She started a chart and asked me some questions. Mr. Kenny Morton, it turned out, was the type of old-fashioned amiable cat who called the doctor Doc, who probably called cops Chief, and who called fat strangers Big Guy. He was the kind of fella who scratched his head with theatrical uncertainty when asked where his previous physician’s practice was located and when his last appointment had taken place. Dr. Venezia-Karbach registered no surprise to hear that Mr. Morton had no insurance or current place of employment.
I imagined for one sharp second Dr. V’s tidy white examination room as the tidy white examination room at the worker-care facility in the western section of the GGSI campus: imagined it splattered with gore, covered with an exuberance of blood. Two dead nurses. Jackdaw on the loose.
Dr. V wrote everything down on her chart and told me that for a man of my age and height and weight I seemed to be in fine shape. When she asked what it was that had brought me to the doctor today, I figured that was enough of that. “Well,” I said, emotion coming hot into my voice, choking me up, “well…” and I slid off the examination table and exploded with need. “That boy!”
“What?” Dr. Venezia-Karbach stepped backward in startlement while I fought back a sob. I advanced across the small room and grasped her roughly by the shoulders. “That boy y’all got!”
There were more graceful ways I could have gone about this. More circumspect methods, more careful. But I was feeling half off the horse that morning. I was feeling like a battering ram, just wanting to shove and smash through this thing. What had Bridge said, in that unwonted casualism—I wanted to get it over with.
“What on earth are you talking about?” said Dr. V, furrowing her brow, playing at confused, putting on a nice show of her own. “What boy?”
“Come on,” I said. “Come on, now. They brought you a boy. The Airlines, a boy, Sunday night. Monday morning?”
“Sir.” Without turning around, Dr. V extended a leg behind her and kicked the door shut.
“The boy!”
“Sir, please.”
I waited for some stammering excuse—what are you talking about, I don’t understand. But it was too late, and she knew it—her eyes had betrayed her, her neat physician’s mask had slipped to reveal not fear, or not just fear, but also the shock of having been discovered. In a fluid gesture she turned around, locked the door, and turned back around. She smoothed her white coat with both hands, adjusted the stethoscope that had been jostled, ran thin fingers through her hair.
“Okay,” she said. “What about him?”
“Well…” What the hell, I figured. “Where’s he at?”
“I do not know, and I could not tell you if I did.” She nodded once, a quick birdlike gesture. “Now, as I’ve said, your checkup shows no areas of concern. Have a good day.”
She unlocked the door and opened it, and I was across the room, reaching past her and pushing it closed again. Dr. V’s shoulders tensed as she turned to face me, the two of us separated by inches. This was a fine line I was walking here. I’m big, even for a man, and she was small, even for a woman, and the room was small and close.
“He’s my brother,” I told her quietly, damn near whispering now.
“What?”
I took two deep breaths. The space between us was ruffled by a drift of warm air from the heating system, riffling Dr. V’s short, spiky hair and making it look like white grass.
“I don’t mean he’s my biological brother; I mean he’s my brother.” It was a southern voice, PB voice, the blood traces of my old real voice tasting like dirt in my mouth. “You know what that means down there? Raised up together, eyes on each other. Family.” I was careful not to say what kind of place it’d been, this plantation or mine or rig where Mr. Morton and Jackdaw had been bound together as boys. The full file was empty on Jackdaw’s history, and I guessed that Barton and company didn’t know any more and that, regardless, they wouldn’t have shared anything with a physician brought in on a freelance basis to tend to him. But this was dangerous territory, and I moved past it quickly.
“We come up together ten years, him and me, but then he gets sold. No warning, no good-bye. That’s how it goes, you know?”
Dr. V was watching me warily, arms crossed, eyes darting back and forth in the small room. I charged on.