If Looks Could Kill

When I drove into the parking lot of the clinic “approved” by my insurance provider, it was clear to me how they cut costs. The metal frame structure was a long way from the brick and steel, world-class med center downtown. Not necessary for outpatient surgery, I was told. Whatever. I just wanted to get it over with.

It didn’t occur to me to be nervous until the anesthesiologist came in wearing a dew rag, a gold hoop earring and what looked like molars as buttons on his island print shirt. His accent was island also, Haitian or Jamaican, maybe even something from Cajun country. Something about the way he said "We gonna pahty" didn't quite fit the ream of forms I'd signed saying whatever it is they say. I've written enough releases to fill the whole building, and know that they don't generally mean a damn thing anyway. Insurance is insurance and it's all about settling within the limits of liability.

His nametag read simply "Chad," and while he was extremely attractive, my nerves had me focusing instead on the three vials he had in his hands. He stepped outside the curtain of my prep room, just before the nurse came in to draw a big red X on my knee. Only after yet another scrub-clad intern had hooked me to an IV did Chad return with his vials. I wondered if it was too late to change my mind.

“Don’t worry, babe," he said. "You won’t feel… or remember a thing. This one here, " he tapped a vial that clouded when it shook, "it makes you forget anything your body wants it to. And this one," he tapped the vial filled with translucent pink, something like the color of watered down blood, "this is the good stuff. Made it special, just for you."

I wanted to ask what the third one was, but he was already hooking the vials in place on the IV line. I felt so sleepy, I forgot to talk.

Since the next thing I remembered was waking with an unquenchable thirst to the plastic oxygen mask, I guess he was right. Only the headache that lodged right behind my eyes and the throbbing in my leg reminded me why I was there.

My nurse shook her head. “Don’t worry, common complication of anesthesia. Take your pain meds as directed; you’ll be dancing around in no time.

I lost the next two days to fitful sleep, strange erotic dreams, and pain. On the third day, I left the pain medication in the cupboard. I had to get back to work.

My first appointment that morning was with a CEO in his downtown skyline office, whose company’s efforts to comply with EPA regulations were less than stellar. I would have cancelled, but it had taken me weeks to get even the meager amount of time he had granted. The Downstream Development Citizens Organization, "DoDevOr," my clients, weren’t as interested in litigation as they were getting the pollution out of their neighborhood. I presented the plan they came up with, and he actually laughed.

“You are kidding aren’t you Ms. Roper?” He swept his arm, surveying the elegant office on the 43rd floor, high above the smog level of the city. “I didn’t get here by catering to mamby pamby do gooders, tree huggers or fish kissers. Your people want to come up with the millions that compliance will take, then we’ll talk. Until then, we’ll stick with our loopholes. All within the bounds of the law, you know.”

“Mr. Case, there are a lot of kids in that neighborhood. Children can't play in the parks or swim in the nasty water. They are getting sick.”

“So? We’ve got some of the best medical facilities in the country, as you yourself well know,” he motioned to the brace I wore to stabilize my knee. “It’s all about the economy, Ms. Roper. They get sick, they go to the doctor, doctor cures them, we all make a buck. Don’t you know anything about trickle down economics? What law school did you go to?”

He laughed again. I could only stare at him as I thought about what a cold heart he had to have, to even say such a thing aloud.

He waved his hand at me as he reached for his necktie. “That’s all I have to say. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m not feeling well myself.” His chuckle turned to a bit of a gurgle as he punched the intercom button on his phone.

I was happy to leave. The pompous bastard looked like he might be suffering from angina or something, and I was afraid I’d laugh at him. Trickle down economics, indeed.


I didn’t have time to go back to the office before I was due for a post op check up at my doctors office, which was in the med center close to downtown, so I stopped for lunch at my favorite sandwich shop at the city center. There was a new kid working the cash register, and I was pretty sure that the tunes he was listening to in the headset weren’t part of the job for which he’d been hired. The thought occurred to me to mumble "brainless" before he took my order, but something about the look in his eyes just before he clutched his hands to the headphones made me remember, he's just somebody's kid. I smiled.

"Whoa that was weird," he said.

"I beg your pardon?" It looked like he was having trouble focusing.

"Sorry lady. Just, like, for a second there, everything went blank, you know? Like just blank." He shook his head like my dog does when he's been caught in the rain.

