Dr. Death

“Oh, I forget to tell you guys about this call I answered the other day,” Glen said as we were beginning to disconnect and pack up our gear. We had just finished rehearsing and were going through the usual shallow banter that band mates often engage in during the quiet times between the instances of deafening music. I had always thought being in a band was an interesting dynamic; I had rarely become true friends with the other guys I performed with. We usually maintained a warm and friendly, but decidedly empty, relationship. This was a fact I have always thought odd, considering a band’s goal has always been to create honest and powerful sonic art.

“Oh yeah? What was it all about?” Brian, one of the singers and guitar players of the group, vacantly asked. Glen was a police officer and hearing his short stories of the petty crime around the city had become somewhat commonplace for us.

“Well, it was a suicide call.” I felt the mood shift in that basement room subtly. Perhaps it was only inside of me. “You know that pub, down on Main and Broadway? Well, the guy lived just up in the apartment building above the place.”

“No way! Derrick and I were there a while ago. Remember that night? We certainly had a few!” Brian grinned over at Derrick, the other guitar player, vocalist, and likely the leader of our mediocre group.

“Yeah. We were at least two sheets to the wind that night. That was a good time.” Derrick responded, but he didn’t seem to be entirely interested in anything that was going on. But that was his way and we were used to it.

“So, my partner and I were the first on the scene. We walked in and saw him just sitting there. He was sitting at the table with his head face down on the tabletop. The landlord called it in. He had brought up a couple of prospective renters to show the place, because I guess the guy was supposed to be moving out at the end of the month. So, that landlord bangs on the door, right? And no one answers. He keeps banging and banging. Eventually he decides, ‘I’m the landlord, this guy was supposed to be here to let me show this apartment, so I’ll use my landlord right and open the place up and show it regardless.’ And he does so. He opens the door up, walks into the room and finds the guy just sitting there, at his kitchen table, motionless. At first he thinks he’s just sleeping, right? So he goes up to him and starts tapping him, trying to wake him up. But this guy won’t move. The landlord then notices the wounds and he gets out of there – quick. That’s when we get the call and show up.

“You should’ve seen the guy’s cuts. He carved massive gouges out of both of his calves - right above his Achilles - and then cut into both wrists. I mean, you could see the bones! This guy was pretty serious. As far as we could tell, he had filled his bath tub with water, got in, cut himself open and bled himself out. Then, somehow, he drained the bath tub, walked over to the kitchen table, sat down and died. He had positioned photographs of his wife, who I guess had just recently died, on the table for him to look at as he passed on.”

“It’s incredible he had the strength to make it from the bathroom to the kitchen if he had already bled so much.” I was, at this point, completely engaged in the story, and I couldn’t help but comment on this Herculean feat.

“That’s what we thought at first too. There was pretty much no blood where he was found, either, just two tiny pools in the carpet around his feet. But, the head medical examiner came to the same conclusion as us. At first I had thought maybe it was a murder because when I initially looked at him I saw he had this massive swollen lump on his head, and it looked sort of grey, like brain matter. You know what I mean? Have you ever seen brain matter?”

“No, I haven’t...” Brian responded for all of us. Why would we have ever seen brain matter?

“Fair enough. The poor bloke had this huge thing on his head. I don’t know if it was cancerous or not. But we figured out pretty quickly that he hadn’t been killed and it was just a suicide.”

“That’s pretty sad, I guess, with the photographs on the table and whatever.” Brian said as he continued to dismantle his gear. I had long stopped trying to pack my equipment away.

“Yes, it was.” Glen said sharply. “But, you’d be surprised at how common it is. Back in England I often got the suicide calls. The guys around the station started calling me ‘Dr. Death,’ I got them so much.”

This struck me as strange, especially in England. I wondered if Glen or his coworkers knew the connotations of that name and where it has been most infamously used. I couldn’t imagine that they didn’t know. It certainly didn’t really seem to be the appropriate nick name, but I said nothing.

“Anyways, suicides seem to do that quite often. I’ve responded to lots of calls where the body is surrounded by photographs of loved ones and whatever. I guess they want to see them as they die.

“The strange thing about this guy, though, was that he was sober. Apparently he was about sixty two or sixty three and a raging alcoholic. But, when we found him, there was no alcohol about. And none in his system, either.”

“I think that shows how serious he was about it. I mean, it was the one thing he didn’t want to screw up because he was drunk.” I’m not sure I even meant to say that out loud.

“I don’t know. I think he wanted to be sober as he died. He wanted to experience it that way, you know?” Glen responded with cold authority. “You want to know serious, though? Man, this is crazy. The crime scene clean up guys told us this story. Apparently, and who knows if it’s true, but they had to clean up this one suicide this time, and it was a doctor. She was a surgeon apparently, and she had injected into her leg this extremely strong sedative. Then, using a scalpel, she opened up her leg, found that major artery down there, and with her fist she tugged it out of her leg. And, I mean tugged,” Glen emphasised this word with a motion of his fist. It looked like his empty fist was heaving on a tight elastic. “And then, with the same scalpel, she cut the artery into two.”

“I bet the blood hit the roof!” Brian commented, looking up at the roof of the basement as though he would find the evidence there.

“Oh, absolutely.” Glen responded.

A silence came upon our group and we all spent a moment within ourselves. Derrick continued, undeterred, to pack his gear up. I watched the men around me vacantly.

“I just don’t get it, you know?” Brian broke the silence. “I mean, suicide. Like, it can’t be that bad. Go get some treatment for your depression. Get some medication to get better. We have these things now. I just don’t understand how somebody can get so far along and actually go through with that sort of thing.”

“I guess you never know.” Derrick submitted mysteriously. “You just don’t know their mindset.”

“Yeah, I agree.” Glen said as he began to dismantle his drums. “Except for grief. I can understand when you lose a loved one. Nothing can make that better. Except for time, I guess. But even then you’re sort of right, Brian. ”

I couldn’t think of anything to say in agreement.

The Crescent Heights at The 100 Club in London

This past summer I had the incredible experience of performing at the legendary 100 Club in London. Here is a clip of us playing two songs: