Isolation Ward

by Joshua Spanogle

  The Surgeon walked toward the truck. A few cars slowed down along the highway, but no one stopped.

  “Nate?” Brooke asked. “Nate?”

  “Stay down there,” I said, as if she had a choice.

  The door to the truck was opened fully on Brooke’s side, half-opened on mine. The Surgeon walked slowly along the driver’s side, the gun down. He knew we didn’t have any weapons, I suppose, and he knew that even if we did, he was faster than me.

  He looked at the dead policeman on the ground below him. “A shame,” he murmured. Then he raised those tired eyes to me. “Dr. McCormick, you’re making this extremely messy.”

  I had the cap off the nitric acid and slowly—as slowly as I could—pulled the bottle from my crotch. “Don’t you take any responsibility for anything?” I asked.

  Brooke said, “You sick cocksucker.” Where did women learn these words?

  I saw him glance quickly into the cab, at Brooke, at the box of papers on the floor. “I know where my responsibility lies, Doctor. Good-bye.” He began to raise the gun.

  I swung my right arm toward the window and stopped fast. A spray of acid arced out, splashing across the Surgeon’s face. I ducked down, anticipating that he would fire into the cab. He did, the shots splitting the air above me. With both my arms, I shoved the door of the truck—it swung into him, knocking him back. With the gun still in his hands, he began to claw at his eyes. A driver leaned on his horn and swerved to avoid him.

  I turned the key in the ignition. The blessed old Ford started.

  The Surgeon began to spray the side of the cab with the rest of his clip. I put the truck in drive and punched the accelerator to the floor. As I sped along the shoulder, I managed to tag the tail end of the Surgeon’s car. The force of the impact slammed Brooke’s door shut. She yelped.

  I hooked my dead arm through the window of my door and pulled it closed. As I did so, I looked into the side-view mirror. I saw the Surgeon raking at his face with both hands.

  CHAPTER 93

  “You’re bleeding,” Brooke said. Her head was resting against my thigh, her eyes focused up at me.

  “I know. I have no skin left on my hand.”

  “No. Your shoulder. I think you were hit.”

  Only when she said it did I realize the pain and wetness on my back. I was still alive, I thought, and still breathing, so I assumed the bullet hadn’t punctured a lung. I mean, I had to be alive. Heaven wasn’t a nasty stretch of the 101, was it? Hell maybe, but come on, I was a good guy.

  She closed her eyes.

  “I’m losing a lot of blood, Nate.”

  “I know. Hang on.” We drove for another eternity. “We’re going to get stopped again. They’ll think we shot the cops.” Brooke didn’t say anything, so I filled the silence with a quiet “Goddamn.”

  The wind was whistling through the bullet holes in the windshield and the doors. How the hell did I get here? I wondered. I was shot. Brooke was shot. Two weeks before, the worst thing I had to complain about was the heat and humidity in Baltimore. Now, if I were the betting type, I’d give two to one we wouldn’t make it out of this alive.

  Brooke, as if she’d been reading my thoughts, said softly, “It’ll be okay.”

  “Will it?”

  Rhetorical questions like that are nice, because they leave the field wide-open for answers of all types, open to all sorts of responses. And God, if He’s actually up there, decided to answer. Ahead, off to the left, I saw a large building with green illuminated letters spelling out GILROY MERCY HOSPITAL.

  “There it is,” I said, and took the next exit.

  CHAPTER 94

  There wasn’t much commotion in the ER when I arrived, but whatever noise there was ceased for a moment as I stumbled in. I could see the camera shot, long, from the point of view of the admitting nurse—bedraggled man in need of a shave, bloody lump of a left hand dangling at his side, blood slicking his back, yelling for a gurney.

  I remember people surrounding me, trying to get me into a bed. I shoved them away and pushed back through the automatic doors to the truck, yelling the whole time about a gurney.

  Outside, I opened the passenger-side door. Brooke’s rump faced me, covered in blood. I looked, but couldn’t really see where the bullet had entered. I put my hand on her hip and waited.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said.

