Life Support Read online

  The driver turned left, onto a narrow street. No people were sitting outside on the sidewalk here. But she knew they were watching her. She could feel it. She dug in her purse, fished out a cigarette, and lit up. She’d taken only two drags when a disembodied voice suddenly said: “Please put it out.”

  Molly glanced around, startled. “What?”

  “I said, put it out. We don’t allow smoking in the car.”

  Flushing with guilt, she quickly stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. Then she noticed the tiny speaker mounted in the partition.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?” she said.

  No reply.

  “If you can, could you turn down the air conditioner? I’m freezing back here. Hello? Mister driver?”

  The blast of cold air shut off.

  “Thank you,” she said. And added under her breath: “Asshole.”

  She found the electric switch for the window and rolled it down a crack. The smell of summer in the city wafted in, hot and sulfurish. She didn’t mind the heat. It felt like home. Like all the damp and sweaty summers of her childhood in Beaufort. Damn, she wanted a cigarette. But she didn’t feel like arguing with that tinny little box.

  The car rolled to a stop. The voice from the speaker said: “This is the address. You can get out now.”

  “What, here?”

  “The building’s right in front of you.”

  Molly peered out at the four-story brownstone. The first-floor windows were boarded up. Broken glass glittered on the sidewalk. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.

  “The front door’s open. Go up two flights to the third floor. It’ll be the last door on your right. No need to knock, just walk right in.”

  “Romy didn’t say nothing about this.”

  “Romy said you’d cooperate.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “It’s just part of the fantasy, Molly.”

  “What fantasy?”

  “The client’s. You know how it is.”

  Molly gave a deep sigh and stared out at the building again. Clients and their fantasies. So what was this guy’s dream fuck? Doing it among the rats and cockroaches? A little danger, a little grunge to notch up the excitement? Why did clients’ fantasies never match her own? A clean hotel room, a Jacuzzi. Richard Gere and Pretty Woman sipping champagne.

  “He’s waiting.”

  “Yeah, I’m going, I’m going.” Molly shoved open the car door and stepped out onto the curb. “You’re gonna wait for me, right?”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  She faced the building and took a deep breath. Then she climbed the steps and pushed into the entrance.

  It was as bad inside as it looked on the outside. Graffiti all over the walls, the hallway littered with newspapers and a rusty box spring. Someone had trashed the place good.

  She started up the stairs. The building was eerily silent, and the clatter of her shoes echoed in the stairwell. When she reached the second floor, her palms were sweaty.

  This felt wrong. All wrong.

  She paused on the landing and gazed toward the third floor. What the hell did you get me into, Romy? Who is this client, anyway?

  She wiped her damp palms on her blouse. Then she took another breath and ascended the next flight of stairs. In the third-floor hallway, she stopped outside the last door on the right. She heard a humming sound from the room beyond— an air conditioner? She opened the door.

  Cool air spilled out. She stepped inside and was amazed to find herself in a room with pristine white walls. In the center was some sort of doctor’s exam table, padded in maroon vinyl. Overhead hung an enormous lamp. There was no other furniture. Not even a chair.

  “Hello, Molly.”

  She spun around, searching for the man who’d just said her name. There was no one else in the room. “Where are you?” she demanded.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m just a little shy. First I’d like to get a look at you.”

  Molly focused on a mirror, mounted in the far wall. “You’re back there, aren’t you? Is that some kinda one-way glass?”

  “Very good.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Is that all?”

  “There’ll be more.”

  Naturally. There was always more. She walked, almost casually, to the mirror. He’d said he was shy. That made her feel better. More in control. She stood with one hand propped on her miniskirted hip. “Okay. If you want to talk, mister, it’s your money.”

  “How old are you, Molly?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Are your periods regular?”

  “What?”

  “Your menstrual periods.”

  She gave a laugh. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Yeah. They’re sorta regular.”

  “And your last period was two weeks ago?”

