by P. W. Child
He was not impressed with her tone at all, but inhaled deeply and sighed. “Dr. Gould, are you hiding your roommate?”
The question was both absurd and unprofessional. Utter annoyance coursed through Nina at his ridiculous question. “Aye. He is somewhere in the room. Twenty points if you can give me a painkiller before you find him!”
“You have to tell me where he is, Dr. Gould, or you will die tonight,” he said plainly.
“Are you absolutely daft?” she shrieked. “Are you seriously threatening me?” Nina felt that something was very wrong, but she could not cry out. With blinking eyes she watched him, her fingers furtively seeking the red button that was still on her bed next to her while she kept her eyes on his missing face. His blurry shadow lifted the call button for her to discern. “Are you looking for this?”
“Oh Christ,” Nina wept at once, burying her nose and mouth behind her palms as she realized that she recalled that voice now. Her head was pounding and her skin burning wet, but she dared not move.
“Where is he?” he whispered evenly. “Tell me, or you will die.”
“I don’t know, alright?” her voice quivered softly behind her hands. “I really don’t know. I’ve been sleeping all this time. My God, am I his keeper?”
The tall man replied, “You are quoting Cain, straight out of the Bible. Tell me, Dr. Gould, are you religious?”
“Fuck you!” she yelled.
“Ah, an Atheist,” he remarked speculatively. “There are no atheists in fox holes. That is another quote – perhaps one more suited for you in this moment of final restitution, where you will meet your death at the hands of something you will wish you had a god for.”
“You are not Dr. Hilt,” the nurse said behind him. Her words came like a question dipped in disbelief and realization. Then he struck her down with such elegant speed that Nina did not even have time to register the brevity of his act. As the nurse fell, her hands released the bedpan. It went sliding along the polished floor in a deafening clatter that immediately drew the attention of night staff at the nurses’ station.
From nowhere, police officers started shouting down the hall. Nina waited for them to seize the imposter in her room, but instead they darted right past her door.
“Go! Go! Go! He is on the Second Floor! Corner him in the Dispensary! Quick!” the commanding officer was shouting.
“What?” Nina scowled. She could not believe it. All she could distinguish was the figure of the charlatan rapidly moving towards her and, just like the fate of the poor nurse, he landed a mighty blow on her head. She felt immense pain for a moment before dissolving into the black river of oblivion.Nina came to only moments later, still uncomfortably contorted on her bed. Her headache now had company. The blow on her temple taught her a new level of pain. It was now swollen so that her right eye felt smaller. On the floor beside her, the night nurse was still lying sprawled, but Nina had no time. She had to get out before the eerie stranger made his way back to her, especially now that he knew her better.
She grabbed for the dangling call button again, but the head of the device had been severed. “Shit,” she moaned, carefully swinging her legs off the side of the bed. All she could see were the mere outlines of objects and people. There was no indication of identity or intent when she could not see their faces.
“Fuck! Where are Sam and Purdue when I need them? How do I always end up in this shit?” she whined half between vexation and fear as she went, feeling her way to relieving herself of the tubes in her arms and navigating past the heap of woman next to her uncertain feet. The police action had drawn the attention of most night staff and Nina noticed that the Third Floor was eerily quiet, save for the distant echo of a television weather report and two patients whispering in the next room.Clear. It prompted her to find her clothing and get dressed as best as she could in the gaining darkness of her diminishing vision that would soon abandon her. After she was dressed, her boots in her hands to avert arousing suspicion when she walked out, she snuck back to Sam’s bedside table and opened his drawer. His charred wallet was still inside. She removed the license card inside, slipping it into the back pocket of her jeans.
She was beginning to worry about her roommate’s whereabouts, his condition, and most of all – if his desperate petitioning had not perhaps been real. Thus far she had only considered it a dream, but with him missing she was starting to think twice about his visit earlier that night. Either way, she now had to escape the impostor. The police could offer no protection against a threat with no face. Already they had ran after suspects without any one of them having actually seen the man responsible. The only way Nina knew who was responsible was by his reprehensible manner with her and Sister Barken.
