by A. R. Shaw
Soon, they pulled into the UW medical facility campus and the doors opened. Dane stood up and so did several other passengers. “You there, let’s see your ID.”
Crap, are you kidding me?
It was the female officer’s voice from behind her.
Dane turned around along with several of the other passengers. And to her relief the officer was pointing her bully stick at the kid wearing the blue plaid shirt. He couldn’t catch a break today and she watched him roll his eyes at the officer. Bad move, kid.
Dane nearly chuckled. He wasn’t having a good morning. Someone ought to tip him off to wear something the color of mud and mess up his hair the next day if at all possible. It wouldn’t stop the questioning, but it would make him less conspicuous.
Dane pulled her green army jacket closer, adjusted her backpack over her shoulder, and walked off the train along with the rest of the crowd. She was now officially on the University of Washington Medical Center campus and walked along with the others as if she knew where she was going as they walked past several more armed officers. These were National Guardsmen units with the official MP armbands. They weren’t taking any chances. The campus arson fires were all over the news and perhaps that’s why the military presence was in force here. They’d not yet infiltrated the medical school. Then it dawned on her why the officers kept stopping the kid. He fit the profile. They were searching for one particular demographic. Tall, lanky kids that wore bright pastels and looked as innocent as if they just came from volunteering at a Mormon Easter egg hunt but were nothing of the kind. Out-of-towners. Still she doubted that particular kid had anything to do with the arsons. Then again, that was the point. That’s what she was trying to do. She wasn’t there at the university’s campus to murder someone…a rapist posing as a medical student, nope. She was just one of the many shlubs on her way to do a job…perhaps a computer programmer or something like that.
11
Matthew
The clod of meatloaf before him, smelled savory and good…it didn’t look good, though. Not the least bit appetizing. It looked like something he used to scoop up from his mother’s lawn after her old dog Cody took a dump. The next thing he knew, Owen slapped down a wooden spoonful of instant mashed potatoes with such force the plate he held with both hands bobbed down and then up again.
“I don’t…I don’t like those.”
“Who doesn’t like mashed potatoes?” Owen said.
Matthew raised his eyebrows. “I like mashed potatoes. I don’t…that stuff,” he pointed at the glue-like mound edging too close to the meat he wasn’t sure about, either. “I don’t like instant mashed potatoes. They make me gag. That’s not really food.”
“Don’t be a baby. You’re the one that asked for something other than chili. Eat your food.” Owen said shaking the wooden spoon in his hand to emphasis the words.
Matthew drew his eyebrows together. “You sound like my mother.”
“I heard that.”
Rebecca giggled.
He liked the sound of that. Her voice was light and airy. If only they could all make her forget what happened.
“I’ve missed you guys,” she said.
Quick to answer, Owen said, “We missed you, too.”
Matthew thought Owen probably liked the sound of Rebecca’s laugh even more than he did.
Matthew missed Dane’s laugh, the few times he’d heard it. He missed the touch of her skin above her knees and the smell of the soft space just below her earlobe, where at times before they were intimate, he watched a stream of sweat glisten there. But, Dane wasn’t there and that’s what made everything else seem so wrong still. He couldn’t get over how much his heart still physically ached for her. It was a real physical pain.
Rebecca was back but still no Dane to counterbalance the female force in the house. They were both different kinds of women. Before the attack, Rebecca was flighty, quick to smile and laugh. No one would ever describe Dane that way. If Dane laughed, there was a good reason for it and a smile was always well deserved.
This wasn’t helping. Matthew groaned and tried to shake the thoughts from his head, took his plate over to the table, and sat down. He reached for the ketchup, shook the bottle upside down and then proceeded to squirt the red sauce all over his meatloaf in long-languishing ribbons of the red stuff as well as all over the beyond-any-semblance of mashed potatoes.
“Don’t take all the ketchup, man,” Owen said reaching for the bottle.
“There’s no vegetables today?” Matthew asked.
“Nope. Not unless you want the beetle ridden beets.” Owen said. “We have a few bruised apples leftover from last week though. I left those out for anyone who wants to gamble.”
“Seriously? Gross,” Rebecca asked.
Taking his napkin into his hand, Owen said, “Seriously. I had to throw out all the produce except for an onion and half of that one was mushy and moldy. We haven’t seen bananas in over a month, now. And probably won’t since they’re an import. The fresh stuff they send us is anything but fresh. It keeps getting worse. I’m saving all the canned vegetables they send and parsing them out slowly over the colder months. I bet it only gets worse from here. I think we ought to consider growing some ourselves.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Matthew said. “We should have thought of that last spring. It’s fall. There’s no way we can start a garden now and besides, we’d have to hide it or risk sharing with the community.”
“We had no idea it was going to get this bad,” Owen said.
