Chapter Four: Doctor’s Sleep
Give a werewolf sleeping pills and you get...
Officer Hildebrand felt his eyes droop below the cold stream of sulfuric water in the officer’s locker room shower. He was an hour early for his shift. He timed his arrival so that he wouldn’t see much of the night crawlers and as little as he could of his daytime coworkers. He splashed water on his face, wishing he’d snap out of the haze. His body was crisscrossed with scars and red lines, his feet leaking pink water into the shower drain. He had cut himself on the broken glass when he came to, the beer bottle shards spread around the small room as if they had been broadcast by a seed spreader. He used super glue to tighten up the largest gashes and had a roll of fresh bandages in his locker. He made a mental note to buy aluminum before the night came.
He turned off the water and reached for his towel. He hid in it as a child would hide in their mother’s skirt, pressing his face into the cotton and holding himself there. Then he realized how dark it was and threw his head back with disgust. He wrapped himself in the towel and left the shower. He looked forward to the clean bandages. It was one of the few things he could still look forward to.
Bandaged, he dressed. He closed the buttons to the top of his neck and the ends of his sleeves. Hildebrand walked to the hall. The night crawlers nodded at him but didn’t speak a word. They were sweaty and worn, but not worn as thin as Hildebrand. The look of his gaunt face made their stomachs turn, and made them want to fight one another.
He turned on all the lights and was surprised to see the Chief sitting at his desk.
“Chief,” Hildebrand said, standing straight.
“Hildebrand. Sleep any last night?”
“Enough, sir.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I need less sleep than most people, sir.”
“Highly doubtful.”
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“Why would you think there is a problem?”
“You’re sitting at my desk.”
“Oh, this is your desk?”
“Yes, sir. My name is on the plate-”
“This isn’t your desk, Hildebrand. This is the city’s desk. This is the desk of the taxpayers, of the people who pay our salaries.”
“Understood, sir.”
“If you understand that, then you will understand why you’re going off patrol today.”
“What? You can’t take me off patrol.”
“I can’t? Why not?”
“I need the fresh air, sir.”
“Air’s fine where you are going.”
“What?”
“You’re going over to the morgue.”
“Why?”
“Doctor Gelhiem needs a hand.”
“He has assistants, doesn’t he?”
“Justin called in sick.”
“Can I patrol after I’m done?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why not, sir.”
“Why not, sir?”
“Because you’re a danger to yourself and your partner. Delude is a good, strong cop. He’s got a few years left until he retires. Having you sit as his partner makes me worry.”
“I don’t follow, sir.”
“Last Friday, after assisting Detective Balrose in the dog attack investigation, you confronted a man selling stolen golf clubs at seventy-fifth and Diplomac.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Delude made the stop. You came out to assist. The suspect was acting delusional, likely on drugs.”
“That’s what I remember.”
“He swung a club at you and you backed off.”
“Yessir.”
“He swung a club at Delude and hit him in the back.”
“Yessir.”
“He took off running before you had drawn your weapon.”
“I didn’t know if force was justified-”
“He hit a damn police officer, Hildebrand! He hit your partner! Then he ran, and you let the old man start the chase.”
“He was closer.”
“He’s twenty years your senior! As soon as he swung at you, you should have drawn! Your reaction times are horseshit. Your sense of judgment is lagging. You came in today after a weekend where you were told to rest, but you look worse than you did before.”
“I didn’t know my appearance would affect my work like this. Would you like me to smile, sir?”
“Cut it out, dumbass. Bottom line is you’re a danger to yourself and your partner. Go down to the morgue. Help the Doctor with his issues. Then see if he’ll write you a script for something that will knock you out.”
Hildebrand turned as the chief left to go to his office. The members of his shift were clustered by the door, holding their breath, smelling of soap and coffee.
#
The morgue was in a brick office building five minutes from the station. Hildebrand passed men and women in professional attire as he walked to the glass doors from the parking lot. They were surprised to see him, looking up from their phones and staring wide-eyed as he passed. He turned in the lobby and found the morgue door. He had been there once before, to identify his wife’s body.
He entered a small waiting room. A small thin woman with large glasses was behind the desk. She smelled of cucumber, mint, and vanilla. White dog hairs were collected on a roller behind the desk.
“Yes?” she asked, looking up from her seat.
“Chief Sullivan sent me to assist the doctor.”
“Oh, you’re the one…” She turned back to her computer and clicked around.
“The one what?”
“The one we got a call about.”