“Oh shit!” she said, stopping in her tracks, almost at the end of the white hallway. “Sister Barken. I have to warn her.” But Nina knew that asking for the stout nursing sister would alert staff that she was sneaking out. There was no doubt they would not allow that. Think, think, think! Nina urged herself as she stood still, wavering. She knew what she had to do. It was unsavory, but it was the only way.
Back in her dark room, using only the hallway light shining in on the glimmering floor, Nina began undressing the night nurse. Fortunately for the small historian, the nurse was two sizes larger than she was.
“I’m so sorry. Really, I am,” Nina whispered as she stripped the woman of her scrubs and put them on over her clothing. Feeling rather awful for what she was doing to the poor woman, Nina’s clumsy morality drove her to drape her bedclothes over the nurse. After all, the lady was in her underwear on a cold floor. Give her a roll there, Nina, she thought on a second look. No, that’s stupid. Just get the fuck out of here! But the nurse’s motionless body seemed to call to her. Perhaps it was the blood that came from her nose, blood that had formed a sticky, dark puddle on the floor under her face, that provoked Nina’s pity. We don’t have time! the forceful reasoning reprimanded her pondering. “Fuck it,” Nina decided out loud, and gave the unconscious lady a roll over once so that the bedding would wrap her body and keep her insulated from the hardness of the floor.
As a nurse, Nina would be able to foil police officers and get out, as long as they did not notice that she was having trouble finding steps and doorknobs. When she finally made it down to the Ground Floor, she overheard two officers talking about the murder victim.
“Wish I was here,” one said. “I’d have caught that son of a bitch.”
“Of course all the action happens before our shift. Now we’re stuck babysitting what’s left,” the other bemoaned.
“This time the victim was a doctor – on night duty,” the first one whispered. Dr. Hilt, perhaps? she thought as she headed for the exit.
“They discovered this doctor with a piece of his facial skin peeled off, just like the one security guard of the night before,” she heard him add.
“Shift over early?” one of the officers asked Nina as she passed. She caught her breath and formulated her German as best she could.
“Yes, my nerves did not handle the murder well. Passed out and hit my face,” she replied in a quick mumble as she tried to find the door handle.
“Let me get that for you,” someone said, and opened the door amidst their expressions of sympathy.
“Have a good night, nurse,” the police officer told Nina.
“Danke schön,” she smiled as she felt the cool night air on her face, fighting her headache and trying not to tumble over the steps.
“And you have a good night too, doctor…Hilt, is it?” the cop asked behind Nina at the door. Her blood froze in her veins, but she kept true.
“That is correct. Good night, gentlemen,” the man said cheerfully. “Stay safe!”
Chapter 11 – Margaret’s Cub
“Sam Cleave is the just the man for this, sir. I’ll get in touch with him.”
“We cannot afford Sam Cleave,” Duncan Gradwell answered quickly. He was dying for a cigarette, but when the news of th
e fighter plane crash in Germany came over the wire on his computer screen, it demanded instant and urgent attention.
“He is an old friend of mine. I’ll…twist his arm,” he heard Margaret. “Like I said, I’ll get in touch with him. We worked together years ago when I assisted his fiancée, Patricia, with her first piece as a professional.”
“Is that the girl who was shot dead in front of him by that arms ring whose operation they busted open?” Gradwell asked in a rather insensitive way. Margaret sank her head and replied with a slow nod. “No wonder he took to the bottle so strongly in the years after that,” Gradwell sighed.
Margaret had to chuckle at that. “Well, sir, Sam Cleave did not need much coaxing to suck on a bottle neck. Not before Patricia, nor after the – incident.”
“Ah! So tell me, is he too unstable to cover this story for us?” Gradwell asked.
