Bad Doctor

20

“Stay where you are!” Bobby shouts.

“Shut up, Bobby! She’s dying! Open the trunk.”

I hear him scream, “Oh, God!” then he falls to the ground and vomits violently.

Seconds later the trunk opens. It’s nearing dusk, so my eyes have no problem adjusting to the light.

“Get out!” Willow shouts. “Cameron’s been shot!”

She tries to help me, but Bobby staggers up behind her and grabs her by the hair. He pulls her backward and throws her to the ground. Tries to kick her but misses and nearly falls down. His chin and chest is covered in vomit.

There’s no avoiding his penis.

It’s black from powder and purple from pressure. It’s not only erect, but enormous, and maintaining an eighty-degree angle, which is to say, practically vertical. It’s also pulsing and throbbing, as if ready to explode.

Bobby sees me looking at him and shouts, “You bastard!”

He staggers toward me, but is forced to squat and shit a thick, wet stream that splats on the dirt beneath him, creating a little puff of steam.

“You think that’s funny?” he says.

“I think it’s hilarious! Do it again!”

As if on cue, he groans and shits a quart of black water in the noisiest manner possible.

“How’s that Black Toad working for you, fuckhead?” I say.

“I’m gonna kill you!” he shouts, seething with fury.

“Before you do, shit again, like the baboon you are.”

Still squatting, Bobby aims his gun at me and says, “You’re a dead man!”

“Maybe so, but at least my corpse will have balls.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I point at his crotch. “Your nuts disappeared.”

He looks down and frowns.

“You’re a dead man!” he shouts.

“You said that already.”

He sneezes, and a pint of black water spews and sprays from his ass.

He stands upright and stumbles toward me. He’s furious, in agony, but he’s not going to shoot me. Not before finding out if I slept with Willow.

Turns out I’m wrong about that.

We’re twelve feet apart when he pulls the trigger.

I have to look down to be sure he actually missed me from that distance.

He did.

Willow comes up behind him and kicks the back of his knees as he’s firing the second shot. Bobby hits the ground, writhing and blubbering, and I realize he’s shot himself in the upper thigh. He waves his gun around in the air, firing indiscriminately. A hundred yards away, on the main road, I hear something that sounds like a car crash. I look up instinctively, but Maggie’s house is blocking my view.

When Bobby’s gun is empty, I work my way out of the trunk and try to stand, but my legs are asleep. I fall back onto the edge of the trunk and sit there, rubbing my legs to get the blood flowing.

Willow yells at me to do something about Cameron.

“What about my leg?” Bobby whimpers.

“Throw the gun toward the house and I’ll see what I can do about your leg,” I say.

“You’ll kill me.”

“He won’t kill you,” Willow says. “He’s a doctor. He took an oath. He has to help you. It’s the law.”

She runs to Cameron’s side.

“That true?” Bobby says. “About the oath”

I sigh. “I’m afraid so.”

“Hurry, Dr. Box!” Willow shouts. “Cameron needs you!”

From somewhere behind me, Cameron hears her name and starts moaning.

To Bobby I say, “Throw the gun away and I’ll help you.”

“You swear?”

“Often.”

He throws the gun twenty feet away and moves his hand so I can see the wound.

As I approach he says, “Oh, my God!”

“It hurts, huh?”

“Yeah, sure, but what the hell is that stink?”

“I think you know.”

“ I did that?”

“You did.”

I’m moving slowly, as if crossing a minefield. Stepping carefully, doing my best to avoid the pools of excrement he’s left in the dirt. But there’s no avoiding the smell. It’s drifting with me, toward Bobby.

“Oh, man!” he says. “That ain’t right.” He shakes his head and repeats, “That ain’t right.”

“No it ain’t.”

“You’ve got no medicine,” he says.

Now that I’m beside him, I take a knee, which causes me to gasp in pain as my ribs shift.

“Smells terrible, don’t it?” he says.

Bobby’s given himself a nine-inch flesh wound. Bullet went in shallow, cut a gully a quarter inch deep, exited cleanly, without hitting the knee.

“You’re in luck,” I say, removing the plastic baggie from my pocket.

“What’s that, Willow’s nutmeg?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a coagulant. It’ll stop the bleeding.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Not much.”

A look of sadness crosses his face as he looks at the nutmeg.

“You fucked my girlfriend, didn’t you?”

I pause. Then say, “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Why would you do that?”

I sigh. “Because I’m an asshole.”

He nods.

I say, “If it makes you feel any better, she hated every minute of it, and only did it for the money.”

“I believe that,” he says. “She’s a good girl. I love her.”

Feeling charitable, I say, “She was probably going to use the money to buy you something special.”

“I wish. Truth is she’s been trying to sneak money into another account for the past two months, to pay for the cancer treatments.”

“Cancer treatments?”

He chuckles despite the pain. “But I put a stop to that shit,” he says. “Or so I thought.”

I pour the entire packet of nutmeg into the palm of my hand and work it deep into Bobby’s cut, packing it.

“Damn!” he shouts. “That hurts like hell!”

“All done,” I say. “Now press both hands tightly against the wound to keep it from bleeding. You okay?”

He nods.

“I’ll be back as soon as I check on Cameron.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The one thing you want to know about nutmeg is you never apply it to an open wound. I don’t care who you are, the smallest amount of nutmeg in your bloodstream will kill you quickly.

How quickly?

Cameron and Willow are only twenty yards away.

Bobby will be dead before I reach them.