The Eve of the Dragon

by Michael Dunn

  Tex smiled and continued, “They do a lot of successful research here. For example, we are a leader in Europe for stem cell research. Our cancer research has made great strides in beyond the proton therapy, which I always thought sounded like something from Star Trek.” Tex tried to make a joke to the easily amused Dan, who did not even crack a smile. “We are using nanobots to attack the cancer cells. We have partnered with the University of Illinois-Urbana on their research on how nanobots can pass through the bloodstream using, pass through using a coating that makes them appear as red blood cells and thereby accepted by the bodies systems as the nanobots navigate through the bloodstream. So far, according to reports, this method works well in the computer simulations and in rats. We hope to start human trials within the next three years. With help from this hospital and thousands around the globe, we could be the generation that would make cancer as simple to fix as the common flu virus.”

  A disinterested Dan remarked, “The common flu virus once killed more people than World War II in a matter of six months.”

  “But that was centuries ago.”

  “No, that was one century ago. 1918.”

  Tex prided himself on the hospital’s accomplishments; because he had helped the Sabella family finance the hospital’s construction. Tex’s bragging annoyed Dan for its hypocrisy.

  “Which floor has the organ harvesting, the money laundering schemes, and nefarious smuggling via plastic surgeries? I guess that would be four.”

  Dan ruined Tex’s delight in that one moment by reminding him why there were there. His thuggish stoicism returned, and they both stayed quiet until the elevator doors opened.

  The operating room was clean, well lit, with all the modern devices necessary to keep a patient sedated during surgery. The empty operating room was large enough for multiple surgeries performed simultaneously. The room could be one expansive room or sectioned off by flimsy cloth curtains attached to rails on the false ceilings.

  “Benvenuto, Sr. Romano,” the middle-aged man in the doctor’s lab coat greeted the mob’s envoy with a handshake and a kiss on the ring.

  Dan whispered to himself in an exaggerated raspy voice, “Don Vito, on this day of your daughter’s wedding, I ask a favor…”

  Tex and the Italian doctor spoke in Italian for a couple of minutes while Dan’s resolve was slipping.

  “Dr. Broccoli, this is Dr. Dan Carter from America,” Tex introduced.

  The Italian doctor stuck out his hand and Dan shook it.

  “Dr. Broccoli, are you kidding me? That sounds like the name of a doctor on a kid’s nutrition show.”

  “Che Cosa?” The Italian doctor asked.

  “He does not speak much English,” Tex explained.

  “Okay, why am I meeting him?”

  “Because he will assist you during the surgery.”

  Dan stared at Tex wide-eyed and incredulous. “Are you kidding me? How can I work with a surgeon who doesn’t speak English? Are we going to mime or use flashcards?”

  “I will be there to assist you.”

  “Do you have any form of medical degree?”

  “No, but…”

  “Then why are you staying in the operating room?”

  “Because I am the boss and I get to make sure that we get what we want,” Tex’s volume matched Dan’s.

  Dan, a surgeon, was accustomed to authority in the operating room unless there was a more senior surgeon. Tex was also accustomed to being the authority unless he was back at the compound. At the compound, he was another employee on the Sabellas’ payroll.

  Dan’s tone and volume returned to normal. “What is it you want?”

  “You were partially right in the elevator. This is where we do the business nobody else sees.”

  “And if I refuse to cooperate?”

  Tex shrugged, “It’s a teaching hospital. We can always use a new body.”

  That was the moment Dan believed that even if he cooperated, he would never leave this hospital alive, or worse, they would push him out of the helicopter not long after takeoff. That thought terrified him. No, he was not returning to that helicopter. Dan needed to think how to escape Tex and the hospital without being spotted. First, Dan figured, he needed to do his job, because all eyes were on him.

  “Okay, who are the victims, er, patients? I mean, patients.”

  Tex glared at him, but nodded. To the other doctor, Tex spoke in Italian. Dr. Broccoli nodded and left the hidden operating room.

  “What did you say to him?” Dan asked.

  “I said, ‘Bring in the girls.’”