  Thirty seconds later, two guys came out, rolling a bed between them. A young doctor followed.

  “What happened?” he asked me.

  I told him Brooke had been shot. As the orderlies pulled Brooke onto the gurney, the doc looked at me. “You?”

  “Shot, I think. Not too bad. And my hand . . .” I raised the thing to show him. He took it in for a second, then looked down at the gurney.

  “Brooke?”

  She looked up at the doctor and smiled like an angel. “Jaime.”

  Jaime glanced at me, then back to Brooke. “What the hell happened?”

  The orderlies began to wheel Brooke inside; Jaime—who was annoyingly good-looking—followed. Nathaniel—with injuries almost as bad as Brooke’s—was left alone.

  “Hey,” I called. “I need someone to help me with this.” I pointed to the box of files.

  Jaime looked over his shoulder. “Leave it. Come inside.”

  “No.”

  Jaime set his chiseled jaw, then told one of the orderlies to give me a hand. He took the orderly’s place on the gurney.

  “No police, okay?” I said.

  “They’ve already been called.”

  That’s it, then, I thought. I turned back to the truck to watch the orderly gather my files, then ran to help him get things in gear.

  One of the nice things about a lot of blood is that it’s dramatic, so we didn’t have to wait for attention. Of course, at that point, I didn’t know if we were being taken care of so quickly because of the blood or because Brooke and Jaime seemed to have, well, a history.

  So, there they were, Brooke and Jaime, chatting comfortably. Or, more exactly, it was Jaime doing most of the talking. “You got shot in the butt?” I heard the scissors rip through the denim of Brooke’s jeans. Jaime clucked his tongue. “What a shame. Like defacing Michelangelo’s David.”

  Brooke laughed, exhausted but genuine, charmed by the charming Dr. Munoz. Okay, it was an inappropriate feeling, I know, the jealousy that spiked through me. I mean, I had much bigger things to worry about—the police would be there any minute, asking questions about this mess and the mess on the highway ten miles south, I had to worry about the damage to my hand—but there it was. Jealousy.

  Another doctor was tending to me. She was older, fifties maybe, and severe looking. She and I definitely hadn’t slept together, so she didn’t mention my beautiful butt, my beautiful shoulder, or my beautiful hand.

  “Just wrap it, please,” I told her. “Put a dressing on the shoulder.”

  She blinked when she finally pulled off the last of the gauze. “You need to go to surgery.”

  “Dress it. Quickly. I need to go. And get somebody down here with a bolt cutter.”

  “They’ve already been called. Dr. McCormick, I insist you—”

  “Dress the goddamned hand.”

  The easy conversation in the next bay ceased. I reached up to the curtain and pulled it back. Jaime cranked his head around, furious at the intrusion. Brooke was draped in a sheet, which didn’t hide her rear end, now bare, the jeans cut down the leg.

  “I’ve seen her ass, too, Doctor,” I told Jaime.

  Brooke, to her credit, said nothing.

  “I need to go, Brooke.”

  “Why?”

  I glanced at Jaime and the doctor—Dr. Saxon, according to her hospital ID—who was caring for me. “I just need to go. I need to get something . . . before everything explodes.”

  Brooke seemed to get this, and she turned her head to look at me. “Be careful.”

  I said to Dr. Saxon, “Please wrap my hand and bandage the back as qu
ickly as you can. If you don’t, I’ll leave.”

  “You have to sign—”

  “I know. Bring me the papers.”

  Dr. Saxon called for the forms that would release the hospital of any liability for my checking myself out against medical advice.

  Jaime Munoz pulled the curtain closed, but I stopped him.

  “I need a car,” I said, keeping my eyes on Brooke. She nodded slightly. God bless this woman.

  “Jaime, give Dr. McCormick your keys,” she said.

  “What?” Munoz looked angry.

  “He needs your car. Give him the keys.”

  Doctors Munoz and Saxon exchanged glances. “Why?” he asked.

