Terminally Ill

by Melissa Yi

  I lifted it into the air. Someone had filled the pillowcase with something of medium weight and a squarish appearance.

  “Hey!”

  The man’s voice rang from the far side of palliative care hallway, beyond the staircase Mr. Watson had disappeared down.

  I glanced at the tall, thick-set white man who was bearing down on me. He was wearing a leather jacket, so he wasn’t a hospital worker, although he looked vaguely familiar through his scowl. I froze with the pillowcase still in my hands.

  “Hey! That’s mine!” he hollered.

  He was still a good sixty feet away from the soiled linen cart, not even next to the nursing station. And anyway, who puts their belongings in a soiled linen cart? But he was closing in on me fast, and my only choices were to rush down the staircase, where Mr. Watson might be waiting for me, or—

  I rushed toward him, but took a quick left into the nursing station, still clutching the pillowcase in my gloved hands. “Help!” I called to Toni, the préposée, who was standing next to the chart rack, gaping at me. Then I kept running into the miniature staff lounge and slammed the door shut.

  The door had a lock, so I turned it closed and jammed a chair under the doorknob just before a meaty fist slammed on it. “Give. That. Back. Bitch!”

  I grabbed the phone on the windowsill, half-hidden behind a stack of magazines, and punched in locating. “This is Dr. Sze. I need the police. A man is trying to attack me in the nurse’s lounge on the palliative care ward. I’ve barricaded myself in the room.”

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  The door reverberated with his pounding.

  I tried to ignore that. He couldn’t break down the door in the middle of the hospital, with at least one witness. Could he?

  “Do you want to call a Code White?” asked the male on the phone, who was no doubt an incompetent security guard who replaced the operator at night time.

  “Send up security! And call the police. Now!”

  I hung up on him and called 911 myself to repeat the story. The woman who answered asked, “Don’t you have security at the hospital?”

  “The guards are all a hundred years old. Yes, they’re on their way, but I need real protectors. Hurry!”

  I hung up on her, too. The city’s finest, always at your service.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  I squeezed the pillowcase. There was definitely something inside. Something rectangular with edges, solid but bendable.

  I unknotted the bag with some difficulty and glanced at all the $20 and $50 bills inside, bundled neatly and encased in a Ziploc.

  Bang!

  Bang!

  “That’s mine, bitch. I earned it!”

  “What did you do?” I yelled back through the door.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” I called, while checking out the window as an escape route. I was on the fifth floor. Even if I could break the glass, jumping out the window wouldn’t be my first choice. What kind of weapons did I have in the nurse’s lounge? Could I electrocute him with the coffee maker?

  No.

  Could I shove him in the microwave and sizzle him, like a modern day Hansel and Gretel?

  Nope.

  Then I remembered that I’d shoved a needle in my lab coat pocket for the arterial blood gas I’d never done on the CHF patient. I rummaged in the depths of my pockets and even found the 18 gauge, large bore needle, as well as the 5 cc blood gas syringe. I fitted the 18 gauge needle on the syringe and kept the little ABG needle capped in my pocket. If a woman could defend herself in a parking lot with her keys in her fist, I could certainly jab a crazy man with a syringe, and I wanted the biggest motherfucking needle possible at my disposal.

  Then I shoved the pillowcase in the microwave. The door just barely closed on all that cash, and I knew the nurses would be pissed because now their microwave was now contaminated with money from the soiled linen cart, but if I survived this, I could donate my own home microwave. I just figured that if he broke down the door, that was one of the last places he’d look.

  Why the fuck was I worrying about microwaves?

  BANG.

  BANG.

  He was kicking the door now. The acoustic ceiling tiles vibrated with his kicks. The door handle rattled. Secretly, I was amazed that anything at St. Joe’s had held up this long. I was not surprised that security and the police had not achieved anything in the past few minutes, but I could probably hold out until they came and arrested this crazy bastard.

  The kicking stopped.

  My heart hammered on. He might have gone for a weapon. He could break open one of the “in case of fire, break glass” displays, maybe get an axe, chop the door down.

