Death Spiral (13 page)

Jesse trots along next to me.

I stop in front of a kiosk loaded with promos for some benefit concert at the Art Institute. “What are you doing?”

“Coming with you.”

“No you're not.”

“Am.”

“Not.”

“Am.” He walks back to the building, opens the door, and calls over his shoulder, “And if you keep arguing you're going to miss your appointment.”

***

Just as we enter the lobby, a heavyset woman with molded gray hair and glasses dangling down the front of her unibosom from a beaded chain calls Dr. Bell's name. I race across the room and tell the woman that I'm with Dr. Bell, but that he's running late and I'd like to start the appointment without him. She buzzes me through the door and leads me to the elevator without asking questions. Jesse follows.

“Where are we going?” he asks as the elevator door dings open.

“Administrative. Second floor.” She must glean something more from Jesse's question because she adds, “Autopsies and forensics are on ground level.”

“Bummer,” Jesse says under his breath.

The elevator door slides open. Even though she's just told us that this floor is for administrative purposes only, the place smells like biology lab on dissection day. My legs go weak. More than once I think of turning back, but I force myself to follow the woman down the corridor, past a row of offices, to family services, a somber room with dark wood paneling, a large bookcase, and heavy blinds. She tells us Dr. Carlisle will be right in and leaves.

“Cheery place,” Jesse says once she's gone.

I don't answer. Not because I don't want to or because I'm still thinking about Tia and Doc, but because I'm afraid if I open my mouth the only sound to come out will be a sob. I drop onto the leather couch and dig my nails into my palms, concentrating on the physical pain as a distraction from my emotional pain. I'm examining the half-moon impressions etched into my skin when a balding man with wire-rimmed glasses and pockmarked skin the color of boiled potatoes enters through a door opposite the couch.

The man crosses the floor in two big steps and extends a hand like a bear's paw. “I'm Dr. Carlisle, medical examiner.” He looks around the room, then looks back at us and frowns. “I'm sorry, but I was expecting someone else. I'm supposed to be meeting with a Dr. Bell from Glasgow.”

I'm instantly on my feet explaining. “You are. I mean
we
are. I mean we're all having a meeting. Only Dr. Bell's not here. The woman we're here to talk about was my mother and Dr. Bell was a friend of hers, but he got called away on some other business and sent us on our own. I brought the death certificate with me. You can look at it yourself.” I glance nervously at Jesse, who smiles encouragingly, but leaves the fibbing to me.

Dr. Carlisle tugs at his chin. “I see. Well, this is most unusual.”

Before he can decide that “most unusual” means “most unacceptable,” I launch into the story. I tell him my mother's name and when she died, then explain her symptoms and the circumstances of her death, what the death certificate says, and my belief that she didn't OD.

“So, I thought maybe there was something else wrong with her,” I say, finally stopping to catch my breath. “Something that got overlooked when they found the morphine. I was hoping you could review the full autopsy report with me.”

Dr. Carlisle peers at me through the thick lenses of his glasses. “The results of a full autopsy report can take a few months to complete, and legally you have to be an adult to get the report. Are you eighteen?”

My chest tightens around the question. “No,” I mutter.

He opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish. No words come out and his hand flies to his chin again where he pulls at the bony nub
as if searching for a beard to tug. Finding no beard, he transfers his agitation into his feet, scuffing the floor with a brown loafer.

“Well, I'll see what I can do.” He hurries across the room and disappears through the door connecting to what appears to be his office.

“I wonder where they store the bodies?” Jesse asks the minute the door clicks shut. “Do you think they put them in a walk-in freezer? Or maybe they keep them in drawers. Or maybe—” He looks at me and stops. “Aw, man, shit, sorry.” He hits himself on the forehead. “Major insensitive. How're you doing?”

“Okay,” I say, trying to
constrict thoughts of my mother, so her image is no more than a pinhole of light at the back of my brain; trying not to think of her naked flesh frozen in some freezer, a bar code and case number Sharpied onto her arm.

