“Hey,” Winn says, “how does your tablet work? Weren’t you submerged in the English Bay?”
“Yes,” I say. “And thank you for asking, I’m fine.”
“Well,” Winn verbally stumbles. “I already knew that. I read your charts, and I’ve been talking to you for the past ten minutes—”
“They don’t train doctors to ask their patients how they’re feeling?”
“They do. It’s just—” I hear him rub his hands over his face and then ask in a resigned tone, “How does your tablet still work after being submerged?”
I shrug and say, “Mika.” Then I ask, “Which room is his?”
“Hang on,” Winn says and shoots by in front of me to take the lead. He walks up to the central area that’s staffed by two nurses. “Excuse me,” he says, “I’m Dr. Yates, Vikki Gilbert’s primary care physician. She would like to see the companion they brought her in with.”
“Mika Laupepa,” I helpfully provide.
The closest nurse to us, a beautiful African-American woman with nice cheekbones, looks down at her system. Of course, now I can’t stop wondering if “African-American” is used in Canada, and if not, then what? I heroically restrain myself from asking.
The beautiful nurse looks up at Winn’s badge, which he holds up for her. “Room 206. Down the hallway there and to the left.” Her eyes linger a little too long on Winn.
I start to mentally call her a discourteous name but then decide, Why do I care?
As we head down the hallway, I whisper to Winn, “Do you like her?”
“Do you want me to like her?” he shoots back.
I don’t answer that trap and instead ask, “So does part of your life here include forgery, or you make that up on the fly?” I flick his badge again.
He answers dryly, “I couldn’t exactly practice medicine under my real name, now could I?”
I suppose not. There’s that whole malpractice suit back in the states, and his name is listed as a suspicious person in connection to a sculpture heist out of the sunken state of Florida.
Winn continues, “And besides, someone once taught me to be prepared for anything.”
“Yeesh, you make me sound like a boy scout.”
Winn “hehs” and then says, “Yeah, I don’t think the boy scouts would want to be associated with you either.”
Before I can respond to that, we come to a wooden door with two push handles, one at normal height and the other at wheelchair height.
Winn stops outside the door and uses the holopad display on the wall to pull up Puo’s information.
It’s all gobbledygook to me, but it must make sense to Winn. He’s staring between it and the medical cart under it, his brows furrowed.
“What?” I ask.
“His chart includes a prescription for pain killers, which is standard. But this—” He points to one of the pill containers on the cart. “—is an MAOI inhibitor even if it’s not labeled that way.”
“What are you telling me?” I ask. I’m afraid I already know the answer.
“The combination of the two will kill him.”
Shit. That bomb was meant for us.
CHAPTER FOUR
I DON’T EVEN wait to ask any more questions, plowing through the wooden door into Puo’s room.
It’s dark in the room for the evening; the curtains are drawn. There are some rhythmic beeping, pumping sounds. It smells awful, like chemical cleaner trying to expunge the smell of decay.
Not good.
Puo’s bed is in the back of the narrow room.
“Mika!” I run to him.
The light above his bed flares on. Puo’s round Samoan face, none the worse for wear (well, maybe a little pale) smiles wide at me. There’re wireless sensor patches on his neck and just visible near his neckline from the hospital gown. “Hey, there. Glad you could get out of taking the kids to soccer practice to come visit me.”
I scrunch my face up in annoyance but don’t hit him. Stupid seafoam-green sweater.
“What’s with the threads?” he asks me, smirking.
“It’s what they could scrounge up. We need to get out of here.”
Puo doesn’t acknowledge what I said. Instead, the smile disappears off his face when he sees Winn walk into the room. “Well, well, well. You’re lucky I got all this stuff on me at the moment. You have no idea what you did—” Puo tries to sit up more.
“Mika!” I cut him off. Winn does not need to know the extent of my ... issues. “Not now. The explosion was meant for us. We need to get out of here.”
