by J J Andrews
The nurse nodded.
Ali touched Tom’s arm. “I have your gear. I have your weapon. Everything. Now you behave and quit showing the nurses your rear end. I’ll lock up your service weapon and upload anything you have on your bodycam. Grab your street clothes. I promise I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“I don’t want to do this, Ali.” His voice was ragged and soft.
“That’s the morphine talking. You relax and let these good people take care of you.”
“I have done bad things here.”
“That’s all in the past, Tommy. All in the past.” She leaned closer. “Most of these people don’t know how many women you’ve seduced into the linen closet. I mean, now you only have healthy relationships with hookers.”
Tom withheld a laugh. “It hurts to laugh, Ali. And she’s not a hooker and that’s over.”
“No wonder you got sick. Pissed off the wrong hexing harlot, officer.”
* * * *
She left Tom to the ministrations of the medical staff, knowing he’d get good care. Even the nurses he’d loved and left would be professional. Officer Wolfson has a reputation, but they’re professionals and they’ll take good care of him.
Stepping out of Tom’s partitioned suite, Ali stopped and watched the secondary triage staff for a moment. They were frantic. Something was wrong. She peered into exam four. And immediately wished she had not. She had to close her eyes. She’d seen just about everything working as a hospital cop. But this…
“I don’t know what to say about this one,” she whispered to a nurse.
The nurse patted her own cheeks to elicit blood flow. “I’m in shock. That is one sorry son of a bitch. He was fine—at least as fine as a tweaker can be. He’s riddled with sores. We sedated him and inserted a catheter. He’s going to need some surgical intervention on those wounds. He seemed calm. And then…he went apoplectic. I can’t believe he took off with a catheter inserted. It has a balloon to hold it in place. Up his urethra and lodged in his bladder. How can you forget that?” She cringed. “How? Tox pending. Maybe PCP.”
Ali shuddered. “Don’t do drugs, kids. Bad things happen. Ripped him a new one, literally.”
An orderly crept out of the patient’s room. “There’s so much blood.”
“This tops the night that drunk came in with the toothbrush shoved up his dick, bristles first. I was a rookie then. I didn’t know how to write that shit up.” Ali paused. “But the second time the same guy came in with a toothbrush sticking out of his penis, I had enough experience to find the words. Literally…just the facts.”
“I need a vacation,” the nurse replied. She exhaled and walked around the station to sit.
“No, that guy needs a vacation.” Ali nodded toward the curtained room where a dozen medical personnel worked to stitch up the tear in the patient’s dick. “Well, this was exciting. No time to get an OR ready. Surgical interventions on a penis of a man with MRSA who is high as a kite.” She paused. “What’s his name?”
The nurse laughed. “You’re going to love this. It‘s Johnson.”
“I guess when it’s Johnson’s johnson…” She stopped herself from laughing. “Wolfson came in. Probably appendicitis. I’m going to hang out here until he’s out of surgery. Do you know who’s on security tonight?”
“Nah. I haven’t checked the log. I wonder who’s getting the pleasure of cutting Wolfson open.”
“Come on, Ellen. Tom’s not that bad.”
The nurse made a choking noise. “Only if you don’t let him get under your skin—and I mean that literally.”
Ali laughed and recalled fondly the mad crush of passion she and Tom had enjoyed on Hell Night. Never again. Never ever again.
Chapter Two
Tom was not a good patient. Though in pain and sedated, he wanted only to fight the team pulling him into exploratory surgery. Someone put a mask over his nose and mouth. He balked. He kicked against the hands wrapping his legs in compression boots. Or at least he thought he kicked. He knew the circulating nurse, the surgical techs, an anesthesiologist, and others were present. He heard the first round of questions from nurse to the anesthesiologist. Allergies? Previous surgeries? She began the same list with the surgeon, making sure everyone working on him was up to speed.
