The bone hunger, p.9
The Bone Hunger, page 9
“If all the surgeons were as nice as you, I’d still be there.” She left it at that, but Ben knew what she meant. Like Lenny, she was annoyed by Dr. Lock’s insistence that only certain people could scrub in on his reconstructive surgeries. In her case it was Michael who was the chosen scrub nurse. Although Tara didn’t particularly care whether she worked with Lock or not, she’d told Ben it was the principle of the thing. As if no one else was good enough to make the privileged surgeon’s team.
“Ben. Dinner. Now,” Karen barked.
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her, said goodbye to Tara, and followed his senior resident down the hall. He made it half a hallway before his phone buzzed. Lenny. About time.
As he trotted behind Karen he read the text: All’s good, man. Program director and ortho chair notified. Off to treatment, but as far as anyone else knows I’m helping a sick cousin with cancer. I know you’ll protect me.
Ben read the last sentence twice. Protect him? Did Lenny mean protect his secret about drug treatment or did he mean protect him from inquiring detectives?
The first he could do. The second, he wasn’t so sure.
15
The first thing Ben did when he left the hospital post-call Tuesday morning was visit Kim Templeton’s husband in their ranch-style home on the outskirts of Philly. Though Ben doubted Detectives Becker and Patel would approve of his house call to the bereaved husband of the recently murdered woman, he felt like he had to do something—anything—to figure out what happened to his patient.
Unfortunately, other than learning that Del Templeton was a heartbroken man with the body of a lumberjack and that Kim Templeton had been a wonderful dancer before her hip injury derailed her quickstep, Ben discovered nothing new, only confirmed what the police had already told him: that Mrs. Templeton had disappeared Saturday evening when her husband stepped out to buy her pudding, that she’d been paranoid someone was watching her (which they had attributed to her medication since Del had found no evidence of trespassers), and that her body still hadn’t been found. After Mr. Templeton clarified for Ben there’d been no sign of a break-in or a struggle, he added that the outdoor camera he’d ordered as a safety net hadn’t yet arrived before she disappeared. At that point, he pounded the table and broke down completely.
After comforting the man as best he could, Ben said goodbye and returned to his Mustang to go visit his mother. Forty minutes later he arrived at the Sethfield Long-Term Care Facility, fifteen miles from downtown Philadelphia in a small, working-class community. With its urine-colored brick and shutterless windows, the five-story complex wasn’t pretty, but it at least offered good care to a comatose woman.
As always when he entered the flavorless room with its hospital-grade bed, chipped wooden dresser, and two plastic chairs, he hoped he and his dad had done enough to make the place homey. Max had been the one with the keen eye, not Willy or Ben. But Ben had installed lace curtains over the lone window and hung prints of shorelines and meadows on the walls. Willy had dotted the dresser with family photographs, Ben and Maxwell beaming from most of them. And together they regularly filled the ceramic vase on her nightstand with flowers. Judging by the sweet fragrance of Lily of the Valley in the air, Willy had brought in the most recent bouquet today, but although his coat was draped over one of the chairs, he wasn’t in the room at the moment.
Still dressed in rumpled scrubs and his mind still pregnant with his conversation with Del Templeton, Ben slipped off his winter jacket and laid it on the other chair. He bent over and kissed Harmony’s forehead, and then smoothed back her long auburn hair, the locks thinner and sprinkled with gray but still vibrant thanks to the stylist he hired to come weekly.
“Hey, Mom, it’s Ben. Missed you. Maxwell’s been asking when he can come see the Quiet Passenger again. Believe it or not, that’s his new nickname for you. Must have something to do with his trains.” Ben smiled at his son’s obsession. Harmony would smile too. She’d raise her pale arms, gauzy dress flowing around her, and whoop, “Nothing quiet about me.” Except, of course, when she was in the throes of depression.
At first Ben wasn’t sure about his son seeing his grandmother in a coma, but Sophia had convinced him it was a good way to gently initiate him into the sad realities of life. Had Maxwell shown fear, they would have stopped his visits, but he seemed to enjoy sitting next to his grandma, showing her his trains and books, convinced she was equally enthralled. “She likes Sir Quincy the best, just like me, Daddy,” he’d once told Ben.