Puo shifts his gaze to me, his face no less serious than before. “How do you know?”
“They switched your meds,” Winn answers. “If you took it, you would’ve been dead in hours.”
Puo’s pale face goes paler. “And it’s not a mistake?”
Winn shakes his head no. “There’s no way they would’ve screwed this up.”
“Start unhooking him,” I tell Winn.
“Wait a minute,” Puo says, a tremor to his voice. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” He looks between Winn and me, licking his lips. “I just had a heart attack—”
“A coronary spasm,” I say. “And how long are you going to milk that for?” I try to say with some swagger. Mostly, I just want to say: No shit, but we don’t have a choice.
Puo continues, “They said I need to stay here, take it easy while they keep an eye on me.”
“We can’t stay here,” I say. “You know this. I’m sorry, Mika. I really am. But we have to go. Besides, I brought you your own personal doctor.” I gesture at Winn and smile.
Puo does not look placated.
Winn starts to look over the machines and shake his head.
“What?” I ask Winn.
Winn answers, “As soon as the machines don’t get a reading, they’ll alert the on-call nurse who will page the doctor and run in here.”
“How long?” I ask.
Winn shakes his head more. “Twenty, thirty seconds, maybe, before they’re alerted.”
Shit. Several ideas pass through my mind, but only one can be executed immediately without any prep.
“Dr. Yates,” I say, “take the machine sensors off of Mika and put them on me, then escort him out of here.”
“What?” Winn asks at the same time Puo says, “No.”
“There isn’t time to debate this,” I say. I take off the horrid green sweater and come stand next to Puo and Winn. “Start transferring them to me. Once you two are safely out of here, contact me and I’ll follow.”
Winn stares at my naked chest, his mouth slightly ajar. The nurse didn’t bring me a bra.
“Focus, Alan,” I say. The gaping monkey is making me suddenly self-conscious. But this is for Puo.
“S— Sorry,” Winn stumbles. He starts taking the medical patches off of Puo and transferring them to me. The patches are warm, slick with sweat.
“What am I supposed to wear?” Puo asks.
Good question. No idea. “I don’t know.” I look to Winn for a possible solution.
Winn shakes his head. “I don’t know either. Your gown.”
“They’re going to let me walk outside in December, with snow on the ground, in nothing but a hospital gown? The cold is what caused the first heart attack.”
Coronary spasm, but I let it slide.
Winn and I share a look.
“Hide in the hospital?” I suggest.
“There’s no hiding in a hospital,” Winn answers. “Not when there’s a patient missing. They lock down the hospital and then their internal surveillance will trawl through the past twenty-four hours to narrow it down quickly.”
“So ... what?” Puo asks as Winn peels the last medical patch from Puo’s upper chest.
Winn finishes putting the wireless sensor patches on me, managing to avoid the large bandaged area on my back while still making the area sting from time to time from pressing the patches down on me.
I turn back around and Winn tears his eyes aw
ay from my chest and says to Puo, “C’mon—” He holds out his hand to help Puo sit up.
The bed creaks from Puo’s weight shifting on it.
Winn continues, “—I’ll take you out a back way. We’ll get a taxi—”
“No,” I say. “No transportation with a digital record.”
Puo says incredulously, “You want me to go from an explosion, to a heart attack, to wiring a hovercar in seven hours?”
“Yeah.” I nod seriously. And: coronary spasm.
“I’ll be with you the whole way,” Winn says. “A doctor escorting his patient. And we’ll get you the meds you need. You can do this.”
I step closer to Puo and rest my forehead on his. “You can do this. Be vigilant. Stay safe.”
Puo leans in against my forehead and looks up at me with dark eyes. “You too, kid.” He barely manages a tremulous half-smile.
I pull back, and Winn helps Puo to his feet.
I sit down on the bed and pull up the sheet over my bare chest for warmth—at least I tell myself it’s for warmth.
“Keep me updated,” I say.
