Chapter Five (Part Two)

(continued)

Snapping the folder shut, Campbell threw it back onto the table and massaged his temples. He was having a slight headache from the lack of sleep. Taking a sip of water from the mug on his desk, he reached for another file and flipped it open.
The first patient information listed was one he had reread countless times. He stared at the picture stapled on the top corner, and the name typed underneath it:

Landon Campbell.

Campbell’s eyes shifted to the silver-framed photograph sitting on his desk. Landon, then sixteen, was smiling brightly at the photographer, the graduation cap sitting smartly on his head. Landon's arm was draped across a younger-looking Campbell, trying on an unsuccessfully taut smile.
Smiling has never been one of his passions.
Still, he remembered that behind the rigid smile that faithful day was a very proud father – a father proud of his valedictorian son who had just graduated.

The pride was short-lived, though.

Year 1999:
He remembered vividly that warm afternoon: a special day for the graduating class of 1999 from Royston Academy – alma mater of which Campbell was alumni to.
Like him, Landon had emerged the top student of his year. Campbell had a pretty strong hunch Landon wouldn’t have been the high-flyer he was, if his freak of a mother had been around him longer.
He was glad she was gone from both their lives, for good.

‘Mr. Campbell, would you like me to help take a picture of you and Landon together?’

It was Jason, Landon’s good buddy from school. Campbell recognized him easily. The toned, brown-haired teenager often came over to the Campbell’s residence for homework and basketball sessions with Landon.

‘Why, thank you.’ Campbell had obliged agreeably, passing his camera over to Jason, before taking a spot beside his son.
The shot of father and son was taken.

‘Hey dad,’ Landon said after the picture, his eyes sparkling brightly. ‘Jason and I are gonna go over to say hi to a few other buddies. Alright with you if you wait here for a minute or two?’

Campbell nodded. ‘Sure thing, son.’

Landon followed after Jason, turning back to smile at his father.

He looked exactly like me when I was sixteen. Campbell thought to himself.

He was relieved that Landon looked more like him than his mother. It would be damned if he’d gotten her genes. Landon was going to make it big one day, most likely become a good surgeon, like him. He was going to be successful.

It was nothing he could have achieved if he was anything like his mother.

*

Somebody rapped loudly on the office door.

‘Who is it?’ Campbell asked aloud. He reached over and turned the picture of Landon and him face-down on the desk. Looking at it and remembering everything was too painful.

‘Doctor Campbell, its David. Have you forgotten? It’s time for the check.’

Campbell glanced down at his watch. Of course, it was already ten past three. Ten minutes behind schedule. Campbell picked up the confidential folders scattered on his desk and placed them into a drawer, locking it after he was done. Striding towards the door, he unbolted it and met David’s curious eyes immediately.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Campbell sighed and nodded. ‘Just lost track of time for a while. Thanks for the reminder.’

‘No problem. You’d better hurry. He’s requiring a higher dosage more so each day. The last one might be wearing off very soon.’

‘Alright then. I’ll catch up with you later.’

‘Sure.’

Campbell adjusting the stethoscope around his neck as he made his way briskly to the independent block connected to the main premises by a passageway – the hospital mortuary. The small building was eerily serene. Campbell nodded to a couple of nurses that passed his way. Drawing closer to the single flight of stairs leading to the basement, he turned to check if they were anybody behind him. The corridor was empty; the chattering nurses’ back views disappearing into the passageway linked to the main blocks.
Campbell jogged down the stairs, heading straight for the double doors located right at the end of the badly lit hallway.
Reaching for the magnetic-strip card in his coat pocket, Campbell swiped it twice on the card-slot. The double doors swung opened, before closing themselves automatically behind him.

The inside of the room was larger than one would expect from its exterior. Once a storage room for highly-radioactive drugs, the room was left desolated after the management built a more secured and facilitated room in the main building itself.

Of course, this was now Campbell’s personal room. Nobody but himself and David knew of this.

The mounted tabletops around the four walls of the room were scattered with chemicals and apparatus: beakers, test-tubes, microscopes…
It could easily be mistaken for a mad scientist’s dwelling. This was where Campbell did all his research and formulation for the solution.

In the middle of the area stood a mattress, backed by thick boarding, inclining 45 degrees to the ground. The young man lying on it had to be strapped down by three padded steel flaps, just so he wouldn’t slide off.
And also that he wouldn’t break free and escape.

Campbell reached for a cabinet and retrieved two glass-bottles the size of his thumb. Straightening up, he picked up a new packet of syringe, tearing it open as he walked to the middle of the room.

Machines of various shapes and sizes surrounded the inclined mattress, their snaking nodes attached complicatedly to the man secured under the locked steel flaps. An adjustable LCD screen hung down from the ceiling, its blinking monitor poised in front of the unconscious man strapped down against the padded plank.

Campbell took a long look at the young man. His bald scalp gleamed under the light; head once full of black hair shaved for all those operations. Week-old stubble was forming on his coffee-colored skin, and the slightest tinge of grayish grime was beginning to gather on his face.

I should clean him up again. Campbell thought, sudden sourness wrenching its way through his heart. A stereo headphone attached to the LCD screen covered the young man’s ears, and even from where he stood, Campbell could hear the muffled sounds escaping from beneath the headphones.

A sudden series of movement from under the young man’s closed eyelids snapped Campbell back to reality. The young man was starting to gain consciousness.

Plunging the needle swiftly into one of the two bottles, Campbell drew the transparent liquid up into the barrier, before bringing the full syringe down onto the crook of the man’s left arm. He repeated the process with the second bottle of liquid.

The sudden movements under the man’s eyelids went as abruptly as they came. He had fallen back into deep sleep.

Campbell felt his own eyes moistened; something he rarely experienced. Tears are useless. They never help alleviate any problems.
But seeing the young man before him seep back into unconsciousness; taking away his own son’s consciousness with strong anesthetic dosages – that pained him.

Campbell knew he had no other choice, however. This was the only way to stop Landon from destroying his own life.

*
(to be continued)