Organ - Chapter 17
ORGAN
Chapter Seventeen
Mary performed the same routines, which felt almost mortifying at this point, in the quest for her sons return, arrived in the same section of the parking lot at the hospital, talked to the same faces at the reception desk and stared at the same posters in the elevator on her way up to Boothes now undesirably familiar lair on the second floor. Oscar hated this place, Mary was fully aware of this before his disappearance after all the phone calls, she attributed that to his many outbursts and slips of the foul tongue he most definitely did not get from either of his parents, Thomas was a joyful silly man and his idea of cursing involved replacing the “F” word with “fudge” and the “S” word with “sugar-plumb”, Mary did truly love the light-hearted man she married for those quirks that she knew would in some way create a better son for it, as much as she believed love could emerge in a vulnerable human heart. Arrival at Boothes office came sooner than she expected but before Mary could rap a knuckle on the door she was stopped in motion, a voice behind her that belonged to Nurse Katie left her lingering frozen in place with her back to the hallway. The anger she felt suddenly was surprising and unhealthy, Mary thought it would take a bit more than just the noise this nurse made to create the mood she had done so well to keep off her shoulders. Mary approached this as she thought a responsible adult should and turned heading over to the nurses station, Katie was sitting behind the desk speaking with another young nurse when the mother of their shared interest placed her purse on the counter to break their fixation on each other and onto her arrival.
“Hello Mrs Rubens” Katie said politely and quietly enough to indicate her uncomfortableness with this scheduled meetup, it had never dawned on Mary that Katie would also be reluctant to talk with her.
“I wanted to let you know that I am here to find out what I can about his disappearance, I didn’t come here to argue or get into it with you or the doctor” Mary explained to the nurse with a stern motherly look to her face.
Katie was silent and nodded along in agreement sucking in her lips to keep herself from showing any facial expression that could be misconstrued by the woman who seemed to be teetering on the edge of unravelling. Doctor Boothe swung open his door and slid into the halfway on the vinyl floors, Mary imagined a man of his shape and age sliding like a child would be a terrific way to break something and the irony of it leading him into the same beds that he grew so tired of habiting.
“Mrs Rubens, Good afternoon, would you like to come through and we can get started. Katie would you mind grabbing us all a tea before you join us, thank you” Boothe said instructing both women in separate directions.
Mary dared once last glance at Katie and the nurse seemed dead pan to any comments Boothe made, unaware of course that Boothe had suspected her involvement and equally in the dark of the threat of termination that Boothe threw the pretty young things way, Katie was a hard woman to read and that frustrated Mary even more, there was something besides her obvious errors in caring for her son that she did not like, it grew under her skin like an internal rash from some stinging plant. Something lurked there that the mother could not put the light upon just yet. Mary stepped in Boothes office and found a seat; another had been brought in since her last visit and this was presumably to accommodate Katies involvement that afternoon.
“Before Nurse Katie returns with your tea, I wanted to ensure privately that we can put aside the previous issues with Katies involvement in Oscars incident and instead use today to accomplish what we planned…finding some useful information that could clear up the timeline and point us down the right path” Boothe said knowing full well that Mary would not argue with anyone before the meeting was up, it was her only chance of getting something solid between her finger tips to hand over to the police.
She simply nodded in agreement and got comfortable in her seat as Katie wandered into the room pushing the door open with her hip and placing a tea before Boothe and Mary, none for herself, Katie took her seat and shifted uncomfortably in the silence while Boothe sorted through his drawers for some stationery to keep track of the conversation.
He waved the pad and pen in the air like a gleeful court auditor, “Nothing lost, and everything recorded” he said aloud putting the paper in front of him before taking a long sip of his tea, the steam fogged his glasses and for a second gave the two woman opposite a rest from his wandering beady eyes. Boothe dated the paper scribbling away with handwriting only a serial killer or indeed a doctor could make out,
“So, to get you caught up Katie, Mrs Rubens has asked to meet with us both in order to determine a timeline of sorts for Oscars last day in our hospital before his disappearance” Boothe explained to the nurse.
Fully aware that she could gather from context and Mrs Rubens words outside the reason they had got together with the chief.
“I am just looking for something that could help the police in their search, anything that either of you might have missed when recalling the days leading up to Oscar leaving” Mary added watching as the other two simply nodded and avoided her eye contact directly.
She misunderstood if this were out of fear or empathetic guilt.
