Duby's Doctor

by Iris Chacon

  Mitchell had been almost at the bottom of the stairs when a loud bang sounded from behind one of the closed doors on the ground floor. She practically fell down the last few steps in her hurry to find a hiding place. She crouched between an ornate hallway credenza and a six-foot vase overflowing with wedding flowers.

  Frank Stone and two black-uniformed officers dashed past her and broke down a door. Frank rushed inside the room with his weapon drawn and two officers armed and ready to back him up. Only moments passed before Rico came out of that room, squeezed his way between the police officers, and bounded up the stairs.

  Mitchell stayed hidden. She wasn’t sure her Jello legs would support her if she tried to stand up at that moment. She waited several seconds, drawing her courage about her like a cloak, then she followed Rico upstairs, toward Carinne’s suite.

  Jean was about to exit Carinne’s suite of rooms when Rico stepped into the doorway. Rico’s face lit up. “Dubreau,” he said. “I hoped you would come.”

  Rico quickly scanned the room, noting the broken window, the insensate body on the floor, and the absence of one female physician. “So, you have rescued the damsel already,” he said with a congratulatory smile. “Well, that’s very good for her, because you will not be rescuing anyone ever again when I’m finished with you.”

  “Doctor Oberon is freed, and Agent Stone is downstairs to protect Miss Averell,” Jean pointed out calmly. “There is no need for more violence. It is over. You should just go, before the police arrest you and your boss.”

  “Zere iss no nidd for morr violens,” Rico mocked Jean’s accent. “You bet your sweet paintbrush there’s a need, Dubykins. We connected twice before: once you made me look like a jackass, and once I made you look like a corpse. So, I figure it’s time to break the tie.”

  With that, Rico sidestepped into the room, forcing Jean to sidestep also, to face his enemy. For a moment, they circled like wolves, in their martial arts poses, seeking the opening to attack. Jean led with his right; Rico led with his left, arm outstretched and slowly circling ‘round and ‘round and ‘round in front of Jean’s face. Jean knew enough to ignore the mesmerizing hand movements, however. He watched Rico’s calculating eyes.

  “I never thought I’d face you like this again,” Rico commented.

  Jean said nothing.

  Rico tried a right foot sweep toward Jean’s left knee, having spotted Jean’s slight limp.

  Jean spun in a full circle counterclockwise, his right leg swinging to block Rico’s kick and force the man off balance. Both men quickly regained their footing and again circled, seeking an opening.

  Again, Rico’s left hand formed slow circles around Jean’s face, and Jean ignored it, as they stalked one another.

  “Y’know, I really thought you were dead when I tossed you out of that chopper,” Rico said.

  Jean paid no attention to the voice, only to the sinister eyes.

  Suddenly, Rico spun left, aiming a powerful roundhouse kick at Duby’s left temple.

  Duby’s left arm blocked the kick, jarring the wounded shoulder, and he continued his body’s momentum, putting all his weight behind a roundhouse kick that planted his right foot deep and hard into Rico’s left armpit.

  Shaken, both men backed off, feet at right angles, weight on the balls of their feet, shrugging off the pain from their first blows. Gradually, they began closing on each other again, circling.

  “You’ll be dead for sure this time. I guarantee it,” Rico said.

  Jean saw the man’s right shoulder drop, telegraphing the uppercut. With blurring speed Jean blocked Rico’s attack with a crushing right punch to Rico’s elbow, then Jean reversed direction to slam a backhand hanma fist into Rico’s right eye. It didn’t quite take Rico’s head off – Jean, after all, was out of practice – but Rico’s brow split like a ripe melon, and a torrent of blood coated his eye and half his face.

  “First blood to you,” Rico acknowledged. “Lucky.” Then his left jab knocked Jean’s leading fist to the side, clearing a path for Rico’s right cross into Jean’s left eye.

  Jean bobbed, avoiding the brunt of the blow, but Rico’s fist opened a cut at the hairline over Jean’s eye. Both men’s faces were half-painted red now, and both men’s vision half-impaired.

  Jean drove his right knee toward Rico’s Adam’s apple.