  Dan took a seat and thought of several possible escape routes, which would be hard because he felt akin to a rat in a maze. If he was back in Miami, he knew almost a half a dozen ways on how to escape his hospital, most of which he had used either when he needed to hide from his superiors, or wanted to leave work early, or needed to get out of extra duty.

  There were new questions plaguing his mind: how far would he be willing to go to escape and would he use violence to get what he needed? Dan had been beaten up a few times as a kid and teenager thanks to his fast, acerbic, and often uncontrollable mouth, but he would not consider himself a capable fighter. He had never learned how to fight, but his mouth had taught him how to take a punch. He took his mind off his escape plans when the surgical nurses wheeled in the patients.

  The patients, three bloodlessly pale young women in their early to late twenties, dressed in white gowns. Each woman possessed sunken cheeks and had aged prematurely, looking sad, wide-eyed, and dead inside; resigned to their shared fates.

  “They look like Dracula’s brides.” Dan whispered to himself.

  Dr. Broccoli, Tex, and the three nurses spoke in Italian. The wheelchair-bound girls did not respond. When the conversation ended, they wheeled the girls to their own respective gurneys. Larger orderlies wheeled in more equipment and one well-dressed man with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, unlocked the binder and handed it to Tex. Tex took the handcuffs and attached it to his wrist, and the man handed over the key and then left.

  Once the orderlies left, the nurses wheeled the patients and helped them onto the gurneys and Dan approached.

  “Hola. ¿Cómo están? Soy el doctor Carter. Soy su doctor.”

  “What are you doing?” Tex asked through gritted teeth.

  “I’m trying to introduce myself to my patients and provide a consultation about the upcoming procedures.”

  “First, there is no need for that. We have already taken care of the consult. Second, you were speaking Spanish, not Italian.”

  “How do you know Spanish?” Dan asked.

  “I’m from Texas. It’s a life skill.”

  “And I need my patients’ histories before I can get to work. I don’t want to make the mistake of giving her a face lift if she wants bigger boobs.”

  Tex was about to scream when he realized Dan was right and calmed down.

  “You know, you are absolutely right. You need to have that information.” Tex flagged over a nurse to come closer. “Dan, this is Rosetta. She speaks English too. She will be your translator during the procedures.”

  “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a purgatory like this?”

  She glared at him.

  Dan smiled. Yep, she knows English.

  “Can I get patient histories and can someone let me know what needs to be done with each of these women?”

  “Yes, doctor,” Rosetta said, and she spoke Italian to the girls’ caretaker. Rosetta wrote what the man was saying. Rosetta handed the notes to Dan, who read them.

  “This is more of a procedural list than the patient’s history. Does she have any pre-existing conditions? Is she allergic to penicillin or anything else? Does she have hemophilia? These are things I want to know.”

  “Dr. Carter, is it?”

  “Yes, Nurse Rosetta?”

  “You must understand, Dr. Carter, that things are different here.”

  “In this country or this
hospital?”

  “Yes, to both. These unfortunate young women have undergone several surgeries.”

  “What? Someone pays them to get plastic surgeries? Like they are the Kardashians or Playboy bunnies?”

  “I don’t know who they are, but these surgeons give these young ladies, um, boob jobs, with items placed inside the saline bags. The middle one has a false pregnancy.”

  “What kind of items?” Dan asked.

  “The kind of items you are going to remove from their bodies,” Tex interrupted. “You will remove the saline bags from their bodies, clean off the bags, remove the items from the bags, replace the saline bags, and patch up the women. We will compensate you well for your time and medical expertise.”

  “Wait, you were going to pay me?”

  “Absolutely,” Tex said confused. “I could have sworn we talked about that before we got into the chopper.”

  “Um… NO! I sure as shit would have remembered that part instead of being extorted into performing surgeries for free. Fuck, we’re from the US, not Canada, nor every other civilized country in the world, and we Americans believe that medical procedures such as these are fucking expensive! I thought I was doing these with practically a gun to my head.”

  “I didn’t put a gun to your head.”

