Lost Girls

''Now, lad, don't you think we should be speaking about this in private?''

''If you could spare a moment.''

''Ach, I've got nothing but moments to spare, Mr. Crane.''

He steps around me once more, scribbles out a prescription for the kid with the welts, and ushers him out while waving me in.

''Nuts,'' he sighs as I pull the door closed.

''Sorry?''

''Allergic to nuts. I keep telling him to stay away from the devils, but he can't resist. They'll be the death of him one day, though.''

''That's rough.''

''Not so rough. I see a good deal of rough in here, by God, but a wee fellow who passes out every time he sticks his finger in the peanut butter jar is not so rough at all.''

MacDougall stands and opens the small window above the counter cluttered with boxes of surgical gloves, tongue depressors, adhesive bandages, and jumbo tubes of lubricating jelly.

''Mind if I smoke?'' he asks, already digging his hand into the breast pocket of his lab coat and pulling out a pack.

''Not at all. Although I would've thought that hospital policy wouldn't--''

''To hell with hospital policy, Mr. Crane,'' he snaps, lighting his cigarette and slumping back down into his chair.

''Fair enough. You're the doctor. Which leads me to my question: Did you treat Krystal McConnell for a scraped knee on the first of April of this year?''

''Are you planning on calling me as a witness?''

''Depends on your answer.''

''What if it's yes?''

''Then my answer would be yes too.''

''Bloody hell!''

The doctor takes a long haul on his cigarette, managing to burn the thing down to half its original length.

''Did Tripp bring her in?''

''He did.''

''You put four stitches in her knee?''

''Indeed. She said she was pushed around by some of the older boys at school. Flirting.''

''Of course. Thank you. That's all I really need at this time, Doctor. You can expect a subpoena sometime in the next couple of weeks.''

''Sure, sure.''

He keeps his eyes on me as I rise, with what I assume to be his upper lip rolled thoughtfully beneath his whiskers.

''I was just wondering if your Tripp told you the funny part,'' he says, stubbing his cigarette out in the stainless-steel bedpan he pulls out of a cupboard next to him.

''All he told me is that Krystal got hurt at school, that he drove her in here to get stitches, and then took her home. Where's the funny part in that?''

''Well, now, it's not surprising he left that out of his story. But didn't he tell the nurse who was doing the paperwork that he was her father.''

''What?''

''Filled out the form just that way. 'Patient delivered by father, Lloyd McConnell.' But I saw him standing there myself and I knew damn well it was Thom Tripp. My own son's been in the fellow's class, y'see. Lucky for him that particular nurse was new up from Toronto and couldn't have told the difference between Tripp and The Lord High Mayor, but when she told me later how strange that girl's father was behaving, all sweaty and worked up, nobody knew what she was talking about. I mean, why would he even try pretending he was McConnell? What's the point in trying to fool anyone about that?''

''Were the authorities contacted? The police, I mean, or the high school?''

''Why would I do that?''

''Because Tripp might have been considered, I don't know, dangerous. Impersonating a young girl's father--''

''Now, look here. While in hindsight what Tripp told our nurse that day makes a little more sense, at the time there was no way to know he was dangerous. We get some very strange people in here. Some have become strange over time, others were strange to begin with. If I was to call the cops every time one of them walked through our doors, I'd be on the phone all day.''

''Well, thanks again, Doctor. You've given me something to think about.''

''Like whether you're going to want to call a witness to tell a funny story like that?''

''Among other things.''

I pull open the door.

''Sure you won't join me?'' he asks, shaking the cigarette pack once more and sticking one in the middle of his beard, but I shake my head no and let the door close behind me, walk out past two new faces sitting in the waiting room. A man holding his wife's pale hand as she rocks back and forth in pain but with eyes fixed on the TV. A greasy-spoon waitress using two kinds of paper towel to sop up a puddle of spilled coffee. One absorbs, the other disintegrates. At this the husband turns to look up at me with both helplessness and accusation, uncertain as to who to blame for his wife's suffering, for cheap paper towels that always let you down. My face must offer no answers, for in the next moment his eyes return to the screen. ''It's the quicker picker upper!'' the TV chirps as I push through the Emergency Room doors and out into the stabbing rain.

chapter 29

Night. Sleep comes riddled with dreams whose hectic events and grisly climaxes leave me sitting up on one elbow, eyes blinking at the door to check that the chain lock still sits in its groove. Try to remember the details but they're gone, leaving only the panicked impression of being unable to move, to escape. But soon the body demands that I try again, and I lower my head to the pillow hoping that this time I'll be left alone until morning.

But it's still night when I next wake. A shattering sound outside the door. The phone.

So I'm pulling on pants, socks, shoes, buttoning up a shirt. Dipping two fingers deep into the thermos and making barnyard sounds with my snout. Slam the door behind me but the sound is buried in the next ringing that rains down from the floors above as much as from below. Only when it finishes do I allow myself to breathe again, a smacking gulp, and with it a flood of circulation in my ears like poured sand.

It won't let me move. Feet gripped to their places by invisible fingers reaching up through the floor. Staring down to where the peeler's room would have been in my dream, to the far end of the hall that, even as I watch, pulls away into the shadows left by an unreplaced overhead bulb.

Lower my eyes so that I won't see whatever it is I can almost make out walking forward from the dark and throw myself forward, hands waving first for balance and then to swing me around the banister and down the stairs. A blind dance that goes on long enough for the phone to twice repeat its alarm. Each ring slightly closer to the last as though it knows that I'm here beside it now, a hand unconsciously clenched to my chest to calm the sudden pain there.

Then I wait. Maybe it'll stop without me having to do a thing and then I can pull the cord from the wall or leave a nasty note for the concierge and go back to bed. But it rings three more times to remind me that none of this will happen, that it won't stop until I answer. So I do.

From out of the watery static comes the peeler's voice, trembling but insistent. Heard not so much from a place at the other end of the line but from upstairs, from within my own ear.

''You like the show the other night?''

''Fantastic. I love these customer service follow-up calls too. But can I tell you something? Your timing