  Rico spun 90 degrees clockwise, his left arm deflecting most of the incoming knee’s force, so that his Adam’s apple was bruised instead of smashed.

  Jean stepped forward on his right foot and jammed his left knee into Rico’s diaphragm. Rico’s lungs emptied in a whoosh.

  Breathless and seeing stars, Rico nevertheless managed to bash Jean’s left knee between two massive fists, crushing the knee from both sides, then lifting Jean’s thigh upward to flip him over backward. It almost worked.

  Jean inhaled involuntarily when his bad knee was pounded, then he used his backward momentum to roll quickly 360 degrees and pop back onto his feet, with his right leg supporting his weight.

  Rico backed off, sucking in big gulps of air to replace what had been knocked out of him when Jean’s knee had slammed into his diaphragm. He resumed his ready position, his open left hand leading. Rico grinned. It was not a pleasant expression.

  Jean, also, resumed the ready position, now leading with his left. His right foot, flat, held his body weight while the left foot rested on its toes, the left knee bent. His eyes gave nothing away.

  Without warning, Rico’s right fist bash-bash-bashed into Jean’s wounded left shoulder, then Rico bounced backward on the balls of his feet, out of reach.

  Jean side-hopped right in order to stay vertical. His leading left arm drooped, but he jerked it back into position. Blood seeped through shoulder of his shirt, forming a slowly spreading red circle.

  Rico’s grin grew even nastier, and he winked at the bleeding shoulder.

  Jean’s not-quite-useless left leg slapped the grin off Rico’s face by slashing Jean’s left foot across Rico’s nose. Cartilage and bone splintered with an audible crunch, and a geyser of blood erupted from the center of Rico’s face. Jean winked at the bloody nose and, for the first time, smiled.

  Rico wasn’t grinning any more.

  Both men returned to ready position, circling, bleeding, panting, sweating, leading with their left.

  Rico switched to lead with his right, closing in, circling Jean’s face with a right, open fist. “You got only one good arm and one good leg, Dube,” he taunted. “How long you think you can last?”

  “Long enough.” Jean shifted his weight to his left leg and sent his right foot crashing into Rio’s chin. Rico’s head snapped backward, but it wasn’t enough to knock him out.

  Circling, shaking off the chin blow, Rico emitted a wicked laugh. He said, “Once you’re down and immobilized, maybe I’ll let you watch what I do with your woman before I kill you bo—“

  “I am NOT ‘his woman’!” Mitchell shouted from doorway.

  Jean didn’t react, as if somehow he had known she was cringing just outside the door for the past few minutes, listening to the sounds of battle. Rico, however, involuntarily glanced toward the noise of Mitchell’s shout.

  That split-second diversion was all Jean needed. Lightning-quick, he pounded four left knee-kicks into Rico’s ribs, armpit, throat, and jaw – bam-bam-bam-bam.

  Rico fell like a sack of cement. He did not move.

  When Jean’s left foot returned to the floor, the knee was too badly battered to support any weight at all. Jean swallowed a shout of pain when the foot hit the floor and again, less successfully, when his body fell to the carpet, landing first on the shattered knee and then on the bleeding shoulder. He nearly passed out from the pain. He rolled onto his back and toward the right, writhing to escape the pain permeating the left side of his body.

  Mitchell ran toward Jean, but before she reached him she kicked the unconscious Rico hard in the ribs. Then, she stomped hard on his foot, on her way to Jean. Then, she sat on the
floor, laid Stone’s pistol on the carpet, and took Jean’s bloody head into her lap, cooing comfort sounds and gently stroking his hair. She didn’t hear or see Carinne enter the room.

  Carinne crossed to Rico’s prone body and watched until she saw that he was breathing. “Thank you for not killing him,” she said to Jean, but he was scarcely conscious and did not answer.

  Mitchell, startled, snatched up Frank Stone’s pistol. When she saw that only Carinne stood before her, she again placed the gun on the floor. “Don’t tell me you care for that piece of...,” Mitchell began. “...well, I don’t know any of the right words, but you know what I mean.”

