by Grant Pies
“I’m taking her.” Carter stepped in the room and stood over the girl. It was Rose. Even with her eyes closed, he could tell. He’d spent so many hours studying her picture. “Is she alive?”
“I sure hope so,” the man said, sliding down against the glass wall until he was sitting on the floor, and then repeated more softly, “I sure hope so.”
Her cheeks slightly more sunken than they were in the picture Carter had, and her dark hair even darker now that it was soaked by the sprinklers. Still, she looked peaceful laying there.
An IV was stuck in her arm, pumping some chemical into her. Another tube filled with blood stretched from her other arm to the machine in the room. Carter couldn’t tell if the blood was being pumped in or out.
“What the fuck are you doing to her?” Carter asked. He looked back and forth between the two tubes running in her arms, like he was defusing a bomb. “What is this?” he asked, looking at the bag of clear liquid attached to Rose’s IV.
He looked at the man outside the glass cell. He sat slumped on the floor, breathing but only barely.
“Shit,” Carter said.
Only one minute before Olivia was to abandon him. Deciding quickly, Carter took the bag of clear liquid and placed it on Rose’s chest, leaving the IV in her arm. Then he pulled out the tube that was pumping blood between her and the machine. A small puddle pooled in the crook of her arm. He wheeled Rose out of the glass room and pushed her towards the front office.
A small fire burned through the debris. At the double doors leading to the front, Carter glanced back at the man slumped on the floor. He thought back to Jake Dawson and his daughter. He thought of who might be counting on the man, of what his motives may actually be. According to his watch, the fifteen minutes were up.
“Son of a bitch!” he said to himself and turned back. He pulled a stretcher up next to the man and tucked his arms under his. He lifted and struggled, barely getting the man’s back onto the stretcher. He grabbed the man’s ankles and swung the rest of his body up.
Pulling the man behind him and pushing Rose in front, he scanned the dark parking lot. He didn’t see anything. He swallowed deep and clenched his jaw.
“Shit,” he mumbled and looked at the bodies he towed with him. There was no way he could get the van out of the office, much less drive it. They were stuck.
At that moment, a van pulled up. Olivia hopped out of the driver’s side.
“You’re still here!” Carter said. He felt a smile grow over his face.
“I was just leaving.” Olivia looked at the two bodies on stretchers. “What’s this?” She quickly tied her hair back and examined them. “What happened to them?”
“He’s been shot. And her, I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” He lifted the IV bag from Rose’s chest. “She had this in her and some tube in her other arm connected to a machine. Pumping her blood out or something.”
“Get them in the back.” Olivia threw the back doors of the van open. Carter wheeled Rose in first, then the man, and Olivia climbed in the back with the two patients. “Drive!” she said.
Carter climbed into the driver’s seat. “Where?”
“The hospital.”
Pulling out of the parking lot and leaving the clinic behind him, Carter said, “I don’t think it’ll be safe there. Rose shows up at a hospital and whoever did this might show up too.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to treat her off the books,” Olivia said. “I’ve already done it once, why not do it again? Do I need to ask who shot this man?” Carter glanced in the rearview and saw her using the tools from the torture kit in the back of the van. “And is this who I think it is?”
“Yes,” Carter said.
“What about Sam?” Olivia asked as she cut the man’s bloody pant leg to expose his gunshot wound.
“Wasn’t there.” Carter took a corner without slowing down. Olivia braced herself against the wall of the van and both bodies slid back and forth.
“You sure?”
“It was just one large room. Sam wasn’t there, but he may know something.”
“How is she alive?” Olivia asked.
“You mean why is she alive?” Carter said. “I don’t know. You should have seen this machine. It was doing something to her. What’s the IV for?”
“Sedative most likely.” Olivia had already pulled the IV out of Rose’s arm. “This bag would probably have kept her asleep for twelve more hours before it ran out.”