"Are you okay?" The motion made even my head ache.

"Yeah, yeah. Guess so. What can I get for you?" just as quickly as the "fit" came, it seemed to end. He simply looked bored with his job, again.

"I'll have a number seven, please." I guessed it was just one of those days.

I took my salad to my favorite window booth to eat while I watched the people on the street. Late October was the beginning of good weather in south Texas, the humidity lifting its stranglehold, and hundreds of people were out walking. I watched a jaunty woman wearing a sequined jack-O-lantern sweater, short black skirt and bright orange slides with heels every bit of five inches high. She had that confident Texas beauty look: long blond hair and enough make-up to throw her off balance, but she moved like she was suspended by marionette strings. She made walking in those heels look as easy as going barefoot. I rubbed the bandages on my newly repaired knee and felt the frown lines on my face contract. Just once, I'd love to see one of those honeys fall on her well-toned ass.

Then she stumbled, her perfectly manicured fingers flailing for someone, anyone to catch her. It didn't take long for her to find a knight to help her up, but I felt a glow of satisfaction that seemed foreign to me. I'm a nice person; what pleasure is there in witnessing the misfortune of someone else? Even if she did have legs that didn't seem to end.

Endlessness reminded me of the pain in my own leg. No doubt I'd be waiting until Dr. Dune was caught up from his morning surgery schedule, but on the off chance that he was on time, I wanted to be, too.

I limped up the walk to the office, my knee swollen from the morning's exertion, and took note of the fall leaf cutouts pasted in the windows. Next to an orange poster announcing the Halloween blood drive with promises of Vampire visits, someone had pasted over Dune's name on the door with green sponge letters so that it read "Dr. Goon" instead. I'd noticed several children with casts come and go during my appointments. Nine year olds were going to get a kick out of it, for sure.

The receptionist wasn't at the desk, so I signed in and took a seat in the waiting room. An older woman with the telltale vertical scars of knee replacement argued with the man sitting next to her, and a young boy sporting a sling scrolled through daytime TV with the remote left on the table. I picked up a magazine, but before I'd turned to the first article, they called my name.

More Halloween décor was strung through the halls to the examining room, and again there were green foam letters replacing my kindly doctor's nameplate. I tried to imagine what a "Dr. Goon" would look like. His eyes would bug out, I decided, and his tongue would hang inches below his chin. He'd smell of dark earth, and his skin would feel like the rubber they use on masks, but it wouldn't come off. Unless it came off in clumps, exposing the sinew and bone beneath its surface. And bugs. Surely there would be bugs….

I'd only waited a few minutes when the door opened and the young man who'd been in the clinic came in holding my chart. "Ah, and how are we doing today, Miz Roper?"

"Hi," I replied. "Weren't you the anesthesiologist the other day?"

"See, you remember the good stuff." He held out his hand. " Actually, I'm more of an, shall we say, intern, here. I'm learning the ways of western surgery, while sharing some of the ...secrets, of the ancient medicines of my people."

"Oh. Sort of a holistic thing? I've heard of those programs."

"Good. Then you know there is much that modern medicine hasn't yet explained, that some of the tribal doctors have at their disposal."

"Like the amnesia drug?"

"Very good! You were paying attention. My grandmother told me you were smart. She told me you did things because they were right, not just for money, like most of dis place."

"Your Grandmother?"

"Yes, she lives in the Downstream Development. I've been staying with her. Nasty stuff in the air an'such." He put his hand on my knee and examined the staples.

I grimaced with the pain, and tried to make polite conversation. "I wish I could do more there. It doesn't look good right now."

"Well maybe it will go bettah with Case out of de way." He changed the bandages as we talked. His touch was that gentle kind that felt like it had magical healing powers. The pain in my knee was almost gone. I wondered what it would be like to feel that touch in other situations.

"What do you mean? I just met with him this morning."

"Ah, that explains it then." He crossed his legs then. It bothered me; I had a definite sense that he was somehow aroused.

"I don't understand."

Just then I heard a child's scream down the hall. Chad opened the door and we could see the little boy from the waiting room and his mother rush past the doorway, followed closely by someone dressed in a Halloween costume. The costume looked familiar, and I was a little disturbed to see some sort of squirmy insects crawling on what looked like an arm of exposed sinew, with plastic looking flesh dangling free from it. The costume even had a tongue that flapped over the persons shoulder.

