A skinny child-cop sat in a chair across from him in the small room. His quiet glare made Steve really nervous. The cop didn’t look away, read a magazine, or anything. Steve glanced over at him and then diverted his gaze to the floor.
What an asshole.
Fuckin’ cops.
The door to the quiet room opened and an older cop, red-and-gray haired with lots of stripes on his left sleeve, came in. He stared at Steve, who felt his pulse pound harder in his temples. There was something strange about the older cop’s eyes, but Steve was unsure what it was, other than that they made him uncomfortable. His eyes looked kind of blank or something. When he turned to the other cop, Steve could swear he saw a kind of little yellow glow in his pupils. The yellow-eyed cop leaned over and whispered something in the younger cop’s ear. The young cop looked surprised.
“You’re shitting me!” he said and then rose. “What the hell is that all about? Are they Feds?” The young cop seemed pretty pissed at whatever the news was. Steve relaxed a little. Maybe they had to let him go. He knew the little brat would be too scared to fuck him.
The older, yellow eyed cop stared vacantly at the wall. “It’s all taken care of, so don’t worry about it.”
The first cop looked at Steve in disgust and shook his head. Then he stormed from the room. The older cop held Steve’s eyes and then a thin, tight smile flashed for a moment on his lips.
“Don’t leave. There are some men who want to talk to you.” He smiled that hard, mean smile again, but his eyes still looked dead, vacant maybe. Steve looked at the gold name plate above the cop’s right breast pocket—Maloney. He tried to remember that in case the asshole tried to rough him up or something. He’d have the shithead’s badge. Steve shifted nervously and fought not to look again at the cop’s strange eyes, but then the older cop turned and left, closing the door behind him.
Some men? What men? They had to be some kind of cops, he guessed. Something in the cop’s icy voice and dead eyes made Steve shudder. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and ran down his back under his flannel shirt.
What the fuck?
The man who walked in towered above him. Steve couldn’t tell if he was big as well as tall because he wore a long gray trench coat, with no belt, that came nearly to his ankles. A shorter man with a similar coat stood beside him. Both wore gray hats, like Bogart in an old black-and-white movie. The wide brims cast shadows that prevented Steve from seeing their eyes. The shorter man closed the door behind them and then stood behind his boss, arms across his chest. The tall man spoke. His voice was deep and even with no emotion. The voice sent a chill through Steve.
“Mr. Prescott, my name is Mr. Clark. This is Mr. Smith.” The tall man indicated his partner with a long bony finger, the skin so pale it seemed translucent. He paused for a long time, like Steve was supposed to say something. Instead, he shifted uncomfortably on the vinyl seat and felt a droplet of sweat trickle down his neck from his face. He wanted very much to see the man’s face, but couldn’t. Only a thin-lipped mouth, like a purple cut across his white face, and then above that, shadows.
“You more fucking cops?” Steve asked. He tried to seem bored, but realized he sounded small instead. The tall man bent his head forward as if holding his tongue and then spoke again.
“Mr. Prescott, my name is Clark and this is Smith.” The same long pause, only this time Steve looked down and said nothing. “Do you know why you are here, Mr. Prescott?”
“My name is Steve and yeah, I do. My girlfriend’s rocket-scientist kid burned his hand. I tried to help him and now you cops are trying to fuck me over. I didn’t do nothin’ wrong, but I get in trouble. I should have let the little shit burn.” He wanted to exude toughness, but again his voice sounded different than he intended.
“Mr. Prescott, we are not policemen.” The man behind him opened a small notebook. “We need you to answer a few simple questions. What is your full name, please?”
“Man, you guys are killin’ me. I already answered all this shit. Ask your fucking cop friends.” The tall man tilted his head slightly but his face remained shadowed.
“Mr. Prescott”—the voice was like ice—”what is your full name please?”
Steve sighed nervously and tried to swallow but his throat felt painfully dry. “Steven J. Prescott.” His voice cracked. The man with the notebook scribbled in it with a short little stub of a pencil.
