The Assistant

I met Keylee the day I moved into my apartment on Belmont Avenue. I had just finished my residency in Phoenix and gotten a job in the emergency department of a hospital in Seattle. After years of living in cramped, shared, or otherwise crummy apartments, I wanted something nice, something that reflected my station in life. And so I picked the building on Belmont, tall and modern, entirely glass on the western side, affording every unit an expansive view of downtown, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains.

Keylee was my neighbor. She had moved in just a few weeks before me, and we became acquainted the evening of my arrival. We sat on our conjoined balconies, talking across the low railing that separated them. She’d lived in Seattle her whole life, she told me, having spent the last five years in a house in Ballard with her husband. They had recently separated, and now she was on her own.

“We’re like intersecting parabolas. You, the new doctor, and me, the new divorcee,” she said after I told her my own story. “Your trajectory is going up, and mine is going down, but for the moment we’re in the same place.”

I wanted to point out that she probably meant we were intersecting lines on a graph, since parabolic trajectory implies something going up and then back down again, or vice versa, but I didn’t want to be rude.

“It seems to me you’re doing just fine,” I said.

Keylee glared with mock disgust and gestured to the view laid out before us. “Are you kidding? Just look at this shithole.”

I found her humor, among other things about her in that moment, very attractive.

I saw Keylee quite often after that. Not every day, but several times a week, we’d bump into each other in the elevator and then go for a meal or a drink.

She was only a couple years older than me, but she seemed so much more worldly. She managed an art gallery downtown and sang in a band. She had traveled widely, both with her husband and on her own. Her manner of speaking was breezy and unaffected, with a lightness prevailing even her most serious statements.

 I, on the other hand, practiced medicine, and then came home and read about medicine. People sometimes told me I sounded like a textbook when I spoke. I knew this wasn’t a compliment, but I was committed to my vocation and wanted to be good at it. Aside from that, I watched TV and played video games. I went to the gym. I sat on the balcony and talked with Keylee over the railing.

I’d never been very forward in my romantic efforts in the past. I always needed obvious signs of shared interest before I was brave enough to make a move. With Keylee, there were no such signs. In fact, just the opposite. Most of our conversations, no matter where they began, circled back to the issue most consuming to Keylee: her marriage and its collapse. So, I tried to be a friend and offer a sympathetic ear. This wasn’t hard. The details Keylee told me about her husband were not flattering. He had no time for Keylee’s interests or her “scene,” which she referred to frequently, and which I took to mean the circle of artists with whom she affiliated. He preferred her home every night straight after work.

“And by the end he never ever wanted me to have anyone over to the house. He said my acquaintances disgusted him. Can you believe that? Like I was bringing around hookers and bank robbers or something.”

“He sounds like a controlling prick,” I said.

“I think we just had different ideas of what our lives should look like.”

I wanted to tell her that I liked the way her life looked––that I was on board for her vision of life.

Once, Keylee took me with her to see a friend’s band play. It seemed like she knew everyone at the club. She got drunk and kept introducing me to people by saying, “This is my doctor.” Or, “This is Jeremiah, my private physician.” Her friends laughed and cooed things like “Ooh, he’s a cute one.” I enjoyed the implication: of me belonging to Keylee, being hers in some way. Though, of course, I wasn’t her doctor. She’d never talked with me about her health at all. 

But then one night, not long after that, she called my phone, and when I answered, she asked if I was at home. Was I busy just then, she wanted to know?

“I’ve got a bit of a problem,” she said. “What do you know about bad burns?”

“I’ll be right over,” I said.

I put on a clean shirt and grabbed my medical bag. If I’m being honest, I’ve always loved that kind of situation. An ex-girlfriend of mine once accused me of having White Knight Syndrome. When I asked her what that meant, she said, “It means you want to save everybody before you fuck them.”

I was perturbed to find, when I got to Keylee’s apartment, that she wasn’t alone. The largest man I have ever seen was sitting on her couch, one hand clasped to his chest.

“My drummer,” Keylee said. “He singed himself on the tea kettle. I think it might be second-degree. Sven, show Jeremiah your hand.”

