Dialogues Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  2.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  District Attorney Brawley Loren

  3.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Mrs. Viviana Troy

  4.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  5.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Gabriel Mundàne

  6.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Medical Log: Tory Troy

  Skyline Pigeon

  7.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  8.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Dr. Gwyneth June

  9.

  Dane Lyman, AM Live

  District Attorney Brawley Loren

  10.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  11.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Judge Gerard Becker

  12.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Mrs. Viviana Troy

  13.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  14.

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  Seneca Stone

  15.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  16.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  A Crow on the Lawn

  of the House I Grew Up In

  17.

  Tory Troy

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  18.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  19.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  20.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  21.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Mrs. Viviana Troy

  22.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  23.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Crouch Troy

  24.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  25.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Crouch Troy

  Attorney Marilyn Costanza

  26.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  27.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  28.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Halle Bexley

  29.

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Lester Jackson

  30.

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  District Attorney Brawley Loren

  Judge Gerard Becker

  The Jury Pool

  31.

  Judge Gerard Becker

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  District Attorney Brawley Loren

  The Jury

  32.

  Tory Troy

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  33.

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  34.

  Tory Troy

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  35.

  Tory Troy

  Psychiatric Nurse Chiarra Ziegler

  36.

  Court Transcript

  37.

  Court Transcript

  38.

  Juror Number 4

  Juror Number 3

  39.

  Tory Troy

  Defense Counsel Carolyn Payne

  40.

  Court Transcript

  41.

  Viviana Troy

  Defense Counsel Carolyn Payne

  42.

  Court Transcript

  43.

  Tory Troy

  Psychiatric Nurse Chiarra Ziegler

  44.

  Court Transcript

  45.

  Tory Troy

  Psychiatric Nurse Chiarra Ziegler

  46.

  Court Transcript

  47.

  Tory Troy

  Defense Attorney Carolyn Payne

  48.

  Tory Troy

  Psychiatric Nurse Chiarra Ziegler

  49.

  Court Transcript

  50.

  The Jury

  51.

  Court Transcript

  52.

  Tory Troy

  Viviana Troy

  53.

  Tory Troy

  Father David North

  54.

  Corrections Officer Miranda Wiater

  Corrections Officer Jesus Moralés

  55.

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  Ward Nine

  The Last Dialogue

  I watch myself from above …

  Euthanasia Day

  “Jake! JAKE!! Call 911! It’s Tory! I don’t think she’s breathing!”

  The Hospital of St. Raphael

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  To my trinity of the female spirit …

  My wife, Pam

  My mother, Lee

  My sister, Janet

  Lights for me in dark places

  PROLOGUE

  Euthanasia Day

  Friday, October 11, 2002

  8:00 A.M.

  Today is Friday. Euthanasia day at the Waterbridge Animal Shelter.

  The shelter stands at the corner of two New Haven streets in a century-old house. The house is tall, gabled, and has large windows with many panes. It is weathered and has a wraparound porch in need of painting. Many families have walked its halls and slept in its rooms since it was built.

  A pretty young woman with dark brown hair moves through the rooms of the shelter. Her face is expressionless. Not empty or blank, though—it is more … neutral.

  The linoleum in the house is cracked and worn. It is a hideous brown and green pattern, a style that was very popular in the fifties. She sometimes thinks what a pity it is that the house’s beautiful hardwood floors were covered by the atrocious linoleum … but animals are messy.

  The young woman wears a light-blue smock with a name badge attached to it: Tory. The smock is spotless. In one pocket of the smock is a box of Tic Tacs, the orange ones—not many people like the orange ones—and a small spiral notebook. Around her neck is a set of small bud headphones, worn like a choker. In the other pocket of her smock is a pink iPod. She always brings it to work but rarely gets a chance to listen to anything on it.

  Tory is known to be pleasant and agreeable, both with her coworkers and visitors to the shelter, but sometimes she seems a little distant. She only really smiles for the animals.