  “We can’t tell you.” The not-so-subtle subtext here was that it was very important. How could he refuse? His former lover had been shot; the guy with her was spattered with blood and mangled. They obviously weren’t on the run, since Brooke would be left here to deal with the cops. Plus, I’m sure Dr. Munoz was thinking he might have another chance with the beautiful Brooke Michaels if he gave in.

  I shouldn’t have said anything about seeing her ass.

  “Please, Jaime. It’s very important.” She put her hand on his arm.

  Dr. Munoz huffed. Then he stripped off his gloves and dug into his pocket. He produced a key chain, took off a few keys, and pushed the rest into my good hand. “It’s the black Mustang. In the lot right outside the ER.” He began to draw closed the curtains, and I stopped him again. This guy was going to pop me if I didn’t let up.

  “Brooke, make sure the documents get to the police. Make sure they know how important they are. I don’t know if there’s anything important left, but . . .”

  She nodded.

  Jaime gave it a moment, then pulled the curtain fast. This time I didn’t stop him. I heard Brooke say, “Thank you.” I didn’t hear any more conversation after that.

  Dr. Saxon finished with my hand, then undid my shirt and pulled it off my shoulder.

  “You’re lucky,” she said, poking around at the wound. “It just grazed you. It’s already clotted. We’ll just irrigate and get a couple of stitches—”

  “Great. Then I don’t need it dressed right now.” I began to pull on my shirt. “Thanks,” I said to Saxon.

  She threw up her hands in a “whatever” gesture. By way of mollification, I said, “I just don’t have time.”

  “No one ever has time, Dr. McCormick.”

  Not like me, lady, I thought.

  A nurse brought the papers for my discharge, and I signed them. The cuffs were still dangling from my right hand, and I saw the nurse watching them make little loops as I signed; she looked hypnotized.

  I heard a commotion at the end of the hallway. I stood and poked my head out of the curtain. Two policemen were talking to another nurse. I pulled back into the bay. “Is there another exit here?”

  Saxon seemed confused. “Uh, the hallway curves around. There’s an exit to the hospital proper in back.”

  “Tell the cops I went to surgery.”

  As I pulled the curtain to the empty bay next to me, I heard Brooke say, “Be careful, Nate.”

  I wished she were coming with me.

  I made my way to the end of the hallway by crossing through each of the bays. Some were empty; others contained people—mostly of Mexican heritage, it looked like—who ogled me as I moved around past their beds. Eventually, I came out to the end of the hall. Quickly, I checked for the police, saw them talking to Jaime Munoz, who looked decidedly displeased.

  Better him than me, I thought, then rounded the corner.

  In the parking lot, I hit the Unlock button on the key chain and heard a double blip from my right. The Mustang was parked toward the back of the lot, stretched across two parking spaces. Poor Jaime, parking it back there to keep it safe. Now a guy with one hand was going to take it for a spin. He must have really been into Brooke.

  I had to give it to him: it was a real car, only a year or so old. V-8, 300-plus horsepower. And, unfortunately for me, a five-speed. Good thing I knew how to drive with my knees.

  I got in, turned on that four-and-a-half-liter, and put it into first. In a minute, I was on the highway, clicking along at ninety. Who needs a left hand?

  After I passed San Jose, I pulled off the highway to a convenience market. My telephone still had a little juice—enough, probably, for one call.

  “I need to see you. Where are you?”

  There was a pause on the phone as decisions were being made and remade. She sighed, then told me to meet her at the university.

  CHAPTER 95

  I parked the Mustang in the med school’s parking area, not far from where my car had been broken into the day before yesterday. Perhaps I should have opened up to the bad juju of the place, taken the cue, and gotten the hell out of there. In fact, in light of what would happen, there was no “perhaps” about it.

  I got out of the car.

  The buildings surrounding the parking area—which had been constructed with a lot of nouveau flair—looked different at night. Light blazed from within their exoskeletons, giving them the look of spaceships adrift in some cold corner of the galaxy. There was something very Arthur C. Clarke about the place.

