A Dog in the Fog

“I come to report an incident.”

The sergeant patiently continues with whatever he writes with a blue pen in a book. He must have done a lot of writing before, because only a few empty pages remain. He finally pushes a decisive full stop on the page and looks up. The streetlights pierce the thick morning fog, slip through the window, and cast yellow streaks over the clock on the wall. It is half past four, only an hour and a half before his shift ends.

“What incident?” he asks, uninterested.

But the pale, worried-looking face in front of the counter stirs something in him. The lady must be in her forties, he reckons. She looks quite elegant in a brown-and-white coat. No make-up. Perhaps this hour is not part of her usual day, he thought. Her cheeks draw a slight hollow under her high cheekbones. Her knuckles are clenched white around the keys of a Mercedes. She must be of some standing, but life is probably tough.

“I think I just hit a dog on the side of the road”, she stammered. “I was driving around the bay from Hartenbos to Mosselbay. I could hardly see a thing in the thick fog. I think it was a dog, a big dog. I didn’t turn back to check. I was too scared. You can’t even see the traffic coming along on the road”

She paused and said softly: “I don’t have a good feeling about this…”

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A woman’s tears always melt my heart. And there is nothing I can do about it.

Kate clasped her green handbag under her arm. Her oversized sunglasses were on again, but I can see the bruising escape from under the dark hide. A big teardrop appeared under the frame and followed a furrow through the make-up over her cheek.

“This is the end, Doc. You’ll have to help me out now.” A raw sob shook her chest, and she buried her head somewhere between her shoulders, arms, hands, and bosom.

I walked around the table and, with my left hand on her shoulder, took her glasses between the fingers of my right hand. “Let me look at your eye,” I said quietly and removed the glasses. The fresh bruising is puffed up in purple, blue and pink hues around the eye and there's a red blood blister under the mucus membrane. I noticed more bruising around her left shoulder and left knee.

“Doc, you will have to prescribe the Antabuse now. We have spoken about this long enough. I really can’t go any further.” The control she briefly achieved was lost again in a flood of tears.

Antabuse (Disulfiram) is a tablet that blocks the normal metabolic breakdown pathway of alcohol in the liver and produces a toxic aldehyde. This substance causes severe nausea, vomiting, sweating, palpitations, and a drop in blood pressure. It can be used as a deterrent as part of an alchohol rehabilitation program. It should be used with the informed consent of the user and with great caution since it is a dangerous substance.

Kate had found out about Antabuse from a friend and has been pushing to use it on her husband, Jack, for more than a year now. I’ve resisted the use since we both agreed that Jack would never agree to the use of it, because he did not admit to having a problem with his drinking habits. The fact that I admitted his wife several times to hospital following his violent attacks when drunk, and that his children left the house due to his abuse, was “just an error in judgement”, he said, and brushed it off with: “It won’t happen again”. But it always happened again, because alcohol blunted his control and released a vicious and violent man. Kate refuses to leave him, or to involve the police. “He will track me down and kill me, Doc. There are no two ways about this”, she declared, and I knew I believed her.

It’s amazing how alcohol can have the opposite effect on others.

Zane, for instance, would withdraw from human contact into his own world. If he had been drinking and my car stopped in front of the door, Zane would lock himself in the toilet and not even teargas would smoke him out. Pam used to shout at him under a spray of spit: “You’re a useless and pathetic bastard, Zane Sampson! Look at you! Drunk and spineless - just as my mother said you would be. Why did I not listen and marry Blue?” She would kick the locked toilet door, sending shudders through the walls. I could only imagine Zane shrinking away on the bowl, whimpering with his head in his hands. I had a soft spot for him. It was as if the world was just too harsh a place, and the bottle provided the escape he needed. I spent many an hour with my back against the toilet door chatting with Zane once his wife left the house for the neighbours. “Zane, forget about Pam and the stress she brings about. Think about the children. You love those girls, and they need your guidance and protection. Don’t let Pam get on your nerves. I know you can do it!”

And then all would be good for some months, until something broke again.

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When the phone rang that Saturday afternoon, a cold feeling crept up my spine. Kate’s voice was calm and calculated: “Jack is seriously ill, Doc. His face is flushed, he is sweating and throwing up. Yes, he has been drinking. No, he has never been this sick before. Yes, I will phone the ambulance and tell him you will meet him at the hospital."

We were locked in. Time would be my judge.