I went to Sven and kneeled in front of him. “Let’s have a look, buddy,” I said in the voice I used when examining children. Something about the man seemed off.

Slowly, he unwound himself from his injured appendage and offered it up to me. What I saw could not have come from a tea kettle. The closest I’d ever encountered was a man who’d had an accident with a welding torch. Barring the use of a similar tool, it was unlikely Sven could have inflicted such a wound on himself.

“You need to go to a hospital,” I said. Then, because I didn’t want to sound like I was abdicating my responsibility, “We need to get you to a hospital.”

Sven shook his head. “No hospital.”

I looked to Keylee for help.

“Yeah, no,” she said, her words slow and caustic, her eyes trained on me. “We’re not going to a hospital.”

I knew I should not be a party to this situation. I felt my obligation was to call an ambulance and also maybe the police.

Instead, I said that I would see what I could do, and set about cleaning up Sven’s hand. Though my efforts must have caused him terrible pain, he made no sound, and when I was done, he curled the hand back into his chest and placed the other over it just as he’d been when I’d found him.

On my way out, I told Keylee that Sven’s injury wouldn’t heal right without further attention and that it would almost certainly become infected. This was the most courage I could summon. To this information, she gave no response.

Back in my own apartment, I locked the doors, turned out the lights and turned on the TV. I watched cartoons until late at night like I used to when I was upset as a kid. I didn’t like what I’d done to Sven, and also what I hadn’t done for him. But even more than that, I was unsettled by the scene in Keylee’s apartment––Keylee’s angry detachment, Sven’s silent acquiescence, and everything else, exactly as it always was. This wasn’t what people in emergency situations looked like or how they acted. It made me feel as if I’d been the panicked one, the vulnerable one. That I was the one who was hurt and needed care.

In the morning, I went to work. After my shift, I looked for excuses not to go home. I invited a colleague out for a drink, and when he declined, I went for one on my own. Then I ate at a diner I’d been to before and knew I didn’t like. When I could think of nothing else to do, I returned to my building and took the stairs instead of the elevator, opening the door to my floor as quietly as possible. I saw no one. When, out of curiosity, I went to my balcony and peered into Keylee’s apartment, I found it dark. She wasn’t even home.

I didn’t see Keylee all the rest of that week. I thought of Sven often, wondering about the fate of his hand and even looking for him at the hospital, hoping he’d come through the ED’s doors. But he never did. 

I finally saw Keylee the following Saturday. She was sitting on a deck chair on her side of the balcony. When I came outside, she waved, just like always. I took my own seat, pretending to give the weak sunset more attention than it deserved. 

“Jesus, Jer-bear,” she said. “I’m sorry about the other night. That was so fucked up, right?”

Her words were a weight lifted, both to hear her say them, and to hear her normal voice, breezy and light. I’d missed that, more than anything, in the last week. Outside of a few acquaintances from the hospital, Keylee was my only friend in Seattle.

 “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it was.”

“It was such a weird thing. Oh my God. I can’t even believe it happened.”

“But, what did happen, exactly?”

If Keylee heard my question, she ignored it. She went and got two beers from the kitchen and handed one to me over the railing.  

“You earned it,” she said. “For your good work.”

Though I knew I’d done no such good work, I accepted her offering, clinking my bottle to hers.

We talked for a little while, the sun sinking the rest of the way into the mountain clouds across the sound and leaving us in semi-darkness. I slouched into my chair, enjoying my drink. Keylee said something about her band having a show the next night.

“How will you play without Sven?” I asked.

Keylee was silent for moment. Then she laughed. “Oh, we’ll be all right.”

I felt myself laughing, too.

The next week, Keylee called again.

She sounded like herself. “You home? Because I got another thing-a-ring for you to do. Bring your gear.”

I had no illusions of her being alone this time. I didn’t bother to change my shirt. I did as I was told.

There was a woman sitting on Keylee’s couch––slender, stylishly dressed, and clutching a blood-soaked dish towel to her left forearm.

“My bass player,” Keylee said.

