It was no consolation. It was an indictment.
“The unexpected twist is, I might be losing my marbles, but even I would remember an Akita with hip dysplasia.” He winked at her, as if theft of controlled substances was nothing. “You know what bitchy little babies Akitas can be.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Jerry.” Tears poured down her face. Her nose was running. “I’ve got a gorilla on my back.”
“Ah, then you know that lately, demographic shifts in the gorilla world have led to unusual behavior.”
Callie felt her lips tremble into a smile. He didn’t want to lecture her. He wanted to tell her an animal story.
She stuttered in a breath, asking, “Tell me.”
“Gorillas are generally quite peaceable so long as you give them space. But that space has become limited because of man, and of course sometimes there are downsides to protecting species, mainly that those species begin to repopulate in greater numbers.” He asked, “Say, have you ever met a gorilla?”
She shook her head. “Not to my recollection.”
“Well, that’s good, because it used to be that one lucky fella was in charge of the troop, and he had all the gals to himself, and he was very, very happy.” Dr. Jerry paused for dramatic effect. “Now, instead of going off to form their own troops, young males are staying put and, absent the prospect of love, they’ve taken to attacking weaker, solitary males. Can you believe that?”
Callie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “That’s terrible.”
“Indeed it is,” Dr. Jerry said. “Young men without a purpose can be quite troublesome. My youngest son, for instance. He was bullied terribly at school. Did I ever tell you that he struggled with addiction?”
Callie shook her head, because she had never heard of a younger son. She only knew about the one in Oregon.
“Zachary was fourteen years old when he started using. It was a lack of friendship, you see. He was very lonely, but he found acceptance within a group of kids who were not the sort of kids we would’ve liked for him to be around.” Dr. Jerry explained, “They were the school stoners, if that’s a word that’s still used. And membership in the club was contingent upon experimenting with drugs.”
Callie had been sucked into a similar group in high school. Now, they were all married with kids and driving nice cars and she was stealing narcotics from the only man who had ever shown her genuine fatherly love.
“Zachary was a week away from his eighteenth birthday when he died.” Dr. Jerry walked around the breakroom, opening and closing cabinets until he found the fun-sized box of animal crackers. “I wasn’t keeping Zachary from you, my dear. I hope you’ll understand that there are some topics that are too difficult to discuss.”
Callie nodded, because she understood more than he knew.
“My lovely wife and I desperately tried to help our boy. It’s why his brother moved across the country. For nearly four years, the entirety of our focus was on Zachary.” Dr. Jerry chewed on a handful of crackers. “But there was nothing we could do, was there? The poor young fella was helplessly caught up in the throes of his addiction.”
Callie’s junkie brain ran the numbers. A younger son would’ve come of age in the eighties, which meant crack. If cocaine was addictive, crack was annihilating. Callie had watched Crackhead Sammy scratch the skin off his arm because he was certain that parasites were burrowing underneath.
“During Zachary’s short lifetime, the science of addiction was well-documented, but it’s different when it’s your own child. You assume they know better, or are somehow different, when the fact is that as special as they are, they are just like everyone else.” Dr. Jerry confided, “I’m ashamed when I think back on my behavior. Had I the ability to redo those last few months, I would spend those precious hours telling Zachary that I loved him, not screaming at the top of my lungs that he must’ve had some kind of moral failure, an absence of character, a hatred for his family, that made him choose not to stop.”
He shook the box of treats. Callie didn’t want any, but she held out her hand, watched him pour out tigers and camels and rhinoceroses.
Dr. Jerry took another handful for himself before sitting back down. “June was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after we buried Zachary.”
Callie seldom heard him say his wife’s name out loud. She had never met June. The woman was already dead the first time Callie had seen the sign in the clinic window. There was no junkie math needed this time. Callie had been seventeen, the same age that Zachary was when he’d OD’d, when she had knocked on Dr. Jerry’s door.