  Tory knows that certain of her duties are terrible, but she takes some comfort in knowing that they are also merciful. Her face sometimes shows this conflict. It is a state of uneasy surrender. She is resigned to what she must do, but it is difficult, and lately, with each day that passes, it becomes more so. She is not a Stephen King fan by a long shot, but she sometimes thinks about a line she heard in the movie Pet Sematary: “Sometimes dead is better.”

  This is a new job for Tory. After college, she took a job with a pharmaceutical company as a sales representative. The job had nothing to do with what she studied in college—American literature—but it paid well, and it came with benefits. She traveled around New England, visiting doctors and introducing new medicines to them, and she also worked with large hospitals, handling their drug needs. Her psychology minor often came in handy when dealing with doctors and hospital buyers, as well as with their staffs. One of the company’s biggest sellers was the generic form of Pavulon, pancuroniu
m bromide, which is used to paralyze patients before surgery.

  Tory did well with the drug company and managed to put aside a fair amount of money. She lived at home with her mother, Viviana, who would only accept a small contribution to the household expenses each month from Tory, insisting that she save as much as possible. That money came in handy when Tory’s position was eliminated after the company launched a secure, interactive Web site for ordering pharmaceuticals.

  She was out of work almost a year—a year she spent writing, and reading, and trying to decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She completed a few things she was happy with—a novella, a short story—but she couldn’t stop herself from wondering if she would ever fulfill her college writing professor’s hope for her. “Don’t tell me a story, Tory,” Mr. Mundàne used to say to her, always giving the “story/Tory” rhyme a sly little grin. “Show me life. I know you can do it.” She still wasn’t sure she knew precisely how to do it, but some of her writings were things she would not have been embarrassed to show Gabriel Mundàne.

  Then, one day during that solitary time, she saw an Animal World documentary on cable that truly touched her, and she suddenly knew she wanted to work with animals. In fact, it felt like what people who have had a calling say it feels like. She applied at Waterbridge the following day. When she was offered training to become a euthanasia technician, she accepted, and has been working as one ever since.

  This morning it happens to be raining. Heavily. Tory mostly ignores the rain, but every now and then she walks to a window, stares out at the gray sky, and watches the sheets of water pour off the house’s clogged gutters.

  It is cold today. The song may have lamented rainy days and Mondays, but Tory always felt that a cold and rainy Friday, especially one in October, was much sadder.

  Today is Friday. Euthanasia day. The gas chamber is in the back of the building on the ground floor. It holds a few animals at a time, and Tory is the euthanasia technician who operates it.

  Tory knows the black Lab will go today. And probably the terrier. The black-and-white kitten too.

  Rainy Fridays are the worst, she thinks to herself as she prepares the coffee. Marcy should be here any minute. Jake’ll probably be late.

  Tory has already checked on and fed the animals. For some, the food she gave them would be their last meal.

  Shelter workers who must deal with the unavoidable reality of euthanizing sick, unwanted, or violent animals usually adopt one of three modes of coping. Some become withdrawn and robotic and completely distance themselves from the animals. Some become sadistic. Tory has heard stories about these kinds of workers, and her loathing for them runs deep.

  Then there are workers like Tory, who believe wholeheartedly that they are working for a greater good, that a merciful and humane death is better than … well, better than any alternative other than the impossible one of finding a home for every animal.

  The Waterbridge Shelter uses carbon monoxide to euthanize animals. Tory Troy is a state-certified animal euthanasia technician, and she knows it is only a matter of time before the shelter switches to lethal injection, which some say is more humane. Waterbridge is state-and city-funded, though, and change takes time. So, for the foreseeable future, Tory euthanizes the animals in a gas chamber.

  Tory hears voices but continues to stare out the window at the pouring rain. The voices belong to Marcy and Jake. They arrived together, Tory thinks. Imagine that. Jake is on time.

  She steps away from the window and calls out, “I’m in here, guys.…”

  3:30 P.M.

  The gas chamber is silent. Tory knows that the lethal carbon monoxide has done its job. Now comes the removal, the disposal, and the cleaning of the chamber.

  Tory pulls on heavy yellow rubber gloves, dons a face mask, and steels herself for the task before her. This is getting harder, she thinks. Much harder.