Jesse picks up a pamphlet from the coffee table and reads. “‘How to deal with the death of a loved one. Step one: Seek the support of family and friends.' You want one of these?”

“Nah, I'm good.”

“No really, you should take one. Check it out. In just five short steps you'll start to feel better. Imagine that. ‘Step two: Keep busy.' Man, whoever wrote this is some kind of friggin' genius. He should write a book or have his own TV show. Maybe he could start a church.”

He rambles on with a critique of the generic self-help literature, and I don't think he notices that I've turned on my iPod and have stopped listening. I watch his lips move and his hands gesture as I advance through my songs until I find an upbeat Jimmy Cliff tune that I hope will drive away the gruesome image of my mother's body on the autopsy table and replace it with a positive reggae vibe. I'm listening to “I Can See Clearly Now” when Dr. Carlisle returns. I turn off my music and put my iPod in my bag at my feet.

“I'm sorry, but the complete report isn't available yet,” the medical examiner tells me. “As soon as it's available, you can bring an adult, and I'll be glad to meet with you and go over all the details. Now is there anything else I can do for you?”

Jesse turns to me. His eyes are a question. I shake my head.

“Nothing else,” I say.

Dr. Carlisle nods, then turns and vanishes into his office with hardly a good-bye.

I follow Jesse out of the dark room into the harsh florescence of the overhead lights, a penetrating white that turns skin so pale it's easy to imagine ghosts wandering these halls. We follow the corridor back to the elevator. We've just gotten to the first floor when I reach for my bag and realize it's not with me.

“I left my stuff in the room,” I say. “I'll be right back.”

I retrace my steps, but when I get back to family services, my bag isn't on the couch. It's a few seconds before I find it on the floor beneath the coffee table. I drape the strap over my shoulder, and I'm about to leave when Dr. Carlisle's voice startles me. The door leading from family services into his office is cracked open. I can just make out his back, a phone pressed to his ear.

“It's about Augustina Archer,” he hisses.

I freeze at the sound of my mother's name, the way it spits off his tongue like the name Augustina Archer is some kind of curse. I think of yelling out, telling the dude to respect the dead, but there's something anxious in his tone that warns me to keep quiet, not to move, and to listen.

“You didn't tell me she had a kid. If you want me to lie to some teenager, you're going to have to pay more.”

The stress beat of my heart pounds against my chest and temples. A sickening tremble ripples through my body. What lie?

“Yes, I did an autopsy report.…Yes, a real one, and I have the proof right here. If you don't give me more money, I'll show the girl.”

He slams down the phone after that and slaps something onto his desk, then puts his hand to his chest like he's having a heart attack. He's studying whatever it is making him so upset when I hear a knock on what must be another door at the far end of his office, and a woman tells Dr. Carlisle that he's needed right away in the pathology lab. He shuffles some papers around his desk, then follows the woman out.

I don't have time to think or to plan my next move. I dart across the floor, slip into his office, and head straight to his desk where I immediately start sifting through papers and folders slopped across the surface. I'm peeling through some medical file when I hear Dr. Carlisle's voice at the door leading to the hall.

“I must've left it in my office. I'll be right back.”

I glance around for somewhere to hide. There isn't a closet or even a bookshelf. My only hope is to make it back to family services before he opens the door. I've hardly taken the first step when Dr. Carlisle speaks again.

“Wait a minute. Here it is. Let's go.”

My heart jackhammers and my hands shake, but once I'm sure he's gone, I continue to search, desperate to find whatever he was talking about and get out of here. His proof could be anywhere, anything. I'm about to give up when a red folder peeking out from beneath the keyboard catches my eye. I snatch the folder off the desk and turn it over. Augustina Archer is written in black marker.

I tuck the folder under my arm and force my nonathletic and now trembling legs on an aerobic sprint for the first floor.

Thirteen

My stomach's taken a parachute dive, and my heart's still racing when I get back to the lobby and find Jesse waiting for me.

