“As a lay person you would not be
able to understand the science of my experiments at Harvard,” the doctor began
his explanation to Madelyn.
“What experiments?
“They involved Heck. That’s all I
want to say.”
“Like a guinea pig?” she asked.
“Yes, you could say that, although
Heck wouldn’t like the analogy. Would you, Heck?” The doctor looked at the rat,
who tilted his head, like a curious cat, squinting up at the doctor while rubbing
his nose with his paws. “Fruit flies are very useful for experiments and so are
guinea pigs,” the doctor continued. “But for my purposes only Rattus norvegicus, would do. Not as cute
as the guinea pig, perhaps . . .” Heck made a tiny squeaking noise. “Have I
hurt your feelings? I’m sorry, Heck,” the doctor said.
“He understands you?” she asked. Up to now she had thought of the doctor as being eccentric. Now she wasn’t
sure what to think.
“He understands me, of course,” the
doctor said proudly. Then he added, in a show of bitter humor. “He’s got an
IQ well above the average Democrat.”
“But why did you bring him to the office?”
“I received a warning that the
authorities might be paying a visit to the clinic today.”
“Today?” She couldn’t believe he had
waited until now to tell her. She had felt nervous when she had arrived at the
office that morning because of renewed rumors circulating in the town about an
imminent crackdown on the so-called pill mills.
“That’s right. Today.”
“Then why did you bring the rat
here.”
“Because I’m sure they want me to
think they’re coming to the clinic when what they really plan to do is to go to
my home.”
“But how would they get in?”
“My landlady would let them in.
She’s easily intimidated.”
“She’d let them in?”
“With alacrity.”
“With who?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“But what would they be looking for? What
records we have are in my computer.”
“They’re not after records.”
“Then what?”
“Why, Heck, of course.”
“What would they want with Heck?”
Puzzled, she looked from the doctor to the rat and back at the doctor.
“The ‘rat’ as you like to call him
is the key to everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s the answer.”
“To what.”
“To the single greatest threat to
freedom in the world.”
“What threat?”
“Big Brother.”
“Big Brother?”
“Precisely,” he said.
“Who’s Big Brother?”
“You’ve never heard of Big
Brother?”
“I don’t think so.”
Shaking his head and turning to
the rat, the doctor said, “What do you think of that, Heck? She’s never
heard of Big Brother.” As he continued
shaking his head slowly, Heck tilted his
head and peered up at him curiously while the kittens looked down on
what was happening with the look of total
incomprehension.
“Haven’t you read this pamphlet?”
he asked her, picking up one from the
little pile he kept on his desk. “I distinctly remember giving you one, and one
for your daughter.” The doctor opened it to one of the illustrations, showing a
menacing Big Brother figure. He held it up to show her, then he laid it down on
the desk, leaving it open to the same page, which the rat edged over to and
looked down at, as if it could read or
at least appreciate pictures. Madelyn felt stupid. Was it possible the rat
had not only heard of Big Brother but had also read about him? It couldn’t be,
she told herself. She had a tee shirt, which she had worn only once, to a Fourth of July fireworks
display. REDNECK AND PROUD OF IT! But
she never could have imagined encountering a rat smarter than she was, a show-off, smart-ass rodent which, if it had a
tee shirt, would probably read SMARTER THAN A REDNECK!
“But what does the rat have to do
with Big Brother?” she asked.
“Heck and I made a remarkable
discovery.”
“About what?”
“About Oxycontin,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Oxycontin is the diabolical
means by which the American government is attempting to enslave us.”
“Enslave us?”
“Yes, by eliminating all
resistance to Big Brother.”
“But why are you prescribing it if it’s diabiblical?”
“Diabolical,” he corrected her. “Because
the ends justify the means.”
Talk about ends and means always passed
over her head, as it did now. She didn’t want to show her ignorance by asking
him what he meant. She just looked at him blankly.
“I’ve discovered how to turn Oxycontin into
Anti-Contin,” he explained.
“Anti-Contin?”
“Yes, an antidote to Statism.”
“Statism?” Statism was not something she had heard of before.
“What the Democrats believe in. ‘That
government is best which governs most.’”
“That’s statism?”
“That’s right. But it won’t be
much longer before I have enough money to manufacture it in Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
“Yes. I plan to open a clinic there.”
“But you’re not prescribing
patients Anti-Contin now?”
“No, not yet.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“It’s derived from Heck’s urine.”
“Heck’s urine? Hoy shit!” she
exclaimed.
