Extinction: The Will of the Protectors

by Jay Korza

  There had been a few errors, to say the least, but nothing life-threatening so far. A few cases of projectile vomiting, runny noses that seemed to come from a never-ending sinus waterfall, unconsciousness, and one minor case of very ill-timed uncontrollable and unrelenting flatulence. Bryce’s mother always came to his defense, though, and pointed out that even with some odd side effects, everything he had set out to cure was in fact, cured.

  As Bryce stood in front of his father, he straightened up and walked in a slow circle around his sister and tried to act like an intern presenting a patient to their attending physician. “Sir, the patient is a five-year-old human female. Chief complaint consisting of chronic allergies of unknown origin. The patient’s history seems to indicate having recently moved to a new colony that is heavily populated with Trizites. There might be a connection to her allergies and a Trizite-centric material, possibly in the food or other commonplace item in the community.

  “Using this assumption along with the patient’s past history of allergies, I formulated a homeopathic mixture including some local flora and herbs along with a traditional set of human-based allergy remedies. The patient has responded well and most of her symptoms have subsided with a only few left that are significantly diminished.”

  Bryce’s father looked at him and he could tell that his father was trying hard to stay mad or at least look as if he was. “You still haven’t explained why she’s purple. Another one of your unexpected side effects?”

  Bryce tried to look wounded by the question. “Side effects? I don’t think I know what you mean, Doctor.” The look he received from his father made him quickly add, “Not a side effect, sir. The patient has been upset for the last week or so because her Trizite classmates can change some of their facial coloring almost at will. Some of the compounds in the Trizite diet are directly linked to their pigment abilities. I simply added a few local elements that I thought would give the patient a slight tinge of color to her face.” Bryce looked at his purple sister and waved his hand up and down her body. “I might have miscalculated the end results. Just a little. Sir.”

  Maya jumped up and down as she realized that her big brother had purposely turned her purple, as a gift to her. She jumped on to his chest and wrapped her arms and legs around him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! How long will I be purple? Can you make me different colors? Can you make my friends different colors?”

  “No, he certainly may not turn your friends different colors.” Their father now looked at the two embracing siblings. He smiled; it was pretty great to have two kids who actually got a long so well. “Bryce, get your baseball uniform on. We need to get going if we’re going to get you to practice before it starts.”

  Bryce lowered his sister to the ground and just smiled before he ran out of the room. He knew that he had just barely dodged a lot of grounding from his father, possibly worse. As he left the room, Maya jumped into her father’s arms and started to talk about school and what she was going to wear tomorrow to show off her new color. Bryce came back just a few moments later and his sister was still babbling away. She was set down and then father and son left together, all trespasses forgot for the time being.

  As they left the driveway, his father mentioned that they would have to stop by the hospital on the way to the baseball field. His father had left his wallet in his locker and wanted to pick it up because he was going to be off for the next four days. Bryce was fine with the detour; he loved the hospital and they still had plenty of time to get to practice. They arrived a short time later and Bryce went in to the building with his father, saying hi to all of his father’s coworkers as they passed.

  When they were just about to the locker room, Doctor Wilson walked up to Bryce’s father. “Hey, Trevor!”

  Bryce’s dad turned to look at his colleague and friend. “I can’t, Tim. I’ve got Bryce with me and I need to get him to his baseball practice.”

  Tim looked at Bryce and then back to his father. “Look, Trevor, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t an absolute emergency.” Trevor looked at him sideways. “Okay, I would ask, but this is different.”

  “Tim, this is an emergency room. Newsflash—everything is an emergency. My son is more important to me than strangers I don’t know.”

  Tim looked a little shocked to hear the statement that almost everyone thought but there had always been an unwritten rule that it was never to be spoken aloud: the patients weren’t the most important things in the world. Tim looked at Bryce before addressing Trevor again. “You’re right, absolutely. Here’s the deal, though, we have a family of five that will be here in about”—he looked at his watch—“thirty seconds now. They all have major multiple stab wounds. We have the surgery department alerted and they are busy getting teams together for each patient along with getting the operating rooms ready. We just need you to help stabilize one of the patients until surgery comes down to grab him.

  “We’ve only got two trauma surgeons on right now. I’m sure we can handle it without you but it will be smoother with you. I’ll give you the worst of the five to make sure yours gets taken to the OR first and then you can get out of here. Twenty minutes tops, but you know in this situation we’re really hoping for less than ten minutes before they get hauled to surgery.”

  Trevor looked at Bryce, who just shrugged. “A whole family was stabbed; we should help them. It’s all right, Dad; you already said I was more important so you don’t have to feel guilty. Besides, I may be more important to you than the patients, but the patients are more important to me than baseball.”

  “You’re just saying that to get out of trouble for turning your sister purple.”

  Tim said, “What?!”

  Bryce, smiling from ear to ear, answered his father, “Maybe. But seriously, Dad, not really. Let’s help.”

  “Okay, Tim, let’s go.” Looking down to Bryce, who was keeping in step with the adults, “Do you want to watch or wait at the nurse’s station?”

