Death Spiral (7 page)

“I'm Dr. Wydner,” Hairdo says, offering a hand. “Please, come in.”

He leads me to a folding chair opposite a large desk. I take a seat and look around. Besides a few framed photos of a girl about my age, there's nothing personal in the office. No diplomas or art or posters. Just a computer, some papers on his desk, and the obvious need for a vacuum and dust rag.

“So,” he says, peering at me with tired eyes before sliding a form across the desk. “You're here about the clinical trial. Are you eighteen?”

“No,” I say, unsure what my age has to do with anything.

“You have to be eighteen,” he tells me, taking in my hoodie and faux leather skirt, my black eyeliner and the curtain of my bangs.

Suddenly it dawns on me—my clothes, my hair, the way I look. He thinks
I
want to be in the clinical trial. “You got it all wrong,” I say. “I'm not here for myself. I'm here about someone else.”

Dr. Wydner raises his eyebrows and steeples his fingers beneath his chin. I can tell he doesn't believe me. It's like going to Planned Parenthood for condoms and saying they're “for a friend.”

“No, really. I'm not…I don't…” I stop and inhale, fold my hands in my lap, and start again. “I want to find out if someone by the name of Augustina Flores was in this clinical trial.” I cringe hearing myself call Mom Augustina. She hated that name. She used to say it was too Catholic for a New Age Pagan like her. Everyone called her Auggie.

Dr. Wydner scrutinizes me like I'm a lab mouse and he's waiting to see which way I'll go in the maze. “I'm sorry,” he says, without taking his eyes off my face. “That information is confidential.”

“But, I'm her daughter,” I protest, digging through the clutter in my bag for some kind of ID. I find my birth certificate crumbled at the bottom along with several other papers from school registration I never bothered cleaning out. “You can give the information to family, can't you?”

“Her daughter?” A look of surprise crosses his face.

I pull out the crinkled document, push it across the desk as proof of my existence, and sit patiently as I wait for the doctor to study my birth certificate and confirm I am who I claim to be.

When he's examined my documentation and lo and behold, I'm Faith Flores, he hands back the paper and clears his throat. “Yes, well I see. We can certainly release information to family members, but I don't have the information at my fingertips. I only have a number for each patient, not a name. I don't see the applications or work directly with the patients. The nurses do that. They register the patients and administer the treatment. I'm here to monitor the progress and analyze the data.”

“Well, couldn't you find out about my mom? Ask a nurse or something? You are running the thing, aren't you?” I don't even try to hide my irritation. He's just like every adult who blows me off whenever I bring up my mom, who acts like the word teenager is a synonym for delinquent.

Dr. Wydner sighs, leans forward, and rests his fatigue on his elbow. “Why not ask your mother if she's in the study?”

I meet his eye without flinching. “Because she's dead.”

He passes a hand over his jowls. For a minute he doesn't speak. There's something faraway about his silence. Like he's forgotten I'm here.

“I'm sorry,” he finally says. I'm not sure what he's apologizing for—his silence? My mother? That he can't help me? “I know how hard losing someone is.” He glances at the framed photos on his desk. “I have a daughter.”

I look at the pictures of the smiling girl with brown curls and soft brown eyes. In one of the photos she's dressed for a soccer game, in another for a prom. She seems like someone who might be head of student council or editor of the yearbook, someone who's pretty enough to be a bitch, but whose warm smile tells me she isn't.

He clears his throat. “She's very sick.…We might lose her.”

For some reason, hearing this ignites my anger. What does he mean, “lose her?” Is he going to misplace her in some drawer? And why is he telling
me
this?

I peer at the doctor again and immediately feel bad. He's obviously hurting and, judging from his appearance, not doing too well. I mumble something sympathetic about his daughter and get up to leave, thinking our meeting's over.

“Augustina Flores, you said?”

I stop in my tracks, two steps from my chair. “That's right.”

He lowers his eyes and starts typing. I stand there, wondering if I'm supposed to stay, or if he's moved onto something else and class is over and I'm dismissed. I'm guessing the second. I'm about to split when he pushes his chair away from his desk and looks up from the screen.