The woman removed the towel from her arm to reveal a laceration, long but straight. An easy suture job. This was something I could fix, and I could do it right there in Keylee’s living room.

“No trouble at all,” I said. “We’ll have you up and out of here in no time.”

“You were right,” the woman said, smiling at me, but speaking to Keylee. “He’s just what we needed.”

“He really is,” Keylee said, and I blushed under the weight of her praise.

Though the mood was lighter with this woman than with Sven, I didn’t linger. I finished sewing her arm, accepted effusive thanks from both her and Keylee, and went back home where I slept well in my bed.

And when Keylee called again a couple nights later, I felt I had been expecting it.

I knocked on Keylee’s door. She let me in, and I went to the kitchen to wash my hands. There was a college-age boy balled on the floor near the coffee table.

“She’s got it right up in my ribs this time,” he moaned to me, and I told him everything would be all right, though I had no idea what I would see once I got a look at him.

“Is this young man also in your band?” I asked Keylee.

“I think you know by now that he is not,” she said, a smile pulling at her lips, wanting to become a laugh.

What changed for me, between the boy with the pierced side (it turned out to be a sewing needle), the woman with the cut-up arm, and Sven? I thought a lot about this, at first. The last two injuries had been easily treatable. But just because I could, didn’t mean I should. These people weren’t friends of Keylee’s who just happened to get hurt while they hung out in her apartment. I knew that. I didn’t understand the circumstances around their injuries, but it was clear that Keylee was the agent. She was causing harm, then calling me over to clean up the mess. Whatever the arrangement between her and them, it was something with which I should have no part.

And yet, I answered Keylee’s calls. I never said no. I wondered why she never called on nights I was at the hospital and then eventually I figured out that she was setting her schedule around mine. I was not as unsettled by this realization as one might think. By the time I caught on, I was already fully invested.

The cases I encountered at Keylee’s were diverse. There were more cuts and puncture wounds and more burns. There were also missing toenails, a dislocated shoulder, an amputated nipple. There was a man suffering from a seemingly unending bout of vomiting. Had he been poisoned? I didn't ask. That was part of the unspoken rules. I treated symptoms and never inquired as to what had caused them. There was a simplicity to this, unlike at the hospital where I spent more time looking at computer screens than at the patients themselves, and where a person’s entire medical history would often unravel before me, proving that any good I could do would be temporary at best. As for the vomiting man, I started an IV and hung the fluid bag from Keylee’s shower rod. I checked on him periodically, drifting between the bathroom and the couch where Keylee was watching a Godzilla movie. I found it not an unpleasant way to pass an evening.

Some of the people in Keylee’s apartment were distraught when I got to them, their pain on full display in the most dramatic of fashions, like the vomiter, who moaned from the bathroom, shouting alternately for me and for Jesus. Others seemed to be enjoying themselves, and chatted with Keylee and I both, as if catching up with old friends (and I suppose some, in fact, were; we saw a number of repeat visitors). Others stayed quiet. Keylee’s demeanor changed depending on who she was with. Sometimes, she, too, was a chatterbox. Other times, a little mean. She was responding to the person in front of her, determining what they wanted most in that moment. I, for my part, played the role of the doctor, and the bleeding, whimpering, puking humans were always, always, always grateful.

For a long time, Keylee and I never talked about it what it was we were doing. There wasn’t a right time. I saw less and less of her outside her apartment, our trips to bars and restaurants having stopped. And, of course, I couldn’t question the situation while we were in the midst of it. One night though, on the balcony, I asked Keylee, “How do you find your clients?”

“Oh, here and there. They find me nowadays, mostly.”

“Nowadays,” I repeated.

“Yes. Nowadays.”

“You’ve been doing this awhile then?” I asked, thinking of her husband and his insistence at the end of their marriage that she not bring friends back to the house. Then I thought about how you can never really know what it’s like inside of someone else’s relationship, not even when they tell you everything about it.

“Why?” Keylee laughed. “Did you think I was new?”

“Look,” I said. “All I want to know is, who’s getting off on this? Are you getting off? Are they getting off?”