  “How do you know that?” she demanded. Then, shaking her head, she muttered, “Oh. Romy told you.” Romy would know, of course. He always knew when his girls were on the rag.

  “Are you healthy, Molly?”

  She glared at the mirror. “Don’t I look healthy?”

  “No blood diseases? Hepatitis? HIV?”

  “I’m clean. You won’t catch anything, if that’s what worries you.”

  “Syphilis? Clap?”

  “Look,” she snapped. “Do you want to get laid or not?”

  There was a silence. Then the voice said, softly: “Take off your clothes.”

  This was more like it. This was what she expected.

  She stepped closer to the mirror, so close her breath intermittendy steamed the glass. He would want to watch every detail. They always did. She reached up and began to unbutton her blouse. She did it slowly, drawing out the performance. As the fabric parted she let her thoughts go blank, felt herself withdrawing into some safe mental closet where men did not exist. She was moving her hips, swaying to imagined music. The blouse slid off her shoulders to the floor. Her breasts were exposed now, her nipples dimpling in the room’s chill. She closed her eyes. Somehow that made it better. Let’s get this over with, she thought. Just screw him and get out of here.

  She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. Then she peeled off her panties. All this she did with her eyes closed. Romy had told her she had a good body. That if she used it right, no one would even notice how plain her face was. She was using that body now, dancing to a rhythm only she could hear.

  “That’s fine,” the man said. “You can stop dancing.”

  She opened her eyes and stared at the mirror in bewilderment. She saw her own reflection there. Limp brown hair. Breasts small but pointed. Hips as narrow as a boy’s. When she’d been dancing with her eyes closed, she had been acting out a part. Now she confronted her own image. Her real self. She couldn’t help crossing her arms over her naked chest.

  “Go to the table,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The exam table. Lie down on it.”

  “Sure. If that’s what turns you on.”

  “That’s what turns me on.”

  To each his own. She climbed onto the table. The burgundy vinyl was cold against her bare buttocks. She lay down and waited for something to happen.

  A door opened, and she heard footsteps. She stared as the man approached the foot of the table and loomed above her. He was garbed entirely in green. All she could see of his face was his eyes, a cold steel blue. They were gazing at her over a surgical mask.

  She sat up in alarm.

  “Lie down,” he commanded.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I said, lie down.”

  “Man, I’m getting out of here—”

  He grabbed her arm. Only then did she notice he was wearing gloves. “Look, I won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice softer. Gentler. “Don’t you understand? This is my fantasy.”

  “You mean—pl
aying doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m supposed to be your patient?”

  “Yes. Does that scare you?”

  She sat thinking about it. Remembering all the other fantasies she’d endured on behalf of clients. This one, in the scheme of things, seemed relatively tame.

  “All right,” she sighed, and lay back down.

  He slid out the stirrups and extended the footrests so they jutted out from the end of the table. “Come on, Molly,” he said. “Surely you know what to do with your feet.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “I’m the doctor. Remember?”

  She stared at his masked face, wondering what lay behind that rectangle of cloth. A perfectly ordinary man, no doubt. They were all so ordinary. It was their fantasies that repulsed her. Frightened her.

  Reluctantly she raised her legs and positioned her feet in the stirrups.

  He released the foot of the table and it swung down on hinges. She was lying with her thighs spread wide apart, her exposed bottom practically hanging off the table’s edge. She displayed herself to men all the time, but there was something horribly vulnerable about this position. Those bright lights shining down between her legs. Her utter nakedness against the exam table. And the man, whose gaze was focused with clinical detachment on her most intimate anatomy.

  He looped a Velcro strap around her ankle.

  “Hey,” she said. “I don’t like being tied down.”

  “I like it,” he murmured, fastening the other strap. “I like my girls this way.”