  Carinne smiled wanly. “Yes, I know. I know what Rico is, but he’s someone I need to help me run my father’s business ... for now, at least.” She approached Jean as Mitchell began helping him to sit up. “Will he be okay?”

  “Can you help me get him on the bed, please,” Mitchell said.

  The two women were able, with Jean’s minimal help, to get him from the floor to the nearby bed, where they laid him atop the duvet. Trish, lying unconscious at the far side of the huge bed, remained undisturbed. If Carinne was concerned about Jean’s blood staining her elegant bed linens, she gave no indication.

  “I need some ice,” Mitchell said when they had him settled. “Can you call nine-one-one?”

  “Already done,” Carinne said. “We had a, sort of, situation downstairs, so the EMTs are on the way.” She pointed toward another part of the suite. “You’ll find ice and towels under the bar in the TV room.”

  Mitchell took half a step away then paused. She looked from Carinne to Jean and back again. Jean seemed to be asleep or unconscious.

  “I’ll stay with him,” Carinne said.

  Mitchell nodded, gave Jean a long look, then absently picked up the gun from the floor and walked toward the other room with Stone’s old pistol hanging, forgotten, from her hand.

  PART IV – BEREFT

  CHAPTER 19 – SUBSTITUTION

  Mitchel had barely walked out of the room when Frank Stone appeared in the doorway and looked warily at his niece and four prone bodies. He lifted an eyebrow at Carinne.

  “They’re alive,” she answered his unspoken question.

  He sighed. “Good. Looks like only one fatality, so far at least. That’ll make the paperwork a helluva lot easier. How’s Duby?”

  Carinne was still sitting on the bed beside Jean. She took his hand in one of hers, using her free hand to gently brush his hair back from his blood-streaked face. “Doctor Oberon went to get some ice for the knee. We should get him to the hospital.”

  “No prob,” her uncle said. “EMT’s are downstairs. I’ll go tell ‘em to get up here with a gurney ASAP.” He turned as if to leave, but stopped and looked back at her. “You okay with all this? It’s a lot, losin’ your dad and all.”

  Carinne looked up from studying Duby’s face. “I don’t think of it as losing a father; I think of it as gaining my freedom plus my own business.” She had never looked more like the Stone side of her family than she did at that moment.

  Frank nodded and left the room.

  Carinne turned her attention back to Duby’s unconscious form. “Thank you, my friend,” she whispered, and she leaned down to press a kiss to his lips.

  A shot exploded behind her. Carinne leaped to her feet and spun around.

  “I-I’m s-sorry,” Mitchell stammered, dropping the gun onto the hole she had just shot into the carpet beside her feet. Her eyes had gone wide with shock. “I f-forgot I h-had it. I g-guess I-I squeezed the t-trigger thingy.”

  Carinne relaxed and exhaled in relief. “It’s okay. It’s easy to do. You found the ice?”

  Mitchell looked at the stack of towels and the ice bucket in her opposite hand as if she had never seen them before. “I found the ice,” she murmured.

  Carinne stepped aside to give Mitchell access to the bed and Jean, but Mitchell only stepped forward as far as the foot of the bed, where she laid the ice and towels.

  Frank Stone rushed through the door, red-faced from running back upstairs. “What happened?” he cried. “Oh,” he said, taking in the gun and the hole in the floor. “Everybody okay?”

  “We’re fine, Uncle Francis,” Carinne said. “Doctor Oberon was holding that pistol and it went off. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mitchell said, looking from Carinne to Jean and back again. “Just pack that knee in the ice,” she told Carinne. To Stone she said, “Can I get a ride home, please?”

  “You’re not gonna ride with him in the ambulance?” Stone said, surprised.

  “Carinne can do that. Right, Carinne?”

  Carinne nodded. “Sure. If you like. You’ll come later?”

  “They’ll call me if they need me.” Mitchell walked as far as the door and waited for Stone to shift his bulk to one side so she could pass him.

  “I’ll have a unit drive you home,” he said.

  She nodded. She took a halting step and seemed about to turn back and look at Jean or Carinne, but she forced her eyes forward and continued walking toward the stairs.