Jack waited anxiously for my arrival—panting, sweating, and vomiting. “I am dying from alcohol poisoning, Doc. I drank again, and it all came on exactly as you warned me. I don’t want to be dying, Doc, not yet. Please, Doc, help me. I promise I will never drink again,” he whimpered. I have never seen Jack this scared before. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

I examined Jack carefully. The Disulfiram effects were profound after his drinking, but I could not find any serious side effects.

The guilt feelings were overwhelming. How could I conspire with his wife to disguise the Antabuse in his food and then lie to him about the effects? I argued with myself. This is not ethical medicine.

Part of me wanted out, to tell the truth, handle the consequences.

Handle the consequences?! How can I or anyone else handle the consequences? I thought in fierce defence.

I closed my eyes while I listened to his heart. In my mind I saw Kate’s cold, bruised body lying on the stainless-steel morgue bench. A bullet had entered between her eyes and taken half her brain through the back of her skull.

I forced my eyes open and squashed the images. There is no turning back.

I was also the District Surgeon (forensic medicine) for Mosselbay at the time and did the post-mortem examinations of all unnatural deaths in the district. Kate was not going to land on my stainless-steel bench. I would rather lay there myself!

I took the stethoscope out of my ears and stood motionless under the anxious gaze of Jack.

“I think you’re going to live”, I finally said. “But you will never be able to drink again...”

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My car grunted unwillingly up the slopes of the steep mountainside. At the top, I swerved towards the cliffs. The car lights scanned yellow over the dark, moonless ridge and then flashed into the distant skies over the sea. I stopped short of Zane’s house and got out of the car, hoping I had not been noticed. Pam had phoned and asked for a home visit. Zane had started drinking again.

“You useless bastard!” I heard Pam screaming. “Get out of my house, you fool!”

The screen door of the kitchen flew open and slammed closed. A dark shadow stumbled over the grass and disappeared into the night.

I waited a while in the dark, walked to the front door and knocked.

Pam opened the door. The two girls looked around the corner behind her—wide-eyed and whispering in each other’s ears.

“Zane just left, Doctor. Come inside. Sorry, the place is a mess,” she offered.

“Will he be coming back?” I asked.

The kitchen smelled of strong spirits.

“Not soon”, she said and clumsily tried to move between me and a bottle of gin on the kitchen bench. “He always goes and hides in the chook pen when he can’t handle things anymore. He is such a coward, such a fool. I hate him!”

Her tongue slurred over the s’s, and a different picture edged into my mind.

“I’ll go outside and see if I can find him,” I said, stepping around the screen door.

Clouds masked the skies creating a darkness so dense that made no difference if I had my eyes open or closed. I listened for a while until I heard the soft “aark, aark” of a hen seeking sleep. My feet searched the surface and my hands the empty darkness until my fingertips found the frame of the chook pen. The door was open. I knelt and then crawled slowly through the entrance on hands and knees. The pen smelled of chook poo, dust, and feathers. I eased forward and accidentally pushed with one hand on a chook. “Aaark, aark” she said but did not move. Behind her was a post. Easing my back against it, I sat down and picked the chook up on my lap. “Aaark, aark” she said again, and I gently stroked her head. She liked it. One or two chickens somewhere shuffled for comfort and groaned softly.

Where would Jack be?

About half an hour passed in the chook pen with only the gentle, comforting sounds of sleeping chickens. When I finally spoke, my voice had a foreign tone that I’d never heard before. Nearly as if voice was an inappropriate instrument.

“These chooks are good friends, Jack”, the sounds came over.

“Yes, Doc. These are my best friends,” Zane answered nearby. His voice calm and relaxed, like the croaking of a stroked hen.

“We all need a chook pen like yours, Zane,” I said.

“That’s true, Doc. I’m very fortunate to have them.” Zane sounded more secure and happy than I had ever heard him before.

“Make sure to come here whenever the world gets too hard, Zane. It’s a much better place than the inside of a bottle.”

Zane groaned something, and I could imagine him stroking a chook on his lap.

And that was the last time I “saw” Zane.

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Over the three years that followed, the turn-around of Jack was remarkable. Simply “heaven on earth”, Kate said, dressed in a brand-new pink dress, white shoes, and a red handbag. She was her old happy self again. Believing that alcohol was no longer an option, the stress about the consideration thereof disappeared. Jack cared again for his wife and children and even started a woodwork project in his garage.

This was until his old-time friend Jock appeared on the doorstep, bottle in hand.

He poured two glasses to celebrate, only to be informed by Jack that he does not drink anymore. Jock enquired, and Jack explained up to a point when Jock stopped him.

