THE DOOR OPENED, and Rath looked up nervously from studying the anatomy model in Doc Rankin’s office.
Rankin shuffled in, rummaging his fingers in his Santa’s beard as if searching for loose change, worked his eyes over his clipboard. “Well,” he said, and sat on a stool, legs spread, bear-paw hands rubbing the knees of his green Dickies. If you didn’t know he was a doctor, you’d have thought he was a dairy farmer. Rath liked that.
He examined Rath’s eyes and throat, listened to his heart, glanced at the clipboard.
“Well,” he said.
Out with it, Rath thought.
“I know you were concerned,” Doc said, “about the pain being a symptom of something else.”
Something else.
“The MRI shows nothing of the sort,” Rankin said.
Rath nodded, expecting to feel relief. Instead, he felt disquiet, as if someone were eavesdropping on the other side of the door and waiting to bring the real news.
“What it does show is your pelvic bone has torn away a bit.” Doc leaned toward the anatomy model to grab hold of its pelvic area. “See here, the largest of the pelvic bone, the palmate part. The ilium. Where it connects the tissue is a bit torn. We’re talking less than a millimeter, a tenth of a millimeter actually.”
“That little? How can it possibly—”
“To your body, it’s seismic. It causes pain, so you compensate with your standing, lifting, and walking, which stresses other areas, other muscles, like the erecta spinae.”
“I know that one.”
“The new stress means more pain. So you compensate for that. Get the picture?”
“My hip’s fucked up, and it’s fucking up everything else?”
“So to speak.”
“What can be done?”
“Nothing. Not with PT. You hadn’t been doing your stretches anyway, had you?”
Rath shrugged.
“Uh-huh. Well. The way to correct it,” Doc said, “and it’s not really correcting it, but the way to give you the most permanent relief is to mask the pain, so you no longer compensate and recompensate. Exacerbate the issue. I suggest an appointment at the Spine Center for a series of cortisone shots. That will block the pain.”
“When can I go about doing what I’ve always done?”
“You act as if you’d stopped.”
“Without it killing me.”
“After the shot. Within days, pain-free. The ‘injury’ is an anomaly. But it gets those nerves rankled. So we’ll shoot you up and tell the nerves a lie, that all is OK, and they will quiet down.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. You can’t reinjure it or make it worse.”
“I don’t know if it can get worse.”
“Pain can always get worse.” Rankin clapped a hand on Rath’s knee in a gesture of finality and rose. Rath stood, the pain in his back coursing along his spine, as if in protest to their conspiracy to kill it. He took the Post-it note from his pocket. “Doc. What does this mean to you?” he said, and held out the note.
Rankin read the note, scratched his beard. “What is this?”
“It’s the word erythromycin.”
“Sure doesn’t look it. What’s it all about?”
“What’s it used for, erythromycin?”
“It’s a macrolide antibiotic used to prevent bacterial infection, usually postop, often for individuals who have an allergic reaction to penicillin. Though not always.”
“What would the use of this drug among several teenage girls tell you. If you could give me one word.”
Rankin told him.
IN THE HALL, Rath dialed Grout and told him his theory.
“Christ. That’s ghoulish,” Grout said.
“We’re not after the Hardy Boys here,” Rath said. “We need to interview Langevine and whoever’s in charge of the Family Matters in St. J. Later. I have somewhere to be right now.”
An uncomfortable silence bled between them.
“Preacher,” Grout said “That today? No wonder you’ve been an asshole.”
“We’ll need a subpoena. Short notice, I know.”
“I’ll run it up the flagpole for Barrons. Judge Charbonneau owes him for a New Year’s DUI that never was.”
In the Scout, Rath stared out the windshield at Mount Monadnock. The woods bare of leaves, the trees gray as ash. Winter now had the woods clenched in its tight, unforgiving fist.
Rath rested his head on the steering wheel for a moment, trying to collect himself. He’d go home and shower and work on what he was going to say to the parole board even though he knew he’d end up sweating like a wrestler and have every rational thought fly from his mind like bats from a cave at dusk once he saw Preacher in the flesh.