  And then a woman screamed. A real, horrifying, make-your-hairs-stand-straight-up holler.

  I stiffened.

  The man’s voice called, from farther away, “I’ve got her, bitch, If you don’t want the fat bitch to get it, you better come out now with the money.”

  He had Toni.

  She screamed again.

  I couldn’t let him kill her. I’ve always prized human life above money. That’s why I went into medicine instead of business.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I called. “I’ve hidden the money. Just give me a minute.”

  “Come out right now, or the bitch buys it!”

  Too many bitches, I thought crazily. A girl could get confused this way. I made sure the 18 gauge needed was still firmly covered with its plastic sheath before I dropped it back in my lab coat pocket, on my right side, so I didn’t stab myself with the bare needle. There was little chance I’d get to use it, so I might as well put the safety back on, so to speak.

  I opened the microwave door and yanked out the pillowcase. Of course the fabric got jammed in the hinge, and I sweated and swore, but I got the wad of cash out. Good thing Mr. Watson had been neat enough to bundle it and place it in a Ziploc. That way, leather jacket guy wouldn’t lose a single 50 dollar bill.

  I’ve always loved fifty dollar bills. They’re red, one of my favourite colours, and used to have a ring of Mounties on horseback on one side. They’re still the prettiest Canadian bills around. But of course, I didn’t feel too fond of them now.

  “I’ve got them,” I said, moving the chair away from the door.

  “Come on out with your hands up!”

  I twisted the door handle with my right hand, holding the bag of money in my left hand.

  Leather jacket guy had his hands around Toni’s neck. She’d made it to the nursing station desk, but the phone was beeping helplessly from the floor as, slowly, he began to squeeze.

  Toni let out a peep. She yanked on his hands.

  He squeezed harder.

  Her face turned from red to redder. Tears gleamed in her eyes.

  “Stop it! You can have your money.” I threw it on the floor halfway between us, to force him to let go of Toni’s throat.

  He grinned behind from the dark bristle dotting his face. He shook his head, still clamping on Toni. She tried to elbow him, but he didn’t flinch. I could tell that she’d gotten weaker in a matter of seconds. He said, “Not over there. Hand it to me.”

  My stomach twisted. I didn’t want to get into range. My voice still wasn’t quite as strong as before the last time I nearly got strangled, and I could clearly picture him breaking my neck.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t let Toni die in front of me. She’d closed her eyes now, like she was praying, but her face had turned purple.

  I took two steps toward them, scooped up the bag with my left hand, and let my voice tremble. “I don’t want to come near you. You killed Mr. Bérubé, didn’t you?”

  His smile flickered for a second.

  “George Bérubé. The old man in 5656.” I pointed to the room diagonally across the hall, with my money hand, hypnotizing him, while I delved in my right hand pocket and uncapped the syringe.

  “H
e was dying anyway,” he said.

  “But he wasn’t dead. He was waiting for his lunch. Did you put a pillow over his face?”

  His mouth twitched before he met my gaze full on. “A plastic bag. Easier to carry.”

  Toni moaned softly.

  His hands tightened.

  I kept my voice soft, unthreatening. “But you didn’t think of it yourself, right? David Watson paid you to do it.”

  He glanced over his shoulder for a microsecond, but I knew he’d seen Mr. Watson disappear down that staircase.

  “You did all the hard work,” I said. “He just handed over the money. And he couldn’t even do that right.”

  “You’re telling me!” His hands squeezed again. Where his fingers had shifted a little on her flesh, I spotted purple bruises already forming under his thumbs.

  I said, slowly and clearly, “I’m going to give you the money and you can disappear. But you have to let go of Toni.”

  Toni’s lips trembled. She was still conscious, but barely. And we both knew he could kill her before he took the money, even by accident.

  I kept my voice soothing. “I’m a doctor. When you let go of Toni, I’m going to take care of her. I’m not going to chase you. You can just take the money and run.”

  “You’d better not call the cops!”

