Bone Dus

by Bette Golden Lamb

When Gina and Jenni tried to slip in the entrance, no one would move out of their way until they held out their IDs.

  “This is panic,” Jenni said.

  “Fear. It’s always the greatest enemy.”

  Inside, a large crowd stood around the elevator, waiting. Most were wearing masks. Everyone was silent.

  “Come on, Jenni. Let’s hoof it up the steps or we’ll never get to the station.”

  Up on the floor, the nurses from the night shift and the oncoming day replacements were huddled in the nurses’ station.

  Gina looked down the corridor and saw a rumor had turned into reality—there were beds outside the rooms and in the hallway. The sounds of moaning, crying, coughing, complaining patients became a surrealist nightmare.

  “Welcome to Ridgewood’s nightmare alley,” the night shift team leader said. “This has been indescribable.” She pulled out a room index of the people on the unit. “I thought this would make it easier for all of the staff to identify everyone, both in the rooms and in the hallways. Computers alone won’t cut it.”

  “I’d heard every hospital in the area is now trying to divert,” Gina said, her headache getting worse. “No one is accepting patients.”

  “Hospitals and urgent care centers are sending medical teams out into the community,” the head nurse said. “Wear your masks all the time, wash and sanitize your hands with every blink of the eye. If we get sick ... well, we have to at least try to take care of ourselves so we can take care of others.”

  “This has really spread quickly,” Jenni said. Most of the gathered nurses nodded in agreement.

  Another nurse popped in, “This is the second year in a row they’ve developed the wrong vaccine. What’s the matter with those Big Pharma geniuses? They’re supposed to know their stuff.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” said the outgoing team leader. “I need to get home and crawl into bed.”

  “Sounds like most of these patients have severe complications from the flu,” Gina said. She could see the team leader had had it.

  “That’s pretty damn obvious, Mazzio.”

  The team leader turned and spoke to the whole group: “As I, said I’ve indexed every person on the floor. Read through it. But I think, mostly you’re looking at pneumonia, and all kinds of severe respiratory symptoms in between.” She paused, then added, “I said mostly because, as you already know, thrown into the mix is a continued outbreak of some kind of intestinal bug.”

  Everyone moaned.

  * * *

  Russell couldn’t stop thinking about that Inspector. When the cop had left his apartment, he’d spent an hour cleaning up all the bone dust on the floor and from his tools.

  It’s a good thing I got rid of that hacked-up femur right away.

  Doing that had made him feel better ... at least for awhile. Then that Inspector showed up.

  Fuckin’ dumb to put that rabbit in Jenni’s fridge. Couldn’t help it. I wanted her to be scared. Guess it worked. She was scared enough to call the fuckin’ police. Didn’t think she’d do that after the way they treated her before. Worth it just to break into her apartment ... go through her things. I own her now.

  Hope there’s no way they can trace that rabbit back to the pet store where I bought it.

  He ran a movie through his head of what had happened, watched while he gave the rabbit a shot of fentanyl, put the animal in a bag, and drove it to Jenni’s place.

  Man, did its eyes ever bug out when I set it on the cold bottom shelf of her fridge.

  He’d positioned the rabbit just right so that when he sliced through its carotid, blood would spurt all over everything and the bunny would look like it was ready to jump out at her.

  Thinking about it made him smile.

  Russell looked out at the sea of bodies that were lined up outside the blood drawing area. He called the next patient to have her blood drawn.

  Looks like there’s a million of them out there needing to be drained.

  The manager moved in and stood by Russell’s blood-drawing-cubicle. “There’s a whole bunch in Internal Meds that needs drawing. Why don’t you get it? I’ll do this.”

  * * *

  The unit was crawling with patients.The minute Russell stepped out of the elevator, the sound of the sick and dying stunned him. The moans of pain, the choking coughs made him short of breath. These people were all dying.

  Dying.

  And so many. How could he stop it? How could he stop them? Stop their pain!

  He looked for Gina or Jenni, but he didn’t see either of them. Mostly he saw nursing techs flying from one end of the corridor to the other and it didn’t look like nearly enough staff.

  Maybe I can slip through the unit without either of them seeing me.

  He took out his lab sheet with the names and the tests that were ordered. Lots of tests but only for four patients. One of them a Jane Doe.

  He moved from room to room; no one seemed to notice or care who he was or what he was doing. With his lab coat and meds tray, he fit right in.

  The first three patients looked feverish, but they were silent, eyes closed, and trying to sleep past their coughs.

  For the last lab order, he entered a private, darkened room. The patient was sleeping.

  At the foot of the bed, patient information read: Jane Doe. Restraints required.

  She was restless and talking to herself between whimpers of pain and deep coughs that kept her spitting up mucus-like gunk all over herself.

  Russell wanted to turn around and run. Instead, he set his tray down on the patient stand. She raised her hand as far as her wrist bindings would allow. “Please, please, please ... help me.”

  Thin white strands of hair were plastered to her skull and her eyes pleaded with him. “Please, please make it go away.”

  He set up his equipment and took a pail from the cleaning closet, set it close to the bed. There was room underneath to hide the bucket if he had to.