Chad started laughing. "Nice one Ms. Roper. But you really should change him back."

"What?"

"Let me guess. Dat's your image of a Goon?"

"How did you know that?"

He closed the door to the exam room and I began to feel queasy. "T'ink about what you want Dr. Dune to look like, Ms. Roper. Just do it."

I didn't like the way his accent reverted to Creole when he fell out of his formal tone. I thought of the kindly gentleman who'd done my surgery, and while I was thinking about him, he opened the door to the room.

He looked just as I'd pictured him.

"Everything under control Chad?"

"Yes sir, Dr. Dune. Think the staples need to stay a few more days though."

"Good work Chad. You doing okay on medicine Megg? I can write you another prescription, if you like."

I was still trying to comprehend what was going on. "No, no thanks Dr. Dune. It's really feeling much better." It was. I noticed even the swelling had dissipated.

"Good, good." He signed the chart, and left the room.

"You are quick." Chad smiled an electric smile. "That was a great recovery."

"What are you talking about?" "Grandmother told me about your problems with Case, and, well. We decided it was time the cards weren't so unevenly stacked." He touched his fingertips together, forming a bridge with his hands and his gaze, directly in my eyes, was purposeful. "Do you remember those vials I showed you the other day?"

"Yes."

"The third vial was a little specialty of mine from the islands. Sort of a modern day derivative of what used to be used, well, in voodoo."

"Voodoo? You've got to be kidding."

"Not at all Miz Roper. By adding what we know from the ancient arts of black magic to the details science has discovered about the human brain, we combine the ability to transmit pain, and pleasure for that matter, to the telekinetic forces of the brain. In effect, you are a human voodoo doll. Whenever your thoughts tap into those basic emotions, love, desire, jealousy, anger, even impatience, you have the power to… influence others."

"This is crazy."

"Perhaps. But that is what the third vial gave you."

"I don't believe it."

Chad laughed, a melodious deep laugh that suddenly seemed quite mad. I wanted out of there.

"Just one thing you need to remember. Good is almost always vulnerable to evil, but evil, while it may secretly long for it, almost never looks for good." He ran his hand alongside my face then, his touch as innervating as before. Instinctively I turned toward it, like a nursling seeking sustenance, and saw the tattoo of a tribal knot on the inside of his wrist. I knew without asking that it represented something sacred. Then he opened the door and was gone.

I checked out, a little stunned that I no longer needed the brace to walk back to my car.
Things were starting to fall in place in my head, and a warmth that reminded me of the dreams from the night before settled in my belly. It was like the feeling that new knowledge in a case always gave me, a power of knowing I'm right, that I have the tools to make things happen. It was my biggest frustration with DoDevOr. No matter how much I learned, no matter how convinced I was that the equities were on the side of the homeowners, I kept hitting roadblocks. Case's words came back to me. It's about the economy. Not about what is right or wrong. I felt the frown lines on my face disappear for the first time since I'd agreed to take the case.

The next day's paper featured a biographical review of Robert Case's life. The obituary didn't give details of his death, but a search on the rumor boards on the internet said he'd died of some strange heart disease. His heart tissue had been all gray, like meat that had been frozen and thawed and left to rot.

The paper also detailed the procedure the board of the company was going to use to choose a successor. They were looking for someone who believed in the company enough to hold shares in it. I tucked the ten-share certificate I'd purchased in order to be able to file a shareholder derivative suit for DoDevOr into my briefcase. I'd have to look at the numbers to decide if loopholes were better for my company than being a good neighbor. I didn't want to mess up the economy after all.

I went into my bathroom to dress for the meeting, finished my ensemble by pulling on a red blazer, and sliding into five-inch heels. The image of marionette strings came back to me. My image of myself was no longer of the bleeding heart do-gooder. Pulling those strings was going to be fun. I looked into the mirror and admired the sheen of my newly blond hair, and imagined my chin just a little more pointed, my blouse a little more full.

Yes. That was better.

I flipped open my cell phone and called Dune's office. They agreed to give Chad the message that I'd be meeting him for dinner after the meeting. The address I gave them was for a suite that was something out of a dream. My dream. He deserved to know just what his concoction could do, after all. And smiling at my own reflection, I decided I did, too.

I have to admit, the view was awfully nice from the 43rd floor. I'll have to practice my laugh though.