“Will do,” Winn says looking back at me, the red spot on his cheek deepening into a bruise.
Puo grabs his old clothes for what looks like want of something to do. They’re crusty and all cut up from where the medics had to cut off his clothes to treat him.
I turn my attention back to Winn. “And if you think that our meeting upstairs went poorly, that will be nothing compared to the next one if anything happens ...” to him. But I can’t bring myself to say it.
Winn nods at me. His eyes linger on me again, but not in a lecherous way, in a way that was like he was just trying to remember what I looked like. He turns back to Puo and starts whispering calmly to him as they shuffle out.
* * *
The silence is loud when Puo and Winn first leave the room. Every creak, every footstep, every wheel squeaking by outside on the laminated wood floor sounds like pursuit, like a harbinger of discovery.
The rhythmic beeps of the machines that receive my vitals from the wireless patches keep the time. Winn and Puo should be in the parking garage and in search of a suitable hovercar. They’re to text me when they’re off, and then I’m going to bolt.
I sit on the edge of the bed, the tips of my toes in the tan loafers just barely touching the wood floor below me. There’s something really gross about wearing another person’s shoes, especially without socks.
The horrid seafoam-green sweater is laid out next to me ready for me to rip off the medical patches and slip on. Once the patches are off, I’m hurrying out of this part of the hospital as fast as I can without attracting notice and then slowing down to stroll out of the hospital like nothing’s amiss. I wish I could just stroll out calmly, peeling the sensors off as I go, but the sensors have trackers in them.
I breathe in and out of my nose calmly, waiting for word that Puo and Winn are in a hovercar and on their way somewhere warm and safe.
The door to Puo’s room opens up. No knock.
It’s an Indian male nurse with some heft and a butt chin, wearing light-orange scrubs and pushing the metal cart from outside with the wrongly-labeled MAOI inhibitors on it into the room.
He looks suspicious upon seeing me, calculating. His brown eyes are menacing.
“Where is the patient?” he asks. He knows who I am. I can feel it.
“I don’t know,” I say, continuing to hold the sheet over my bare chest. “They just moved me into this room. The bed’s still warm and everything. Who are you?”
“The nutritionist,” the man says.
A nutritionist that gives false medication? I size him up quickly. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s lying; he’s probably trying to figure out if I’m suspicious of him.
“Can you go get the nurse?” I ask like a confused patient. “The patches monitoring my life signs itch.”
He doesn’t move from where he is, or make to get hold of anyone to understand what’s going on. He just stares at me, calculating.
It’s a stalemate. I’m probably on his hit list. But I’m conscious and healthy—he can’t make it look like an accident. And so long as I’m hooked up to the machines, he can’t do anything drastic as the nurses and doctors will come running.
“Never mind,” I say, “I can call her.” I pick up the patient tablet on the side table. The longer this draws out the more it favors him.
“Stop—” the man says.
My heart catches in my throat.
“—I’ll go grab her for you,” he finishes. He turns to leave. There’s a suspicious bulge in the middle of his back.
“Wait,” I say, a stupid idea forming. Oh, Puo would love this. So would Winn for that matter. “Can you adjust one of these patches?” I drop the sheet over my chest and turn sideways to point to one of them on my back, pulling my right leg onto the bed, bending it at the knee. “It’s itching me like crazy.”
He darks eyes dilate on my chest, but he doesn’t move. Well, at least he’s a man, even if he doesn’t slavishly do as I wish in front of a pair of boobs.
“Ugh,” I say and reach for the call button again. My tablet buzzes in my mom-jeans pocket from a text—almost assuredly Puo.
“Okay,” he says guardedly. He walks over slowly, his eyes flicking all around me, but always coming back to my chest.
I try and stay relaxed, while at the same time getting ready to do something stupid.
He gulps, his hands are tense as he starts to peel the patch off my right middle back.
I sneeze once to desensitize him.
His hands pull back in surprise.
