The doctor refuses to speak.
10 p.m.
Not an honest word; just excuses.
Madness. He says.
Idiocy. He balks.
He lies.
So I got furious – I am furious.
And now I’m breathing on his face, my eyes, pricked enough to
pierce his skin, and I’m gonna stay right up close.
I clutch his neck and am close enough to lick his bulging
eyeballs.
He is trembling.
What is MMCD?
Tell me it’s my Miriam.
No response.
The storage unit is a giant freezer, tucked into the basement of
the building. It’s walk-in, deluxe, cleaner than any ward I’ve
seen, draining enough energy for a town.
There are shelves of dull metal, packed with ice, stacked with
containers, crammed with organs and limbs and bones,
preserved solid until they’re needed.
I followed him inside, jammed the door shut, and I asked him,
politely, to tell me what MMCD means.
No clue, he said.
Bullshit, I said: Mary Malek Charley Dimmock
And then he looked confused, and he started rambling,
aggressive, patronising, told me I’m mad, told me my brain’s
not plugged in right, told me told me told me and his words
kept hitting me till I silenced him by grabbing his throat,
pushing him up against the wall, and now that’s exactly where
we stand.
If I didn’t want to kill him, this’d be the closest I ever got to
kissing a guy.
The doctor struggles, tries to shift his body out from Mary’s
grip.
Mary clutches tighter.
We look at each other.
We breathe steadily, heavily.
And I decide I will speak again, calm, I will ask –
A beep.
Shrill, sudden.
Automatic, the doctor reaches for his pocket, but Mary pushes
him harder up against the wall – I tell him he’s not moving.
He begs me, it’s urgent, an emergency: he’s being paged – but
no one’s had a pager for decades, and his eyes are flashing at
me, lying to me, shameless.
Grip tightens.
I tell him this is the part where he gives me answers.
I tell him I found papers on his desk: 201-MMCD.
I tell him I know what that means.
I tell him about the foot.
I tell him about the hand.
I tell him about the green wire.
And then I ask him, blunt, pointed: who are you experimenting
on?
Sweat.
The doctor starts to sweat.
It’s below zero and the man is sweating. He looks panicked.
Naughty-schoolkid-cheating-husband panic.
And now he’s really struggling, trying to reach down to
his pocket, trying to hide something, and he’s almost
overpowering me.
Almost –
But Mary twists her grip and the doctor flinches in agony.
His arm smacks into a container, a box crashing to the floor:
limbs, shards of blood, bone.
A leg bone
ripped out of flesh
and Mary picks it up.
The doctor’s heading to the door, Mary thuds the bone onto his
back.
He collapses. He lets out a strange wail.
I tell him once more I want answers and he looks at me.
It’s like his whole face is wobbling, incoherent, jelly.
I wait for him to speak.
But the doctor stays bent double, lifting up his head, his eyes
looking for mercy, but the leg bone, I have decided, is a dagger,
now, aimed at his eyes.
Easing closer.
His eyes wet.
Mary shakes.
His eyes wet.
Mary pummels the thick bone into his left socket.
Doctor’s mouth is wide open, his teeth are ragged, his tongue
vibrates and he should be screaming but he’s on mute – silent,
as I watch his face drift to the floor, his body crumpling under
him.
A cold thump, then quiet.
Mary stands tall. Blood pumping.
Never felt this – blood, warm, rippling, physically pumping
through me, like I’m overflowing with gloopy red energy. And
the doctor’s whimpering’s drained to nothing, so there’s just my
hoarse breath, and the hum of the fridge, and my hand’s shaking.
–
There it is again: a
BEEP.
From where?
BEEP.
A phone?
BEEP.
Older than that, analogue.
BEEP.
And then I see the flash from the doctor’s belt.
BEEP.
It is a pager.
BEEP.
Mary notices a message flashing on the pager screen.
WARD 201
That’s all it says, and suddenly I’m freezing.
201
201-MMCD
The doctor refused to provide answers, but his pager does.
And I chase.
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