
The call forms must be completed. There must be a record of the nighttime fears, of the questions that come in the dark. A woman called to ask the correct temperature of bathwater. A man called on his Toronto cellphone, while on a business trip in Texas. He wanted a prescription faxed to him in his Austin hotel room, was angry that Sri refused.

Sri scrolls through the text-pager, sees the unanswered message.

WINSTON
>
IS TAKING PILLS
>
DOING WELL
>

Sri brings up Winston's number on the clinic computer. He didn't have the number at home, last night. He calls. It rings for a long time. He puts the phone down. Sri finds Dr. Miniadis in the observation room with her morning coffee.
Tosca.
In the mornings, it is usually opera.

She says, “Ah, the fine, young Dr. Sri. How did the night treat you?”

At this question, it is always possible to answer with respect to the events of the night, or the responses to them, or neither. Sri says, “It was long. Shall I review the calls with you?” Sri summarizes the calls, describes them the way one writes captions for cartoons. Dr. Miniadis nods absently. She asks occasional, leisurely, clarifying questions in the manner of the well rested. Once they are finished, Sri hands over the records for Dr. Miniadis to leaf through and sign. He says, “There was a text message with no phone number. Winston—the first-break psychosis. I tried to call this morning, but no answer.”

“The poisoning, seductive neighbour, et cetera,” says Dr. Miniadis.

“I did a med-line search last night, tried to find any case reports of such a toxidrome. I wondered, maybe a new rave drug?”

“And?”

“No such description.” He feels satisfied that he looked, and that he did not find what he had looked for.

“Tell me, Dr. Sri, if you woke up one day and saw a purple bird in your room, what would you think?”

“Excuse me?”

“A purple bird. Even a little one. We won't say a parrot or a vulture, but just a tiny purple bird sitting and chirping at your bedside. What would you think?”

“I would wonder how it got there.”

“And how might it have gotten there?”

“I would check the windows, the doors, and anywhere else a bird could have flown in.”

“What if you called someone to help you with the bird—to remove it—but then it was gone. What would they think?”

“That would depend on their sense of humour.”

“There are no purple birds native to Toronto,” says Dr. Miniadis. “But despite that, you would be left with the spectre of a flying, tweeting creature having appeared in your room. Do you think this will happen to you today? You will go home to sleep, yes? Will you wake to find a bird?”

“I sleep with the windows closed,” says Sri. “Even if a bird escaped from a pet shop, or the zoo, it couldn't get in.” He imagines Dr. Miniadis creeping outside his window, birdcage in hand. “At least, I don't think it could.”

“What if one morning, despite your fastidious window-closing, despite the lack of such creatures in the city of Toronto, you woke up and there was a purple bird? At the very least, you would check the window, perhaps buy a birdwatcher's guide. It doesn't make sense, but your mind would want it to, might even contort in order to explain it.” She stirs her coffee. “Right now, it's still early in the morning. Perhaps your Winston is asleep.”

“He was having difficulty sleeping.”

“There you go, an explanation. You see how the mind needs to make sense of things.”

Sri thinks of Dr. Miniadis outside his bedroom, propping up the window, releasing the bird into his dreams.

He says, “Shall I call Winston again?”

 

Winston writes.

 

November 7, day break

Didn't sleep. Talking all night, my mother especially won't shut up. More frightening to hear. Wish I couldn't. Adrienne woke. Heard the bath. Claude drove off this morning, like he always does. At least it looked like he did. A trick. He might be upstairs. I didn't hear the decision, whether they will murder me or whether I will have to help kill Claude. Scared of blood. Phone rings. I know not to pick it up. Out of cigarettes, should have got two packs.

 

Sri tries to phone Winston again before leaving the clinic, wishing to erase the jitteriness of unfinished business. No answer. He goes home and calls Winston from there. Today he is off, because he was on call last night. In the steam of the shower, Sri tells himself that this is clearly a psychosis. His gut whispers,
Zebras do exist.
But he is a physician, he tells himself sternly, who should deal not in gut feelings but in facts.

The facts:

 

Fact 1: an upstairs neighbour.

Fact 2: a sleep-deprived man.

 

What else does he know? And why does he care? No, stick to the first question: what are the facts?

 

Fact 3: tension and fog can appear between neighbours.

Fact 4: the presumption of physicians.

Fact 5: recreational chemists are constant innovators.

 

When Sri steps out of the shower, his face suddenly feels cool, clear, and alarmed. Is he now inventing so-called facts? He pushes away this possible slip. Sri calls Winston before going to sleep. Ringing, ringing, more ringing. Sri goes to bed—the grateful sleep of having the pager turned off. He falls asleep nervous that he might dream of birds, but it is a dreamless blank sleep.

Sri wakes into a light that has the melon colour of afternoon. He is somewhat fresher for a few hours' rest, but he did not have the dense post-call sleep that sometimes permits a new day to begin. He realizes that what underlies his fitful rest is the situation both having an uncertain reality and now being out of control. Either of these alone would be acceptable, almost normal, but the combination bothers him. Winston is not admitted, not observed, not reliably medicated, and not answering the phone. The situation has slipped out of his grasp, and Sri decides to place his hands on it, to find out what is real and what is not. This would help, whatever the facts may be. He is awake in the clear-eyed yellow light. There is no purple bird, he notes.

Sri calls the clinic and asks about Winston's drug screen, which the receptionist locates and says has come back clean. So it's clean. Sri asks for Winston's address. Crawford Street is not far, a short sunny walk. Sri pulls on a jacket, goes out. The trees are angular frames, and some of the fallen leaves press like mortar into the corners between buildings and sidewalks. The alert bite of the breeze signifies that first snow will come soon. Most of the leaves have faded to grey, although some still show bursts of yellow and orange when blown suddenly across the road. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, will come the snow but today the sky is the pure, amazing blue that is the colour of promises. Sri follows the numbers, finds the house just north of Queen.

Just before walking up the steps, he wonders why he is here. Well, no point thinking about that now, he decides, and goes up to the porch.

Three buzzers, three mailboxes. The house is tall and narrow as if it had stood on tiptoes and then turned sideways. Sri rings the middle buzzer, the second floor. He hears it sound, he thinks, upstairs. It could be a different button. Sometimes the wiring and the buttons are not what one would expect. Sri looks up at the windows, at the two colours of brick, the lighter brick in modest geometrical patterns around the tall windows and the skinny door. He rings again and backs up, shields his eyes against the glare on the windows. Sri sees a shiver of the window shade and waves. Was it Winston? Did the shade actually move? Now, its fabric
looks still. Certainly there is no face. Maybe the suggestion of movement was a trick of light on glass.