I finished with my last patient of the day, but there was still another of my colleagues in a room with a patient. Two office staff remained in the office: a medical assistant to put patients in the room, take their vitals and write down their medications and enter them in the computer, as well as one remaining receptionist.  The rest had already left for the day.  I appreciated the quiet and the office provided me with a brief respite from the tension of the hospital rotation and I took advantage of the time to do some paperwork at the end of the day.

The front office staffed buzzed me on my office phone: “Dr. Carson, there are two men here to see you.”

“Are they patients who are late for their appointments?  You know I have a 15-minute late rule.”

“No Dr. Carson.  They are not patients.  They said they must see you and are standing they seem to mean business.”  She was there to protect me from people with no appointments and drug reps etc.

“I don’t care, office hours are over.  Tell them if they want to see me, they must make an appointment and tell me what is the nature of their business.  They are probably lawyers who want me to testify as an expert witness or something.”

“They’re not lawyers.”

“What are they then?”

“I don’t know.  They’re not police, but they look serious and showed me some kind of badge from some agency, I don’t know, I was too scared to read it.  They said if I don’t let them see you, then they will just see themselves back.”

I thought that was quite aggressive.  So, I asked the receptionist, “ask them what is the nature of their business with me?”

“I know this sounds weird, but they said, sui generis is gone.”

“Send them in.”

The five-foot two-inch receptionist brought the 2 men to my office, and they both towered over her and were probably both six-three or better with shoulders that could function as retaining walls, if needed.

“Gentleman, please take some seats.  This is a bit unusual in a doctor’s office, so I want you to tell me what you need with me now.  I’ve got a lot to do.”  I figured I knew who they were, but I played dumb with them, so they would introduce themselves properly, although I knew it wouldn’t be an open book.  One guy sat down and stared at me, while the other bulk walked around the room, checking plants and bookshelves for electronic bugs, then he looked at me, asked me to stand up and he frisked me up and down, looking for who knows what. Guns?

“Give me your cell phone Carson.”

“Nope”

Then he stared at me and said, “We can do this the easy way or hard way Carson.  Which do you prefer?”

I handed him the cell phone.  I wanted to live.  “We’ll give it back to you when we’re done.  Just don’t need electronics around here recording our conversation.”

“So, you guys are Ollie’s other shadow men, I presume.  I met one of your colleagues at my house a few months ago and you all kind of look the same, no offense.”

“We prefer to call ourselves his handlers.  Listen, let’s get to the point. The old man is gone.  Do you know where he is Carson?”

My mouth dropped open just a bit with that announcement, and then, I folded my arms together in a defensive mode.  “No, I don’t know.  I haven’t talked to him since Easter when we went to church.”

“We know.  He said he would be in touch.   Did he contact you?”

“No, He never contacts me.  He only finds me at places, it seems, I don’t know.”

The second guy finally sat down after his inspections, then decided to chime in to the interrogation.  “I think you’re lying Dr. Carson.  Its best for you if you tell us the truth, because we’ll find out eventually, one way or the other.”

“Now let me get this straight,” I said.  “Your jobs are to shadow him, quietly and without calling attention to yourselves.  Right?  So why did you guys not do your job? Do you still get paid by whoever pays you, if you fail your jobs?”  Right then, I realized maybe I said too much because these guys were not ones who you wanted to piss off. But I said it.

“We are not there every second.  He needs privacy.   But he never just takes off without us knowing it.”

“How do you know he’s not just walking on the beach somewhere, or shopping you know like most —”

“Because he left some things behind.  All of his clothes and shoes, no suitcases gone but what worries us is he left his bible and his favorite Munich Oktoberfest beer mug that he never leaves without.”

That’s when I realized he really was gone, and these guys had no clue.  I could tell by the tension in their hands that they realized their asses were in big damn trouble and they needed me.   Let’s face it, he is 105 years old, and anything could happen, but his mind was as sharp as mine, maybe sharper.  I didn’t know whether he was injured, dead or in trouble somewhere, or whether he just had enough of the whole thing.

“We know he has chosen you as the author to write his book, and he has chosen to meet you sometimes, so if you hear of him, or he contacts you, we expect you will give us a call.”  He handed me his card that had simply a phone number on it and nothing else.  “We’ll be watching you now with some extra eyes Carson.   Be careful.”

I said nothing, and they showed themselves the door.  Although these guys seemed stressed, I felt an inner calm for some reason.  It’s hard to explain. Yes, I enjoyed my brief encounters with Ollie, but whatever happened to him, I realized that if he was dead, he was at peace with the almighty, and that if he was alive, he still knew how to take care of himself.

© SRCarson Publications