The Death of Wendell Mackey Read Online Free Page B

flannel shirt, the Hotrod Girls calendar, the picture of his mother, his I.D. tag, all gone. He remembered closing the locker door and being met with the face of a new doctor, this one with a black toupee and an oily smile. The doctor gave a saccharine greeting, followed by “Won’t you come with me?” and a grand sweep of his hand towards the locker room door. Behind the doctor, flanking the door, were two of the armed nurses. They walked him to the elevator, eyeing him closely, even as the doors closed and the elevator rose, and dropped him off at Dr. Scotia’s office.
    Wendell’s position had been “liquidated,” Scotia told him, due to some “irregularities in some of the test results” that warranted more extensive scrutiny. These were not the reasons for his initial monitoring by the NAG, but they proved to be effective reasons for keeping him in the institution indefinitely.
    “The position will be returned once we sort all of these irregularities out,” Scotia promised.
    “What’s the problem?”
    Scotia looked up at Wendell, seeming to catch himself before he said something unintentional. He said, “Nothing lasting. That is, nothing that we can’t fix. You’re in the hands of experts, Mr. Mackey.”
    Being “in their hands” implied some sort of benevolent attention, they the benign authorities healing Wendell, their helpless charge. But Scotia’s semantic slither was bolstered by a piece of paper, an agreement that Wendell—whether he remembered it or not—had evidently signed, stating that, indeed, he was “in their hands,” for good or bad. Scotia had played it as a trump card after seeing that his false assurance hadn’t worked with Wendell.
    “All of this,” Wendell remembered saying, “I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea.”
    To which Scotia reached into his desk without the slightest ripple on his placid face, pulled the paper out and held it up.
    “Standard commitment papers, or, I should say, the last of the commitment papers, as this just shows the appropriate signatures.”
    Wendell shook his head. “For something like that don’t I need to—”
    “You did.”
    “But I don’t think I—”
    “Yes, you did.”
    “But I don’t remember—”
    “You even used my pen, Mr. Mackey.” Dr. Scotia set the paper down on the desk. “It’s not like we take pleasure in all of this. Really, as healthcare professionals, we just have the needs of our patients in mind. And to be honest, your apprehension for what may come next necessarily must become, well, secondary to greater concerns.” Scotia looked down at the paper and leaned forward. “It’s a matter of protection. Protecting you, of course, and protecting—” he tapped his finger on the paper “—our agreement here. Because, what are we if we aren’t true to our word?” Slight wrinkles at the corners of his eyes emerged, as if he was trying to wince, but found it painful. “We need to be prepared to protect this agreement. We are, in fact, prepared.” His eyes drifted to his office door, slightly ajar, where the shoulder of one of the nurses was visible. “And you need to know that.”
    Perhaps a greater man would have protested. Claimed his right to break an agreement, even one that he had no memory of making. Stood up and stormed out. Reached across the desk to grab the doctor’s windpipe and hiss his own threat into his face. But greater men possessed a level of fortitude absent in Wendell. In the end, he was weak. In the end, he was still a gawky, tremulous child. What the mind wanted the body would not do, and Wendell watched as the final lock to his imprisonment was turned with a smile and a wink.
    What followed was busy talk by a man for whom it was his bread and butter, medical nomenclature meant to lull the hearer’s senses into a confusing but disinterested bliss. It was all veiled in the bureaucracy of a to-do list, a doctor prepping his patient; but it had a hypnotic quality, the long