He didn’t know when he drifted off to la-la land. The blackness was warm and comforting. He understood the dark. His memories lived in the shadows. He’d been pulled from the inky waters of the Bez with very little intact. It was far too complicated to reconcile when he was created as a prison to when he’d leveled up to become a real-life boy. A Pinocchio in blue. His stomach ached whenever he tried to work out the math of who he was—and who he had become. He didn’t actually know if anything—any part of his life—was real. Was Old Town a construct of hex and rage? Or was only he created to house chaos?
Dreams under general were supposed to be rare. Even rarer were those remembered by the patient upon waking. Tom was fully aware he was in surgery. He could see it from the gallery above the suite. Once a teaching hospital, now only the med students with poor grades interned. St. Anthony’s was not the finest medical facility. It was old but clean. Its staff was decent but worn out. He avoided the morgue and tunnels because there were too many voices down there. The dead were restless. The one thing he knew was that he was “sensitive.” Be it part of the curse that forged him, or something more real—he could hear the voices of those who had gone before him.
In his Propofol slumber he left the hospital to walk his beat. Officer Friendly. He tipped his five-point hat to the bored shopkeeps and said a prayer—to whom he did not know—at each boarded-up building. Thriving businesses would attract money to Old Town. Money meant a better way of life for the inhabitants.
He walked with a child, her hand in his. He pet the dogs. He scratched the chins of the cats. He held a silent conversation with the damned squirrel who passed messages to the dragon asleep beneath the square. He held out his hand to help the drunks up from the pavement and bought them coffee. He felt the longing in his heart for love. Real love. Not just sex. Sex, he could get. Love…not so much. He didn’t want a wife, two kids, a white picket fence, and dog. He wanted a relationship so magical a kiss could awaken a dragon and give a squirrel human speech. Only one woman had ever made him feel that powerful. He looked around for Ali. The nurse-turned-cop who always had his back. She’d had some heartbreak. And Hell Night had fucked them all up.
Time in her arms was the most erotic moment of his life and the most trying. The residual magic of their curse-induced coupling—their afterglow—was potent, but frightening. Satisfying, yet fraught with peril. He had no secrets from her, yet there were things she must never know. Like what he did in the shadows.
He squatted atop a vagrant. Straddling, pushing downward, his full weight against the man’s chest. He was hunched over, his left arm pressing against the man’s windpipe and his right hand firmly clasped over his nose and mouth. The sweet, sweet power of taking the life of another was more arousing than any other single experience of his bizarre and twisted life. But I can’t let Ali know. She must never know. What I do in the shadows is a secret. Smothering. Suffocating. Strangling. It is a slow and beautiful death I offer. But she must never know. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. I’m not a killer. This is an anesthesia-induced nightmare. When the struggles of his victim ceased, he stood and removed a ragged paperback from his pants pocket. He flipped it to the backmatter pages and ripped off a corner. He let the paper flutter to the floor. He chewed off another page end and then spit it out. Rage filled him. He threw the book and shouted into the blackness, “I reveal my inmost self to my god.” The words cut him. The jagged edge still sticking in this throat, he choked out, “This is not my true face.”
He hadn’t expected the void to give reply. He was so shocked as laughter pushed its way to him that he fell back.
He knew the laugh.
It had dwelled inside him for a very long time.
&nbs
p; It was the voice he heard in his mind. When he was a prison of flesh.
For a god.
Loki was back.
Tom wanted to vomit. Maybe he never left.
His medication-induced slumber was suddenly shattered. A huge golden eagle ripped across his bare back and around his gut. His entrails pulsed forward. He pushed them into his abdomen and scanned the vicinity for his attacker. The talons did not belong to a nightmarish rogue raptor. Raptors didn’t laugh with the cackle of an enraged woman. The claws extended, in manicured form. It was a woman. Her yellow eyes burned into his soul and he felt small and weak. Fear sank him. I am small and weak. This is a god. Who are you? Answer me! Little pieces of torn paper rained down before him as he shuffled off the hypnotic sleep of surgery and his eyes fluttered open. This isn’t Loki. I am in trouble. Ali!
