Chapter 9
Patty Pen heard her scream as if it were coming from someone else. It seemed very far away. Then she heard its ending shrill as she slipped into unconsciousness again.
Amos Fiken kept his hands posed above her body for another few seconds. They trembled violently and the scalpel that he held in his right hand set off reflections because of the overhead lights.
Fiken stepped back and looked at the unconscious girl. Her body, still nude, was streaked with blood. Her one breast had been partially severed. It hung flat and the nipple was bent as if it had died. Blood streaked to the side of her ribs. The stream trickled from her breast.
Fiken laughed madly when he observe?! her breast and its lifelessness. Then he turned his view to Patty's thighs. They, too, were streaked with blood. A gob of it was in the middle. But the blood there seemed to have gathered from the results of two slices, half-moon shaped, that had been made on the inner-sides of her thighs.
Patty stirred and moaned. Fiken stepped back a pace. She moaned again, louder and blinked her eyes. Then they held steady and stared directly into the doctor's eyes.
"There, there, child," he said patiently. "It'll soon be over."
Patty's lips trembled and they looked ready to form a word. But then they failed. They closed. Her eyes, did, too.
Fiken sighed and stepped close to the table again. He lifted the scalpel once more and brought it close to the breast that was still unmarred. He lifted the flesh by its tip. He brought the scalpel against it, then paused as Patty's eyelids fluttered open.
She looked at him. Now, words formed.
"Why?" she said faintly. "Why, why, why?"
"Because we must pursue this surgical form of therapy as far as possible," he said. "It's the only way, my dear-the only way that we may be purged of the evil that is within us."
Patty's eyes closed. Her breathing slowed.
Fiken, looking very professional, lowered the scalpel long enough to grip Patty's pulse. Then he lowered it and raised the knife again.
Just before he began a new slice upon Patty's nonbloodied breast, he became distracted. He looked at her thighs. The blood oozed badly there and apparently it bothered him for he reached to the surgical table, took up several puffs of cotton, then lowered them to her thighs where he daubed and tenderly wiped the blood clear of her body. He dropped them on the floor. Then he brought the knife up to her breast, but again he became distracted. Suddenly, the middle of Patty's belly seemed to intrigue him. He brought the scalpel to it and made a tiny slice down the middle, a mere scratch that, although it bled, only pierced the surface of her white skin. Fiken watched the blood trickle from it. Then he laughed. And suddenly he was laughing very hard, almost uncontrollably, higher and higher to a hysterical pitch. All of his body trembled. His eyes bugged at the girl's body, at the blood upon it, at all the length of it, its curves and crevices and indentations and lovely bloats and postures of skin. And he laughed madly, on and on and on.
Patty fought through her unconsciousness. Her eyes opened. Her ears keened. But there was only laughter, Fiken's laughter, and she knew that she was better off asleep, unconscious, for then she would have no awareness of the final treachery to her body that was bound to be done. Her eyes closed. She fell into the deep black of that unearthly place where one must rest before finding their eternal sleep.
Fiken stopped laughing abruptly. Now, his expression turned to one of determination and finality. He raised the scalpel up crisply. He plucked the nipple of her breast up just as crisply, brought the scalpel to it and had just moved it forward to begin the backward draw that would sever it from her body when the sudden opening of the door behind him made him jerk around.
"Hold it, Fiken," Roger shouted. "Hold it right there."
"You," Fiken hissed.
"Amos, please, put that scalpel down," Mona pleaded.
Fiken's eyes shifted to her. They glared hate and confusion and a kind of insane misunderstanding of everything around him.
Roger took a step forward but when Fiken did not drop the scalpel, Roger paused. Then he said, "Look, you're a doctor, for Crissakes, don't be a fool. Maybe-maybe we can still save that poor kid you've butchered."
"Kid? Butchered?" Fiken said in a tone of awe.
"Put the knife down, Fiken," Roger ordered.
Mona took a step forward. Her voice pleaded as she said, "Amos-stop it. Nothing's this bad. Stop it and we'll start getting things straight. Roger will help us-everyone will help you, but please, put that scalpel down and stand away from that girl."
"Scalpel? Girl? Roger? Help me?"
"Yes," Roger said.
"Please, Amos," Mona said.