“Aye, Mr. Gradwell. Sam Cleave is not only reckless, he’s infamous for a bit of a bent mind,” she said with a fond smile. “Which is precisely the caliber of journalist you want to blow open the covert operations of the command of the German Luftwaffe. I’m sure their Chancellor will be thrilled to know about it, especially now.”
“I agree,” Margaret affirmed, locking her hands in front of her while she stood at attention in front of her editor’s desk. “I will get hold of him immediately and see if he’ll be willing to knock some off his fee for an old friend.”
“I should hope so!” Gradwell’s double chin shivered as his voice escalated. “The man is a celebrated author now, so I am sure these insane excursions he embarks on with that rich idiot are not a feat of necessity.”
The ‘rich idiot’ Gradwell so fondly referred to was David Purdue. Gradwell had cultivated an increasing disrespect for Purdue through the recent years, due to the billionaire’s snubbing of a personal friend of Gradwell’s. The friend in question, Professor Frank Matlock of Edinburgh University, had been forced to resign as Department Head in the much clamored over Brixton Tower after Purdue had ceased his generous endowments towards the department. Naturally, a furor ensued over Purdue’s subsequent romantic involvement with Matlock’s favorite chew toy, the object of his misogynistic by-laws and reservations, Dr. Nina Gould.
The fact that this was all ancient history worthy of a decade and a half of water under the bridge made no difference to a bitter Gradwell. Now he was running the Edinburgh Post, a position he had attained with hard work and fair play, years after Sam Cleave had deserted the dusty halls of the newspaper.
“Yes, Mr. Gradwell,” Margaret replied politely. “I’ll get a hold of him, but what if I’m not successful in reeling him in?”
“In two weeks of world history will be made, Margaret,” Gradwell smirked like a Halloween rapist. “In just over a week the world will watch a live broadcast from the Hague, where the Middle East and Europe will sign a peace treaty to ensure the cessation of all military hostilities between the two worlds. A sure threat to that happening is the recent suicide flight of Dutch pilot Ben Grijsman, remember?”
“Yes, sir.” She bit her lip, knowing full well where he was going with this, but refusing to provoke his wrath by interrupting. “He got into an Iraqi air base and stole a plane.”
“That’s right! And crashed into the C.I.T.E. Head Quarters creating the fuck-up now unfolding. As you know, the Middle East obviously sent someone to retaliate by rogering a German air base!” he exclaimed. “Now tell me again how the reckless and sharp Sam Cleave will not jump at the chance to get into this story.”
“Point taken,” she smiled coyly, feeling deeply uncomfortable at having to watch her boss produce threads of saliva while he spoke passionately about the nascent situation. “I should go. Who knows where he is these days? I’ll have to start calling around promptly.”
“That’s right!” Gradwell roared after her as she made a beeline for her small office. “Hurry and get Cleave to cover this for us before another anti-peace prick gets a boner for suicide and brings about World War III!”
Margaret did not even glance at her colleagues as she rushed past them, but she knew that they were all having a good laugh at the delightful phrases Duncan Gradwell spat out. His choice words were an office joke. Margaret usually laughed loudest when the veteran editor of six prior press offices started getting excited about the news, but now she did not dare. What if he saw her giggle at what he considered to be a seriously newsworthy assignment? Imagine what he would thunder if he saw her smirk reflected in the large glass panels of her office?
Margaret looked forward to speaking to young Sam again. Then again, he had not been young Sam for a while now. But to her, he would always be the wayward and over-zealous news snout out to expose injustice wherever he could. He had been Margaret’s understudy in the previous era of the Edinburgh Post, when the world was still in the chaos of liberalism and the conservatives wanted to tighten the very freedom of every individual. Things had swung around drastically since the World Unity Organization took over the political administration of several former EU countries and several South American territories had broken away from what had once been Third World governments.