  She flinched as he inserted his gloved fingers. He leaned toward her, his gaze narrowed in concentration as his fingers probed deeper. She closed her eyes and tried to detach her thoughts from what was happening between her legs, but the sensations were difficult to ignore. Like a rodent burrowing deep inside her. He had one hand pressed down on top of her abdomen, and the fingers of his other hand were moving inside. Somehow this seemed a worse violation than any mere fuck, and she wanted it over and done with. Is this turning you on, creep? she wondered. Are you stiff yet? When are you going to get on with it?

  He withdrew his hand. She gave a shudder of relief. Opening her eyes, she saw that he was not looking at her anymore. His gaze was focused instead on something beyond her field of vision. He nodded.

  Only then did she realize there was someone else in the room.

  A rubber mask was clamped over her mouth and nose. She tried to twist away, but her head was pressed hard against the table. She reached up, frantically clawing at the edges of the anesthesia mask. At once her hands were yanked away, and her wrists firmly and efficiently tied down. She gasped in a breath of acrid-smelling gas, felt it sear her throat. Her chest rebelled in a spasm of coughing. She bucked harder, but the mask would not go away. She took another breath; she could not help it. Now all sensation was draining from her limbs. The lights seemed dimmer. Bright white fading to gray.

  To black.

  She heard a voice say, “Draw the blood now.”

  But the words meant nothing to her. Nothing at all.

  “Man, oh man, what a mess you’ve made.”

  It was Romy’s voice—that much she could figure out. But she could not seem to make sense of anything else. Where she was. Where she’d been.

  Why her head ached and her throat felt so dry.

  “Come on, Molly Wolly. Open your eyes.”

  She groaned. Just the rumble of her own voice made her head vibrate.

  “Open your fuckin’ eyes, Molly. You’re stinking up the whole room.”

  She rolled onto her back. Light filtered, blood red, through her eyelids. She struggled to open them, to focus on Romy’s face.

  He was staring down at her with an expression of disgust in his dark eyes. His black hair was slicked back and shiny with pomade. It reflected light like a brass helmet. Sophie was there too, her face slightly sneering, her arms crossed over her balloon breasts. It made Molly even more miserable to see Sophie and Romy standing so close together, like the old lovers they were. Maybe still were. That horse-faced Sophie was always hanging around, trying to cut Molly out. And now she’d come into Molly’s room, trespassing where she had no right to be.

  Outraged, Molly tried to sit up, but her vision blanked out and she collapsed back on the bed. “I feel sick,” she said.

  “You’ve been sick,” said Romy. “Now go get cleaned up. Sophie’ll help you.”

  “I don’t want her to touch me. Get her out of here.”

  Sophie gave a snort. “Miss Titless, I wouldn’t hang around your pukey room anyway,” she said and walked out.

  Molly groaned. “I don’t remember what happened, Romy.”

  “Nothing happened. You came back and went to bed. And threw up all over your pillow.”

  Again she struggled to sit up. He didn’t help her, or even touch her. She smelled that bad. Already he was heading for the door, leaving her to clean up her own filthy sheets.

  “Romy,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did I get here?”

  He laughed. “Geez, you really did get wasted, didn’t you?” And he left the room.

  For a long time she sat on the side of the bed, trying to remember the last few hours. Trying to shake off her residual wooziness.

  There had been a client—that much she remembered. A man all in green. A room with a giant mirror. And there had been a table.

  But she couldn’t remember the sex. Maybe she had blocked it out. Maybe it had been so disgusting an experience she’d shoved it into her subconscious, the way she’d successfully blocked out so much of her childhood. Only occasionally did she allow a wisp of a childhood memory to return. The good memories, mostly; she did have a few good memories of her years growing up in Beaufort, and she could conjure them up at will. Or suppress them at will.

  But the events of this afternoon, she could hardly remember at all.

  God, she stank. She looked down at her blouse and saw it was stained with vomit The buttons had been done up wrong, and bare skin showed through an unfastened gap.

