by Connor Mccoy
“What’s the matter, Babe?” Christian asked.
“She has a bad feeling about today,” Sally said. “And before you ask, it’s not about the surgery.”
“Why would she be anxious about the surgery?” Christian asked. “No, if she’s anxious, we should be extra careful about things. Don’t send Robbie on any errands, don’t fall asleep outside on the grass. Be vigilant.”
He came over to Mia and rubbed her neck. She leaned into him, comforted that he took her intuition seriously.
“Don’t worry, Mia. We’ll be extra careful today. Okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, wishing she could turn off the roiling in her gut. “Where’s breakfast, Melvin? We need to get the day started.”
“It’s coming,” Melvin said holding up the wooden spoon, “no need to get your panties in a twist.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re just hungry.” Sally sat a bowl in front of Mia. “That’s happened before. You’ve eaten and felt better.”
“It has,” Mia had to admit that was true. Sometimes what felt like doom was just low blood sugar. Maybe it would be like that today.
When Glen unlocked the door to the clinic, Arthur was standing on the steps in the morning sunshine, waiting. They shook hands and Glen ushered Arthur inside. There were no patients on the doorstep as of yet, but it was early, and Glen was not surprised.
I hope it’s not laundry for me again today,” Arthur said, taking off his coat and hanging on a peg in the entryway. “I about melted into the mist yesterday.”
“Not to worry,” Glen said smiling at the man. “No one is doing laundry today. Have you had breakfast?” He checked the desk to make sure they were ready for the clinic’s start today, and went through the rear door to the old kitchen, now waiting room, with Arthur following behind him.
“I ate before I left the house. I don’t want to be a burden on your household,” Arthur said. What’s on the books for today?”
“I’m expecting a surgery patient later this morning. He needs his gallbladder removed, but it’s business as usual until then. Will you join me in my examining room today?” Glen raised an eyebrow at Arthur, thinking he was looking much better today. Well on the way to completely healing from his injuries.
“Certainly,” Arthur said. “But you’ll have to tell me what to do.”
“Just watch Sa- P.” Glen cursed himself. He must not let his guard down. “If you can, help her do her thing. If you can do it for her, that’s even better. It will free her up to assist me.” He tidied the chairs and picked up a couple of old Barbie dolls that had been left behind the day before. He put them on the window sill.
The others came clattering up the hallway, talking animatedly about breakfast. Mia had tried cardamom in the oatmeal a few days before, and they still were talking about it. Glen thought it was a symptom of their new life. Not enough happened in the day to day to push the flavor of cardamom oatmeal out of their minds.
“It’s just not a flavor I associate with oats,” Sally said. “It wasn’t bad, but it’s just not a flavor I expect at breakfast.”
“I’m with you,” Christian said. “Not a breakfast flavor.”
“Well, I can’t find cinnamon. Maybe you’d like nutmeg better.” Mia shrugged a shoulder.
“You can serve cardamom oatmeal to me for breakfast anytime,” Melvin said. “Best breakfast I’ve had in ages.”
They came up to Glen and Arthur. Glen kept his amusement to himself as Arthur said his good mornings to M, P, Techie and the Quartermaster.
“Can’t I just call you Q?” Arthur asked Melvin. “It’s so much easier than saying Quartermaster.”
“It’s okay with me,” Melvin said. “There was a Star Trek character called Q. Rather mischievous, if I remember correctly. I could do worse.”
Glen left them chatting and went to check his examining room. It seemed up to snuff. He then went down to the room they had designated as the surgery room. It was as sterile as it could possibly be, furnished only with a stand for instruments, a table draped with a sheet for the patient, and a battery-powered bar of LED lights mounted on the ceiling. He was grateful for rechargeable batteries and solar panels. He had no clue where Melvin had found them, and he thought it was probably better to keep it that way.
He wondered at his comfort in this clinic. He had fallen a considerable distance from his days as a neurosurgeon. He chuckled to himself. He was perhaps happier now than when he’d been a high-priced stressed-out surgeon, or he would be if he didn’t still feel the loss of his wife and child. He never would be free of that pain.
