The Remains Crumble in the Ashtray

 

William O´Dole was a highly respected doctor by society and his family. He was the first surgeon to have ever transplanted a dog´s heart into a human being’s body successfully. This event made him well known worldwide.

However, in the last couple of months, Doctor O´Dole had been going through a dilemma.

It all happened on the 14th of July. Dr. O´Dole was at his office attending a patient when suddenly a woman carrying a child, which looked as if it had fainted, came stomping angrily into his office.

The woman howled, “you murderer you killed my baby!”

Dr. O´Dole was perplexed. How could he have killed this woman's daughter if he couldn't even remember who the lady was?

“You must be mistaken Madam. I don't know who you are”, said the doctor shaking like a leaf .

“Oh, don't give me that crap! You killed her! Do you need more proof than this?” She shoved a sheet of paper into his face. It was a prescription with his name printed across the top and his signature at the bottom right hand corner.

“What's this?” he asked.

“My, my don't tell me you don't know a prescription when you see one” she angrily answered.

“I can't remember if …”, he started saying when the woman began shouting .

“Someone called the police! He killed my baby! He killed my baby!”

The patients in the waiting room didn't know what was happening and as soon as they heard the woman´s screams they called the police.

In a matter of minutes, Dr. O´Dole´s office was full of police officers, ambulance technicians and worse of all -reporters, at least five of them snapping away. This would be the end of his successful reputation and career.

Dr. O´Dole was taken to the police station and ask thousands of questions.

“Is this your prescription?”

“Is this your handwriting?”

“Is this your signature?”

Of course, all the answers to these questions were yes. But how could this have happened? Dr. O´Dole was speechless.

After being questioned for over 3 hours, Dr. O´Dole was let out on bail. He returned to his office as fast as possible. When he got there, he locked all the doors and disconnected the telephone so that he could think about this matter in peace.

Suddenly he had the idea of checking his files. Now there was some hope because he remembered that he always kept a copy of every prescription in the patients´ files, which were kept in another room. If he had made out a prescription with TT48 (a poison strong enough to kill an elephant) there would be a copy in the file.

As he was walking towards the file cabinet he froze. His arch number one enemy, Dr. Jack Butcher's office light was still on. It was past 8:00 PM and Dr. Butcher usually left the office around 6:00 PM.

Dr. O´Dole and Dr. Butcher had been the best of friends until Dr. became famous. Actually Dr. Butcher had been the one who started experimenting heart transplants, however, he thought that it was a waste of time. So, he asked Dr. O´Dole if he wanted to have a look at it because he had given up the idea. As a result, Dr. O´Dole worked it out and got all the credit for it. Dr. Butcher didn't accept it though.

When Dr. O´Dole reached the filing cabinet, the envelope with the little girl’s prescription was missing. “Where can it be?”, he asked out loud.

As he was going back to his office, he saw Dr. Butcher sitting at his desk. What he saw gave him the creeps. Dr. Butcher was staring at a yellow envelope on his desk (Dr. O´Dole used yellow envelopes for children patients).

Dr. Butcher was just staring at the envelope as if he were a statue. Slowly and with great excitement, he picked up the unopened envelope and set fire to it with a match. With the faint smile on his face, he watched the remains crumble in the ashtray.

Written: March 23, 1990

Note: Another old piece that I found in my drawer. I have decided not to change a word. Perhaps nowadays I would. This is a work of fiction.

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