Syringes and morphine

Syringes and morphine appear in Pet Sematary as the tools Louis Creed reaches for when he must undo what the Micmac burying ground has done. They are the instruments of a second death, the medical equipment a doctor turns against the patients he himself has made.

Medical Equipment as Executioner's Tools

Louis keeps a black medical bag stocked with syringes and multidose vials of morphine. The bag is stored on the high shelf of the upstairs bathroom, and he retrieves it on the night of Norma Crandall's heart attack, sending Jud across the road to fetch it. Later, after Gage's funeral, Louis brings the bag into the master bedroom and opens it, checking its contents. He finds syringes and ampules of "very deadly stuff" and sets the bag by the bed, ready for use. The bag is not merely a doctor's kit; it becomes an arsenal against the resurrected.

Killing Church with Morphine

The first use of the syringes is against Church. On the morning after Louis has carried Gage's body to the Micmac burying ground, he sees the cat perched on the roof of a strange blue Chevette in Jud's driveway. Louis puts a can of cat food on the car's trunk, and when Church begins to eat, Louis takes a syringe from his jacket pocket, fills it with 75 milligrams of morphine from a multidose vial, and sinks the needle deep into the cat's haunch. Church struggles, spits, and claws, but Louis holds on and depresses the plunger all the way. The cat leaps off the car, the needle and syringe dangling from its haunch before falling and breaking. Church weaves drunkenly, reaches the porch steps, falls off, and dies on the bare patch at the foot of the steps. Louis is indifferent to the broken syringe; he has more of everything.

Preparing for Gage

After discovering Rachel's body in Jud's house, Louis steps over to the kitchen table and removes three more Becton-Dickson syringes from his pocket. He strips them of their paper coverings and lays them out in a neat row. He removes three more multidose vials and fills each syringe with enough morphine to kill a horse. He puts them in his pocket and goes upstairs to find Gage. The preparation is methodical, clinical—the same precision he would use in an operating room, now turned to a different purpose.

Killing Gage with Morphine

When Louis confronts the resurrected Gage in the upstairs hallway, the thing that wears his son's face attacks him with a scalpel. Louis kicks Gage's feet from under him, straddles him, and pins the hand holding the scalpel. He claws for one of the hypos and gets it out, but the thing under him bucks and writhes, its face rippling through the features of Jud, Victor Pascow, Louis himself, and finally the Wendigo. The first hypo flies out of Louis's hand and rolls down the hall. He gropes for another, brings it out, and jams it straight down into the small of Gage's back. The thing screams and sunfishes, nearly throwing him off. Grunting, Louis gets the third syringe and jams it into Gage's arm, depressing the plunger all the way. He gets off then and backs down the hallway. Gage staggers toward him, drops the scalpel after five steps, and after a dozen steps falls to his knees. For a moment Louis sees his real son—face unhappy and filled with pain—who cries "Daddy!" before falling forward on his face. Louis slides his fingers down Gage's throat, finds the pulse, and monitors it until there is nothing.

The Transformation of Medical Purpose

The syringes and morphine represent the inversion of Louis's medical vocation. As a doctor, he has spent his career preserving life; now he uses the same tools to end it. The morphine that could ease a patient's pain becomes the agent of a second death. The clinical precision with which he prepares the syringes—laying them out in a row, filling each from a multidose vial—mirrors the routine of a physician preparing for a procedure, but the procedure is execution. The syringes are the instruments of a terrible mercy, the only way Louis can stop what he has started.