“Let's get out of here,” I say, pushing through the front door.

I set a brisk pace down the sidewalk the second we're out of the building.

“What's going on?” Jesse pants, dodging a woman pushing a baby stroller. “What's that folder under your arm?”

I glance over my shoulder. It would be just perfect if the Rat Catcher chose this moment to show up. “Keep going. I'll tell you later.”

We take a few turns, carving a circuitous path through city streets, putting distance between the medical examiner's office and us. Seven, maybe ten, blocks later I stop on a busy street filled with suit-and-tie-wearing clones who jabber into cell phones without making eye contact with any of the other clones.

“Over there,” I say, pointing to a department store, the last place I figure the Rat Catcher would track us.

Jesse follows me into the store, past cosmetics, through a maze of consumer's paradise until I find a dressing room in the women's department. I motion for him to follow me into the changing area, and we slip past a saleslady sporting what must be half the gold in the jewelry department and half the makeup in cosmetics as well, giving her an Avon-lady-meets-streetwalker kind of look.

The fitting room is one of those extra big deals with a couch and mirrors on three sides for people who take their shopping seriously. Jesse looks so ridiculous sitting here in über-feminine pastel land that I should laugh, at least crack a joke about a guy in the women's dressing room, but there's nothing funny about the situation.

“Dude, we're like Marathon Man.” Jesse gives me the thumbs up and makes himself at home on the couch. “Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, 1976.”

I know Jesse well enough to understand this non sequitur is a lead-in to why we just ran out of the medical examiner's office and then high speeded it down all those blocks, so I squeeze onto the couch next to him and explain what happened. It's only then, the fight-or-flight pump of adrenaline no longer flowing through my veins, I realize the implications of stealing a file from a medical examiner's desk: police investigations, jail.

“Here. I can't look,” I say, handing Jesse the folder, a queasy feeling about whatever's inside.

Jesse opens the folder and pulls out a thick envelope with my mother's name printed in big black letters. He glances at me, then opens it. Inside is a smaller envelope.

“What is this, Russian dolls?” I snap.

Jesse doesn't answer. He takes out the smaller envelope, tears it open, and removes something that looks like a shiny white matchbox. He slides open the drawer of the box and peers inside.

“What the hell is that thing?”

Jesse studies the contents for a few seconds, then closes the drawer and looks at me. “A microscope slide. Could be some kind of tissue sample from your mother's autopsy.” He catches the look of surprise on my face. “What? I saw something like it on a crime show once. Who said TV was a waste of time?”

He slips the glass slide back into the smaller envelope and reaches into the bigger envelope again. This time he brings out a thin stack of photographs rubber banded together and finally a bunch of papers. He puts the photos on the couch, grabs the top paper, and reads the heading out loud. “Toxicologist's report.”

I tap the floor with the steel toe of my boot. Crack my knuckles. This report is no big deal I tell myself. I already know what it's going to say: cause of death heroin overdose. But still my breath is shallow; my heartbeat too fast:
I have proof right here. If you don't give me more money, I'll show the girl.

A shopping soap opera takes place in the dressing room next to us. Woman A complains about how a pair of jeans makes her butt look fat. Woman B tries to convince her she looks gorgeous. Woman A debates if the jeans are really worth two hundred dollars. Woman B delivers a sermon on the value of the newest, must-have designer.

Parallel universe theory. That's what I'm thinking. How can two groups of people so close in time and space occupy such different realities? I drift away on a head trip about the nature of reality, of sitting in a woman's changing room in an upscale department store, looking at my mother's flesh reduced to a microscope specimen and reading her autopsy report, while listening to someone in the next room mull over jeans worth more than my mom earned sometimes in two weeks. I hardly hear Jesse when he asks if he can check out the photographs.

For a minute I have no idea what he's talking about. I stare at him with a blank expression.

“The photographs?” he says, eyebrows arched. “Is it okay if I look at them?”