  “No, not you, Godfather, no, but your minions have.”

  “Yes, well, there were… precautions taken.”

  “I don’t like this. Who is my anesthesiologist?”

  “Dr. Broccoli,” Tex said and pointing to the balding Italian doctor.

  “Is he any good?” Dan asked. “I know nothing about him.”

  “He’s good,” Tex said nodding. “We’ll do everything we can to keep the girls alive and well. However, if we have to choose between the merchandise and the girls, well, I know you will make the right choice.”

  Tex exited the operating room. The medical team got to work. Dan scrubbed while the nurses laid the surgical instruments next to plastic the bags to hold the merchandise inside the plastic girls.

  After Dan scrubbed, the nurses helped him put on his surgical gown and mask. No rabbit ears this time. He was no longer in a joking mood. He just wanted this ended.

  The anesthesiologist gave the girls on the gurneys an anesthetic to put them under before the gas mask covered their respective faces. Once the first plastic girl was under sedation, Dan started the procedure. In his short career as a plastic surgeon, Dan had performed almost thirty boob jobs and he was great at them.

  He opened the girl’s breast, removed the first silicone bag, opened it with the scalpel, and removed the Mylar bags from inside the silicone bags. Another nurse, who was not Rosetta, wiped the Mylar bags and placed them in the plastic bag before placing them to the side.

  Dan replaced the silicone breasts with newer, smaller models. When he finished, he closed up the first girl and replaced surgical gloves before moving onto the next patient. He kept the same gown, but performed with new instruments.

  The young woman with the fake pregnancy was having a Caesarian section. The ‘baby’ inside this poor girl was two-and-a-half kilos of cocaine, which Dan delivered. The nurses cleaned the bags of cocaine and placed into the merchandise bag. Dan sewed this girl up too.

  The third and final girl was another boob job. Dan cut inside her right breast which contained heroin and a smaller Mylar bag. The bags were slippery, and Dan dropped them after he opened the silicone bag.

  “Oh shit,” Dan said as the contents poured out.

  The nurses scrambled to get the bags of heroin that were falling out while the smaller Mylar bag fell by Dan’s feet. He knelt to pick it up when a small, green, perfect sphere that was the size of a marble rolled out. When he saw the marble, he stared at it for a long moment, hypnotized. A voice inside Dan’s head told him to get it. He picked it up and hid it.

  “Did you find what fell, Doctor?”

  Dan shook his head. “Sorry about that, people. Let’s get back to work. Rosetta, please translate.”

  Rosetta spoke in Italian. The other doctors and nurses nodded, and they returned to work. The non-essential personnel in that surgery were scrambling around the floor searching for the green marble-shaped sphere.

  Dan noticed this woman’s scar tissue was greater than the other two women’s. The dense scar tissue implied these women have been enduring these procedures often enough as if it was their part-time job. He removed the final silicone breast, and this time handed it to an Italian-only speaking nurse, who did the honors of emptying the contents of the bag, while Dan replaced the larger fake breasts for a newer, but smaller ones.

  “Let’s close her up,” Dan said.

  “Yes, doctor,” Rosetta said.

  After the surgeries, the caretaker placed a lollipop on a tray next to the beds of each of the girls.

  “What is that?” Dan asked.

  “The girls’ rewards for being good patients,” Rosetta said.

  “Lollipops?!” Dan asked appalled. “That’s what you give to brave little kids. These girls are not little kids.”

  “Not these girls,” Rosetta explained. “They would love these special lollipops as much as those little kids who love the taste of sugar. They do not make these lollipops of sugar, but crystal meth.”

  Not much stunned Dan Carter enough that he couldn’t elicit a smart-assed comment, but this stopped him cold, so much so that he was nauseous.

  It was time for him to leave. He stripped off the bloody surgical garments and dropped them onto the floor. Let the hospital staff in this façade of a hospital clean up after him. He would not dare do this in an American hospital; however, he was sure he would never practice medicine in this hospital again. He hid his new souvenir in a special place before he spoke with Tex.