Speeding through a yellow light just as it turned red, Carter turned around to see Olivia pulling the man’s arm straight and sliding the IV into his arm. “Is that a smart idea? Reusing an IV?”
“Would you rather he wake up in the back of this van?”
“Good point.” He slowed for a red light, but drove through after looking both ways. He’d been running on adrenaline for so long that he hadn’t realized he’d ripped his own sutures completely open. The gunshot in his stomach was bleeding through his shirt. He pressed his hand down and pulled it away to see just how much blood had soaked into his clothing.
A light ahead turned red, and for a split second he thought about running it, but cars had already started crossing the intersection. “Shit!” He slammed on the brakes. Olivia, along with the two bodies, slid forward.
“Watch it!” Olivia said, bracing herself, but ultimately falling on top of Rose.
“Sorry, sorry. Red light.” Carter thought of where else Sam could be, where else they could have taken him. He’d been thinking of this since he looked in the last empty room back at the eye clinic.
He just prayed Sam wasn’t being kept in the Accenture building he’d escaped from days ago. He was pretty sure he’d never be able to just drive a van through that building. And even if he made it in, he knew he’d never make it out.
“I think it’s time to call the cops, Will. This is madness what you’re doing.”
The light turned green, and Carter sped through the intersection. “He’s our only lead right now. I call the cops, and he gets arrested.” Carter glanced in the rearview at the unconscious man. “Is he gonna make it?”
“I don’t know. It depends on if I can take him to a trauma room or if I have to work on him in the bloody storage closet!”
He saw the hospital up ahead. He drove towards the ambulance bay. “Fine. Put him in a trauma room. Do whatever you can to save him, but keep him sedated so he doesn’t try to run.” He stopped the van outside the hospital.
“And her?” Olivia nodded at Rose.
“Storage closet.” Carter hopped out of the van. He circled around and opened the back doors. “Unless you think she needs a trauma room?”
Olivia crawled over the two bodies and jumped out the back. “From what I can tell, she’s just sedated. No major traumas. I’ll monitor her in the storage room, assuming I can get this man stable quickly.”
Carter pulled the man’s stretcher out first, then Rose.
Olivia handed him a security card. “Here, this’ll get you into the side entrance over there.” She pointed around the corner. “They know me, they’ll let me in. I trust you can find the storage room?”
Carter nodded and pushed Rose towards the side of the building. Behind him he heard Olivia barge through the ambulance bay doors, barking orders. Carter made it to the side entrance and wheeled Rose through the halls of the emergency room. He reached the storage room, let out a deep sigh, and dropped down in the lone chair.
He thought of Sam. He thought of how Sam was wrong. Rose was alive! Two months missing and she’s alive. He just hoped he’d get the chance to tell Sam I told you so.
He watched Rose, like she was just going to wake up any minute. Her arm dangled off the stretcher. In the crook of her elbow were bruises and needle marks. He stood and held her hand, stretching her arm out and examining the marks.
“Son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
He folded her arm across her body, then lifted her shirt up to r
eveal her stomach. No scars. No surgeries. No stolen organs.
He turned and examined the storage room for gauze or something to stop the bleeding from his own stomach. Reaching for a box high up, he winced and quickly lowered his hand. Focusing on the boxes within reach, he opened each one until he found rolls of gauze. He sat down and pulled his shirt up. Pressing the gauze against his gunshot, he held his breath.
Rose twitched in her bed, or at least Carter thought she did, he couldn’t tell for sure. He wrapped the gauze around his stomach, but kept an eye on Rose. She moved again. This time he definitely saw it.
He stood. Rose moved again, her body jolting, like she was being electrocuted. Then it happened again.
“Shit,” Carter said. “Shit!”
He looked around the room, as if someone would appear and tell him what to do. Rose jolted again and again, until she was in a full-blown seizure.
“Fuck!” Carter shouted. “No, please, please, please.”
She kept seizing, her head jerking back and forth and her jaw clenched. The veins in her neck bulged.
“Damn it!”
