Spare Parts

Part One: The Doctor-2

“Come in.”

The door opened, and his new employee walked in. Average height. A little on the skinny side. A face that would get lost in a crowd. Nothing remarkable about the kid stood out, except for the fact that he looked extremely young, and he wasn’t Italian. His bland features suggested to Todd that the kid was English, or somewhere from the United Kingdom. Todd just hoped the kid wasn’t Scottish. He hated dealing with that accent; granted, he’d only had one f*****g New Guy over the past three years that’d been Scottish. If Willie was any yard-stick marker, it would prove to be a challenge.

He gestured to the two worn out chairs pushed against the wall, his own groaning in protest with each movement he made. He swung his feet off the desk and stood up, brushing himself off as he did so. He extended his hand and shook the newbie’s, gesturing once again to the chairs.

“I’m Todd. You must be Giles.” It was a statement.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever have a job before Giles?”

Todd saw a brief look of confusion flash across the kid’s face before it became impassive again. “Yes, sir. I worked for my Uncle’s cleaning company for almost three years.”

“Why’d you leave?” Todd asked, sitting back down.

“I’ll make more money here,” the kid said with a shrug.

Todd popped the rest of the muffin into his mouth, licked his fingers then grabbed the kid’s uniform that was sitting atop his desk, near where his feet had been. It was peppered with pebbles of dirt that fell to the floor when he handed it to the kid.

“Go get changed, then come back to see me.”

The kid nodded and left. Todd opened the bottom drawer of his desk, selected a donut, and it disappeared in two bites. He turned back to his computer, pulled up the kid’s file, and was baffled that the kid was over twenty. He shrugged. Everyone looked young to him these days. He was on the wrong side of forty and felt even older. He closed the kid’s file and went back to dispassionately reading his emails while he waited for the kid’s return.

They went up to the seventh floor of the surgical wing together. It was long term care and therefore an easy way to introduce the kid into the system. He saw Marky at once; the tall, lanky Filipino was easy to spot. He was always hanging around the nurse’s station, flapping his gums. Todd felt a pang of remorse at leaving the kid in Marky’s care knowing the kid would do the majority of the work.

Some things just couldn’t be helped.

“Marky, this is your trainee,” Todd said as he shuffled up to the desk.

“Day one or two?” Marky asked.

“One.”

“Okay. Thanks. I got it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Todd said, before turning on the well-worn heels of his cheap shoes and walking away.

The DoctorThe framed picture he held in his hands, taken during a particularly hot summer, was of his daughter and him. Her hands were proudly displaying a snake she’d found slithering around in their garden, while her smile showcased two missing teeth.

A raucous roar of laughter drifted up through the vents of his study. His wife was having her monthly book-club meeting in their den. This month it was some pulpy vampire novel that Yvonne, his wife’s best friend, had chosen. While he thought the novels they read were of the worst variety, he was happy that their monthly meetings brought a joy to his wife that he rarely did, even after fifteen years.

Plucking a cloth off his desk, The Doctor rubbed the glass until the finger smudges were erased. Replacing the picture, he sighed, and lifted his pen jar where a key was taped to the underside. He pulled it free and bent down, inserting it into the lock. He opened the drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. The top few were blank. He put those aside and laid the stack upon his desk. On them were the notes of his private work, stacked in chronological order with the most recent being on top. He reviewed the procedure he’d done on the latest patient Simon had brought him. Her blood work was good, better than good, actually. Along with advanced Alzheimers, she suffered from Hepatitis C. Looking at the recent tests he’d had done on the sample showed it was Hep C free. His concoction was a success. Of course, one sample did not mean that it was a sure thing, he’d have to run other tests on more blood samples, but it was a massive step in the right direction; it looked like the work he’d done on Stanley was still paying dividends, many years down the road. Granted, it wasn’t the exact strain, but the base was comparable.

The Doctor reached back into the desk and produced a leather, zip-up pencil case. Inside where a multitude of blood and tissue samples. He selected the one matching the paperwork in front of him and looked at it. Something was off. He held it up to the lamp light stationed on his desk and squinted behind a set of thin framed, round glasses. He tilted the vial to a forty-five degree angle and watched the blood slide down the interior of the glass with viscous determination.

“This is not good,” he said to himself. More testing would be required, but it didn’t look promising. All his previous good feelings evaporated and he sighed. He picked up his wine glass and swirled it, watching as the legs spread with the same slow speed as the blood. An idea was forming in the back of his mind. He put his wine down and jotted “Marangoni Effect???” at the bottom of the sheet of paper.

He went over his research for the next couple hours. He formulated theories, jotting some down, and circled the most promising ones. It was thin, but it was a start. This was how his research always went. He’d make a few advances but have to backtrack to fix whatever problems arose from his tampering with the human genome. He was getting close, though. A few more hurdles and he felt confident his life’s work would come to fruition.