The woman ran her bottom lip over her top teeth as she looked at the screen. Her hair was blonde and springy. She bordered on rat-like, but her clothes were undeniably human. Hildebrand caught himself looking at the little cleavage she mustered together, pressed out the top of her low-necked sweater.
“The doctor will see you now,” she said, looking up from the computer. She hit a button on the desk, and the door unlocked. She pushed up her large frames.
“Okay,” Hildebrand said, turning.
He adjusted his pants as he entered a cold room. There was a glass wall between him and the doctor, yet the smell of rubbing alcohol made him wince. The room beyond the glass was lit by the intense illumination of examination lamps. The stainless-steel faces of the body fridges went from blinding white to pitch black. The body beneath the blade of the doctor was gray and rank. It was a young black woman. A blue sheet covered her stomach to her waist. The stainless-steel table beneath it glared back at the light.
“Hildebrand,” the doctor said, through a mask.
“Yeah.”
“Put on a set of scrubs, mask, and gloves. They’re in the cabinets behind you. Do you need instructions on how to properly keep things sterile?”
“No.”
“Very good. Get dressed and help me with this.”
“I don’t think I’m qualified, Doc.”
“I qualify you. Does that make you feel better? Now, hurry up.”
Hildebrand walked into the room dressed in a blue gown and mask.
“Take that camera and get a few shots of this,” the doctor nodded to a small camera on a tray. Hildebrand picked it up and came to the body cavity. The abdomen was split from the neck to the top of the belly. The ribs were sawn down, and the sternum was missing. The doctor’s hand was wrapped around the woman’s heart. It was black and shriveled. Hildebrand took a picture. On the small screen, it looked charred.
“Take some more, we’re not using film anymore.”
“You just needed someone to take pictures?” Hildebrand asked.
“That and to move the bodies. I’m not as spry as I used to be, officer.”
“What happened?” Hildebrand asked.
“Not sure, to tell you the truth. One day I woke up with this pain in my back…”
“Not you, her doctor.”
“If it was her stomach, I’d say she swallowed lighter fluid while trying to breathe fire.”
The doctor took a scalpel and removed a piece of the heart. He put it into a tray and set it aside. He turned it over.
“Picture,” he said. Hildebrand snapped three. The doctor took another piece from a different lobe. He held the sliver up to the light. Hildebrand could see through it and noticed it wasn’t black, but a red darker than anything he had seen before.
“There is no carbon,” the doctor said, “at least at first glance. So, nothing burned, per se. Perhaps it was chemical. But there were no marks on the outside of the body indicating an injection.”
He cut through the cords that held the heart to the body. He collected brackish blood that spilled from it in another tray. He took the heart and placed it in a bag. He sealed it.
“Write the date and tag number,” he nodded to the woman’s foot. A yellow tag, like the discount tags used at thrift stores, hung from a toe. Hildebrand set down the camera and copied down the string of letters and numbers and the date. Her nails were caked with something and freshly painted. The soles of her feet were tough, but not calloused. Her toes seemed to stick together as if she were still wearing a pointed shoe.
“That’s good from her,” the doctor said. He returned the skin he had removed over the cavity. It fell inside, with no bones to support it. He pulled up the sheet and tucked it under her head, as firm and delicate as a parent tucking in a child.
“Move her onto the cart,” the doctor said. He went into the glass room and took off his mask. He peeled off his gloves and rubbed his face. He took out his phone and sat in a chair with a humph.
Hildebrand rolled the cart beside the body. He swallowed as he put his hands under the woman’s shoulders. She was colder than the room. Chicken flesh erupted on his arms, and he got woozy. He lifted the woman’s head and shoulders onto the cart, then went to move her legs and hips. He pressed his lips together as he felt her thighs, his gloved hands feeling her taut skin as he lifted and moved her. He shook his head as he pulled the cart from the table.
“Over there,” the doctor said. Hildebrand jumped. The man was behind him, in a new mask and new gloves. The officer moved the woman to the body fridge. The doctor opened one of the many doors and pulled out a rack. Hildebrand used the cart’s small motor to lift the body. Then he moved the legs, trying not to look at the body as the sheet caught and pulled tight against the woman. He moved the torso.
“You haven’t been around many bodies like this,” the doctor said.
“No,” Hildebrand said.
“You find them warm. Before the coldness and rigor mortis sets in,” the doctor nodded. “It is strange to see them like this. Their identities remain somewhat, do they not? You can almost know the person. That woman had a tattoo of a cat on her leg. She had a scar on her back. A healed bone in her wrist. Dandruff on the scalp. Ground beef in her fingernails.”