  Across the lot, I saw her—sitting on the trunk of her silver BMW, smoking, looking great in tight khakis and a black cashmere sweater. An expensive handbag sat next to her. The scene could have been an ad from a magazine, something touting female independence, contemplation, or whatever it was one exemplified while perched on the back of a Bimmer. In any case, I was surprised she still did that—smoked—but then remembered it was her answer to stress. A few during finals, a few when she and I split, that kind of thing. She tossed the cigarette as I approached.

  “Don’t mean to interrupt,” I said.

  She was silent for a moment, taking in my bandaged hand, bloodied shirt, and handcuffs. Then she shouldered the bag and said, “Let’s walk.”

  So, we walked—across the medical campus to a path that snaked along Campus Drive. Only a few cars passed us along the road, cracking the darkness with their headlights. Alaine veered off the main path onto one of the smaller walkways that cut through the acres of trees that surrounded the campus. We had been this way many times before—Alaine and I—taking a break from study in the library to talk, hold hands, grope.

  Everything was quiet, except for the wind moving through the large, spreading oaks and the occasional clink of the chains from the handcuffs dangling off my right wrist. I took the loose end of the cuffs into my hand.

  “Alaine?”

  Her eyes were on the ground.

  “Alaine?”

  “No one ever thought this would happen,” she said quietly. “No one thought it would go this far.”

  “Then why didn’t they stop?”

  She looked at me for the first time in a while, but said nothing.

  “Okay, what are we doing here?” Still she didn’t respond. “The pig wasn’t sick, was it?”

  “No,” she said.

  “But I talked to one of the vets down in Gilroy. He said the Abby line was diseased.”

  “Because that’s what we told him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what we thought at first. It was the most likely scenario.”

  We passed through a cactus garden tucked among the oaks—huge saguaro, prickly pear, yucca—and damn it if I didn’t know where she was taking me.

  The path opened to an asphalt expanse about half the size of a basketball court. At one end sat a building, a compact granite structure with big bronze doors and two white marble sphinxes perched beside the steps. It was a mausoleum, resting place of the earthly remains of the university’s founder, his wife and son. During the school year, you could always find a few couples making out here, or a coven trying to raise some Wicca spirit. But it was summertime and deserted, though you could still see the wax stains on the stone steps.

  Alaine and I used to come here. We sat on the
steps.

  She turned to me and crossed her legs. “So, indulge me, Nathaniel. Tell me what you think happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll tell you what really did happen.”

  “I think I’m almost there.”

  “You probably are. You’re a smart man, so nobody should be surprised.”

  “But you are,” I pointed out cruelly.

  “No. Other people were surprised.”

  “Otto and Ian.”

  “Yes.”

  I shook the feeling that it was ten years before and that we were here to neck.

  Sucking deep some night air, I began. “Okay. I figure it starts with Dr. Falk, who comes out here and has a great idea, the idea he’s worked with all of his life—to use animal organs in humans. He’s on the cutting edge of xenotransplantation. The university loves it, the investment community loves it. He brings his kid, Kincaid Charles—KC—who is retarded and can’t be too far from his family. He gets his son a job as an orderly in the hospital. Kincaid, somewhere along the way, finds a girlfriend—Gladys Thomas.

  “Meanwhile, Falk is busy in the lab. He engineers pig organs that lack identifying sugars and proteins, making them invisible to the organ recipient. A paper comes out later that year. I assume it’s around this time that things really begin to rev up with Chimeragen. Ian comes on board from one of the venture firms that backed the whole deal. You meet Ian, the world stops, the bells go off, an angelic host begins singing about true love amidst—”

  “Nathaniel . . .”

  “Wait, that’s not how it happened?”

  Alaine looked annoyed.

  “Anyway, somehow Falk convinces the families of some brain-dead people to give their loved ones to medicine and science. He transplants these new, perfect organs into the patients. Not surprisingly, Kincaid is assigned to be an orderly or caretaker or whatever for the people. Everything is okay until KC rapes one of the women.”