* * * *
Three hours later, Officer Najarah got the call. Though she wasn’t technically on her hospital shift, sitting in the security office or in the squad car wasn’t going to cut it. She couldn’t hide wearing her uniform. While donned, there was only one constant. The job. She’d taken off on a personal patrol even as the on-duty officer did his job. She walked as far out as the berms by the Dumpsters and medical waste depository. Every now and then she sniffed her uniform to see if the chill air had pulled away the stink of the decomp. Maybe a little. Only a little. She exhaled, realizing she’d been holding her breath as she answered her phone.
The voice on the other end was brief. “Tom is out of surgery. His appendix burst. We cleaned the abscess and inserted a drain tube.”
“Can I see him in recovery?” she asked.
“He’s pretty out of it,” the doctor warned. “He’s been quite fitful. Officer Najarah…he called your name. He lists you as his next of kin. Do you have his power of attorney for medical decisions?”
“I do. How long is the drain tube going to remain?” Ali asked.
“A few days. He’ll be here for at least five.”
“I’m on my way.”
She had a light step and dashed across the parking lot and through the ER and surgical floor. The recovery room had pale pink lighting and long shadows.
She leaned over Tom’s gurney. “Hey, Tommy.” She put her hand atop his.
He squeezed hers. “Decomp…”
She texted their sergeant, He’s out and okay. “Don’t worry about that. It’s all been sorted. I’m sure the decedent is in the cooler downstairs by now. I’m going to head home for a few hours. Be back here soon. I switched a shift to get on graves hospital duty tonight. I’ll come see you.”
Chapter Three
She stripped out of her uniform in the house’s locker room and then bagged it. She tagged it with a note. Decomp. The cleaning crew would burn it. No use sending it to the cleaners. Nothing would ever make it clean.
She sacked out on the sofa in the break room, setting her watch to go off in two hours. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep. The moment she allowed her body to relax, waves of sleep hit. She’d been able to sleep in a corner on the floor at the hospital when she worked with her father. Eighteen-hour days born of coffee and audiobooks. At the academy, she’d relished her shut eye. She’d had a private dorm room and crashed hard after training, day in and day out. Dreams were sometimes pleasant. Sometimes sad. When they were of Ford, her dead lover, killed by an IED overseas, they were both. He was a good man. A fantastic lover. A true patriot. And he’d given his life for his country. He would have wanted it that way. When the dreams involved Tommy…things got hot. From political debates to insane sex…hot. She leaned more toward the conservative side of things. Tom was far more liberal. They tempered each other and were good partners. They had fun. They moved like clockwork and had good arrest and conviction records. He slipped fortune cookie fortune-sized notes into her magazine holders. She’d find the them when she emptied the crumbs from them. That was the title of her blog—the one she had started but not really put effort into. Crumbs in the Clip. A female cop’s adventures of working the worst beat in the Pacific Northwest. Subtitle: While trying to keep food bits and pieces in her magazine holders to a minimum.
It was a problem. Crumbs. All the time. Her mother used to have stains on her bosom because it was ample and that was where the drips and drops fell. For her, it was the duty belt. She’d actually found a piece of lettuce on her taser once. The blog was private and was more of a diary to keep her sanity in check. The morning after Hell Night, she’d written, I was dosed and made some mistakes last night. I think it was mass hysteria. Was it airborne? Person to person? Whatever it was, fire and brimstone literally fell from the sky. McPherson’s place is burned to the ground. Her evil henchman, Mary, is gone. There are more reports of strange occurrences on the logs than ever before. I think I fucked Tom. I think we used a condom. I’m going to go across the bridge and pick up the morning-after pill just in case. The priest committed suicide atop his altar. OTAB went nuts because they thought he was Odin. Tom thinks he was sharing a body with Loki. It’s too much. All too much. Oh, and magic is real.
Sometimes she dreamed of when she’d worked in surgery. Blood. Suction. Sutures. Her father’s black eyes staring out from above the mask and through the goggles. Sometimes of cleaning out a meth house. So much despair. Sometimes of holding the hand of an abused child as she tucked the kid into the backseat of her patrol vehicle for the short ride to family services. Please, God, don’t let this child grow up to be the way his parents are.