  She began to strip. She peeled off the miniskirt, unbuttoned the blouse, and tossed them in a pile on the floor. Then she stumbled to the shower and turned on the water.

  Cold. She wanted it cold.

  Standing under the sputtering faucet, she felt her head begin to clear. As it did, another memory flickered into focus. The man in green, towering above her. Staring down at her. And the straps, pinching her wrists and ankles.

  She looked down at her hands and saw the bruises, like circular cuff marks around her wrists. He had tied her down—not so unusual. Men and their crazy games.

  Then her gaze focused on another bruise, in the crook of her left arm. It was so faint she’d almost missed the small blue circle. In the very center of the bruise, like the point of a bull’s eye, was a single puncture mark.

  She struggled to remember a needle, but she could not. All she remembered was the man in the surgeon’s mask.

  And the table.

  Cold water dribbled down her shoulders. Shivering, Molly stared at the needle mark and she wondered what else she’d forgotten.

  3

  A nurse’s voice called to her from the wall intercom: “Dr. Harper, we need you out here.”

  Toby Harper awakened with a start to find that she had fallen asleep at her desk, with a stack of medical journals as her pillow. Reluctantly she raised her head, squinting against the light from the reading lamp. The brass desktop clock said 4:49 A.M. Had she really slept for almost forty minutes? It seemed as if she’d laid her head down just a moment ago. The words of the journal article she’d been reading had begun to blur, and she’d thought she’d allow her eyes a short rest. That was all she’d intended, just a moment’s respite from dull writing and painfully small print. The journal was still open to the article she’d been trying to absorb, the page now crinkled with the imprint of her face. “A randomized controlled study comparing the effectiveness of
lamivudine and zidovudine in the treatment of HIV patients with less than 500 CD4+ cells per cubic centimeter.” She closed the journal. God. No wonder she’d fallen asleep.

  There was a knock on the door, and Maudeen poked her head into the doctor’s room. Ex-army major Maudeen Collins had a voice like a megaphone—not at all what one expected from a five-foot-two-inch pixie. “Toby? You weren’t asleep, were you?”

  “I guess I dozed off. What’ve you got out there?”

  “Sore toe.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Patient ran out of Colchicine and he thinks his gout’s acting up.”

  Toby groaned. “Jesus. Why don’t these crazy patients ever plan ahead?”

  “They think we’re just an all-night pharmacy. Look, we’re still doing his paperwork. So why don’t you take your time?”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  After Maudeen left, Toby allowed herself a moment to fully wake up. She wanted to sound halfway intelligent when she spoke to the patient. She rose from the desk and crossed to the sink. She’d been on duty for ten hours now, and so far it had been an uneventful shift. That was the nice part about working in a quiet suburb like Newton. There were often long periods when absolutely nothing happened in the Springer Hospital ER, periods when Toby could stretch out on the doctor’s bed and take a nap, if she was so inclined. She knew the other ER doctors took naps, but Toby usually resisted the temptation. She was paid to work the twelve-hour night shift, and it seemed unprofessional to spend any of those hours in a state of unconsciousness.

  So much for professionalism, she thought, staring at herself in the mirror. She’d fallen asleep on the job, and she could see the aftereffects in her face. Her green eyes were puffy. Newsprint from the medical journal had smudged words on her cheek. Her expensive salon haircut looked as though it had been whipped up by an eggbeater, and her hair stuck out in short blond spikes. This was the precise and elegant Dr. Harper as she really was—not so elegant after all.

  In disgust Toby turned on the faucet and vigorously scrubbed the newsprint from her face. She splashed water on her hair as well, and combed it back with her fingers. So much for expensive haircuts. At least she no longer looked like a fuzzy blond dandelion. There was nothing she could do about the puffy eyes or the lines of exhaustion. At the age of thirty-eight, Toby couldn’t bounce back from an all-nighter the way she did as a twenty-five-year-old medical student.