He rejoined the others as Mia opened the doors to the clinic for the day and six or seven people came through the door and lined up to register at the desk. It was adults today. It was amazing how people seemed to communicate about who was coming to the clinic. Babies yesterday, adults today.
His surgery patient wasn’t in the mix, so he took the first case back to his examining room with Sally and Arthur. Must remember to call her P, he told himself. A gouged calf was followed by a sprained ankle, followed by a hand with three broken fingers. He was stitching up a nasty head wound when the sound of a firearm going off at close range rocked the clinic.
He quickly tied the stitch, handed the patient a gauze pad to press to the wound and said “Hold this in place and stay here. Lock the door behind me.” He followed the others into the hall and grabbed Sally by the arm. “Have the others lock themselves into their examination rooms.”
Robbie came running up the hall from the direction of the basement. “That was a gunshot!”
“Robbie,” Glen said urgently, “get the patients from the waiting room and lead them to the basement. Hide in the furnace room.”
“But Doc,” the boy began.
“Do it, Robbie. You’ll be saving lives,” Glen said with all the iron in his voice he could muster. He needed the boy safe, not arguing with him.
Arthur and Sally had disappeared in the direction of the commotion, and Glen had followed, slowing as he reached the door to the entryway. He stopped and listened. He heard quiet sobbing and Arthur talking.
“If you are looking for me, then there’s no reason to shoot anyone else,” Arthur said, his voice tight.
The sobbing got louder. Glen risked a look into the room. The gunman’s back was to him. That was good. However, he had a sawed-off shotgun aimed at Arthur’s chest, and Mia and Sally were on either side of him. They stood behind the reception desk, which really was only a table and not much protection against that kind of weapon.
“Let me step away,” Arthur said to Sally, who was blocking him.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “He’ll shoot you.”
“If I don’t, he’ll shoot you,” Arthur said. “I don’t need your death on my conscience.”
“But I should have yours on mine?” her voice was full of indignant anger. “That’s ridiculous. And faulty logic.”
Mia was edging toward the second door to the kitchen and trying to secretly pull Arthur and Sally with her. Arthur wasn’t cooperating and the movement, slight as it was, agitated the gunman, who didn’t know who to aim at. Glen looked for the sound of crying and saw a woman hunkered against the far wall, holding a man who was bleeding from a fresh wound in his leg. The first victim, Glen guessed.
The situation wasn’t impossible, but the shooter seemed trigger-happy. Otherwise, why shoot an innocent man? He wondered if he could talk the man down. Whatever Arthur had done, it couldn’t be so bad that he must die for it. He wished he knew what the problem was. He edged into the room slowly, so the guy would see him, but hopefully not shoot him.
“What’s the problem here?” Glen said. “Can I help?”
“This man must die,” the gunman said.
“He’s an enforcer, Glen,” Arthur said. “There will be no reasoning with him.”
“An enforcer?” Glen was confused. Why would the Court send an enforcer to kill one of its own?
“From the
Tribinal,” Arthur explained. “The guards.”
“I remember,” Glen said. “I’m just confused as to why they would be pointing a gun at you.”
“I did something one of the other judges didn’t like,” Arthur said. His eyes never left the shooter. “That’s what they do. If someone crosses them, they have that judge killed. The idea is to kill the other guy before they kill you. It’s absurd.”
The gunman moved. He’d been watching Glen, but he shifted his gaze back to Arthur, taking a step in his direction.
“Get the girls out of here, Glen,” Arthur said. “If he shoots, they’ll get hit by the spray.”
“No one moves now,” the gunman said. “Everyone stays put, or I’ll hunt down and kill every man, woman, and child on the premises.”
“I’m sure you will,” Glen said. “But tell me what this man did that was so horrible. Why must he die?”
“It doesn’t matter what he did. I have my orders, and he must die.”