  “You’ll see me with Toni, not calling the cops.” I still had my hand around the syringe. It was a terrible weapon, a weapon of last resort. He could easily get it away from me and stab me in the eyeball. It would only work if I had a modicum of surprise. I waved my left hand, to attract his attention to the money. I held it at arm’s length between us. “This is what you really want. You don’t want to hurt her.” Any more than you already have. “You were just trying to get payment.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He was staring at the money. The veins bulged in his forehead, under a sheen of sweat.

  “Here you go.”

  He snatched the bag with his right hand, keeping his left on Toni’s neck, but turning to face me.

  I think he would have let her go, except Toni tried to kick him in the nuts. She was so weak and dizzy, she just clunked him in the thigh, but he roared and clamped both hands around her neck again, serious this time, so I stabbed him high in the flank, where his jacket had exposed when he reached up.

  I hoped to puncture a lung or a kidney, but I felt the needle sink less than a centimetre before it stopped hard.

  I knew that feeling from failed lumbar punctures.

  I’d hit bone.

  I got a rib.

  Fuck.

  He roared again—this must be what wounded bears sound like, I thought at the back of my mind—and he whipped around, but not before I wrenched the syringe back out. So when he whirled around to face me, I ducked and jabbed the syringe into his belly, right through his T-shirt, up to the hilt.

  His eyes widened.

  Oh, my God. I’ve killed him.

  Then I thought, It’s a 1.5 inch syringe and he’s fat. What could I have hit that would have killed him?

  I yanked the syringe out and held it like a knife between us. The needle dripped burgundy blood. “Take the money and get out!”

  He drew back his fist.

  This is it. I’m dead.

  “Jeremy!” a woman’s voice screamed, with such horror that my eyes flew to her. It was the very skinny cleaner, the one with a beautiful voice.

  I remembered her name.

  Rosie.

  Verna Rosenberg.

  Kameron and Kaitlyn Rosenberg’s mother.

  Hatred burned through my core. I said, “I know what you’re doing to Kaitlyn, you son of a bitch.” I lifted up the syringe again, to stab him a third time, when a man’s voice called, “Police! Put your hands up in the air.”

  The police. Thank God for the police. But I kept my eyes on Jeremy while I raised my hands in the air.

  Chapter 32

  Needless to say, by the time the good officers finished with me a second time that night, Ryan was pacing in the entry of Poste de quartier 26. My phone had almost run out of battery power, but I’d managed to text him earlier to meet me at the police station. Now I ushered him outside to talk, needing the fresh night air, even though it was mixed with exhaust fumes from the three lanes of the Décarie highway directly in front of that police station.

  “What happened?” Ryan said, raising his voice to be heard above the whooshing tires.

  I tried to focus on the big terra cotta planter at the front of the station. Someone had planted pink geraniums in an effort to light up this wasteland. And I did my best to explain what had happened.

  “What? You solved Elvis’s case—and then you nearly got yourself killed at St. Joe’s on your way home? Are you insane?” he bellowed.

  “Probably,” I whispered. I checked my watch. It was 11:35 p.m. Only twenty-five minutes until my birthday.

  “Aw, Hope.” His face softened. “I’m sorry. You sent that text that you were okay, but with the police, I just thought—”

  I nodded. I was still numb. But not so numb that I didn’t appreciate how Ryan looked exactly right to me. It was like, every time I turned and saw his beautifully shaped eyes, or the cut of his cheekbones, or the way his lean body was outlined in his loose shirt and jeans, my heart contracted.

  Oh, the irony. This was the second man I’d stood with outside a police station in the past three hours, and I still craved the exact same thing: safety. Then sex. Safely. And more sex.

  “You want a ride home? I’ve still got your surprise. I think.” He touched the phone in his pocket, with a frown, but I was too tired to care. If Ryan would just sleep beside me tonight, it would be the best. Birthday. Ever.

  I didn’t mention that my car was still parked outside St. Joe’s. Tomorrow was Saturday. I’d worry about a ticket in the morning. Maybe the cops would give me a break. Stranger things have happened.