“Well, he was being lined up for a switch over for a temporary stay in our local mental health facility, it was arranged on the grounds of a final assessment by myself and a leading therapist that was going to facilitate his care for his brief stay” Boothe said to the room.
This was relatively new information for Mary, she was aware Oscar was being moved for a day or so but was unaware it was going to be under the instruction of a new doctor.
“Could Oscar have heard of this?” Mary asked inquisitively, Boothe nodded.
“Oscar was informed of a mental health check at a local facility but likely was unaware it would not be conducted by myself; it seemed irrelevant to his treatment and adding new figures into his troubled mind felt like a grander risk at that stage” Boothe answered.
The chiefs voice so calm that Mary believed he had been rehearsing every line of questioning for days before their meeting.
“Oscar was aware of the health check” Katie confirmed piping up when it felt appropriate and safe to confirm the information presented.
The conversation went back and forth this way for the next hour, Katie avoided confronting Marys opinions and Boothe acted as the narrator and peacemaker when necessary to calm Mrs Rubens. Mary was deflating, like a helium balloon loose and fighting against the clouds for shade from the sun, her mission to gain something useful in the search for Oscars whereabouts was dwindling in the light as Boothe continued to tell her the same story and Katie offered up nothing but mimicry and nodding agreements with his acknowledgments. Leaving the room, she noticed Katie lingering behind her at the doorway, when the door to Boothes office closed on herself and Katie, the young nurse tapped on her shoulder gently with timid reframe and cleared her throat silently.
“We need to talk privately” Katie whispered to her as they gingerly stepped away from the office. Mary was obviously caught off guard, the idea of what the nurse needed to say to her that could not be said in front of the Doctor left her reeling.
Mary asked if they should speak in the lobby, but Katie was deeply against the idea.
“We need to speak outside of the hospital, let me come over tonight and I will tell you what I know….something that Boothe doesn’t want getting out” she whispered once again to the mother.
Mary gave Katie her address and the two agreed to meet at her home later that evening. She hated the idea of letting Katie further into Oscars private life and literally the home he grew up in, but she knew that her options ran sharpened razor thin. Time was always ticking away behind her, the time that belonged not to herself. Those grains of sand harrowing through the glass belong to her boy out there somewhere dealing with challenges she could no longer lend him to overcome. Mary was fighting to stop her mind from racing beyond her reach as she arrived home that afternoon, Katie was guarding something that pertained to her son and she was unaware of how crucially time sensitive it could be in helping find Oscar, frankly she was entirely unhappy with the idea of further involving this, in her opinion, lacking careless woman, anymore in her sons situation considering her ability to somehow escape real consequences from her actions or lack-thereof, but now it was down to this same nurse to potentially give the searching mother the weapons required to slay the mystery and bring him back into the light. So, she went about preparing her home for the visit later in the evening, tidying away her various pieces of underwear and work clothes that had hung on her clothing drying racks for three days – perhaps four - and putting some dishes away from the sink that had not seen a wash in similar time. Mary kept remarking about more important concerns to herself as she went off in tornado fashion around the emptier home. Just as Mary finished putting the final pieces of her somehow shameful untidiness away the doorbell rang, Katie opted for the buzzer instead of knocking and that was already putting hairs up on the back of Marys neck in defensive readiness for impending irritancies. Fixing her hair before reaching for the handle, Mary opened the door and half smiled as she saw Katie standing in a baseball cap and hoody outside her front door.
“Please tell me that isn’t a disguise you are wearing?” she joked looking down at this young woman she saw now perhaps even more childish that she imagined at her front door.
“I didn’t want Boothe knowing I was coming here” Katie said with all seriousness as she entered the home and wiped her feet on the mat, “Shoes on or off?” she asked politely.
Mary shrugged uncaring thinking of the countless officers and case workers strolling through, without even brushing off their feet over the past four days, it was not going to break her now seeing the tiny feet of the nurse treading the outdoors into her home, after all she wanted the nurses information, not her courtesy or manners giving the pressing nature of each expiring moment. They sat at the dining table and Mary poured Katie a small mug of tea, she watched as the nurse played with the escaping steam with her breath before taking a careful sip and placing it down upon the coaster the host had slid across to her.
“What couldn’t you tell me at the hospital?” Mary asked jumping head first straight into the deep end of the visit.
Katie was unsurprised at the abruptness; it was common to experience much worse with her professional superiors. Toying with the cup in her hands Katie approached her words with caution, clearly something was eating away at her, but Mary was unsure what it could have been considering the worst she could say is that she had once again harmed her son, but he is for the worse away from her clutches.