Tom filled her dreams during this much-needed nap. How much pain could one man take before losing his mind? He was a tortured soul. She awakened to her alarm with the dream still in the forefront of her mind. His issues were so complex, not even the best shrink or ceremonial magician could help him. That left her. His confesseur. His partner. His friend.
Chapter Four
Time and tide, and police work, wait for no man. Tom hospitalized, the change in shift had left her assigned as field training officer to a rookie. A rookie on his first graveyard shift. Not quite working a double, she’d had little sleep. I’ll make it. I always have.
Perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was the fact that St. Anthony’s Hospital was a pit of despair, but her shift began with a feeling of dread. Tom wasn’t by her side. The heavy aura of an insane asylum clung to her crisp uniform, having changed from the eau de cadaver-scented one, making it feel as though she’d just walked into a sauna. She signed in at the security office. “Another glorious shift. I get to make rounds, do a tunnel run, and finish with an exciting turn at the metal detector.”
“How’s Tom?” the desk nurse asked.
“Recovering, thanks.”
“I heard you have a temporary partner,” the out-going officer said with a chuckle.
“I can’t believe I was ever a rookie cop. It is painful. You know, Tom has never been ill. Not so much as the sniffles.”
“I’m glad he’ll be all right. I wasn’t working when he came in, but I heard he was not a good patient.”
“At least he’s a good cop. And a decent man.”
The nurse and cop looked at each other and laughed. “You got a thing with him, officer? Not many women at St. Anthony’s would describe him as decent. He’s a player.”
Ali smiled at the nurse. She didn’t think she’d been one of Tom’s conquests. She didn’t have the Masters in Nursing pin on her ID badge. He likes ‘em pretty and smart. “Not really company policy to date your partner.”
“He’s a looker.”
“Never noticed,” Ali replied. “I got his back, but that doesn’t mean I’m ogling it.” Liar! I am a liar. During Hell Night, I noticed.
“Right.” The nurse busied herself with a stack of files. “Mind if I have a go? Rumor has it he used to be quite the hospital Casanova. I could use some meaningless sex.”
Ali chuckled and tapped her radio button. “He’s moved beyond that, I believe. He might even have a serious girl.” She paused, then pressed her call button. “540, sh
ow me out for tunnel patrol.”
“What a pity!” the nurse called after Ali.
Her temporary partner strolled up behind her, a soft drink in his hand. “789, clear for patrol,” he said into his radio.
Dispatch replied to their calls as they approached the lock-up area where police vehicles were kept for hospital use. “Today, we get to go to the underworld of Krazy Town.” She punched a code into a secure lockbox and removed a set of keys.
Her temporary partner nodded. “I’ve been looking forward to this. My regular FTO says I’m ready. For graves and the hospital shift.”
“My field training officer was Officer Wolfson. I’m still paired with him. So, Smith, the tunnel is old school. It is downright archaic. Back in the day, the priest and nuns used to keep dry by passing between the church and hospital chapel. An underground traverse for holy passage. It’s big enough for a golf cart.”
“Do we have one?” Smith asked.
Ali nodded. “We do—or rather we have a quad.” She jingled the keys. “A golf cart could never handle the cobblestones. It would rattle apart. The quad, however, is fun. I wish I could take it out and run it along the shoreline of the Bez.”
“That would, indeed, be a pleasant diversion. And in this job, and in this town, we have so few,” Smith replied. “Is it true that there are some drawings in the tunnel? Things older than its origination?”
“Yes. They were studied by the university across the bridge until the funding was cut. And now, they’re protected behind a heavy grate, bolted floor to ceiling. They are a form of Norse runes—that much is known. And they were dated to the year one thousand. I read they are a combination of staves and runes and some markings that must be Viking shorthand. They’ve never been fully deciphered. They are unique.” She paused. “Oh, and we’re not allowed to photograph or video them. In fact, it is suggested that we not shine our high beams at them. It has to do with the impregnation of mica or silver or something. Like an old oil painting—they can be damaged by too much light.”