“Sorry,” I say. I awkwardly position my right hand to be able to strike him.
I sneeze again and feint with my right hand.
He reacts predictably, moving to block my arm with his upper body, while striking me in the middle of my back to the right of the bandaged area with an elbow.
Damn, that stings! But the feint worked; I kick my right leg off the bed as fast as I can and connect with his testicles. There ain’t a whole lot of protection under scrubs.
He stumbles to his knees and retches.
I whip around and knee him as hard as I possibly can in the face.
His head jerks around and he crumples.
Now the middle of my back and my knee throb. Damn, that’s gonna hurt when the pain meds wear off. I check the readouts from my vitals—no significant spike. Whew—that means no nurse running in to check on us.
I start tearing through all the drawers in the room looking for anything to bind him with. Bandage tape!
Nutrition man is already starting to stir.
I rush over and bind his hands behind his back. Then his feet. Then his bound hands to his bound feet. A towel out of the bathroom goes in his mouth, and I tape over it, making sure to tape as much of his hair on the back of his head as possible. Bastard.
I check the bulge in the middle of his back: a handgun. I rifle through the drawers again and find some scissors.
My tablet buzzes again in my pocket to remind of me of my unread text, and I stop to check.
It’s Chameleon, the text reads, we’re in the air. Chameleon is Puo’s codename for when we’re on jobs.
Ok, I send back quickly and turn back to trussing up the nutrition man.
I cut off his light-orange shirt, making sure the handgun is exposed for when he’s found—that alone should carry a stiff penalty, or at least a ton of scrutiny.
He moans and turns his head. His pupils are dilated, looking at me. He starts to struggle.
I stand over him and arch my back to reach around to peel off the patches on my back.
The guy stops struggling and stares at my breasts.
Fucker. I kick him again in the groin. “Close your eyes, asshole, or I’ll just keep kicking all day.”
He makes more retching sounds and convulses. Sweat beads along the edge of his hairline.
I hope there’s vomit in his mouth he has to
swallow.
I’m about to attach the monitoring patches on his sweaty, hairy chest—which is really gross. I mean, I don’t mind a little hair, but ew, not on man boobs here—but then the thought occurs to me that I should question him, and then attach the patches after he calms down, or passes out.
That fucker is staring at me again. I reach for the tape and start taping his eyes shut, making sure to include his eyebrows. “Have fun taking that off, prick.”
He mumbles something that’s lost in the towel shoved in his mouth.
I straddle the disgusting asshat, taking the scissors to hold them up under his chin and pull back the tape and towel around his mouth enough for him to talk. “Who sent you?” I ask.
“Nice tits,” he answers, a smile plying at his lips.
I push the point of the scissors deeper into his chin.
He pulls his head back, and says, “I’ll remember them forever you know—”
I reach behind me and under his pants to find his testicles. I grip the sweaty, gross balls (Eww!) and ask again, “Who sent you?”
The smile wipes off his face. He gulps, but doesn’t answer.
I push the towel back into his mouth and then reach back squeeze his balls. Not too hard, just enough to let him know it hurts and that it wasn’t as hard as I can.
When he’s done squirming, I lower the towel and ask again, “Who sent you?”
He’s shakes his head, panting. “No way.”
I don’t have much time, or much stomach for this. But guys love their penises, so it’s pretty easy to use that as leverage.
I flip around on top of him and pull his pants down. Gross. This guy doesn’t believe in personal grooming—poor girls. And he’s getting a boner! Gross!
I take the scissors and slide them over the edge of his scrotum ready to snip. “Who sent you?”
His chest rises and falls as he tries to catch his breath. He’s preparing himself.
I push the towel back into his mouth behind me and snip. Not much, mind you. Quarter inch, tops. Just enough to draw blood. Nothing but skin.
But he doesn’t know that. He can’t see, and this is his favorite toy in the whole, wide world.
Leverage Page 3