"Scalpel," Fiken said again. His hand quivered.
"Put it down, goddamn it," Roger shouted.
"Scalpel," Fiken said again.
"Yes, scalpel," Roger said, fighting for control of his voice.
"Yes, the scalpel," Fiken said in a different tone of voice, one that was stronger.
Roger moved a step forward, then halted as Fiken said the word again, raised the scalpel, looked at it, then very quickly brought it to his throat, and made a huge slice. His head dropped, hanging by mere cords as he sagged to the floor.
Mona screamed, clinching her fists, balling them before her face and squeezing them against her mouth that would not stifle her cry of horror.
Roger leaped forward, glanced once at Amos Fiken upon the floor, then looked at Patty Pen while he lifted her wrist in his hand.
Mona dived forward. She was starting to bend downward to her brother when Roger stopped her.
"It's no good-he's finished, Mona," Roger said.
She succeeded in stifling a new scream, but she continued to stare downward in a kind of fascination at her brother's dead form.
"Come on-snap out of it," Roger shouted. "You're a nurse-get moving. Get the O.R. ready and maybe we can save this one."
Mona raised her eyes from her dead brother and stared at Roger. Then she turned and hurried out of the room as Roger stuffed cotton on Patty's bleeding cuts.
Roger and Mona walked out of the operating room together. Both of them were in surgical garb and the masks across their faces gave them an other-worldly look. When they removed them, their eyes still told of the ordeal that they had endured.
"Will she-, " Mona started to ask, then could not.
"She'll be all right," he said. "Apparently, she stalled for time, or maybe he-he couldn't work himself up to it."
"I hope that's it-that he couldn't," she said sadly.
"It's over for Amos, Mona," Roger said sympathetically.
"Me, too, probably," she said.
"I don't think so. From the things you've told me, well, I imagine everything will straighten out very well for you."
"For me?" she asked, a bit startled.
"For us, darling," he said, smiling, putting his arm around her waist.
They stripped themselves of their white garments, washed briskly, then left the wash area of the operating room and stepped through the swinging doors and into the tiled corridor. They faced each other and were about to speak when the doors behind them opened again and a wheeled-stretcher, bearing Patty Pen, was rolled into the corridor by a nurse.
Roger and Mona stepped back. The nurse halted the stretcher before them.
Roger looked into Patty's face and smiled when he saw that she had regained consciousness, that, except for the white sheet pulled high to her neck, she did not look very much different from the bright-eyed girl who had been at a party only a few hours earlier. Mona moved to Roger's side and smiled down at Patty too.
"Hi, there," Rog said. "Feeling all right?"
"Fine," she said faintly, her voice very small and little-girlish.
"That's good," Rog said. "We're glad."
Patty glanced from Roger to Mona, then back to the intern again.
"I want to-to say thanks," Patty said.
"Forget it."
"And I want to tell you both that I'll-that this wasn't Mona's fault-that when I see my dad, I'll--. "
"Shhhhh," Mona cautioned. "Don't talk about it now."
"Yes, just get some rest," Roger said.
"I want to," Patty said. "I've got a lot of things to do when I get out of here."
Roger and Mona glanced at each other, trading a worried expression.
Patty laughed and said, "I don't mean those kinds of things. I mean school and-and, well, you know, the things that a kid my age usually does."
"I'm glad to hear that," Roger said.
"I am too," Mona told her.
Patty was quiet a moment, then, after again glancing from Roger to Mona and back again, she said, "Are you two-well, are you-are you in--. " Her voice sounded very tired and she was unable to finish the sentence.
Roger leaned very close to Patty, then said, "Yes, we are-but it's a secret."
Patty smiled. She presented it to both Roger and Mona in turn, then closed her eyes.
Roger nodded to the nurse and she wheeled Patty Pen down the corridor.
"That changed her," Mona said.
"Yes. Good thing, too. I guess everyone can change."
"I know they can," Mona said. She sighed, then gave a small smile to Roger.
"Come on-let's go where we can talk-where we can make plans and get ready."
"Ready? For what?"
"For love, darling, for love."
Roger Harper hooked his arm around Mona's waist. Very slowly, they walked down the long tiled corridor, aware of the problems that were before them, yet strengthened in their love and their closeness, knowing that this would prevail over everything.