  Several hours later, near midnight, Jean stirred against a pillow and blinked in confusion. In seconds he identified the antiseptic smells and subdued sounds that told him he was once again in a hospital. The light was dim in his room, but, when he turned his head one way and then another, he could see that the room was empty except for himself.

  He was aware of aches and discomfort in many parts of his body, but they were nothing compared to the burning of his shoulder wound, which was a close second to the agony pulsing through his left leg. He felt around on the sheet beside his hand and located the call button. He centered his thumb on the button and crushed the device in a desperate grip.

  Yes, he was injured. Yes, his pain was terrible. Yes, waking up alone was disconcerting. He was not desperate because of those things, however. He pressed the call button hard, again and again as if demented, because he had an overwhelming and ominous conviction that something was horribly wrong. Something outside of himself and his physical pain. Something he needed to fix immediately, but first he would have to find out what it was.

  The door swung open and a white uniform approached his bed. As the person drew nearer he realized it was a nurse and it was someone he knew. “Madame Erskine,” he breathed, and smiled at her.

  Gently prying his hand from its grip on the call button, Nurse Erskine smiled back at him. “Hello, John. We’re sorry to see you in here again. I gather you’ve had a life of adventure and excitement while you’ve been away from us.”

  He watched her as if waiting for her to answer a question he had not asked.

  She moved to the foot of the bed and picked up the chart hanging there. “Are you having a lot of pain?”

  “Some,” he said.

  She looked at him accusingly. She knew he was lying.

  “A lot,” he amended.

  She nodded, accepting this answer as truth. “Your doctor has left an order for pain meds; I’ll get them right away.” She replaced the chart and turned to go.

  “Merci,” he said. “Where is she?”

  Erskine stopped in the doorway. “She who?”

  “My doctor.”

  “Your doctor is a he, and he’s gone home for a few hours of sleep. He’ll be in to see you in the morning. I’ll be right back with those meds.” She was gone and the door closed, before he could gather his wits to ask what had happened to Dr. Oberon.

  He must have passed out again at that point. He didn’t remember the nurse returning and adding the pain medication to his intravenous drip. It must have been effective, though, because he slept with no awareness of pain until the noise of breakfast carts in the corridor roused him.

  Hector Velez called “Buenas días!” as he pushed through Jean’s door with a tray balanced on one hand. “One vegetarian breakfast for my main man,” the orderly said with a grin as he rolled the over-bed table into position in front of his
friend.

  “Bonjour, Hector,” said Jean with a bleary smile, still not quite focused after several hours of drugged sleep. “It is good to see a friend.”

  “Yeah,” Hector said while he raised the head of the bed until Jean was sitting up. “Not so great to see you in here again, but good to see you, too, amigo.”

  Jean looked at the breakfast tray as if he hardly recognized it and didn’t particularly wish to consume it.

  Hector observed his friend a moment then asked, “Think you can eat, bro?”

  Jean shook his head slowly.

  “Okay.” Hector suggested, “I’ll leave it here while I go deliver meals up and down the hall, then I’ll come back and see how you’re doin’. Cool?”

  Jean nodded. Hector was almost to the door when Jean said, “What is the matter?”

  “Wh- what's the matter with what?”

  “Has something bad happened to Michel?”

  Hector was nonplussed. “Doctor Oberon? I dunno, man, I think she’s okay. What’s the deal?”

  “Nobody is telling me anything, and I have not seen her. I do not think she has been here at all. And Madame Erskine said my doctor is a man! Where is Michel?”

  Hector walked back to the bedside and placed a consoling hand on Jean’s left shoulder. Jean flinched almost imperceptibly, and Hector quickly moved his hand to the right shoulder with a quick, “Sorry!”

  “Look, amigo, you been here, what, about six, seven hours? They brought you in, in the middle of the night, and you been unconscious just about the whole time. You haven’t seen anybody, okay? Relax. Try to eat something. I’ll come back in a little while. And, if I hear anything about Doctor Oberon, I’ll let you know. All right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. See you later.” Hector left the room.

  Jean leaned back against his pillow and stared unseeing at the breakfast cooling on the tray in front of him. He could not eat; nothing could get past the bowling ball of anxiety that had somehow lodged itself in his esophagus.