“Maybe we could start a hydroponic garden?” Lee offered, and Matthew was about to comment when someone knocked on the front door. They all stared at each other. They weren’t expecting anyone until tomorrow. Everyone stared at one another from their seat at the oval table, and then Rebecca began to stand.
“No, I’ll get it,” Matthew said and scrapped the wooden legs of his chair across the tile floor as he pictured a big grow room filled with lights and butterhead lettuce in trays. As he walked away, he said, “Lee, that’s a great idea but as you can see, we barely have enough room in here for us. I don’t know where we’d fit an indoor unit. Keep thinking though.” They were expecting a new recruit tomorrow, but since Rebecca arrived a day early as well, he thought it was probably him or perhaps a her. It seemed everything was off by a day here or there. Moldy vegetables one day, under-ripe ones the next. You couldn’t count on anything to arrive when it was supposed to. You couldn’t even depend on getting fresh fruits and vegetables either, apparently.
Matthew reached for the door and there stood a skinny kid, his arms the size of number two pencils. “Um…hi,” Matthew said, “What can I do for you?”
“Hey, I’m you’re new recruit. Dustin Myers. They said they’d sent the email from the department yesterday. You were expecting me, right?”
A bit stunned. This kid didn’t look like he could even lift a pencil and he looked barely over eighteen. What kind of training did he have? There was no way he went through the rigorous testing he and the other firefighters went through to achieve the elite smokejumper status. Matthew saw that just by looking at him. Matthew stuck his head out the doorway and looked from one way and then the other. “That’s a long walk, kid. Who dropped you off?”
“Oh, the sheriff. He had a call so he left me at the end of the road. I walked the rest of the way.”
When the kid swallowed, his Adam’s apple bounced up and down. Matthew hated to be rude, but he said, “How old are you, kid?”
“I’m nineteen. I came to the right place, right?”
“Yeah, if you’re looking to cook and clean. I don’t mean to be an ass, but did you complete training? Do you have some kind of paperwork I can see?”
“Yeah, I have a certificate. But they’re not putting us through what you guys went through anymore. They don’t have the time or resources. The necessity’s too great. Didn’t they tell you?” the kid asked raising an eyebrow.
“No. No they did not.
We don’t hear from them much anymore. What the hell does a certificate get you? Oh, sorry, come on in. Let me make some phone calls. I don’t understand what’s going on here. We already received a few recruits earlier this week. You have fought fires before, right? Jump training? Anything like that?”
“Well, not actually. We did some drills,” the kid stepped inside the house and stopped short, “Something smells good.”
“What? Drills? There’s no way I’ll authorize you to go out with us. You’ll put everyone in jeopardy.” Matthew said and then his phone buzzed. “Just a second. This better be good. Owen, get him a plate. Hell, give him mine,” he nearly yelled as he looked down at the unfamiliar number on his phone’s screen.
In the dining room, Owen was saying something about too much ketchup when Matthew decided to take a gamble and answered the unfamiliar number. What he heard on the other end of the phone was a voice he hadn’t expected.
12
Dane
The rain…or rather the mist, covered her hair and clothing in a thin veil as she walked the few blocks toward the campus. By the time she and the other commuters on the same route entered the building’s parking lot, she was damp all over. A young woman passed her by that she recognized from the train, only she now had her hoodie lid pulled up over her head. That’s a true Seattleite, right there, Dane thought. Dressed in layers. No need for an umbrella because it rarely ever rained over the rate of a light spray, more like a constant vapor.
Though the girl stopped in her tracks suddenly causing a sneaker to kick forward a few pebbles on the asphalt of the parking lot. Dane stopped too and when she looked up she realized there was fencing around the hospital entrance and a team of guards posted out front. Some sitting at tables and lines of at least twenty people or more forming in front of the tables.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?” the girl ahead of her murmured. She reached beneath the neck of her hoodie and pulled out a lanyard with what Dane supposed were her credentials attached beneath.
“Is this…new?” Dane ventured a guess.
The woman looked back at her. She only saw the side of her face. Dane thought she was more her own age, maybe even a little older than she first thought. She just dressed in jeans and sneakers, giving her a youthful appearance. She was petite and lean and probably a health-nut runner. That or she was starving to death like the rest of them.
“Yes. This wasn’t here yesterday.”
“I haven’t been here for a while. I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
The woman nodded and began walking again.
“Are you…visiting someone?”
Dane nodded. Yes…yes, she was. Only he didn’t know it, yet. “I am,” Dane said.
“There’ve been some threats but nothing warranting this kind of security. Don’t worry. I’m sure these measures are for an abundance of caution.” The woman sighed and whispered. “But, it’s a big hassle for the rest of us. Hard enough to get here these days. Now we have to deal with this just to get in the door.”
Dane said what this woman might expect to hear, “I can see that’s true if you work here. But like you said, it’s best to be safe than sorry.”