Madelyn looked at the rat on the
desk, at the kittens on top of the file cabinet, at her own fun-house
reflection in the doctor’s thick Coke bottle glasses, asking herself whether this
was a bad dream or, worse still, a drug induced hallucination. At the moment, she believed she
possessed the ability to feel the agony of the people outside
in the line, most of them, like herself, who didn’t understand means
and ends or statism from Adam.
“A rat’s urine! That sounds disgusting,” she said.
“That’s what you all say.”
“All?”
“All who are under the influence
of Big Brother.”
“A rat’s
urine! Yuck!”
“Not a rat’s urine. Heck’s
urine.”
“What makes Heck’s urine so special?” she asked sarcastically.
“You could never guess,” he said,
looking up at the photo of Hayek on the
wall before pronouncing solemnly: “Heck now shares the DNA of the greatest mind
of the twentieth century.”
“Up to now, I must have been blind as well as
addicted.”
“What?” the doctor asked in
disbelief. “You addicted, too?”
“What about the DNA business?” she asked.
“I obtained a lock of the Great One’s hair through
extraordinary luck. If I wasn’t a man of science, I would say that providence had
a hand in all this, even if it’s only the invisible hand.”
“The invisible hand?”
“The the invisible
hand of the free market.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”
And neither did Oxy and Contin,
who were mewing and walking in circles on top of the file cabinet. The doctor looked at his watch. “Madelyn, we have
patients outside in the throes
of Statism. They’re waiting for us.”
“I’m very much aware of them,
Doctor,” she said, feeling very attuned
to them as this moment.
Are you a Democrat?” he asked.
“What’s that
got to do with anything?”
“Excuse the non sequitur,” he apologized.
“ I’m not into politics,” she
said.
“Whom did you vote for in the last
presidential election?”
“Which presidential election?
“You didn’t happen to vote for
the Black Big Brother, did you?”
“I don’t remember voting,” she
said.
“You see, Heck, it’s the familiar
vicious circle. One addiction leads to another, and people end up voting for Big Brother.”
There was the sound of loud male
voices with unfamiliar accents in the outer office. Huck flicked his tail
nervously and the kittens became even
more agitated.
“Who’s out there?” the doctor
shouted, bringing his little fist down hard on the
desk. Panicked, the rat jumped off the desk and scrambled for a place to hide. Oxy
overcame his fear of heights and jumped from the file cabinet and
Contin instinctively followed him. A cat may always land on its feet but the
kittens tumbled over when they painfully hit the floor.
Suspecting it was a robbery, the
doctor shouted, “I demand to know who’s out there?” A tense looking man in a gray
suit and a striped necktie appeared suddenly in the door to the office. Behind him,
looking over his shoulder, stood a a square faced state
trooper.
“Doctor Gudenoff?” the man in the
suit asked.
“Yes, I am Dr. Gudenoff,” he
answered defiantly.
“I’m Special Agent Smith with the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.” He opened a wallet and flashed his DEA badge.
“Your Big Brother badge doesn’t
impress me Special Agent Smith, do you understand?”
“This is Captain Porter of the
State Police,” Smith said. “We have a warrant to search your clinic.”
“Oh, you, do you?” the doctor said
contemptuously.
“Doctor, do you have a key to the closet in the outer office?” the trooper asked.
“No,” the doctor said sharply. “You’ll
have to ask my office manager.”
Madelyn reached into her blouse
pocket and took out the key. It was only then that she remembered where her
purse with the Oycontin was. She kept a pair of galoshes in the locked closet. Last night she had heard about an imminent crackdown on the pain clinics. After she opened the clinic that morning, she had put her
purse in the right galosh of the fur-lined pair she kept in the closet. What
she was thinking as she handed the key to the trooper was that she might lose
custody of Barbie when they discovered she had forged prescriptions. They would
probably lock the doctor up for a long time. She had
heard that it was the case with doctors that, with the complicity of their colleagues, who are eager to
maintain the priestly status or their profession, that they got
away with malpractice, if not murder. But she doubted the doctor would get away with his
promiscuous prescribing of Oxycontin. In
the time she had worked for him he must have prescribed as many pills as the
McDonald’s sign said it had sold hamburgers. But what would they do to her for
having forged prescriptions? At that moment of uncertainty, she would
have given anything for an Oxycontin and so would Oxy and Contin, cowering in a
corner, as would also the doctor and his pet rat, who were as hopelessly hooked
on the drug as anyone in the town. The rest of the country was about to
learn that it was ground zero of Oxycontin addiction in America.
When the doctor and Madelyn were
ushered into the outer office by state troopers, Oxy saw his chance of escape.
The front door was half open and he scooted for it, with Contin right on his
tail and Heck not far behind.
“Your Big Brother badge doesn’t impress me Special Agent Smith, do you understand?”
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