He pushed the door to the storage room open and pulled Rose out into the hall.
“Help!” he screamed.
He wheeled Rose further and turned a corner. Doctors, nurses, patients, and security guards filled the ER. Rose seized, almost falling off the stretcher. Carter wrapped his arms around her to keep her on the bed.
“Help! I need a doctor!” He pushed Rose into the middle of the ER. The nearest nurse came over. “Please,” Carter said. “You need to help her.” He looked in the nurse’s eyes. She waved a doctor over, then nodded to a trauma room.
“What’s wrong with her?” the doctor asked.
“I – I don’t know,” Carter said, looking around for Olivia.
He spotted her in another trauma room, digging in the man’s leg with a set of forceps. He thought of the first time he ever saw her.
“Is she epileptic?” the doctor asked as they rolled her into the trauma room.
“I don’t know.”
He watched Olivia work on the man he’d shot. She must have heard the commotion because she looked up. She looked at Carter, confused and worried at the same time.
“Is she on any medications?” the doctor asked again.
“I – I don’t know,” Carter said, defeated. “I don’t know.”
She Was Never Meant to Last
“Sir, I’m going to need you to step out of the room!”
Two months missing, and she’s going to die one hour after I find her, Carter thought. He left the room in a daze, watching both patients he brought in. Olivia working on one, and Rose in the room across the hall. If Rose survived, it would reunite her with her parents and give her a chance to live a normal life. All of this would mean something. It would matter. But the man Olivia was with was the only chance at finding Sam. If he died…
“Sir?” a voice said. “Sir?” Carter looked through the nurse standing in front of him. “Sir, you’re bleeding,” she said and looked down at his stomach. “Take a seat, sir.” She led him to a bed. “Lay back.”
He had no choice. He wondered if he ever had any choice. If anyone had a choice. Or if his life was a string of forced movements. If everyone was here just to play a role.
The nurse lifted his shirt to examine his wound. “Have you been here recently? Looks like you’ve torn your stitches. I’ll go get a suture kit. Wait right here.” She left, and Carter sat back in his bed to watch Olivia work on the man with the shot leg. He heard her curse then shout out for a nurse to run and get two units of O negative blood.
The nurse returned with a suture kit and spread her sterile instruments out on a metal tray next to the bed. “Just a small prick to numb the wound.” She jabbed her needle into his stomach. “This looks like a gunshot wound, only a couple days old. What happened?” The nurse looked at Carter, narrowing her gaze. “You a cop?” He shook his head, not making eye contact. Instead, he switched between staring at Rose and staring at the other man. “You came in with the girl, didn’t you?” He nodded. Why lie?
Olivia emerged from the trauma room, tossing her bloodied gloves in a biohazard bin. “Denise, I’ll take over here.”
The nurse set down the suture instruments. “Dr. Abbott, I didn’t know you were on tonight.”
“Yeah, last minute thing.” Olivia smiled at the nurse. “I know him. I’ll take it from here. Thanks, Denise.”
“Sure, no problem.” The nurse walked away, but as she passed Olivia, she whispered something to her. Carter couldn’t hear what she said, but he made out the words “police” and “gunshot.”
“I’ve already taken care of that,” Olivia said. “Thanks.” She stepped towards Carter, her face stern. “What bloody happened?”
Carter closed his eyes. “I ripped my sutures.”
“Not this. Rose! What happened with Rose?” Olivia picked up the instruments and started sewing Carter’s wound closed.
“She – she just started seizing. She was flailing all around. I didn’t know what to do.” He felt a slight tugging on his skin around the gunshot wound, but no pain.
Looking over at the trauma room, Olivia said, “It looks like she stopped. What did you tell them?”
“Nothing. Where would I even start?”
“Well you better figure out where to start. An underage girl comes in with a non-parent, Dr. Sheffield has to call the cops. Even if I asked him as a personal favor, he’s required by law. He might have already called them. We need to get our story straight.”