The woman said, “Huh.” As if she was questioning that logic and kept walking.
Dane continued as well. Once they joined the crowds trying to get through the gate a man with a red face shouted with authority, “There are two lines, people. One for staff and one for visitors. Get. In. The. Right. Line. Let’s not hold up the staff more than we have to. Staff takes precedence over visitors. Don’t waste our time or theirs.”
The woman ahead of her stepped behind the last person in the shorter line for staff and Dane was left with a problem. They were asking questions to get through the gate up ahead. Ones she didn’t have the answer to, yet, but she stood in the visitor’s line that, now, snaked out half a block and observed those in front of her.
A mom was petting the back of her teen daughter’s head. She gently pulled the young girl to her and kissed her lightly on the top of her head as mothers do and said, “Jessie, Daddy’s going to be okay.”
The girl pulled away. Her lithe arms crossed in front of her and, smiled at her mother. “He’s had a heart attack, mom. He’s not going to be okay. He’s not going to run with me, again. No tennis.” Riveting her head back and forth the girl named Jessie said, “Dad’s never going to be the same.”
Then an older man suddenly joined them. He embraced the teen girl and she said, “Hi Grandpa,” as she buried her face into his shirt.
Grandpa put his hand on the mother’s shoulder. “Cathy, I got here as quick as I could. How is Michael?”
The mother looked concerned. “Jake, I don’t know, yet. As you can see, there was no rush. We can’t even get in.”
The old man looked ahead. “He’s my son, dammit. The name Falconer should stand for something. Let me see what I can do. Stay right here. I’ll be right back.”
“What is grandpa going to do?” the girl asked.
The mother shook her head. “I don’t know. He’ll try to tell them he taught here ten years ago. I doubt he’ll get anywhere though.”
Dane felt sorry them but from the looks of the expression of those in the visitor’s line, most of them wore she bet most of their stories were the same. Then the grandpa returned, red-faced, looking as if he might also have a heart attack.
“What did they say?” the mother asked.
He only shook his head in response.
That’s when Dane decided to speak up. “You know. I bet this is just rush hour. They’re just trying to figure this out and streamline the process. If you guys go and grab some coffee, there will hardly be a line once you return.”
The mother looked at her and then again at her daughter and her agitated father in law.
“You know. I think you’re right,” the woman nodded and took her father in law and daughter by the arm and led them away.
Ten minutes later, Dane made it to the front of the line.
“Name?” the guard asked.
“Cathy Falconer,” Dane answered, and the soldier scrolled through a list on his laptop.
“Who are you here to see?”
“My husband, Michael Falconer.”
He clicked on something and began typing and when he was done with that, he scanned a wrist bracelet and with two hands he made a U with it and she offered her right wrist.
Snapping the clasp around her wrist, he said in what sounded like a memorized speech, “This wristband is embedded with a security fob. Scan it against the panel on the wall and it will allow you to enter authorized public doors and the patient’s room only, but nowhere else. If…there is an emergency, a staff member will activate the lockdown alarm system, securing you in the room you’re located in at the time. Do you agree with these conditions?”
It was this last line that she realized she was too late. She’d just been taped, and hoped there was no reason for facial recognition software, but she couldn’t turn back now. She smiled and said, “Yes.”
He nodded his head and she moved on through the checkpoint and into the hospital.
One step closer.
13
Matthew
It wasn’t what he’d expected and yet now he was stuck talking to the guy and he couldn’t just hang up. There was never a time before this that he wasn’t more thankful for the crap Tuck dealt with this daily so that the rest of them could do their damn job. He didn’t know how the man handled the higher-ups with such finesse. Matthew couldn’t help but want to feed them instant mashed potatoes, forcefully, and through a funnel. But it was wrong to feel this way, he kept telling himself. Force-feeding bureaucrats with a funnel was a bad thing. And yet he couldn’t help picturing this particular guy tilted back in a chair with a giant funnel teetering above him filled with faux-tatos.
As soon as he heard the voice it reminded him of his little sister’s slime creations. Wet and unctuous. “Yes, sir. Of course. Everyone needs a chanc
e…But, sir, he has no training. You have to the time in for these things. He’s not qualified, emphasis on qualified, to even vacuum a station house let alone serve as a smokejumper,” he raised his voice then, to talk over the man on the other end, “and I refuse to endanger my men and women.”
Matthew braced his thumb and middle finger, of the hand not holding the phone over his temples and closed his eyes. He felt a headache coming on as he listened to the conversation. Then he shook his head and told himself to not lose his temper. “No, I’m not being insubordinate. With all due respect, you are...sir. This is not a place for you to fulfill your political agendas…Do not…do not accuse me of racism or sexism, sir. I do not care if he’s attracted to zoo animals or if he identifies as a lamp.” He was yelling now…could feel his pulse racing.