  The noise outside in the corridor, along with the old woman’s loud moans, made him jumpy. He needed to do this. Do something to make it better for her.

  He wrapped a tourniquet around her skinny arm, which was covered with dry, flaking skin.

  He dampened her arm with alcohol, not to sterilize, but to make it easier for him to search for a vein. He kept moving farther up her arm, looking for something.

  It was hard to concentrate with all the soft, whimpering noises she was making. He could hear Todd in his head.

  Get it done, you fool, get it done! You gonna let that animal suffer?

  She’s suffering. There was no doubt about that.

  Then, like magic he felt a big rubbery vein.

  Can’t hide from me.

  He carefully pushed the needle in and attached a clear catheter to the hub. The blood coursed into the bucket at his feet.

  Even in the dim light the blood looked too red for a vein, and it was gushing out of her arm into the tube. He had tapped into an artery.

  Now, her moans and whimpers took on a different tone. To Russell, it sounded like she was humming herself to sleep.

  Soon even that sound was gone. Without even taking her pulse he knew she was dead. The blood had stopped running only because her heart had stopped pumping it.

  He carefully removed the needle and placed a cotton ball over the puncture, sealing it with a tight elastic bandage.

  It felt like he was awakening from a trance.

  Forgot to fill the tubes for her lab work. Have to take some from another patient.

  Russell moved very quickly now, grasped the bucket, went into the bathroom, and carefully spilled the blood into the toilet. It took two flushes before there was no trace.

  Pleased, he rinsed the bucket and put it back in the closet. He looked again at Jane Doe.

  Yes, she was sleeping peacefully now.

  Chapter 34

  José came over after work; Dominick was up and ready. Today he was going to buy a gun from a friend of a friend of José’s. No re
gistration, no papers, no nothing except good old American bucks changing hands for a pistol.

  The two of them sat in José’s truck in the Walmart parking lot on the southwest end. It was pretty much deserted in that section.

  “So do you know anything about guns?” José asked with that smart-ass grin of his.

  “Nah, but he doesn’t need to know that.”

  “I hope you know which end to use,” José said, poking his shoulder.

  “You’ll be my target. I’ll practice on you, asshole.”

  It wasn’t long before a slick BMW came tooling into the area.

  Man, that’s a good lookin’ car.

  José nudged him. “That’s the dude. Watch your mouth with him.”

  “Yeah, well at least the car looks good.”

  They opened their doors, stepped out, edged to the front of the truck, and just stood there waiting.

  Pretty soon Señor BMW got his legs planted on the cement and turned to them.

  He looked like any businessman, not some thug selling guns on the sly. He barely nodded, but José tapped Dominick’s side, sending him into a time warp of pain.

  They walked to the rear-end of the black car. The driver sort of ignored them, opened the trunk of the Bimmer, and indicated they take a look inside. He moved aside a pink towel to show them a lineup of weapons.

  “That’s really cute,” Dominick said, pointing at the towel. “Nice touch, the pink.”

  “You want to flap your gums, or do you want a gun, huh?”

  “I was only kidding.”

  “For you, Mr. Big Mouth, I have only one gun I’m willing to sell you ... a 9mm Beretta. There, at the top. Take it or leave it.”

  “How much you asking?” José said.

  “For your big mouth friend, nothing less than fifteen hundred. No dickering.”

  “Shit! That’s high ticket,” Dominick said. “I could buy it cheaper in a pawn shop.”

  The man looked at José and said, “If your loudmouth friend here had been able to go through all that legal purchase shit, you wouldn’t have called me out here.” The man flipped the pink towel over the weapons again. “Just turn your walkin’ boots around and hike your asses back over to the ride you came in on.”

  “No, no, wait,” Dominick said. “I’ll buy it.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “How many rounds.”

  “Ten in the clip, one in the chamber. And it’s clean.”

  Dominick pulled the money roll from his pocket and counted out 15 Benjamins. “What about some bullets?”

  “Well, I usually give a box with the purchase. But seeing how it’s been goin’, you get just the gun.”

  The man turned to José. “Don’t bring his sorry ass to me again—ever. You got it?”

  “Yes, Señor.”

  * * *

  Dominick was damn irritable after the transaction. He felt like punching someone, putting his fist through the wall.

  Goddam José! Why’d he have to pick that wise ass?

  Dominick had dropped 1500 hundred big ones for the Beretta because he couldn’t buy a pistol legally. Any records with a fingerprint would send him back to the slammer. And that BMW asshole had treated him like a loser. Him and his smart-ass car and expensive clothes.

  Dominick walked around his small room with the worst fuckin’ headache he’d ever had. Coming off of the Vicodin had been a lot tougher than he’d thought it would be.

  Chrissake, it’s not heroin. This should have been a walk in the park.

  But going off the drugs seemed to make him real angry, even hotter than he usually was. And right now, instead of just his ribs hurting, every single part of him was on fire. He almost grabbed a couple of pills just to get comfortable in his own skin again.

  But he needed to work, needed the money, so instead, he paced back and forth in front of his dresser where the bottle of pills stood taunting him.

  After meeting with the gun dude, he wanted to swallow the whole damn bottle. But he held back.