“Mr. Prescott, what is your full address?”
“2717 West Brandy Court, apartment 210. I’m telling you, I already told the other cops all of this shit, if you would just ask them. Jesus!” The short man scribbled and the tall man again paused for what seemed like minutes.
“Mr. Prescott, do you have any health problems?”
“Health problems? No, nothing. What the hell do you need to know that for?” His voice sounded more like a bark. God his throat hurt.
So fuckin’ dry.
“Can I have something to drink? A soda or something?”
“What is your blood type, Mr. Prescott?” The man’s voice had yet to change pitch.
“Hell if I know man. You looking for a donation? You from the fucking blood mobile or something?” Steve tried to laugh but instead choked out a raspy cough.
“Any allergies?”
“No,” Steve replied. He felt suddenly too exhausted to be a smartass.
“Thank you, Mr. Prescott. We are through.” The man spun on one heel, opened the door and left. His partner finished scribbling, then turned and left also. Before he closed the door he spoke, his voice a deep whisper.
“You may go, Mr. Prescott. We’ll be in touch.” The shorter man tilted his head back and for a second, beneath the brim of the hat, the light illuminated his face. Coal-black eyes, haloed by a shimmer of orange, stared at him, but looked hollow and unseeing. They were set in skin as white as snow with a single, angry red scar that ran from the temple, up in an arc and then down again, stopping just beside the nose. The man turned and closed the door. Steve sat alone and frightened.
What in the holy fuck was that? It was a trick. Funny light or something. No one could have eyes like that.
“They got me acting like a scared little girl,” he choked out to nobody, his throat burning.
It’s like a thousand fucking degrees in here.
Steve sat for a moment and fidgeted, wondering what to do next. Then he rose and crossed to the door on wobbly legs. “Fuck this noise,” he said. They had said he was done, hadn’t they? Those two were freaking him out.
Just trying to scare me. Bullshit, they ain’t cops!
He opened the door and walked out into a long hallway; the two men in trench coats were gone. Where could they have gone? A horrible smell wafted through the air, like someone had shit themselves, and Steve wrinkled up his nose. He saw no one in either direction. Steve shook his head and headed quickly for the electric doors at the end of the long hallway. He passed a desk where a nurse impatiently asked questions of an old man who breathed way too loudly. Steve kept his focus on the floor.
Sherry and the brat can find their own friggin’ ride.
He went out through the electric door, past a parked ambulance, and headed to his pick-up truck in the lot across from the ER.
* * *
The tall man watched Steve from the shadows at the corner of the building, hands clasped in front of him. As Steve drove off in his truck, the tall man turned his head to his partner and their dark eyes met in the shadows. Then he nodded slightly, turned and walked down the dark street away from the hospital. Several paces later he stopped, and after a pause, he spoke without turning around. “Tonight.” His voice sounded hungry. Then he resumed his way down the street. The night air inhaled him as its own.
The man with the scar pulled out his notebook and scribbled in it again with his stub of a pencil. Then he put both in the pocket of his long trench coat, turned in the opposite direction from his boss and disappeared into the night.
* * *
&nbs
p; Jason Gelman felt exhausted. He had arrived at the point where he started to feel like he had the flu—super-sensitive skin, muscle aches and nausea. A few hours of sleep and he would be like new. All he had to do was give a quick report to the senior ER resident relieving him and he could get out of here.
He looked at his watch. Six-fifty p.m. Ten more minutes and his shift would be over. Dietrich would be right on time, maybe a little early. He plopped down on the cheap, stained couch in the ER resident lounge and stretched his stiff legs onto the coffee table, which balanced precariously on three remaining legs. His aching back cracked as he attempted to unlock the knots, then settled back and took a sip of his lukewarm coffee.
Jason wondered for the thousandth time whether he had made the right choice for his career. In general, it gave him grueling twelve-hour shifts of monotonous, clinic-style care, punctuated only occasionally with something exciting or interesting. Even then he was involved only transiently, until a doctor from another specialty arrived to assume care and admit the patient.