“I'm sorry. I didn't find anyone by that name.”

Okay, well at least I have my answer. Melinda lied. Mom wasn't in the clinical trial. I'm not sure if the lie is a total relief or a total let down, but I'm not about to stand around all day dwelling on it. I thank Dr. Wydner for his time and turn to leave for real this time. I make it all the way to the door when something between a eureka moment and a hunch stops me. If Mom really was in this clinical trial and really didn't want me to know about it, wouldn't she cover all her bases to hide it from me?

“Archer,” I say, wheeling back around to face Dr. Wydner. “Augustina Archer. Can you check that name?”

Dr. Wydner scratches his head (not a single hair moving) and gives me a look like you give the guy outside the Wawa who reeks of booze and just needs a few bucks for his pregnant girlfriend because his car broke down and he's stranded and his girl's gonna drop any second.

“I know what you're thinking,” I say, running emergency ops. “Archer is a different last name from mine, and you can only release the information to family, so how do you know we're family? How do you know I'm not lying?”

“Something like that,” he admits.

“Yeah, I understand, but Archer was her maiden name. Please,” I add, when he doesn't respond. “This is really important.”

Dr. Wydner picks up a pen and taps it on the desk. I wait.
Tap. Tap
. I stare out the window at an insurance agency building with a falling down sign that might've once said, “We have you covered” but now says, “We ‘ave you ‘overed.”
Tap. Tap.
Finally Dr. Wydner puts down the pen and turns back to his computer.

“I found her name,” he tells me after a minute. “Augustina Archer. Your mother was in the clinical trial. I see she died about six weeks ago. The report we received from the medical examiner said it was a heroin overdose. I'm sorry. It's always a disappointment when the treatment doesn't work.” He looks at his daughter's picture again, and I wonder if it's his own disappointment he's talking about or mine.

“We normally don't take people with dependents,” he goes on. “Any new medicine has potential complications and risks. This is an experimental treatment. For people with dependents, methadone is a safer alternative.”

He leans back in his chair and rambles on, but I stop listening. My nervous system is jammed. Too many synapses are firing at the same time.

I close my eyes, and when I do, I see Melinda. I hear her voice.
Your mom and I look the same.
Side effects, all of it.

“Do patients ever have any side effects from the treatment?” I ask, opening my eyes.

Dr. Wydner stops mid-sentence and gazes at me. He pushes back from his desk and walks heavily to the window, like his whole body is a sigh. “I'm guessing you're looking for an alternate explanation of how she died,” he says more to the window than to me. “That's not uncommon. But I'm sorry. I can't help you. I can only tell you that she was in the trial, and the documented cause of her death. I can't discuss the specifics of the treatment or the clinical trial. These things are confidential.”

There isn't anything more to say. I know Mom was in the clinical trial, but without information on her symptoms and a connection to the treatment, I haven't gotten any closer to learning what was wrong with her. I thank him again for his time and gather my bag.

“How old are you?” he asks as I start to leave for the third time.

“Sixteen.”

He comes around to the front of the desk and perches on the edge. “This must be very hard for you.”

I don't know if this requires an answer, but I'm not about to get into it with a stranger, so I nod again.

He doesn't press the topic. He asks a few more general questions about my life, and for a few minutes we have a connection of sorts. I fill the daughter void, and he fills the caring-father void. It's playacting, but it works. We each get to fill a little of that emptiness, if only for a moment or two.

He's just asked a question about Aunt T when the door opens and Veronica sticks her head into the office. “Your next appointment is here to see you.”

In about a second's time all that warm, fatherly stuff disappears, and Dr. Wydner morphs into something totally different. He's on his feet, handing me his business card and walking me to the door. “If there's anything else I can do for you, please call.” He shakes my hand and ushers me into the hall as the next guy enters.

The rapid departure from the office has me disoriented, but not so much that I don't get a good look at the guy coming in. He's the love child of Wall Street and American Idol, polished down to his three-piece suit and shiny shoes, just the right amount of gray woven though his black hair. He smiles and says hello as we pass, but the smile doesn't reach his eyes. It's all teeth and no heart.