Willy entered the room, breaking Ben’s thoughts. His appearance was as usual: salt-and-pepper hair ruffled, eyelids hooded under untamed eyebrows, checkered shirt tucked into his jeans. “Oh good, you’re here,” he said to Ben. “I was getting worried. You didn’t answer my voicemail.” He gave Ben a quick hug. “I read about that leg in the paper. The article said the patient had hip surgery at your hospital. Is that true? Did you know her? Do they know who dumped it in the park?” He spoke so quickly Ben wasn’t sure which point to tackle first.
He started with, “Sorry I didn’t call you this morning. I visited the patient’s husband after I left the hospital, and since your message said you’d be here, I figured I’d just stop by before going home to crash.” With good-natured sarcasm, he added, “I would’ve texted you, but we both know how often you check those.”
His father chuckled and took a seat. “You know I’m old school. Rough call night?”
“The usual. Managed two hours of shut-eye.” Ben yawned and slumped down on his chair. “I’ll take a nap before picking up Maxwell later. Didn’t know Mrs. Templeton’s leg made the papers though.”
“Oh yeah. Splashed all over the front page: Severed Leg Found in Fairmount Park.” Willy looked unsettled. “Do you think it’s related to the one you found in the Wissahickon Valley?”
Although Mr. Sampson’s leg hadn’t been big news—maybe because Ben was the one who’d found it and didn’t blab about it on social media or maybe because the police figured it was a hospital prank and not worth further exploring—he wasn’t surprised Kim Templeton’s was. A severed leg and a missing woman made for a hot story. He skirted his dad’s question. “What else did the article say? Did it mention any names?” Like my own?
“No, I don’t think so. Just said a woman who’d had recent hip surgery at Montgomery Hospital went missing and that her detached limb was found by a park employee. There were comments from her husband, her coworkers—I think the article said she worked in a law office—that sort of thing.”
“Did it say anything about an orthopedic implant?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason.” Lenny’s insistence that Dr. Lock had stolen his implant idea poked at Ben’s brain, but how it tied into Kim Templeton’s severed limb—or if it even did—he didn’t know.
“You okay, son?”
“I’m fine. What about you. Anymore...?” Ben wiggled his index finger Harmony’s way, her breathing softly sonorous.
“You mean is your mother still talking to me?”
Ben nodded.
“If I say yes, will you have me committed?”
Ben knew Willy was joking, but he also understood his dad’s response was an affirmative.
“Don’t worry about me, Benny Boy. I’m all right.” His father grew serious. “But your mom is still worried about you. Something about her parents too, I think.”
At that moment, Harmony’s hand slipped off the bed. Ben jumped at the weirdly timed movement. An occasional stirring from her was normal—sometimes her lips smacked or her fingers twitched or her expression darkened—but it startled him nonetheless. Although the doctors felt the movements were simply a reflex response, Harmony clearly had residual brain activity. Her EEGs suggested as much, which confused her primary care doctor and neurologists alike. Her coma was unlike others they’d seen. Regardless, whatever brain activity remained was not enough to wake her from her never-ending sleep.
As far as he knew, her parents had only visited her twice, once at the beginning when he’d tracked them down to tell them about their daughter’s condition (which wasn’t easy to do, having no clue who they were) and once a couple months ago. Both of them, who had to be in their mid-seventies if not older, were remarkably spry and well-kept. They were polite but reserved and said very little. Their aloofness hadn’t surprised Ben. Willy, who’d never met the couple, had mentioned that Harmony tried to avoid them, and she herself had once hinted they were terrible people, particularly her father. At least they were footing the bill for her long-term care facility, beyond what Medicaid didn’t cover.
“How’s your landlady?” Willy asked. “Her vision still fading?”
It took Ben a moment to shift gears. “Poor Mrs. Sinclair. I’m worried she’ll be blind within a year. The other day I smelled burning. I ran upstairs and saw she’d turned a burner to high instead of off. I’m not sure she’ll be able to live alone much longer.”