“Oh, those, right,” I say, with a tight smile, pretending I'm not teetering on the edge of an internal Mount Everest. “Sure.”

Jesse picks up the photos from the couch and holds them close to his chest, so all I can see is the scrawl of my mother's name on the white backside of the photo paper. He looks at the first image, then the second. Watching Jesse study the images, the way he exhales small puffs of air, each one a sigh lifting the hair from his forehead, I have a bad feeling that the Richter scale of my soul is about to record a level nine seismic event.

Next door the jeans dilemma is solved. Woman A decides to make the purchase. I grab the toxicologist's report and start to read. I'm picking off what remains of my black nail polish when I come to a page that makes me gasp.

Jesse puts down the photos and turns to me. “What is it?”

“According to this, my mother's blood test was negative.” I hand him the report with shaking hands. “There was no morphine in her blood. That means my mom didn't overdose.”

I feel instantly lighter, as if someone pumped helium through my veins and sent me floating off into the cumulus-filled blue. Mom didn't die a junkie. She didn't take her life and leave me.

I start creating a mental list of all the people I get to say, “I told you so” to, but then an inky black feeling crawls over me, and I crash back down to earth.

If Mom didn't have morphine in her blood, why did the death certificate say she did? The medical examiner said he had the real autopsy. Does that mean the death certificate Aunt T and I saw was fake?

“Let me see the pictures,” I say, wheeling around to face Jesse.

Jesse mutters something before spreading the photographs face up on his lap. The first image is of my mother's face in profile. An up-close shot capturing her reptilian-like skin. The blisters. The flaking scabs. The dry scaly puckering.

The next three pictures are of some organ that looks like a lump of uncooked meat. A rush of nausea overtakes me. I feel color draining from my face, but I force myself not to turn away. The organ is badly scarred and disfigured, blackened, as if by tar. Even if I had paid attention during ninth-grade anatomy, it would be hard to say what organ this was.

“Cancer?” I ask. The word feels messy, my tongue thick in my mouth.

“I don't think so,” Jesse says. He's been scanning the report, and now he holds out a single piece of paper for me to see. “According to this your mother had something called IPF, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.”

“Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis? What the hell is that?” I hear hysteria in my voice. Come on, Faith. Now's not the time to lose it.

“No idea. Never heard of it.”

“Well, how could that be? How could they have overlooked something like that?”

Jesse doesn't reply, but the truth hovers in the silent space between us: they didn't overlook it. Dr. Carlisle lied about my mother's death.

I want to say a dozen things at once, but words skitter away like cockroaches. I close my eyes and inhale the heady scent of perfumes and colognes, sprayed and dabbed, trying to hide the natural odor of human flesh. Behind my eyelids is a picture of Mom. Spread on the bathroom floor. Dead. All the time her insides diseased.

I have to get out of here. Out of the easy-listening Muzak, soft lighting, and must-have materialistic bullshit. I throw open the door and step out of the dressing room. Jesse files out behind me. Together we pass the startled saleslady who calls after us, asking if we need any help with sizes.

I race through this fantasy of happiness, winding my way through hangars of push-up bras, flab-squeezing camisoles, and other undergarment devices of torture and deception, then through shoes and jewelry, juniors and cosmetics until I'm outside, standing on the sidewalk next to a tree. A white bird perches on a limb. My breath catches. Mom's bird. A blink of the eye, and the bird is gone.

Happiness, joy, love. They're all just illusions. A trick of brain chemistry. I look down, trembling, and focus on a rivulet of oily snowmelt trickling into the gutter. The sun hits the water and reflects a shimmery rainbow that swirls into patterns of red, green, yellow, and blue. I remember, as a kid, thinking the patterns cast of oil and water were magical, like tooth fairies and Santa Claus. Now they're just ugly, a sign of pollution and nothing more.

I feel a hand curl around my shoulder. I turn to see Jesse looking at me. His thumb presses against my scapula. His fingers graze my collarbone. His hand on my body is an anchor, and at this moment I don't care about Tia or Doc. I just need a friend.