“Katie you came here to tell me something, if you don’t have anything useful then I think this was a mistake” Mary said becoming increasingly less hospitable with the lack of dialogue, but Katie was nervous, and her body seemed to be shaking in tiny shivers every time Mary spoke.
“I was with Oscar shortly before he left the hospital, we spoke about his treatment and how he was feeling” she allowed pauses sporadically expecting interruptions but with the nurse finally speaking.
Mary was not in the mind to derail her train of thought before it reached its terminus.
“Oscar mentioned that he was worried about the way Boothe, Doctor Boothe handling his treatment” Katie continued watching Marys face carefully from the top of her eyes, it dawned on the young nurse just then that Oscar and his mother shared a similar nose stare when they became concerned.
Overly unhelpful information, but Mary was still biding her time to see if a jewel could be plucked from the roughage of this string of unusable sentences.
“And?” Mary hurled out like some involuntary bite.
“I was in Oscars room when Boothe came by to check up on him, this was after Oscar had recently had an episode and fainted” Katie continued now staring down at the dining room table surface, it was scuffed and had tiny white scratches everywhere the way a family table should, she imagined the various nice evenings Oscar had here before he came into Greenwood.
“Boothe did not know I was in there because Oscar had me checking out his shower unit that broke, I can prove it by the maintenance logs if you need” Mary nodded in agreement without care for this pointless evidence as she heard from her son himself that the shower was awful and needed repairs.
“Well, I saw Doctor Boothe….hurting Oscar” she finally got the words out and left them dangling like some pathetic fruit in the aether.
Marys eyes became vacant watery craters in her head, her grew pale for a moment, the blood rushing somewhere to retrieve the sickening feeling that was arriving like cavalry to the battlefront.
“I also heard him threatening him, Oscar was worried and Boothe told him that this was all going to carry on until he saw fit to release him” Katie added on layer after layer of upsetting secrets from within the hospital walls as Mary sat stone faced and drank in the poisonous truth.
This now explained Oscars outbursts, he was being abused, tortured even and she never saw it for what it was. Her son was not scared or being childish, he was fearing for his life and now it all began to click into place. His disappearance, his mood swings, the manner in which he defied returning to the hospital and the reaction when Mary “stupidly” called the authorities on her own flesh.
“Did you try and stop him?” Mary asked finally breaking her silence.
Katie looked down and Mary knew her answer, she felt no anger towards the girl, she was young once and knew the fear that men could hold over younger women.
“I need you to tell this to the police” Mary stated now taking control of the room once again, Katie shook her head and pushed the mug of tea away from her. “If he knows I told you, I will be finished. My career will be over, and I will lose all credibility if you need to challenge the hospital on this in court” Katie explained her reasons and they sounded almost fair out loud.
Mary loathed that but had managed to convince Katie to assist if this makes its way to the courts or police.
“I know this was hard to hear, but please believe me that I really did care about your son’s well-being, I would never have hurt him and if I can help bring him home to you I will” Katie said relieve and now grossly uncomfortable having shared the tragedy of her sons abuse in every gory detail, her voice trembled off as though stifling an incoming cry.
Mary saw the sadness in her eyes from the moment she confessed to what she knew. It seemed genuine and the mother left the nurse without bathing her in the scorn she felt, she knew that the punishment Katie was inflicting on herself for doing nothing at the time was more than enough to suffice her craving for some vengeance. Katie left that early evening with a weight off her shoulders, and Mary gave her a squeeze on the arm of encouragement in motherly fashion, it was not the comforting hug the girl needed, but it was all she felt was appropriate considering her hatred for the negligence Katie had shown that night Oscar was almost suffocated under her watch. But a comforting grasp was enough to see her smile back up at her.
“I really hope he comes home soon” Katie whispered back before taking her leave.
“So do I” Mary whispered back.
Katie climbed back into her car and toyed with the mirror, she could not help but feel guilty, yes she had confirmed the abuse or threatening behaviour between Boothe and Oscar, but in mirroring fashion to the original statement she gave to the police Katie had not told anyone that Oscar had asked for her help. More importantly, nobody knew that Katie was the supplier of his escape package that helped disguise the young man and get him onto the nearest transport leaving the area immediately outside the hospitals doors. If it were worth telling her then the time was gone, nothing Katie could say now would really help beyond what she has already divulged, his nurse truly had no idea where her patient had vanished.
