Her husband was not an actor, or a model, or an agent. Brian Wyler had done nothing more impressive in his life than winning a football trophy at seventeen, yet for some reason, the famous and beautiful Julia had fallen in love with him. They married young, and opted against children. But they were deliriously happy and eternally devoted to one another.
Yes, Julia Wyler was a practiced actress, and a skilled liar. But the day she was called to the stand at the Monroe County Courthouse to defend her husband, her talent abandoned her. She had rehearsed a convincing alibi for Brian, and was more than prepared to play the innocent and emotional housewife, but for reasons that even she could not comprehend, she simply couldn’t lie. She could only watch the smugness grow on the prosecutor’s face as she sobbingly confessed to his sins.
11 YEARS LATER
In his four years of pre-med university, seven years of medical school, and twelve as a practicing physician, Dr. Arlo Gordon had finally decided that he was, in fact, far too old to be killing people. He was nearly fifty, and looked it. The stress of failed surgeries and delusional patients begging to be saved had carved deep lines into his once handsome face, and his hair, whilst still full and thick, was streaked with silver.
He cleared his throat and removed his glasses. Heaving a great, dramatic sigh, he held his hands out in front of him and stared down at the palms he no longer recognised. They were skilled, careful hands; hands that had saved many lives... and that had killed many. It hadn’t bothered him so much in his more successful years, but now that his eldest daughter had suffered her second miscarriage, life seemed considerably more important.
“Doctor?”
Dr. Gordon glanced up from his hands. He hadn’t heard the door open, but the nurse, Olivia, was standing curiously in the doorway, her smooth black hair scraped back into a ponytail, her shockingly large green eyes shadowed in black kohl.
“Sorry, Olivia,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes tiredly before replacing his glasses. She shut the door carefully behind her and slid a manila envelope onto the doctor’s desk. He stared at it.
“Another one?” he asked blankly. She nodded quietly and checked her watch.
“It’s nearly ten,” she told him. “The second floor’s already closed up for tonight.”
“Liv...” the doctor murmured nervously. “I don’t-”
She pushed the envelope out of the way and perched on the corner of the desk, raising an eyebrow inquiringly. Olivia Walker was possibly the most beautiful young woman Arlo had ever worked with- surely more beautiful than his wife, although it pained him to admit it. He was still handsome himself, although old age had done its best to prevent women who weren’t his wife from being attracted to him. But, for some reason, Olivia was.
“The other nurse has already left,” she assured hm. “The night watch doesn’t come around here for a half hour yet. We have time.”
“No... I can’t,” Arlo forced himself to say. “Not tonight. My wife-”
“Feeling guilty, Arlo?” Olivia said coldly. “That’s never stopped you before.”
“Liv, it might be a revelation to you, but I actually have a family. I have a wife, and three daughters at home. Sometimes I have to be there for them, and not here with you.”
Olivia glared at him, stung. After an icy moment of silence, she slid off the desk and turned her back on him to leave the room. She paused by the door, and muttered something that, had she not been sleeping with her boss, would have had her fired, before slamming it behind her.
***
Arlo pulled up the driveway just before midnight, to the blissful quiet of a house where all the children are asleep. He found his wife in the kitchen, sitting at the table in her nightgown with her ear to the telephone receiver.
“Honey, I know,” she spoke into the mouthpiece. “It’s hard, but you’ll get through it, I promise.” She looked up at Arlo standing awkwardly in the doorway and raised an eyebrow. “Look, sweetie, your father’s just walked in. Get some sleep and I’ll come straight over in the morning, alright? Okay, I love you too.”
She hung up the receiver and stared stonily up at him. “That was Jenny,” she said quietly. “She and Harvey are going to book tests at the fertility clinic. Why are you home so late, anyway?”
“New patient file,” Arlo replied tiredly. “Paperwork.”
Kate Gordon looked up at her husband with pain in her eyes. She had loved him for twenty-eight years, but she had learned recently that his love for her had faded as they had grown older. Stress and work had driven an angry wedge between them, not to mention the considerable lack of lovemaking since Jenny’s first miscarriage. There was so much she wanted to tell him in that single, long moment. But the sadness in his eyes told her it was not the time, so she held her tongue, and they went up to bed.
***
Brian was already perched on the edge of the examination chair when Dr. Gordon entered his office the next morning. A pang of nerves and anguish shuddered through him when he saw Brian, looking as happy as a five-year-old boy with a two-scoop ice cream cone, swinging his legs like reverse pendulums and grinning widely.
“Hey, Doc!” the patient beamed.
“Morning, Brian,” Arlo replied, as jovially as he could.
“Did you get the message?” Brian asked eagerly. “I’m getting out today. Eleven years I’ve been here, and the wife’s never visited once. She’s called, of course, but it’s not the same, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dr. Gordon mumbled, thinking of his own wife at home.