He had never been a thrill seeker and it wasn’t the lack of excitement that wore on him. He enjoyed the trauma patients and cardiac arrests; it felt good when he did his job well, but he was also perfectly content to pass on the follow-up care and move to the next patient. He often joked that he had chosen ER because of his attention deficit disorder. Once the hyper-acute phase of medical trouble ended, he got bored.
No, the level of excitement and mental stimulation seemed just about right. The emotional impact of human tragedy he waded through daily at work didn’t bother him either. In fact, what scared him these days was how little that seemed to affect him. A few years ago, as a student and intern, he invested himself completely in the lives of the patients he encountered. He remembered more than a few times lying in bed after work, weeping softly at the thought of a patient he had cared for who had died despite his best efforts. These days he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt that way. More than a few times he had turned angry or annoyed when a patient’s problems (often from their own stupidity) interrupted an otherwise pleasant—which these days meant quiet—shift.
Jason sipped the bitter coffee from his cup and shook the thoughts out of his mind. He looked again at his watch. Two minutes ‘til. Where the hell was Dietrich? The end of a shift was no time to make a big life assessment. He looked at the now-nasty drink in his hand and tossed it with a plunk into the institutional wastebasket beside him. A middle-aged moan—
Where the hell did that come from? I’m only twenty-nine years old.
—hissed out of him as he grabbed and dropped the remote in his lap without turning on the TV, which hung suspended in the ceiling corner.
Jason closed his eyes and reluctantly let his thoughts wander to Nathan Doren and just where he was right now. Probably up in the burn ward, getting his first painful debridement. The thought made his throat tighten. It was no mystery to him why this child brought back his long-absent empathy. He unconsciously rubbed his right thigh, the break long ago mended, and kept his mind on Nathan and his mother, not on his own past.
The patient, the poor five-year-old boy, would get Fentanyl and some Versed, he remembered from his rotation on the Burn/Trauma Service. The Fentanyl would help the pain and the Versed would hopefully keep him from remembering whatever pain the narcotic couldn’t dull.
It’s not really about the pain though, is it? It’s the fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being hurt again by a grown up. Fear of letting down my mom.
Jason wiped a tear from his cheek with some annoyance and rubbed his thigh again. He remembered his mother crying beside him while he looked in drug-dazed terror at the large drill they assembled to screw a pin through his flesh and into his bone. He remembered hatred of his bastard father, but mostly, the fear that Mommy would be mad at him had ruled his younger mind.
He shook the thought away violently enough to cause a twinge in the muscles in his neck.
Goddamnit, this is not the time or place.
Five years ago, maybe even less, he would have hated Sherry Doren for letting this happen to Nathan or any other little Jason Gelman clone. He had gotten through that somehow over the last few years. Sherry was a victim, too. They both needed help.
And that lying prick that came in with them needs to bleed and suffer in ways the fucked-up legal system will never achieve.
“You alright, dude?”
Jason looked up at Rich Dietrich, startled. His friend stared down at him with real concern and Jason felt embarrassed.
“Were you dreaming or something?” Rich asked.
Jason tried to play it off and wiped a tear from his cheek as casually as possible. “Yeah, what the hell, huh? Boogeyman almost got me.” He tried a half-hearted chuckle which fell flat. “So where the hell have you been? Our little ER didn’t interrupt your busy social life again, did it?”
Dietrich laughed and Jason felt grateful he could still turn the conversation and mood so easily. When in doubt, just bring up his girls and you could spin a whole egocentric side of Ol’ Rich Dietrich. His legendary prowess with the women of University Hospital remained the only thing that could get him talking of something other than medicine. Rich was a good friend and a great doctor and, to be honest, if Jason didn’t love him so much, he would have hated his guts. Seemed everything came easily to Rich.