  “Well, I guess that concludes our business. How about we shake hands and call it a life?”

  Tex forced a smile and said, “We should talk about your compensation. Let’s get back into the helicopter and we’ll talk about it at the compound.”

  “Sounds good. Let me go to the bathroom first. I’ll be right back.”

  With that, Dan left the operating room. Once he was out, Dan bolted for the first exit and ran as though his former cross-country coach was screaming at him and unknowingly, Dan finally beat his grandfather’s top speed. He ran for miles until he was sure he was far away.

  Chapter Thirteen: The Magical Orb

  They used the GPS in Dan’s phone to lead them to the department store. The department store had closed hours earlier, and Dan was asleep against its brick wall, hidden by shadows. Dan awoke when a headlight shined in his face. Emilio got out of the car first followed by John and Steven.

  “I am so glad to see you guys,” Dan said, standing up. “I was so bored waiting for someone to find me. Do you guys know what the laws are against public urination and… uh, defecation around here? The store closed early and I really had to go. I had to use a ladies’ handkerchief I stole as toilet paper. Ugh, I guess they can’t sell that item again.”

  “Gross,” Steven said. “But it is great to see you alive and relatively well.”

  John and Steven hugged their missing friend.

  “We’re glad you’re back.”

  “Did you guys bring that sandwich?”

  John tossed Dan a wrapped roast beef and cheese sandwich.

  “Can we get going?” Emilio asked.

  “Why did you bring the Keebler elf?” Dan asked.

  Emilio, who was about three-quarters Dan’s size, pointed a gun at the mouthy surgeon.

  “Get in the car,” Emilio demanded.

  “No,” Dan said, while wolfing down his sandwich.

  Both John and Steven believed Dan was about to have a Catholic suicide.

  “What? What do you mean ‘no’?” Emilio asked, exasperated. He waved his gun at Dan trying to intimidate the doctor. It didn’t work.

  “You did not say, ‘please.’” Dan said.

  Emilio sighed. Through gritt
ed teeth, he said, “Please get in the car?”

  “Yes, I will, only because your manners are impeccable, good sir.”

  Steven climbed back into the car first, then John.

  Before Dan stepped inside the car, he pointed to a place on the short thug’s tie.

  “You have a weird spot on your tie.”

  When Emilio glanced, Dan ran his finger up the tie and ended up flicking Emilio in the nose; something an obnoxious child would do. Dan’s laughter enraged Emilio, who was shaking. Emilio cocked back the hammer of his gun pointing it at the fugitive surgeon. Dan held his hands up in surrender, but he was still laughing.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Abraham shouted, jumping out of the driver’s seat also with his hands up. “Don’t shoot.” Abraham also drew his gun, but pointed it at Emilio.

  Emilio and Abraham shouted at each other in Italian.

  While the gangsters argued, John shouted, “What the hell are you doing? He will kill you right here and now!”

  “No, he won’t,” Dan assured his friend. “Not if he has a lick of sense, any amount of forward thinking, or even the slightest bit of impulse control. He knows what will happen to him if he kills the one man who can answer his boss’s driving question and he knows his death won’t be as quick and easy as a bullet to the head. No, it would be akin to feeding him to the sharks, an arm and a leg at a time, bit-by-bit. What peewee here doesn’t get is that he does not need a gun. I want to talk to his boss. I want to tell the Professor about what I know about his precious Rosebud sled half the size of my right nut, and I want this to be over. So, let’s get in the car, and we’re off to see the wizard, who was also a professor if I remember right.”

  John nodded.

  With that, Dan climbed back into the back of the Rolls Royce next to John. Emilio holstered his gun and then got inside next to Dan. He elbowed Dan in the ribs and then slapped Dan in the face before he shut the door. Emilio said something in Italian to Abraham and the car moved.

  Dan leaned forward as if he would talk to his friends, when Emilio said, “Shut up or I will kill you.”

  Dan scoffed in disgust. “Again with the lack of manners. If we wanted this rude treatment, we would have vacationed in France or at an Indian casino back home.”