  Jake doesn’t leave his office when Tory is emptying the chamber, and none of the front-office staff comes anywhere near the back of the building.

  This part of her job sometimes summons to Tory’s mind a quote from a favorite poem of hers, Tagore’s “Stray Birds”: “This life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same narrow ship. In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.” She takes comfort in the image of all the euthanized animals finding their way ashore and spending the rest of eternity happy and content. Sometimes she scolds herself for being such a sentimentalist, but this does not stop the thought; her mind automatically makes the leap to such a comforting ideal.

  Tory pauses a moment, her gloved hands hanging by her side, her silent headphones embracing her neck. She feels something welling up inside her, but she can’t identify the feeling. Is it sadness? Anger? Panic? Fear? She doesn’t know, but she does know she has never felt like this. Yes, there have been moments when she has felt all of those emotions, in brief flashes stabbing at her consciousness … but today is different.

  And then, a sudden kaleidoscope of images and sounds flood her mind … the dogs and cats that have passed through the shelter over the past many months … the inside of the death chamber … the families walking through the kennel area, the children looking for the absolutely perfect pet … the pleading expressions in the eyes of the caged animals as they mentally beg these strangers to take them home—and away from this place … the workday chatter of the office staff, oblivious to the reality of what is happening at the back of the building … the image of Tory herself sitting on the couch in her mother’s living room on any Friday night over the past few months, hugging a pillow, her legs curled beneath her, utterly unable to eat a thing until, at the earliest, Saturday night … the looming shadows the old house throws when the sun hits it a certain way … and then, once again, the animals … the animals …

  Tory reaches out and grabs the door handle of the gas chamber.

  She closes her eyes a moment and takes a breath. Then she opens her eyes … and then she opens the door.

  FIRST GRADE WRITING ASSIGNMENT

  ST. FRANCIS GRAMMAR SCHOOL

  SISTER AGNES MARY’S CLASS

  my kat henry

  by victoria troy

  i have a kat. his name is henry. he is has blak furr and his nose is wite. i love my kat henry very much. sometimes he sleeps on my pilow at night. he purrs becau when I pet him. sometimes he wakes me up when he purrs. Two Ate days ago my dady made henry cry. he stepped in on his tail. i cried too when daddy stepped on my kat’s tail. so i pet henry and made him feel beter. he rubed his nose on me and he likes to eat treets.

  the end

  1

  Tory Troy

  Dr. Baraku Bexley

  “I’ve been thinking about suicide lately. A lot.”

  “How often is ‘a lot’?”

  “At least once a day, although sometimes I may go a couple of days without thinking about it.”

  “When you say you’ve been thinking about it, what does that mean? Are you imagining ways of doing it? Are you thinking about where you would do it?”

  “No, I know how I’ll do it.”

  “Yes?”

  “Pills.”

  “What kind of pills?”

  “Painkillers. I’ve got hidden away on the outside eighty-seven hydrocodone tablets. You know: the generic of Vicodin. I got them from a friend who had a prescription for a hundred and only used thirteen. She had some kind of really bad disk problem in her back, but they fixed it and she didn’t need the pills anymore. So she gave them to me. I figure I could take the whole batch in three or four swallows and within a few hours I’d be dead.”

  “What if you don’t die?”

  “Oh, I’ll die.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I did my homework.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I looked up hydrocodone on the Internet. The lethal dose, depending on tolerance, could be anywhere from around fifty or sixty milligrams up. If I take all eighty-seven, I’l
l be getting over six hundred fifty milligrams, which should be plenty for someone my size. I’m only a hundred nine pounds. Some kid who weighed eighty-nine pounds died from taking only ten pills. I’d say eighty-seven ought to do the trick.”

  “Yes, I suppose it would.”

  “Plus I forgot to tell you—I’m going to down them with tequila.”

  “You’re talking like this is a done deal.”

  “No, of course not. I’d have to get out of here first, right? And in all probability, that’s somewhat unlikely. It’s just that you asked how I would do it, so I told you.”