“Hey, man, it’s like two minutes ‘till. How the hell am I late getting here fifteen minutes before your best showing?” Rich clapped Jason on the back and laughed. “At least if I’m late, I’m doing something worthwhile.”
“Someone,” Jason corrected and pulled on his stained white coat.
“Yeah,” his friend agreed proudly. “More often than not.”
They walked together from the lounge and stood in front of the big dry erase board as Jason gave Dietrich the run-down on the patients he had been seeing that remained in the ER. He proudly told his workaholic friend that all but two had a disposition and would need nothing from Rich. The two still in the middle of a workup were stable and would probably need admission to the Medicine Service.
“Anything cool?” Dietrich asked when he had finished his sign out.
Jason felt weird that he wanted to talk about Nathan Doren. What would be the point? No one, not even his close friends (or as close as he allowed) knew anything about his past, of course. What the hell was there to say about Nathan Doren? One more unfortunate kid, fucked up by an uncaring asshole, who would likely never see the inside of a jail cell, much less get the total ass kicking he deserved.
“Just another day,” he said.
“Yeah, well bring it on,” his friend said and picked up the chart of one of the two patients leftover from the day shift. In moments he looked lost in the record, searching for missing clues, Jason supposed. Jason shrugged and walked away.
He dropped his coat unceremoniously into the bottom of his locker and left the ER. As he passed the elevators, he felt a powerful draw. He stood a moment, contemplating.
What the hell’s the point? What am I gonna do? Tell him I’ve been there?
“Fuck.” He sighed and pushed the up button on the elevator.
He hated the burn ward all over again the moment he stepped out of the elevators. The smell brought back the horror he felt every day he’d worked on the Burn Service the year before. It wasn’t a bad smell but it was distinctive and brought back a flood of emotional memory: people not only deformed, but in agony. He remembered the screams of dazed and slurred-speech patients when he had scrubbed away dead skin with a surgical brush, scrubbed until they were left with nothing but raw, bleeding tissue. Could he stand seeing little Nathan Doren like that?
“Can I help you?” a fat nurse he didn’t know asked. Her tone did nothing to convey a desire to help him in any way.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m Dr. Gelman from ER. I’m just here to check on a patient of mine. Nathan Doren?”
“Oh yeah,” the nurse said without much interest. “The kid
. We couldn’t keep him here. He’s down in Pedi ICU.” Jason walked away without bothering to offer the customary thank you.
The nurse that greeted him in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit seemed the total opposite of her miserable colleague. In a different mood he might have been attracted to her. Young, pretty, enthusiastic and eager to help. Today, she just annoyed him, but he remained a good enough person to feel bad about that.
“Oh, the little boy with the hand, bless his heart,” she said, touching him on the arm. “It’s so nice you came to see him. Not many of you ER guys come up here.” She looked at him expectantly and was clearly not giving him the room number until he responded.
“He seemed like a really nice kid,” he said awkwardly.
“He’s in six-twenty-two,” she answered, apparently satisfied.
Jenny her name tag said. Jason decided to remember that for future reference.
“Thanks, Jenny.” He headed down the little hall between the large nurse’s station and the patient rooms.
Jason peered into the room through the oversized window with its half-drawn shades. The sign on the door read “SMH DOE,” the code for a patient with legal issues that should not have any information released. Nathan appeared to be asleep, his eyes closed and his left hand cupped around the bulky white bandage on his right. His mother stretched awkwardly in the chair beside the bed, her head lying across an outstretched arm and her hands across her son’s waist. He watched them for a moment and remembered things best forgotten.
There was no point in waking them, and Jason felt glad that he wouldn’t have to talk to the mother again. He would visit in the morning on his way in, he decided, just to see how his patient was doing. As he watched, Nathan opened his eyes. They stared at each other. Then the little boy gave a limp wave and smiled. Jason smiled and waved back, just as Nathan’s eyes closed again.
Jason wiped a tear from his cheek and turned to leave.
See you in the morning, little buddy.
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