Carter sighed and snapped out of his daze. “Simple, you had nothing to do with any of this. They don’t know you sewed me up a few days ago, and they don’t know you were kidnapped. We didn’t come in together. You say that you were coming here because you forgot something. You came upon this guy who was dumped at the hospital and you rushed him in.”
“And if people saw us together outside?”
He paused as Olivia continued stitching him up. “I’ll say I saw him getting mugged or something. Yeah, I saw him getting mugged. He got shot. I got him here, and you saw us out front.”
“What’s wrong with the truth?” Olivia asked.
“I can’t admit I shot someone. Even if it was justified. I don’t have time to wait around to get out of custody. And if I tell the cops he was guarding Rose, then he’s locked up. They take either of us into custody, and Sam’s gone forever.”
“And what about him?” Olivia nodded towards the trauma room. “He’s going to wake up. What’s he going to tell the cops?”
“He’s gonna make it?” Carter propped himself up on his elbows.
“He’s still out, but he’s sewn up, bullets out. He’ll live.”
“Oh, thank God!”
“God? You can thank me too while you’re at it.” Olivia smirked.
“Thanks, Olivia. Really, for everything. You’re an amazing doctor. A good person.” Carter slid his legs off the side of the bed. “When will he be awake? When can I talk to him?”
Olivia shook her head. Her hair had shaken loose from her ponytail and strands fell in front of her eyes. “I don’t know, maybe an hour.”
“An hour! They’ve got Sam now! They sent one guy to get me at the motel and another here to get you. The way I see it, they’re rolling this thing up and tying loose ends. Sam’s a big loose end, and I don’t see them waiting around to deal with him.”
“But now you have leverage.” She motioned to Rose’s trauma room. “Whoever took Rose, they kept her alive for a reason, they wanted her for something. And now they don’t have her. If there’s any chance of getting her back, they’ll keep Sam alive for just a little longer.” Olivia rested her hand on Carter’s shoulder. “But he was shot. Lost blood. He’s been through a lot. We all have. There’s only so much people can take. His body has to rest, there’s no fighting that.”
“I have to talk to him before the cops do. Find out where Sam is. Maybe I can get him to go
along with the mugging story. It keeps him out of trouble after all.”
“And Rose? The cops are going to have a lot of questions.”
Carter didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can trust the cops to handle this.”
“That’s exactly who we should trust. It’s their job, not yours.”
“It’s just … something about when we went to talk to Orcheck at the police station…” Carter trailed off and thought back. It seemed like a year ago. “I’ll figure something out to tell them. Tell them enough to make them happy, but maybe keep a few things to myself. I’ll keep your name out of all of it.”
“That’s appreciated, but I’m going on record saying you should tell the cops everything.” She sounded just like Carter when he spoke to Rose’s mother. Tell the cops everything. Tell the truth. So simple yet so far from it. Olivia finished sewing his wound shut for the second time. “Try and keep those sutures in this time,” she said.
“I make no promises.” He sank his head into the thin pillow on the hospital bed. He was tired enough to sleep, but he knew he shouldn’t.
He looked over at Rose. She looked dead.
“I’ll go see how she’s doing,” Olivia said, noticing him staring.
She walked over and spoke to the doctor who worked on Rose, Dr. Sheffield. They had a brief conversation, both glancing at Carter and pointing between him and Rose. The doctor looked stern, almost angry. Carter didn’t like the way he seemed to speak to Olivia. He thought back to what she had said about being a woman in this line of work. He felt the urge to go stand up for her, but quickly wondered if, by doing that, he would be treating her no different than the other men who thought she was less than capable of handling herself. He found there was no good decision, which seemed to be all too common for him at the moment.
Dr. Sheffield watched Olivia walk back, his eyes burning through her back. She made an annoyed face and rolled her eyes as she returned.
“Prick,” she whispered under her breath. “She’s okay for now.”
“What happened?”
“He has no bloody clue.”