  Perplexing question for Bryce. He was at the point that girls were starting to get very interesting and grown women were even more interesting. On top of that, the nurses seemed to adore him and he was guaranteed a lot of hugs and kisses from them. On the other hand, with five simultaneous traumas, most of the nurses would probably be busy so he’d be stuck playing a game on a terminal or something, by himself most likely. “I’ll go with you, Dad.”

  “Sounds good to me. And remember, if one of the new interns messes up an IV, you need to jump in there and get it yourself to make them feel bad.” It was a fun game that Bryce and his dad played on the interns, something along the lines of, “See what you just screwed up? Now watch the twelve-year-old kid do it just right. Hey, no crying in the ER.”

  As they approached the trauma bay, Bryce saw that along with the ambulances that were arriving there were also several police vehicles. Cops usually showed up when there was an assault of some sort but he hadn’t seen this many before. As the first gurney made its way in, there were four cops surrounding it.

  Tim looked at Trevor. “I think that one is yours. The telemetry from the paramedics said the father was in the worst condition. That looks like him.”

  “Copy that.” Looking down at his son, he said, “There’s a lot of blood, Bryce; you know the drill. Gown up and put on all the protection possible: gloves, mask, goggles, everything.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bryce ran ahead and started pulling all of the protective gear from the dispensers on the side of the wall next to the trauma room. One intern passed by him and started to enter the trauma room without stopping. Bryce yelled at him, “Hey you! Yeah, new kid. You want Shirka Herpes or Mulvarian Hepatitis?! Put on your gown and stuff before you go in to that bloodbath.”

  The intern stopped and looked around him to see whether the kid was seriously addressing him. One of the nurses stopped at the dispensers and gave Bryce a quick hug and kiss before addressing the intern, “He’s right. Our safety comes before their treatment.”

  The int
ern slowly joined the two putting on their safety gear and then the three walked in the room, followed shortly after by Bryce’s father. He looked at the people already at work and then the officers who stood nearby. “I understand you gentlemen have a job to do, but so do we. We need a little more room to work. Please, back up just a hair to the red line we have outlining the gurney. Also, blood can shoot quite a distance—there are disposable goggles on the wall outside this room. You’re more than welcome to grab some along with gloves, just in case.”

  The sergeant in the group looked down to the red line on the floor. “Move back, boys; give Doc some room. Jenkins, go get four safety glasses and some gloves for all of us.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” Trevor saw his team doing what they were trained to do; they needed very little direction from him in these sorts of cases. “I don’t think he’ll be able to talk to you, sir. His throat is fairly well damaged. Someone did quite a number on him.”

  The sergeant got a disgusted look on his face. “I’m not waiting here for a statement or suspect description, not this time. He is the suspect. Those are self-inflicted wounds.”

  “All of them? Are you sure?” Bryce’s dad was working on the man’s throat and trying to make a better surgical airway for him. The number of stab wounds all over his body made it seem impossible to believe that he had done it all to himself.

  “Yeah, we’re sure. Bystanders witnessed most of it and we have video feed from the bank security camera. They streamed the video to me while we were on our way here.” The sergeant took a deep breath. “He walked out from the bank after having an argument with the teller about a problem with his account. He pulled out a hunting knife and started to go back in. His wife tried to stop him so he began stabbing her. The kids got out of the car and were yelling and screaming at him and he turned on them next. After he stabbed everyone multiple times, he began stabbing himself. When the first patrol unit arrived on scene, he tried to slit his own throat. It doesn’t look like he did too good of a job of it, though.”

  “He did better than you think.” Trevor was now probing deep into the anatomy of the man’s neck and throat. “He cut one carotid and there are three separate lacerations to his trachea. I can fix it, though.”

  “Don’t try too hard, Doc. No one would blame you if you happened to ‘slip’ or maybe just didn’t do a great job this one time.” The sergeant received nods of affirmation from his fellow officers.

  Without taking his eyes off the patient, Trevor replied without emotion, “I can’t imagine ever doing anything to harm my family like he did, but it’s not my job to judge or punish. My job is to fix.”

  Bryce was pulling down a suture kit and advanced airway tray for his father. “My dad isn’t the Grim Reaper, sir. He doesn’t take lives—he saves them.”

  “Oh, uh, hey there, kid. I didn’t see you standing there. Sorry about that.” The sergeant was stammering a little as he tasted the leather from the sole of his shoe that was now firmly planted in his own mouth.

  “Don’t worry about it. I hear all sorts of things when I help my dad.” Bryce looked at one of the officers in the middle. “And Sergeant…”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “You might want to catch Jenkins; he’s about to pass out.” Thump. “Sorry, too late.”

  Eight minutes after the patient came through the ambulance bay doors, a surgical team came and grabbed the gurney and whisked him away to the operating room. Trevor took his son to the basin sink and helped him remove all of his protective gear and then they both washed up. Holding Bryce’s hand, they walked out of the ER after Trevor made sure to tell the charge nurse that he’d dictate the chart from home later tonight after the kids were in bed.

  “See, dad,” Bryce looked at his watch, “we’ll only be a few minutes late and we helped someone.”