  He carefully rubbed at his ribs, where his skin was itching under the tape. He’d better get moving. José would pick him up soon—they were going out to hit the bars.

  Probably will check to see if I’m still clean. I’ll bet he didn’t think I could do it.

  But it didn’t matter why José was coming. It was a good thing because Dominick was ready to put a fist through the wall.

  He flashed on throwing a ball to first base. Man, that used to feel good. Everything would snap into place. If he tossed a ball now, they’d hear him screaming all the way back to the Bronx.

  He chose a black tee shirt with a Yankee banner design splashed across the front of it and put himself into a new pair of jeans he’d been saving before all of this happened.

  Standing in front of the mirror, he combed his hair flat and slick. He really did look like a Mex.

  * * *

  The bar was a little classier than El Peso. Actually, it was a lot classier. José waved to a couple of guys in the back. There were a few single women but most of the people were paired off. There was even a gay couple sitting in a booth holding hands.

  “Now take a look at that,” Dominick said. “I never could understand a guy getting it on with another guy. Seems to me their dicks would always get in the way.”

  “Listen, man, try to keep that mouth of yours shut,” José whispered. “You won’t want what these people will toss your way if you fuck up.”

  “They don’t look so tough to me.”

  “Look at yourself and get real,” José said. “You dropped a wad of cash today and you’re still a mess.” He laughed. “You might as well hang yourself as start a fight.”

  “Okay, you said your piece. I got it.”

  They slipped onto bar stools and ordered tap beer. The bartender looked them over real good before grabbing two glasses. José paid for the round. Dominick couldn’t help it, he kept slipping a glance at the gay couple.

  “You plan on picking up those two?” José said.

  “What, are you kidding me?”

  “Well, why don’t you feast your eyes on those two chickies at the other end of the bar?” José turned away from Dominick, turned on the charm, smiled at the girls. “Now that’s got real possibilities.”

  Dominick noticed that when he was on drugs, he didn’t even think about pussy. But after a few days of being clean, things were working again. Not that he ever really worried. His buddy down there always knew when to stand at attention. Looking at the dark-haired girl at the end of the bar got him moving in the right direction.

  * * *

  Dominick couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this drunk. What had started out with just beers had quickly turned into boilermakers the minute they started hitting on the girls.

  The four of them left the bar together and after the girls stop making fun of José’s brother’s beat-up car, they all jumped in and took off. They parked on the edge of the desert on the outskirts of Tucson and started groping each other.

  He could hear José and his girl in the front seat. She was sucking him off, giggling while he was aye-yah-aying.

  Dominick tried to get comfortable, but everywhere he turned, his ribs would send out daggers of pain, stopping him from moving too much. He turned on his back, unzipped his pants, and let it out for her.

  “Come on, honey, take it in your mouth. Do it for me.”

  “Oh, Dommi, I don’t do that.”

  “Why not, baby?”

  “’Cause it tastes funny.”

  Dominick was loaded and loose, but his cock was hot, hard, and throbbing. He locked her head between his hands and started squeezing.

  “Hey, Dommi. Stop that! You’re hurting me.” She began to squirm and try to get up.

  “You get those lips where they belong or you’re gonna hurt a lot more, and in places you never dreamed of.” He squeezed harder and shook her head again, pulled her face down where it belonged.

  Soon she was sucking away just like she
was supposed to.

  Chapter 35

  Gina must have washed her hands a thousand times between patients, and used an extra puff of sanitizer each time for safety. All of those precautions probably weren’t going to do her any good.

  She was starting to have severe muscle aches and they were getting harder and harder to ignore. People were coughing all over her, and even with her mask on, she knew she would have to go into a decontamination booth, if one existed, to get rid of all the pathogens that were crawling on her skin.

  Beyond that, she was really tired from running around the unit the whole shift. There never seemed to be a down time, but she did manage to squeeze in a short lunch break.

  She ran to the cafeteria for a large bowl of thick bean soup. She piled a huge mound of crumbled crackers into the bowl of hot liquid and took quick sips of her giant cup of coffee, all while waiting in line to pay.

  She spotted an empty table in a far corner of the room and managed to latch onto it before anyone else could get there.

  Finally, off her feet, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  She didn’t want to talk to anyone, but she’d no sooner started eating then Brad pulled up a chair and sat down across from her. They stared at each other silently for a few moments.

  “So how are you, Gina?”

  “Not too good today.”

  “Look, I don’t want to be a problem or cause you anymore complications.” He reached out and took her hand. “But you know I care about you. I’d be lying if I said anything else. And I really want you in my life.”

  Words caught in her throat. It took her a while to speak.

  Brad, I’ve enjoyed being with you. It was such a relief to just go out and have fun without any strings attached. And you’re a wonderful guy ... warm, intelligent ... sexy.” The last word she said with a smile.

  “I hear a but in there.”

  She nodded. “I have to straighten things out with Harry first, or at least come to some kind of understanding.”

  “Do you love him, Gina?”

  She knew whatever she said would hurt him, but he had to know the truth. “I’ll never stop loving Harry, no matter what happens, and that’s whether he and I are together or not.”