“Of course. Aren’t you getting off on it?” she asked.

I told her no, I most certainly was not getting off.

“I don’t mean with your dick,” she said. “You’re Superman in this story, right? I’m Lex Luthor pushing Lois Lane from the top of a building, and you get to swoop in and save her, every time.”

“Except Lois asked to be pushed.”

“See, you do understand,” Keylee said.

When I wasn’t with Keylee, I was thinking about Keylee. My real work suffered as a result. I became disengaged from my patients at the hospital. I became distracted and curt. I wasn’t the only one in the department like this––emergency medicine takes a toll on people. So I don’t know if my colleagues ever noticed. But I knew what had happened, what had changed.

My efforts at Keylee’s demanded more than just my mental energy. There began to be an economic cost as well. I was constantly buying supplies. I wanted to be prepared for any situation I might face when I walked into her apartment. Some of the things I needed were expensive, or entirely unavailable for retail purchase. These, I took from the hospital, slipping instruments and medications into my pocket at the end of each shift. I was terrified of stealing at first, but ultimately, the risk was worth it.

Like the night Keylee called me to her apartment and I found a man standing with his arm plunged into her kitchen sink.

 “Cold water seems right for the moment,” he said, “but I’m hoping you’ll have something more along the lines of an antidote?”

When I asked, “An antidote to what?” he pointed to a jar on the counter, which contained a live scorpion.

“Do you happen to know the species?” I asked. “Most North American scorpions aren’t actually toxic to humans. Some ice and ibuprofen will help with the swelling.”

“Let’s say we don’t know the species,” the man said. “Hypothetically.”

I turned to Keylee, and she shrugged. “The box just said, ‘Scorpion: medium-sized.’”

“Could we infer that ‘medium-sized’ is the species then?” the man asked through a chuckle. “Or is that the genus?”

“Either way, it’s all the rage this season. I heard they’re having a medium-sized retrospective at the zoo next month,” Keylee said.

The man shook his head. “You’ve been spending too much time with artists. Zoos don’t do retrospectives. Try that joke again, but say, ‘The museum is holding a retrospective on medium-sized, with a particular emphasis on scorpions.’”

In the end I gave him a dose of antivenom and was glad to have had it on hand for the occasion.

Then, another night, I arrived at Keylee’s to find a man lying in her hallway, unresponsive, a bluish tinge already crowding his features. Had Keylee somehow induced cardiac arrest, or was it an unintended consequence of a different injury? I didn’t ask, because, again, I never, under any circumstances, asked. But I did instruct Keylee to start CPR while I ran back to my apartment. It was the first time I’d ever involved her in my side of things.

When I returned, I told Keylee to move aside. I pulled the man’s shirt up and attached the pads of a recently acquired AED to his torso. It shocked him, but no luck. I injected epinephrine and atropine, and shocked him again. A serviceable sinus rhythm appeared on the monitor of the AED, and his eyes opened. He looked like he was ready to run, but I pushed both my hands onto his shoulders, holding him down.

“I need you to breathe,” I told him in a voice different from the one I used at the hospital. It was like something out of a soap opera.

He nodded and opened his mouth, taking a desperate gulp.

I’d never done anything quite like this before. There was no trauma team at my side, no paramedics barking into my ear, no family members hugging each other outside the door. It was just this man and me and Keylee. I could tell Keylee was feeling the rush, too. She laughed then and fell on her side so that she lay beside the man.

“Keep breathing,” I said in this new voice.

Keylee reached for the man’s hand, and I could see them both doing what I said. Breathing, that is. I slid down right there in the hall, too, and breathed. We lay like that for a long time, until the man said, “I’m all right now,” stood, rearranged his clothing, and left. Like Sven, I knew he shouldn’t be allowed to go. But unlike Sven, I didn’t worry about him after he was gone. I stayed in the hallway with Keylee awhile longer, savoring the moment, the life we had saved together.