I let his hand stay there—something solid and organic to hold me down and keep me from drifting away. A quote by some dead philosopher that Marta had on a poster in her office pops into my head:
For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among rocks.

That was the only quote among all her self-help posters that meant anything to me. I always saw myself as that tree: lanky in body, resilient in spirit. Or ornery, depending on who you talk to. That's what I need now, resilience. If I'm going to figure out who Dr. Carlisle was talking to and who paid him to lie about my mother, and more important,
why
, I need tough roots in all these rocks.

The problem is I have no idea what to do next. I've been an expert at making up stories, at skipping school and running around and asking questions. It's been a game of distraction until now. It's not a game anymore.

“Do you think it could be Dr. Wydner who got the medical examiner to lie?” Jesse asks, ESPing in on my thoughts. “He's giving the treatment. How hard would it be to fake the data? I mean, he's got the whole gotta-save-his-daughter motive going, right?”

“Maybe,” I say, peeling back a strand of hair from my face and looking up at the dark and troubled sky. The peaks of buildings disappear into a haze of low hanging clouds and smog like an urban mountain range.

Jesse stops at the corner where an old black guy in a down jacket and earmuffs is selling soft pretzels from a glass-enclosed cart. “You like these things?”

“I only used to live on them.”

Jesse buys us each a steaming hot pretzel. I slather mine with mustard, then bite into the chewy dough. For one blissful moment, my taste buds rule the world. But as I finish eating, my thoughts curdle and my food-related ecstasy turns to gloom.

“None of this explains why there was heroin in our apartment the night my mom died,” I mumble.

Jesse dabs my nose with his napkin then shows me the yellow mustard splotch. “Not following,” he says, tossing the napkin into the trash.

I sit on the curb with my back against the garbage can. Jesse sits next to me and listens as I tell him the rest of the story, the parts I haven't been able to say out loud: how mom swore she was clean. How the Rat Catcher came to our apartment and told her she had a debt to pay. How there was heroin in the apartment the night of her death.

“I'm sorry to say this,” Jesse says when I'm done talking, “but don't you think you're being a little thick?”

I swallow back the urge to tell Jesse to f-off, but I was the idiot who brought up the topic, so I guess I'm the idiot who gets to listen.

“Kind of sounds like your mom was still using,” he goes on, giving me a sideways glance, “like she bought the heroin and owed the Rat Catcher money for it.”

Leave it to Jesse to snub tact and skip right to the painful heart of the matter. I chew my pinky fingernail and concentrate on a withered leaf blowing across the road. “Or maybe the Rat Catcher planted the heroin after she died,” I say, too stubborn to let truly accept the possibility that Mom died an addict. “He could've come back to our place that night. When I left.”

“Why would he do that?”

I stand up and start to walk. Jesse follows. “I don't know. The guy's a dealer. Those dudes are whack jobs. Maybe he's trying to hide something. I just have no idea what.”

“Well then maybe you should go to the police.”

I stop walking and spin around to face Jesse. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Why? Hmm.” Jesse scratches his head in an exaggerated motion. “Let's think about it. We have no idea what happened, but we do know that someone's bribing the medical examiner to lie about your mother's death. Last time I checked it's the police who deal with illegal things, so you might reason that you should tell them about what's going on.”

“No way.” Anger like magma pours through my blood, hardening my face to stone. “The cops didn't give a shit when my mom died. They looked at us like we were scum. They didn't lift a finger to investigate. I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting paid off, too.” Jesse tries to say something, but I cut him off. “Besides, even if they did care, what am I going to say? Um, gee, sorry, but I stole this file from the medical examiner's desk. Please don't arrest me. ”

“Fine. The police are out. Do you have a better idea?”

The truth is, I don't have a better idea. I don't have any idea. But if I'm going to refuse to see the cops and deny the Mom-on-drugs scenario, I have to come up with something.