“At least she has you there.”
“Sure, and I’ll stay as long as she needs me, but I’m not around much. I helped her set up an alert system. If she gets in trouble, it’ll go directly to 911. My cell too.” Ben’s phone buzzed in his pocket. “Speaking of…” When he saw the call was from his mentor, Dr. Smith, he frowned and said, “Sorry, Dad, gotta take this.”
Outside in the quiet hallway, he listened to the internist’s calm yet firm voice. At her mention of Detectives Becker and Patel, his muscles tensed.
“They’re looking for you,” she said. “They came to my office.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Maybe because I’m your mentor. And because I helped you through your…your ordeal a few years back.” She hesitated, as if unsure how to frame her next remark. “They asked me some questions about you.”
“What kind of questions? Did—”
“Please, there isn’t much time. They’ll be headed to your apartment soon.”
“My apartment?” Ben rubbed furiously at his temple, his confusion magnified by his fatigue. “Why?”
“I’ve asked my friend, Shala Lamb, to meet you there.”
“Who’s she?”
“She’s one of the hospital lawyers.”
His throat thickened. “Why do I need a lawyer?”
“There’s been a new development with Mrs. Templeton’s leg. An awful development.” Again, she hesitated. “They think you might know something about it.”
16
My hunger has grown so strong that the energy required to ignore it is exhausting. How long can I hide it? How long before someone figures it out?
Who could believe I’d do something like this? It’s unimaginable…extreme. I’ve released souls before, it’s true, but never this horrifically and never without moral grounds. But I can’t seem to resist these urges.
Maybe it’s not my fault. Maybe it wasn’t me in command of my body or mouth. It was someone else. Something else. Something triggered by that first limb in the park. I was forced to follow my cravings, and now a power greater than me has flipped the cerebral switch of no return. I became an animal, a ravenous beast with a yawning jaw and razor-sharp teeth.
But I have to fight to regain control. Otherwise I risk losing everything.
Dear God, I’m repulsed by my actions. A part of me worries I won’t be able to stop. Like taffy being pulled (and pulled and pulled), my craving will grow, and I’m scared the hunger will never be filled.
Because they all call to me. They thread their way into my psyche and call to me.
I’m next, they whisper. I’m next.
17
Feeling like he couldn’t race home fast enough, where God only knew what the detectives were saying to Mrs. Sinclair, filling her mind with scary images of severed limbs and missing bodies, Ben squealed out of Sethfield’s parking lot and sped back toward Philadelphia’s city center. After rushing through yellow lights and honking at an SUV that was performing an illegal U-turn, he finally slowed down on Wallace Street, where his landlady’s red-bricked row house was located. Hopefully he’d find a nearby parking spot, but it never failed: If he was in a hurry, spots were rarer than moon rocks. If he had time to spare, open spaces were plentiful.
Just when he worried he’d have to circle back around the block, he spotted Detectives Becker and Patel on Mrs. Sinclair’s stoop. She was coatless and appeared trapped between them, each man gripping one of her arms.
Not caring about double-parking or blocking the right lane of an already narrow street, he slammed on the Mustang’s brakes and bolted from the car. His shoes kicked up packed snow and dirtied the hem of his scrubs as he ran. “Hey, leave her alone.”
The two detectives looked up in surprise.
When Ben reached the stoop, its icy concrete pebbled with winter salt, he said, “Edith, are you okay?”
“Oh heavens, don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Just tripped over my doorstep. Can hardly see it anymore.” She wiped her failing eyes as if to clear them. “These men grabbed my arms just in time. I’d have slipped down the stairs like a human toboggan if they hadn’t. They’re here to talk to you. Are they friends of yours?”
“Not quite,” Ben said, hands still fisted by his sides.
“Got quite a temper there, don’t ya, doc.” Patel gazed up at the sun, which was making an afternoon appearance. The glare triggered a sneeze, but the detective caught it in the crook of his elbow, his shabby overcoat no worse for the wear.