  Speaking thoughts that should have been kept private, Trevor sighed. “Yeah, sometimes the people I help don’t make me feel good about what I do.”

  Bryce stopped dead in his tracks and pulled his father to a stop. “Dad. You are not the Reaper. That’s someone else’s job. No matter how bad that man is, I bet his kids still love him. Someone, somewhere must still love him. You helped them, not him. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”

  “I love you, son.” He gave Bryce a quick hug. “I knew I kept you around for some reason.”

  Five weeks later, Bryce was laying on the living room floor trying to stay awake for the end of the movie. When the credits started to roll, his father stood and told him to go get ready for bed then come back so they could review one patient chart together before bed. Bryce completed his tasks and hurried back; patient charts had taken the place of bedtime stories for the past few years and he always enjoyed them.

  When Bryce returned, he found his father leaning forward in his chair, face buried in his hands, obviously crying. Bryce had only seen his father cry after the birth of his sister and he knew that these sobs were a completely different kind. He gently touched his father’s shoulder and was about to ask what was wrong when the picture on the TV caught his eye. It was the man they had worked on together, the man who had stabbed his family.

  Bryce didn’t recognize him when the news initially reported on the event weeks ago. His driver’s license photos and family photos they showed looked so different from the bloodied man they had saved in the trauma room. But after seeing his face all over the news for weeks, Bryce immediately recognized the man being reported on.

  The man had been released after an emotional plea from his lawyer, psychiatric physician and his wife and kids. Everyone assured the judge that he was better now, the medication was helping tremendously and it was a one-time mental break. He and his lawyer promised that he would stay in an apartment and only visit his family with their permission and with law-enforcement supervision at the local precinct. The judge agreed and added several other stipulations of his own and set a trial date. The man thanked the judge and said that he was ready and eager to take responsibility for his actions so he and his family could start rebuilding their relationships.

  The news channel was playing a slide show of pictures while they discussed the latest event that took place just moments ago at the family’s house, not too far from Bryce’s home. The picture on the TV now was the whole family in the courtroom, hugging each other and crying at the man’s release from custody. Bryce heard the news anchor say that the upcoming images were gruesome and not suitable for all audiences.

  Bryce watched as the photo dissolved and was replaced with a crime scene photo of a sheet-covered body on the lawn of a house. The sheet was soaked with blood and the size indicated that it was covering a small child, probably two or three years old. Bryce guessed it was the man’s youngest son from the previous picture. The scene changed again and there were more covered bodies in the living room. Bryce could easily make out two kids, one draped over a couch, probably trying to get away, and another one face down crawling away from the doorway. The mother, he guessed, was at the doorway, half in and half out, probably trying to protect her children as the man came into the house. He knew it was the mother because the one body that wasn’t covered was the man from the trauma room. His body bullet-ridden and torn to shreds, unrecognizable as the man from the previous photos, his identity known only because the news said it was so.

  Bryce knew why his father was crying. He felt responsible or at least somewhat connected to this tragedy even if in only some small remote way. He didn’t know what to do. How does a child console an adult at a time like this? Bryce decided that words were too cumbersome and useless right now so he just rubbed his hand back and forth across his father’s shoulders and back to let him know that Bryce was there for him.

  The news camera moved to a police officer who was about to be interviewed. Bryce recognized him as the sergeant from the emergency room. The reporter stood next to the sergeant and held a microphone between them. “Sergeant Ramsey, I understand that you were involved in the shooti
ng. I know there are obviously things you can’t say at this point, but is there anything you can tell us?”

  The sergeant looked off camera to someone in the background, apparently receiving some sort of permission from some unseen person. The sergeant gave a slight nod in return before he began speaking. “I can’t go into details right now, but we arrived on scene to find a suspect actively trying to kill another person. Several commands were given to him to stop as we were running to the front door from our patrol vehicles. Once we were close enough to open fire, he still had not complied with our orders so we fired on him to end the threat.”

  “Were you aware of who the suspect was when you arrived?”

  “I did. I can’t speak for the other officers involved, but I did. I responded to the incident with this family where the suspect had stabbed them all in the bank parking lot, just down the road. I knew their address from my previous report. I had a pretty good idea that it was them.”

  “Did that make you feel any different while you were responding? Knowing the history and seeing what the family looked like during the first stabbing incident?”

  The sergeant looked off camera again and gave a slight nod in return to whoever was playing the part of the shadow puppeteer. “It didn’t make me ‘feel’ different. We have a job to do and we try to keep feelings out of it. All we knew was that a stabbing was taking place. What if someone else was attacking the family? Some fanatic or someone coming after the father for what he had done before? We didn’t know anything else when we arrived. I honestly didn’t know it was him until I pulled the trigger. His back was to me until after my first rounds hit him and he turned to face me. That’s when I knew it was him, that’s when I had feelings, not before.”

  “Can you explain that, Sergeant? What feelings did you have then?”

  “Sadness. Sadness that the family was going through the same thing again. Anger. Anger that our judicial system is horrible and let this man out just to kill his family.”