Calamity

longer, but Tyler had to see the next bottle and the next and—

The Holy Grail of pills: OxyContin. This was the stuff doctors found in the veins of dead celebrities. This was stuff that could sell for fifty bucks a pill in school. This was stuff that could seriously get you high, or totally plastered if you swallowed some with a few beers. This was all he had needed to begin with.

“Thank you, Doc.” He took a slew of these pills, probably too many, but he felt no remorse. If he didn’t take them, they’d just go to his mother or someone else’s mother who preferred to sleep all day than have to face whatever terrible loss she had suffered. Tyler was saving someone from themselves. And also saving himself.

* * *

Dr. Carroll gave his bag a second glance (or was Tyler imagining that?) before picking it up and returning to Tyler’s parents’ bedroom. Could the doc feel the bag had gotten lighter? He carried that bag everywhere with him so he probably knew its weight and feel like he knew his own body. If he got curious and started opening bottles, he was bound to notice. After that it wouldn’t take long to figure out what happened. Hell, he could be in the bedroom right now searching for just the right pills to keep Mom in her perpetual stupor. This bottle seems a bit light. Then he’d notice another one that wasn’t as full as it should be. And another.

Brendan’s face had paled considerably. Now he really could pass for ill. “You really sick?” Tyler asked.

“I don’t know,” Brendan said.

Tyler started to ask what the hell that meant when the garage door beneath them opened for Mom’s car. Dad was home finally and his timing couldn’t be better.

8

The moment he saw Dr. Carroll’s black Town Car, Anthony smiled. He was pissed, oh, yes, furious beyond belief. If Chloe thought yesterday’s pill-throwing foolery was bad, she could just wait to see what was about to happen. But it was okay. Though anger surged through him and he clutched the steering wheel hard enough to make his hands cramp, Anthony was okay with it. This was supposed to happen. Ellis was right. Anthony had returned home to save his family and he meant to do exactly that.

He sat in the car, parked in the garage, and waited. Dr. Carroll had parked outside the other garage door; he knew the car parked there wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. Anthony flexed his hands on the wheel, stretching his fingers. He couldn’t recall telling the doctor that he’d brought the mangled car back, so perhaps it was just a coincidence that Dr. Carroll parked there.

There are no coincidences, only God’s work in action.

A small part of Anthony still didn’t completely buy this God stuff. That small part used to be bigger, much bigger, but now it was only a tiny section, something easily crammed under a bed or tucked in a closet corner. He didn’t need to hear anything that voice, one he used to call the Logical Voice, had to say about the current situations or the motives pushing Anthony to go upstairs and rescue his family, by force in all likelihood. He’d keep that voice under the bed, locked in the closet.

But the voice was loud and when it screamed, Anthony heard it.

He started for the door to the house and stopped, returned to Chloe’s car, opened the trunk and, after some fumbling, retrieved the tire iron stored back there with the donut. Now, tire iron held in one hand down at his side, Anthony entered his house prepared to prove that no drug-pushing doc was going to destroy his family.

He paused at the top of the stairs. The kitchen was empty. Tyler and Brendan stood in the open doorway to Brendan’s room. They shared identical expressions of anxiety and surprise. Anthony and Chloe’s door, of course, was shut. The good doc was in there administering his brand of medicine—guaranteed to take the pain away and ruin your life.

He should say something to his sons. They were probably worried—he had been gone all night—but Anthony couldn’t think of anything to say that would sound fatherly and simultaneously calm their fears and prevent further inquiries. He never would have thought years ago that he wouldn’t want to acknowledge his children’s presence, not want to answer any of their questions. He always believed he was a good dad, but this wasn’t a moment that the Dad of the Year Award committee would review. He’d been given a reprieve, an advance get-out-of-jail card for what he was about to do. God wanted him to do this because God wanted his disciples to be empowered, not live as prey for drug-pushing predators.

He walked down the hall, nodded to his boys, and swung wide the door to his bedroom.

* * *

Another small internal voice, this one more bluntly referred to as the Don’t Be Stupid Voice, tried in vain to stop him, to stymie his words and stay his hand but that voice ended up crying in the corner of the closet, the Logical Voice shaking its head in disgust. This was the second time in a matter of days Anthony had stained his knuckles with blood.

The events happened so quickly, the violence arising rapidly and then dying off just as suddenly, that it was difficult to piece the events into logical order. Anthony might never be sure what happened, though he knew where responsibility lay. It was firmly in his two hands, shaking and cramping, while he sat against the far bedroom wall and stared at the blood soaking into the bed sheets. What the hell had he done?

* * *

Dr. Carroll was sitting on the side of the bed. He was caressing Chloe’s pale cheek with one hand and searching through his black doctor’s bag with the other. Chloe was murmuring, maybe sleeping. Stephanie was asleep, or knocked out from sedatives, next to her.

Anthony slammed the door shut behind him. “Get offa her!”

Dr. Carroll looked up and started. Hadn’t expected the King of the Castle to come barging in. Did he see the tire iron?

“Anthony, I’m … surprised you’re here.”

He took several steps into the bedroom. “No more drugs, doc. Take all your fucking pills and get out of here. Now!”

Dr. Carroll smiled, actually smiled. “You could use some yourself.” He fumbled around inside his bag, removed a plastic container, held it out. “Here, these will calm you considerably.”

“I’m not trading my soul for sleep.”

“You’re overreacting.”

“Get away from my wife.”

Stephanie squirmed in her sleep. She’d always had an addictive personality: she once had quite a gambling problem, which successfully destroyed her marriage, but it had taken a doctor to get her hooked on drugs. Maybe she wanted to be just like her sis. Chloe continued mumbling, eyelids flickering as they did when she suffered the nightmares.

Dr. Carroll dropped the bottle back in his bag, closed it, clasped it. “I’m only trying to help. Your family is in pieces.”

Pieces. Like those the state troopers found of Delaney’s face. A piece of her cheek bone had skidded across the road into a ditch. Pieces of skin dangled off it.

“Leave. Now!”

“You’re having a nervous breakdown, Anthony,” Dr. Carroll said calmly.

He raised the tire iron. “No, I’m seeing everything clearly.” That damn Logical Voice screamed in disagreement: The doc is right! You’re losing your mind, going off the bend! You need help!

“Your family has suffered tremendously in only a matter of weeks. Your reaction is perfectly understandable.”

That Talking Heads lyric again: Stop making sense, making sense.

“You don’t know anything I’ve suffered.”

Chloe’s whole body spasmed as if she were fighting off a beast in her dreams, her arms gesticulating weak punches in the air. One of her hands fell onto the doctor’s leg, close to his crotch. That probably made Dr. Carroll very happy, this drugged-up woman practically groping him in her sleep. Maybe he’d already groped her. Maybe he’d done worse.

“Your wife cannot be simply removed from these drugs. I have prescribed a delicate balance for her treatment and you can’t just stop it without consequences.”

“You haven’t treated her, you’ve created a junkie.”