Becker, more contemporary in his wool peacoat, released Mrs. Sinclair’s arm. “We’re detectives, ma’am. We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves before you stumbled out.”
“Detectives.” Her expression shifted to alarm. “What’s wrong? What do you want with Ben?”
“Let’s get you back inside,” Becker said. “That sweater’s no match for twenty-degree weather.”
Edith pulled her cardigan tighter against her shoulders, her thinning gray hair lifting in the wind. “Yes, well, yes…I guess.” She looked back and forth between the detectives and Ben, as if unsure what to do. Whether she could clearly see any of them, Ben didn’t know. “Should I send them down to your place?”
He scaled the stairs and grabbed her hand. Warm air from her still-open door wafted out. “That’d be fine. Sorry they startled you. It’s nothing to worry about.” He wished he could believe his own words.
When Ben started to help her back inside, Patel cleared his throat. Ben glanced back at him. “What?”
The detective lifted his lip in a lazy smirk and nodded toward the double-parked Mustang. “Better move that first. You’d hate to get a ticket.” He winked. “Don’t worry. We’ll wait for you.”
Ben didn’t dislike many people, but he disliked Detective Patel. Was maybe even starting to loathe him. Although he understood the guy’s attitude was merely a ploy to rattle him, it didn’t make it less effective. Consider me rattled, Ben thought as he headed back to his car.
Just as he was climbing into the driver’s seat, a woman dressed in a cashmere coat and knee-high boots came trotting down the snow-cleared sidewalk. Her dark hair billowed out from beneath a knit hat, and the decorative ball on top of it bounced with each step. She raised a gloved hand in the air. “Wait, wait, don’t say anything yet, Dr. Oris.” She sounded breathless, as if she’d had to park far away.
Patel looked amused. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Shala Lamb, one of the hospital attorneys.”
A chuckle from the irritating detective. “So the doc needs a lawyer, does he?” He gave Becker a friendly slap on the back and entered the row house after Edith. “Guess we’re talking to the right guy then.”
Inside his basement apartment, Ben felt no warmer than he had on the stoop. Based on what Dr. Smith had told him over the phone forty-five minutes earlier, shit was about to hit him. “Can we just get this over with?” he asked the detectives.
Across the table Becker nodded, but Patel hadn’t yet taken a seat. Instead, he wandered the short distance out of the kitchen, into the living room, and then into the single bedroom and bathroom. His self-guided tour was no skin off Ben’s back. He had nothing to hide.
When the detective returned to the kitchen, he smoothed his coal-black mane and sat down. “Nice digs,” he said.
It was no doubt a sarcastic jab, because although Ben had upgraded his furniture the year before and replaced Mrs. Sinclair’s garish shag carpeting after a few months of earning an income as an intern, the humid cave dwelling was still a few tiles of peeling linoleum and chipped laminate away from “nice digs.” But he’d childproofed the place as best he could and tried to make it a comfortable second home for Maxwell. “It’s a regular penthouse suite,” he replied.
Patel ran his fingertips over the butcher-block table and whistled. “You make this yourself? I understand you’re quite the carpenter.”
How the detective had discovered that piece of trivia Ben didn’t know. “Yes. Last year.”
“That’s impressive workmanship. You make that wooden train track out in the living room too?”
“No.”
Patel pointed to a corner of the kitchen where two bowls sat on the floor, one with a few pellets of dried dog food in it, the other half-full of water. “Where’s the pooch?”
“With my son and his mother. She takes Sir Quincy when I’m on call.”
The dark-eyed detective guffawed. “Sir Quincy. Great name. You’ve got quite the imagination, don’t you, Dr. Oris?”
What’s this guy playing at? “Didn’t realize you came here to discuss toy trains and dogs.”
“Yes, gentlemen,” Shala Lamb spoke up. “Let’s not waste any more of Dr. Oris’s time. He’s post-call, and I imagine he’s had little sleep.” Seated next to Ben, the lawyer’s floral scent helped mask the funk of his day-old scrubs. “Ask him what you came to ask.” She turned to Ben. “And don’t answer anything I tell you not to.”