The AED was what got me fired. I hadn’t taken it from the hospital. Instead, I had stolen it from the office building across the street. That’s how far my mindset had shifted in just a matter of months: I no longer cared if hundreds of people lost access to a lifesaving tool, if it meant I could have it for myself.

Of course, the office building had security cameras, and it didn’t take long for that to come back to me. The building’s management went to my hospital’s administration and said they weren’t going to press charges, but they wanted their equipment returned, and they wanted the hospital to know what kind of person they had working for them. And after that, I wasn’t working for them anymore.

I was distraught. Not because of the loss of the job, which I no longer particularly valued, but because of the shame. I had trained a long time to get where I was, and I’d lost it. I was unsure how long my savings would hold out.

“Don’t fret, Jer-bear,” Keylee said, when I told her what happened. “I’m not going to let you go to the poor house.”

She offered to pay my rent and to buy me groceries and medical supplies.

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “What about my car? What about my student loans? Insurance? My credit cards?”

“Maybe don’t worry about those anymore for a while?”

“That’s not how it works,” I said. “You can’t just stop paying bills.”

But that was exactly what I did.

With me unemployed, Keylee was able to step things up. She now had clients every night of the week. I wondered how much they were paying her for the services of injury and repair. She was good on her word to cover my rent along with hers. She bought the supplies I requested, boxes arriving directly to my door. And twice a week, she dropped off groceries: organic produce and meat, cage-free eggs, and occasionally a nice bottle of liquor. But she never offered to just give me my cut of the cash. I understood. I was not her employee.

Every night, something new awaited me. I was impressed by the variety of situations she conjured. I wondered if she was trying to keep me entertained as much as her clients. There were clever rashes, the webbing between fingers snipped, three marbles stuck up someone’s nose. Broken bones to be set, impalements to be extracted. I treated them all, and if there were cases where I was in over my head, I didn’t notice or I didn’t care. I began to feel there was nothing I couldn’t handle. On a few occasions, Keylee got right up next to me while I was doing my part, leaning over my shoulder or sitting beside me. This started after the night she’d performed CPR, and I wondered if that experience had sparked something for her. So, when she got close, I took the cue and said, “Hey, Keylee, give me a hand while you’re there,” then offered her some task like wrapping a bandage. I liked the feeling of us moving together in this way, but with me in charge. Although it complicated our roles. Who was who here?

Some time went by like this, a few months I think. I wasn’t unhappy. But I wasn't happy either. I found, with my confidence rising, that the thrill and compulsion was wearing off. I decided, like Keylee, I wanted to complicate my role. I broached the subject one evening while we were sitting on our respective balconies.

I had just opened a fourth beer and was feeling brave, so I told Keylee that I wanted to do both parts, the hurting and the fixing, and that I wanted to do it to her. I wanted to push her off the roof and then swoop to save her. Maybe it was all I had ever wanted. Not to fuck her, but to burn her with a soldering iron, to gouge her with a sewing needle, to clip the webbing between her thumb and index finger with scissors, and then gently, meticulously, lovingly clean and dress the wounds.

“I thought you might,” Keylee said. “That’s fine. But only if I can hurt you first.”

I considered this offer. “Do I get to choose how?”

“Sure,” she said. “What would you like?”

“Do you still have the scorpion?”

Keylee didn’t answer. She stepped through the doorway into her apartment, and I realized I didn’t know what she would return with, only that it wouldn’t be a scorpion.

She was back in an instant.

“Hold out your hands,” she said.

Then I knew. It was a brand. She was going to brand me, a stamp burned to the back of my hand showing I was hers. She was claiming me in the way I had always wanted to be claimed. It was a beautiful thing.

I offered my hands over the railing and felt the paring knife enter my palm before I saw it. There was no pain a first, but a cold sick feeling. I speculated, as if from afar, about the damage it had done.

“That’s my right hand. I can’t stitch up my own right hand,” I heard some person with my voice say. And then there was the pain, sudden and unwieldy, forcing all other thoughts from my mind, assuring me I wasn’t going to get anything I wanted. Not that night, and not for a long time.

“That’s right,” Keylee said. “So you’re just going to have to tell me how to do it.”