“But not the girls? You could let them live, right? Why don’t you let the girls go now,” Glen said quietly. “This is a place where lives are saved. You could spare their lives.”
The women at the back of the room gasped for air, and he looked to see the man had closed his eyes. When Glen fixed his gaze back on the gunman and saw his finger twitch, almost without thinking he launched himself at the man, swinging the barrel of the gun away from Mia, Arthur, and Sally.
“Run!” Glen tried wrenching the gun from the enforcer, but the man held on, and the gun went off, deafening Glen. The gun was now empty of ammunition, but still could be used to bludgeon someone to death, and Glen preferred that it not be used against any of his people. He gripped the barrel and twisted, finally feeling it come free of the gunman’s grasp. He swung and cracked the intruder on the back of the head with the stock, but not before the enforcer scraped his nails down Glen’s face.
The man went down with a thud, and just as Glen was sighing with relief, he noticed the smear of blood on the wall near where Mia, Arthur, and Sally had been standing. Fear gripped him as he rolled the gunman onto his stomach and used his belt to tie the gunman’s hands behind his back. He stood up prepared to see the worst.
Chapter Ten
Glen’s face was stinging from the gouges made by the gunman’s fingernails, so the blow he dealt the man with the stock of the rifle probably was harder than it needed to be. But he had achieved the desired effect, the man was unconscious. He used the belt from the shooter’s pants to secure his hands behind his back and stood up knowing the worst was over….
The sight of the blood on the wall behind the reception table sent a cold chill down Glen’s spine. That was where Arthur and the girls had been standing. He started forward, where were they? They all were on the floor now, gathered around one of them. Who had been shot? Panic pushed an adrenaline surge through his body as he sorted out the people gathered there.
There was Sally bent over, murmuring. Christian was pressing his sweatshirt onto the victim’s chest. Mia was feeling for a pulse. Arthur had been shot.
He ran to the man, pushing the others away, ripping the shirt from his wound.
Melvin arrived running, saw the blood and stopped dead in his tracks.
“Help me get him into the surgery room,” he barked. They lifted Arthur as gently as they could and rushed him down the hall to the surgery room. It was locked.
Glen hammered on the door with his fist.
“This is the surgeon,” he yelled desperately. “I’ve got a wounded man here, he’s been shot. You’ve got to let us in.”
The door was unlocked and a white-faced man with stitches at his hairline cracked it open. Glen kicked it full open with his boot, causing the man to jump back, frightened.
“Go to the waiting room,” Glen snapped, as they carried Arthur to the operating table. Mia cut the blood-stained shirt from the wound, the flesh of Arthur’s chest had been shredded by the shot.
“Christian, drag the enforcer to the linen cupboard and lock him in.” Glen said. “Then come back here.”
Christian hurried out. A minute later Glen registered the sound of a body being dragged down the hall as he tried assessing the damage done. Sally was crying as she swabbed the blood away. Melvin had two fingers on Arthur’s neck trying to read his pulse.
Arthur began to moan.
“Melvin,” Glen snapped, “anesthetic. Do we have anything?”
“I can inject him with morphine,” Melvin said. “I don’t know how pure it is.”
“Do it,” Glen said. “I don’t need him trying to perform his own surgery.”
Melvin left his post, and Mia placed her fingers on Arthur’s neck. Christian came back to the room.
“The shooter is locked away,” he said. He stood against the wall, well out of Glen’s way. Glen directed Sally to irrigate the wound over Arthur’s heart, the surgeon had to be able to see. She poured sterilized water over his chest as Melvin was administering the morphine. The ragged edges of the man’s damaged ribs were visible.
“His heart’s stopped,” Mia said. “I can’t get a pulse.”
Melvin pushed her hand out of the way, feeling for the pulse, but Glen already knew.
“It’s no good,” he said. “I can’t repair this damage, his heart is riddled from the shot. I’m not sure we could have saved him with electricity and all the benefits of a modern operating theater. Arthur was utterly still, pulse stopped, breathing ended. Glen took a sheet from the pile they already had for the operation that was planned for that day and drew it over Arthur.