“Anyway, she doesn’t know I got out early. I’ll show up at the house with a big bunch of flowers and no handcuffs, I bet she’ll be over the freaking moon. Everything will go back to the way it was.” He sighed. “God, I miss her.”
While Brian talked on and on about the life he’d missed out on those past eleven years, Arlo assembled his instruments. He had worked at Monroe County Prison for five years, and every time a prisoner was released, they went through the same procedure. Because the prison wasn’t the most hygienic place in the world, they had to be pumped full of antitoxins to protect against any harmful micro-organisms with which they might have come into contact. Not to mention the fact that the inmates worked, slept and showered in incredibly close quarters, which meant that a basic immunity shot was also necessary.
“I never expected for a girl like that to fall in love with me,” Brian was saying. “I mean, she’s beautiful. Beautiful. She’s modelled in Paris, for Christ’s sake. And she’s acted too- people know her name all over the world, and she marries a guy like me? I mean, she’s not as famous as Angelina Jolie, but she’s still way out of my league. Before this, I was in plumbing!” He chuckled and stared blankly ahead, reminiscing.
Dr. Gordon wiped Brian’s arm with a disinfectant cloth and pushed the needle under his skin. Brian winced and bit his lip, but didn’t cry out like some of the others had. He fell silent though, and frowned as he watched the doctor unwind the catheter and push a syringe into the opening at the other end, injecting the translucent, honey-coloured liquid into his body.
“You okay?” the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah...” Brian whispered. “I just can’t wait to see Julia.”
The doctor removed the needle from Brian’s arm and waited for a few moments, before the man’s breath slowed, and he slumped over the side of the chair, his arm hanging limp and lifeless, his chest still. Arlo pressed two fingers to Brian’s neck and waited for a moment.
“Time of death; nine seventeen.”
***
“I don’t understand.”
Julia Wyler sat awkwardly on the other side of Dr. Gordon’s desk, her pale yellow hair pinned up in a tight bun and her bright blue eyes shaded with heavy black liner. Red tendrils began to thicken around her pupils, tears of frustration forming.
“Brian was on death row for a year before today,” Arlo explained in a low voice. “This system was developed last January, but we’ve only recently begun to use it in county prisons. The basic idea is-”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” Julia interrupted. “Why didn’t anyone call and tell me, so I could at least say goodbye to him? I never got to see him! Not once, since he came here! And now the last memory I’ll have had of him is that day at the courthouse when they took him away…” She trailed off, burying her face in her hands and sobbing loudly.
Arlo swallowed, resisting the overwhelming urge to put an arm around her, and tell her everything was going to be fine. But, much as he disagreed with the way he was instructed to carry out the executions, comforting loved ones was not part of the job description.
“We carried out a study last year which showed that prisoners on death row were more likely to cause serious problems in the months or weeks coming up to their executions. Some tried to escape, some started regular fights; one even killed two fellow inmates and a sergeant. So a judge in Napa came up with a system by which the inmates on death row would be told they were being released, instead of being executed. So, on what would, to them, be there last day, they would receive a medical check-up during which, instead of being injected with an immune booster, they would be put to death by lethal injection.”
“What did he say?” Julia whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“His last words,” she hissed. “What were they?”
Arlo sighed. “He said he couldn’t wait to see you.”
“Then why couldn’t you let him?!” Julia screamed, standing up, her entire body shaking with fury, her eyes narrow slits of anger. “Why couldn’t you grant his dying wish? What harm would it have done to you?”
“It would have been unethical,” Arlo replied calmly, placing a reassuring hand on her trembling shoulder, until she sat down again, still quivering. “And furthermore, I am not the one who makes those decisions. I am not the one who passes the sentence; I am merely the one who carries out the orders.”
They sat in silence for what felt like an hour. Julia cried soundlessly, wide tears running over her cheeks and dripping from her chin onto the silk scarf at her throat.
“It was an accident,” Julia said quietly. Arlo looked up. “He never meant for it to happen. I remember, he came home in tears, panicking; there was blood on his shirt, and his tie was ripped. I didn’t understand... He just kept saying ‘someone’s dead, someone’s dead,’ and I didn’t- I didn’t know what to do.” She looked up at the doctor. “But I loved him, you know? He was my forever.”
“You didn’t know how someone you loved so much could shock you like this.”
“Yes.” Julia nodded and buried her face in her hands once more.
“I’m so sorry, Julia. I really am. I didn’t want to have to do this. But once he was sentenced, there was nothing to be done. He may not have meant for it to happen, but it did happen. He was not an innocent man.” He said the last sentence with a distinct finality in his voice. Julia looked up and replied in a quieter voice that he thought was possible.
“But I loved him.”