“Hold it there, old friend; let me tell you what is happening here. Your wife and the doctor have been conniving behind your back and placed some Antabuse in your food. This makes you sick when you drink. They then told you it’s the booze that made you sick, and you will die if you don’t stop drinking. It’s all lies, I tell you!"

Jack listened in amazement. “But I’m not going to try drinking again! The Doc said I will surely die!” he protested.

“It’s easy to prove” Jock continued with confidence. “You take just one spoonful every 30 minutes, and in three hours, you will know for sure. If nothing happens, you’ll know your old friend Jock was right. If I’m wrong, you will soon feel unwell, but not serious after only one or two spoonfuls!”

My phone rang at 5 pm on the Sunday afternoon. It was Kate. Her panic was raw over the phone. Someone screamed, and a gun went off near the receiver. The phone died in my hand.

It was judgement day.

The tyres screamed nearly all the way to Jack’s house. The neighbours recognised the car and signalled me to stop. I slipped into their house, and they all crammed into the sitting room.

“Is Kate, okay?” I asked.

“Yes, we think so. Jack probably put the shot through the roof. We saw her running down the street after the shooting.”

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

“Yes. They are on their way.” The answers came from all directions.

Another shot went off, and we all ran to the window.

Jack appeared in the street and started marching towards the neighbour's house. “I’m coming for you, Doc, and it ain’t going to be pretty!” he shouted ahead. I looked at the car. It was too late. Jack would cut me off.

“Is there anywhere to hide?” I asked urgently and eased towards the kitchen.

They all looked around the room in desperation.

“Get into the broom cupboard in the kitchen, Bob urged. We’ll try to hold him back until the police come”.

Jack kicked the garden gate down and came towards the front door, pistol drawn and ready in his right hand.

I slipped into the kitchen and closed the door.

The broom cupboard was full of brooms and mops and stuff. Even if I kicked it all out, I doubt that I would fit into the narrow space. And it won’t be hard to guess where to look, with all the brooms lying on the kitchen floor! I would rather take my chances running, than being shot at a short distance in a cupboard, I thought.

The front door slammed open with a loud bang, and Jack’s voice demanded: “Where is that bloody doctor? I’ll kill you all if you try to hide him from me!” He hesitated, and for a moment, it was dead silent in the house.

“I know, he’s trying to hide in the broom cupboard!” he announced loudly, and his footsteps echoed to the kitchen door.

Jack burst into the kitchen, looked at the broom cupboard with the door open on a slither, drew his pistol, and kicked open the door. Meanwhile, I scrambled below the kitchen window along the outside wall of the house, ran for the car and took off with screaming tyres. Jack appeared in the street 50 metres behind me and fired, but it was too far and too late.

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Hannelie (my wife) and I sat on the wide sandstone veranda, looking out over the Sunday sea. The great ocean waves spun around the rocks at the lighthouse in broad, symmetrical lines converging on the harbour like a giant version of the radial symmetry in a mollusc shell. You could imagine the waves being swept up by the wind into an unforgiving vortex reaching somewhere into the heavens and the skies.

And then the phone rang. I looked at my watch. It is, to the minute, exactly two weeks since the dramatic phone call from Kate. But this time it was Pam. “Can you come, please Doc? Zane is dead.”

I arrived as the evening fog started rolling in from the cliffs.

Pam waved me in from the sofa with a half-empty bottle of gin in one hand.

“Would you like a drink, Doc?” she invited with a thick tongue and flopped an arm in the direction of a glass at the sink.

Without resistance from Pam, I poured the gin down the sink and sat down.

Pam explained: “Zane was walking to work at the railway station in Hartenbos early this morning. He was run over and killed by a car driven by a lady. She did not even stop to see what happened! She told the police she thought it was a dog. It was a dog, all right!” she added and drooled a grin.

I helped Pam to her bedroom, lay her on the bed and covered her with a blanket. I then encouraged the girls to pack their bags with clothes and books for school the next day. They then said goodbye to mum, who was already fast asleep, and got into the car.

“We are going to Aunty Girtie’s place for the night. You can come back home tomorrow after school when your mum is better,” I explained.

So, we slowly drove through the fog—the car lights illuminating the large cotton boulders filling the road ahead. “Are you two, okay?” I asked.

They both nodded their heads slowly up and down. Their big, tearless eyes white in the reflections off the fog.

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Thank you for sitting this one through with me. I hope you are ok.

Kind regards

Gabriël

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NEXT TIME:

Consider this for a moment:

What is the most precious asset you have?