They left him on the operating table and locked the door behind them. Sally was sobbing openly, and Mia had her arm around her. They were painted with Arthur’s blood, and rage ran through Glen’s veins. How dare they kill a man in his medical clinic! How dare they!
“Sally, come with me.” Glen went to the man in the entrance hall who’d been shot in the leg. “Get Mia to sit with the woman,” Glen said to Sally, “then get an examining room ready. We’ll need to get the bullet out of this man’s leg.”
She hurried away. Melvin arrived to help move the man, followed closely by Mia, who led the woman to the waiting room. He and Melvin clasped hands under the man and lifted him, carrying him to the examining room Sally had prepared.
Luckily, the gunman had missed the direct shot. There were no shattered bones, just a bullet to be picked out of the flesh of the thigh. Melvin gave the man a small dose of narcotics and the two of them went to work plucking the bullet out of the man’s leg.
Robbie put his head in the door, “Is it over?” he asked.
“It’s over. Send the patients home, Robbie. We won’t be holding clinic today. We have an enforcer to deliver to the Court.” Glen returned his focus to his patient’s leg. It wasn’t a difficult task, and while he performed it, he wondered if they’d been set up. If this had been the endgame all along?
“What does it mean for us that Arthur was killed here?” Glen asked Melvin, hard at work on the other side of their patient’s thigh.
“That’s an interesting question, Doc,” Melvin said. “I have the feeling that we all were supposed to die with him. What will happen when we march their enforcer back into the Court is anybody’s guess. If they mishandle this, they could lose control of the city. On the other hand, they could just mow us down as we stand there. It’s not going to be pretty either way.”
“I have to stitch some of these wounds,” Glen said, “can you gather the others? We need a plan.”
Melvin left Glen to brood over his patient’s leg. He wanted to come out of this alive, and he wasn’t sure how to bring that about. There was a dull ache in his chest, the loss of Arthur hurt him. He’d been a good man and would have been an asset to the clinic if they could have lured him away from the court. Arthur was a man who had no business putting his energy into such a corrupt enterprise. He was pure of heart and ideals, and the thought he’d been killed because of them caused Glen’s head to split. He did
n’t feel much like saving anyone else from the Court. Arthur had been the best of them.
Mia left Sally sobbing on the couch in the apartment and went upstairs to stand on the veranda overlooking the park. Sally wasn’t alone, Christian was with her, and Mia just didn’t have any patience for the tears. She was angry. Hot-headed and vengeful. She didn’t blame Sally for crying, but she just didn’t have any room in her heart. She wanted nothing more than to kill the man in the linen cupboard, and then go downtown and kill every other living being in the Koupe Tribinal.
She noticed a movement near one of the large trees and realized that Robbie was climbing. He climbed until he was right at the top and then with his legs wrapped around the trunk he swung binoculars around from his back and trained them on the street leading from the Court. He was keeping watch. He would be angry too, she thought. The good people get killed, and the evil get more power. That would rub Robbie the wrong way. He was the Robin Hood of the city. A young Robin Hood, long before Maid Marian.
Mia paced along the parapet. She was clenching and unclenching her hands, wanting to smash the man who had killed Arthur but knowing she could not. Not because it would be morally wrong, she didn’t care about that anymore. What point was the moral high ground in a place such as this? No, she couldn’t kill him because he was an asset, a bargaining chip.
She needed to calm down before she rejoined the others. The ability to think clearly was important now. They had to be careful how they played this chip, or they all would die as well. Oh, but it was difficult. In her mind, she went to the linen closet, waited until the assassin was awake and looked him in the eyes as she bludgeoned him to death. She wanted him to suffer as Arthur had suffered, lying on the floor, his chest full of blood, pumping his life from his body with a heart torn to pieces.
She was thinking of worse things to do, ways to torture the killer for days before he died, her rage fueled by her thoughts of Arthur, when she noticed Melvin standing in the French door.