  I actually fell asleep in his car. Ryan shook me awake, and I stumbled up to my apartment doorstep. While I fumbled for my keys, Ryan said, “Happy birthday, Hope. Your surprise is here.”

  He pointed to the right, at a Honda Civic pulled tight to the curb in front of the building. But not a new car. A few years old, and sapphire blue, just like my parents’.

  And then my dad opened the driver’s door and stood up, stretching out his arms, before he walked over to me with a smile. “Happy birthday, baby girl.”

  “I love you, sis!” bellowed my eight-year-old brother, Kevin, popping out of his door and racing toward me.

  Ryan beamed at me. “I know how much you miss them.”

  I smiled back in the seconds before Kevin torpedoed into my stomach. I’d braced myself a little, but still had to grunt at his weight before I circled my arms around him. Kevin grabbed my hands, walked up my legs, and clamped his legs around my waist before he let go of my hands. He started to bend backwards, turning his upper body upside down.

  “Watch out!” my mother clucked, but I was already counterbalancing him and dragging him upright.

  “Pretty good, huh? Bet you weren’t expecting that,” said Kevin.

  “Bet I wasn’t,” I said dryly, but actually, he used to do that kind of stuff all the time. Except now he was almost shoulder-height on me, which was crazy, because he’s only eight.

  I hugged my mom. She was wearing a heavy sweater that scratched my cheek and she looked like she wanted to kiss me, so I gave her one on the cheek.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  Mom, you have no idea. “I just got home.” I hugged my dad, last but never least. He looked the same as ever, his handsomeness disguised in a schlumpy blue and black checked shirt and loose dress pants. “How was the drive up?”

  “We got stuck in an accident,” he said.

  “We were supposed to leave an hour before, but...” Ryan shrugged and glanced at my mother.

  She lit up. “I made you some won ton soup. It’s nice and fresh, the shrimp were good, but I think it leaked all over Ryan�
�s trunk. Sorry! The snow peas were really good this week, so I bought a whole bunch. Eat them fast. There was a sale on oranges, but they’re a little sour. If I come up next week, I’ll get you some new ones and switch them for you.”

  Kevin pouted. “I want some egg tarts.”

  Mom threw up her hands. “So fattening! I didn’t want to make them. I was going to go to TNT at the last minute, but maybe next time.”

  “I wanted to take you out to dinner with them,” said Ryan. “That was the surprise.”

  “Let’s eat now. Did you have supper yet?” asked Mom.

  I shook my head. For once, I’d forgotten.

  “Oh, my God. And it’s almost midnight. I have so much food. Let’s bring it inside!”

  Between all five of us, we managed to Sherpa the mountain of food inside, past the silent, black security guard. Even Kevin carried the bag of oranges, complaining the entire time. I was still exhausted, but my cheeks hurt from smiling. I’d survived to my 27th birthday, and right now, this was a perfect way to celebrate.

  So, while my mom insisted on cooking the snow peas (“I just bought the pork. So fresh! We should use it right away!”), the rest of us feasted on won ton soup, fun (rice noodles) with beef, and oranges.

  It was too late for my parents to drive home, although they didn’t think so. “I’m fine,” said my dad. “It’s not that far.”

  “No way.” It was bad enough that they’d waited in the car for me for two hours. I’d forgotten that my fancy new apartment wouldn’t let them in to use the couch in the lobby without me accompanying them. “You guys take my bed. I’ll sleep on the futon in the living room.” I glanced at Ryan, wondering if he’d stay with me, even though my family was around. He smiled back and squeezed my arm, so I guessed he was game.

  “All riiiight!” said Kevin.

  “It’s your birthday,” said Mom. “We’ll take the futon. We’ll go home tomorrow night, after taking you out to supper.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t mind driving.”

  “Dad, please. It’s my birthday. I don’t want you guys driving around in the middle of the night.” My breath hitched in my throat when I remembered that saying, Jamais deux sans trois. Bad things come in threes. I’d handed Lucia and Jeremy over to the police. What if some drunk driver took out my family next?