Margaret was not a feminist by any reach, but the World Unity Organization being predominantly run by women had showed a considerable difference in how they governed and resolved political tension. War efforts no longer enjoyed the favor they’d once received from male-dominated governments. Now, achievements in problem solving, invention and the optimization of resources profited from international endowments and investment strategies.
At the head of the W.U.O. was the chair of what was instituted as the Council for International Tolerance Efforts, Professor Marta Sloane. She was a former Polish ambassador to England who had won the last election to run the new union of nations. The Council’s main objective was to eliminate war threats by engaging in treaties of mutual compromise instead of terrorism and military engagement. Trade was more important than political hostility, Prof. Sloane always imparted in her speeches. In fact, it became a principle associated with her in all media.
“Why do we have to lose our sons in their thousands to sate the greed of a handful of old men sitting in office where war will never affect them?” she was heard proclaiming only days before she was elected by a landslide victory. “Why do we have to cripple economies and destroy the hard work of architects and masons? Or destroy buildings and kill innocent people, while modern warlords profit from our heartbreak and the severing of our bloodlines? Youth sacrificed to serve the unending circle of destruction is madness, perpetuated by the feeble-minded leaders presiding over your future. Parents losing their children, spouses lost, brothers and sisters ripped from us because of the ineptitude of aged and bitter men at resolving conflict?”
With her dark hair taken back in a braid and her trademark velvet choker that matched whatever suit she wore, the petite, charismatic leader shook the world with her seemingly simple cures for the destructive practices practiced by religious and political systems. In fact, once she’d been ridiculed by her official opposition for claiming that the spirit of the Olympics had turned into nothing but another exuberant fiscal generator.
She insisted that it should have been employed for the same reasons it was begotten – peaceful competition by which the winner is determined without casualties. “Why can we not go to war on a chess board, or on a tennis court? Even an arm wrestling match between two countries could determine which gets their way, for goodness sake! It’s the very same idea, only without the billions spent on military material or the countless lives destroyed by casualties between foot soldiers who have nothing to do with the proximal cause. These people kill each other, having no reason other than orders to do so! If you, my friends, cannot walk up to someone in the street and shoot them in the head without regret or psychological trauma,” she asked from her podium in the city of Minsk a while ago, “why do you force your children and siblings and spouses to do it by voting for these old-fashioned tyrants that perpetua
te this atrocity? Why?”
Margaret did not care if the new unions were criticized for what the opposition campaigns called the advent of feminist rule or the insidious coup by agents of the Anti-Christ. She would support any ruler who stood against the senseless mass murder of our own human race in the name of power, greed and corruption. In essence, Margaret Crosby supported Sloane because the world was less heavy since she’d come to power. Dark veils that had covered age-old feuds were now addressed outright, allowing a channel of communication between begrudged countries.If it were up to me, the dangerous and immoral constraints of religion would be relieved of their hypocrisy, and dogmas of terror and subjugation would be abolished. Individualism is pivotal in this new world. Uniformity is for formal attire. Rules are for scientific principles. Freedom is about the individual, about respect and personal discipline. These will enrich each one of us in mind and body and allow us to be more productive, to be better at the things we pursue. And as we get better at what we do, we will learn humility. From humility comes amity.
Marta Sloane’s speech played on Margaret’s office computer while she looked up the last number she’d for Sam Cleave. She was excited to speak to him again after all this time, and could not help but cackle a little as she dialed his number. As the tone clicked into the first ring, Margaret was distracted by the bobbing frame of a male colleague just outside her window wall. He was waving wildly to get her attention, pointing to his watch and the flat screen of her computer.
“What the hell are you on about?” she said, hoping his aptitude for lip reading surpassed his hand signal skills. “I’m on the phone!”
Sam Cleave’s phone went to voicemail, so Margaret stopped her call to open the door and hear what the clerk was on about. Jerking open the door with a hellish scowl, she snapped, “What in God’s name is so important, Gary? I’m trying to get hold of Sam Cleave.”