“Dr. Glass, it's good to see you, ” I hear Dr. Wydner say as I start down the hall. “I have the data you were asking about.”

***

When I return to the waiting area, Anj, diplomat and peacemaker extraordinaire, is having a friendly conversation with a guy with a naked woman tattooed onto his shaved head. Anj's smile is a shining star in this dreary place, and she seems the happiest person in the world, sitting on the floor, chatting up some half-baked junkie.

“Come on,” I say, tugging her to her feet. “Let's go.”

“Back to school?” Anj asks as we leave the clinic.

I don't answer right away as I let an idea percolate. The thought has been a seed in my mind since her death, but it wasn't until I went to Melinda's and saw the Rat Catcher that it really took root: what if the heroin and the debt had something to do with Mom's death? I followed up on the clinical trial. Now it's time to follow up on the dope.

I look at Anj with her rosy cheeks and sparkly blue eyes and hesitate. I don't want to bring her there, to that place, but it's now or never. “Can we take a detour on our way back to school?”

Anj agrees and twenty minutes later we're at a place I never thought I'd see again. Nothing much has changed. The street scarred by potholes. Mad Dog in his Eagles jersey, selling hotdogs from his corner cart. The trash collecting around curbs and piling up in the gutter. The falling down Welcome sign above a boarded up store. The Pawn Shop. The torn Bud Light billboard. Welcome to paradise.

“Uh,” Anj says as I direct her to an empty lot across the street from the last place Mom and I lived. “What are we doing here?”

“Stay in the car,” I say instead of answering. “And lock the door. I won't be long.”

Before she can protest, I dash across the street. I bite down hard and steel myself against the desire to bolt as I open the front door of my old building and trudge up the stairs, pretending the life I once led here life belonged to someone else.

I reach the apartment at the end of the second floor belonging to Wanda, the one person in this building Mom called friend. I hear music. Old R&B. Something sultry and sexy. Marvin Gaye I think. I raise my hand and knock.

“Who is it?” a muffled voice calls.

“Faith Flores. Auggie's daughter,” I say to the closed door.

A second later Wanda opens the door just wide enough for me to notice that she's wearing something short and lacey with far too much exposed flesh for a Monday afternoon.

“Girl,” she says, tossing her head and flipping her long black hair behind her shoulders. “I didn't think I'd see you again. What are you doing here?”

“I'm sorry to bother you. It's just…I have a question.”

“Babe!” I hear a man call from inside the apartment. “Bed's getting cold.”

Wanda glances over her shoulder. “Now's kind of a bad time.”

“I'm sorry. I'll be quick.” I bite my lip. “It's just that you and Mom were friends, so I thought maybe you'd know.” I stop. Not sure I can ask. What if the answer is yes?

“Know what?”

I look into Wanda's eyes—black like obsidian, like something dark and shiny and beautiful—and find the courage. “If she was using heroin before she died.”

“You came all the way here to ask me that? Aw, Faith, I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I hardly saw your mom at the end. She was acting so funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wanda!” the man calls again. “I'm serious. Tell whoever it is to come back!”

“Look, hon. I've gotta go. I'm sorry.”

“Wait! One more thing. Did you ever hear of someone called the Rat Catcher?”

The man comes to the door. Tall. Black. Gorgeous. And none too happy to see me standing here. “Wanda doesn't know anyone with that name,” he answers for her. “Now we're busy. Come back when she's free.”

He closes the door before Wanda can say good-bye.

I sigh and go back outside to the car. The wind's picked up since the morning. My hair whips my face. Pieces of trash swirl like snowflakes. A beer can rolls down the sidewalk and hits a wall with a metallic clank. Car brakes squeal, followed by a long honk. There's a siren somewhere. The whole city feels like an emergency, and I have a sudden need to get out of here, to quiet the thunder in my brain and try to fit together the pieces of this story. Melinda. Mom. Dr. Wydner.