“What?”
“She was found last night, collapsed while making burgers for a small party. Was fully alive two days ago. It’s different than an old person, whose body says that they’ve lived life and are done with it. The young and violently murdered gives one a feeling of hope cut short. They leave their desires with their flesh.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.”
“Next body is two to the right, one down. She expired a few days ago,” the doctor said. “My file was returned, and additional investigation was requested. The board of medical examiners doubts my accuracy in the determination of death. Hogwash, of course. All they needed to do was examine the pictures. But they say the rule I used was blurry, that it seemed misconstrued.”
“What case?”
“That dog attack.”
“Oh,” Hildebrand swallowed as he opened the door and slid out the tray. The doctor pulled back the sheet to look at her face. The blonde woman from the forest looked up wide-eyed at the ceiling. She still had bits of leaf and dirt in her hair.
“Move her to the table so that I may begin,” the doctor said, turning and walking to the exam table.
Hildebrand shook as he reached out for the woman. He grasped her by the back of the head and beneath her hips. Her torso didn’t lift. The nearly gone neck folded like cardboard. He adjusted, putting her head in his elbow and his hand behind her back. He hauled her onto the cart. He rolled it over to the table, looking over his shoulder at the wall. He wondered how many bodies were in the fridge.
“Here we go,” the doctor said, as Hildebrand set her beneath the light. The doctor pulled the sheet down below her breasts. Hildebrand pulled the sheet over her nipples.
“Please,” the doctor said. He pushed the sheet lower. “There are marks on her abdomen. I do not expose these women for my pleasure, officer.”
“Sorry.”
“You’ll catch on.” He adjusted her loose skull, then held up a ruler against the neck of the woman, pressing it down so that the edges pressed into her skin. “Take a photo. Chief Sullivan indicated you may be suffering from insomnia.”
“I- I haven’t been sleeping, I guess.”
“For how long?”
“I- I couldn’t say. I tend to black out from time to time.” Hildebrand took a few shots. The doctor turned the ruler horizontal and nodded at Hildebrand. He took a few.
“Guess.”
“I haven’t slept for… two years.”
“Two years? You’re kidding.”
“No.”
The doctor rolled the body over so that the opening in the woman’s neck was facing the light.
“Take a picture.”
Hildebrand lined up a shot. The doctor grabbed his wrist and made him take two steps forward, and lean over so that the lens was nearly in the flesh. Click.
“No human would be awake if they hadn’t slept for two years.”
“Maybe I’m in a dream then.”
“Why do you say that you black out but do not sleep?”
“That’s what happens.”
“I would say you blacking out indicates sleep.”
“I would not.”
“Humor me,” the doctor said. He pulled the sheet over the young woman. He dug into his pocket and pulled out an orange pill bottle. He shook one into his hand. The pill was yellow and round.
“I’d rather not.”
“You don’t want to sleep?”
“I want to sleep,” Hildebrand said, feeling sweat run down his back. His skin prickled. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the bliss of rest. “I don’t think I can.”
“This will knock you out hard. I’ll monitor you while you’re down. You’re in safe hands here, officer.”
He stared at the pill. It looked tiny in the doctor’s hand. He wondered what would happen. Taking it would be giving up his control. But the change only occurred at night. It was stronger when the moon was brighter, the thing that he became. Yet for the last two years, even on the newest of moons, he would feel the change coming on in the darkness. What danger was there in the day? If I slept, truly slept, the change would be skipped, maybe, he thought.
What the decision was the weight on his back. The heaviness in the skin of his face. The mind that he was losing.
“There’s a couch in the waiting room,” the doctor said, “Molly can keep an eye on you while I finish up here.”
“If you’re… sure,” Hildebrand said. The doctor nodded. He took the pill in his hand and felt his head spin as if he were high. He stumbled. The doctor was beneath his shoulder.
“Gottcha,” the doctor grunted. He helped the cop pull off the gown and the mask, and the gloves. He walked Hildebrand into the waiting room and laid him down on a couch. He took the pill from Hildebrand’s hand and pushed it between his lips.
“Molly, water,” the doctor said, snapping at the woman. She got up from behind the desk and brought a bottle to Hildebrand’s lips. He swallowed.
“What’s the matter with him, Doctor?”
“He’s tired,” the doctor said. “That’s all.”
And for the first time in two years, Hildebrand slept.