When he felt his brain hitting its brick wall, he packed everything away, ensuring to put the handful of blank pages on top, and then locked up. That done, he sat back and raised his near empty wine glass to the picture.

“Soon,” he said with a humourless smile.

Alessia“Do you want to rest?”

“Yes. But I should push a little further, no?”

“If you feel able to, sure. But I don't want you overexerting yourself.”

“If I can live with these staples in my chest, and to not pull them out in itching madness, then I can push myself a little further.”

Alessia smiled at her client. They were halfway down the hallway of the Cardiac Surgery wing. All heart patients inevitably ended up there and were separated into two silent categories by the staff; those who wanted to go home, and those who didn’t. Because they were the only ward with that specialty and turn-around needed to be quick, the staff suffered many late shifts and mandatory meetings. Alessia smiled because her patient, a Mr. Gary Chenowitz, was determined to get home. He pushed himself towards independence with a grim determination few of her patients showed. She smiled because she believed in hard work and admired Mr. Chenowitz’s tenacity.

She watched his legs as he took a few more steps. On the fifth, she saw the small spasm in his rectus femoris spread to the surrounding muscles. She slid the commode chair up behind him.

“Sit for a bit,” she said, placing a hand gently on the small of his back and guiding him onto the chair. Her student quickly locked the wheels of the chair before gripping Mr. Chenowitz under the armpit, stabilizing the old man’s descent.

She caught John’s eye above Mr. Chenowitz’s head and gave him a quick nod of approval.

“How’d the date go?” John asked while their client sat and caught his breath.

“It was nice.”

“Nice enough for a second date?”

“Sure. But I doubt it’s going anywhere,” she said with a shrug.

“It takes longer than one date to get to know someone.”

“I said it was nice. I didn't say it was interesting.” She saw John’s eyes widen briefly and felt a pang of regret for the tone she’d used.

“If you say so,” John said, abashed.

The two of them shared an uncomfortable silence. Mr. Chenowitz waited for someone to speak. He found the tidbits of staff gossip more interesting than any television show he’d ever sat through. He found that since he was a patient, only a passing character in their life’s story, the staff were less concerned about what they said around him; it also helped that they saw him more as a piece of furniture than a person at times. Because of this, he knew some salacious secrets.

“How’s the condo search going?”

“Not as well as I’d hoped,” Alessia said, reciting the line she’d practiced hundreds of times in her head. “It’s tough.”

To Alessia, ‘tough’ was an understatement. ‘Tough’ was too personal to tell someone like John. No. She’d keep repeating the lie for now. To him. To everyone.

“Tough?” he asked incredulously. “From what I’ve heard, you've got enough money put away to afford anything in this city.”

“It’s not a matter of money,” she said finally. Then, she looked down at Mr. Chenowitz. “Are you ready to continue?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, firing off a two finger salute. He stood up, and with the help of the teacher and student, finished his circuit.

An hour later, Alessia found herself at the Emerge Ambulance entrance. She sat down on the raised concrete barrier separating the sidewalk from the wild vegetation that grew on the other side. The bare beginnings of the late spring vines snaked their way up the three-meter tall rock wall. The wall was close enough that she could smell the minerals in the water that continuously leaked down it. Sitting further down the embankment was a psych patient and their escort. The escort looked bored while the patient hoovered a cigarette.

Parked along the curb was an ambulance, its putrid yellow and green shade an annoyance to her eyes. She thought about the look in John’s eye when she’d told him condo shopping was tough. She was a poor liar. Condo shopping had been easy. She took her time, a whole year, and did extensive research into each piece of property. She’d found one on the ground floor of an old bricked triplex. It had been newly renovated inside with deep brown hardwood floors and all new appliances. Best of all, the area was zoned to allow clinics; she would be able to open her own home business. She’d had to have it.

She’d filled out the paperwork and sent an offer. They countered. She countered. They agreed, and she received a copy of the contract. With that piece of paper in hand, she’d returned home and called her parents into their den. By the time they’d arrived, she had the contract on the table, along with a manila folder. She’d practiced the upcoming situation in her head many times, always reminding herself to keep her composure but remain firm. She almost made it.

“What do you mean you bought a house?” her father asked.

“Not a house, Papa. It’s an apartment condo.”

“So you have no property.”

“It has a small yard, but it’s still property. It’s still an investment.”

“Why?” her mother asked.

“Because it’s time.”

“Time for what?” Her mother slipped a hand onto her father’s thigh. He reached down and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“It’s time for me to grow up,” she said as she opened the folder and spread the documents it contained upon the table. Her father took his hand from atop her mother’s, slipped on his reading glasses, and began examining the papers. Her mother didn't glance down, opting instead to look at Alessia, who shifted uncomfortably a few times while her father mumbled noncommittal sentences. When he finished, he took off his glasses and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his index and thumb as he did so.