by Melissa Yi
He moved stiffly, almost robotically. His shoulders twisted to follow his head before the rest of his body followed suit. Maybe he really was hurt and I’d misjudged an overdressed patient.
Still, the punk rock secretary glanced up from the phone, since he hovered only three feet away from her left elbow. Andrea and a nurse I didn’t know looked up from their terminals at the nursing station.
A door closed on the ambulatory side. An IV pump beeped from one of the beds.
The man spoke next, his voice electronically distorted and amplified. "I have a bomb."
23
The secretary threw her hands in the air like he'd ordered a stick 'em up. "Did you say—a bomb?"
"I have a bomb," he repeated, in that same creepy electronic voice that deadened all expression. It is snowing outside. It is Sunday, January twelfth. I have a bomb.
A motherfucking bomb.
He could’ve been joking around. Twice. He's the bomb.
But my gut screamed that this man wouldn’t hesitate to annihilate us.
I'd been held hostage less than two months before. Gun to my head in the labour and delivery room. What were the odds?
Unless this was a copycat threat.
I heard there’s this great hospital. All you have to do is break in and try to kill everyone. Nothin’ like it. You in?
Yeah. But let’s do it bigger and better. Forget one room with a gun. Let’s do the whole ER with a bomb. Yeah?
Yeah!
The criminals had started playing Clue, only instead of Professor Plum in the library with a rope, I’d lucked out with Colonel Black in the ER with a bomb.
I felt too tired for gibbering terror. Seriously. After a while, you’re so numb that dropping dead seems like a reasonable Door Number Three.
"Okay. You have a bomb," I said. Forget denial, rage, and heartbreak. I’d skated straight to acceptance. This was the worst night shift of my life. Of course a man would cap it off with a bomb. The key was to survive said bomb. "Can we move all the patients out of here?"
After a pause, Bomb Guy intoned, "No."
Okay. May we move all the patients out of here? But I suspected Bomb Guy wasn’t a grammar Nazi. He simply wanted to exterminate every one of us.
Well, it was worth a shot (no pun intended). And his response told me that he was able to modulate his voice in real time, instead of repeatedly pressing a recording that said, I have a bomb.
Still, he wanted something. If his only goal was devastation, he should have walked straight in and detonated the bomb. Instead, he’d spoken to us. Warned us.
"What do you want?" I called. The effort made me cough, and I hacked into the crook of my elbow, keeping my hands up to show that they were empty.
"Give me your drugs. Narcotics and benzos."
He was naming them by drug class. Nobody I know does that unless they work in the medical field.
Bomb Guy was one of us.
Not Jesse or Curtis, then. I supposed the psychiatric patient could have learned the medication classes, but my instincts whispered to look closer to home.
"I'm—I don't know how to unlock the medication cart," I said. "You need a badge to unlock it. I'm not authorized."
"Well, then, you're a useless piece of shit, aren't you." The electronic voice couldn't convey expression, but something about the rhythm of his words told me he derived great pleasure from telling me so. More than a stranger would.
This guy was probably from St. Joe's.
Who the hell was he?
I studied his face as best I could through the eyeholes of his balaclava. Even from a distance, I noted pale skin, greasy with sweat. So he was a white guy who didn’t relish this.
The main thing, though, was his build. Part of his body habitus might be the bomb he was carrying—surely it would add twenty pounds to any svelte silhouette—but he looked a good 250 pounds to me.
"One of the nurses. You. Amber." He pointed at the new nurse who'd gotten bitten.
She'd been hovering in room 14, behind me. She squeaked.
"Go get the drugs. Morphine, Fentanyl, Dilaudid, Versed, Ativan. All of it. Now."
Amber's lips quivered. She ducked her head and her entire body, almost like she wanted to kowtow.
Amber was new. I'd never worked with her before tonight, yet he knew she was a nurse. Sure, he could have read her badge, except he didn't hesitate. He named her immediately. And he’d chosen her over two more experienced nurses already frozen inside the nursing station.
I might know who Bomb Guy was.
We had never liked each other, but this was beyond anything I'd ever considered him capable of.
"Do it, Amber. Unless you want this." He placed a hand to his chest. He must be wearing an explosive vest.
Amber scurried toward the resus room, body still bowed like a candy cane. Probably she didn’t want to look him in the eye. Probably a smarter tactic than me chatting, but my only weapon was my mouth. Unless he got close enough for my scalpel.
"She'll have to enter patient names to get the drugs out of the system. I can help her!" Andrea called from her spot at the nursing station, closer to bed 3.
"Don't you move. No one else fuckin' moves a muscle. That kid gets my drugs, and the rest of you play freeze tag. Stay right where you are, or I will blow up this hospital." He headed straight for room 14 without even checking the room sign above the door.
When he passed me, I held my breath but didn’t dare stir.
Room 14.
Our psych room, and the room that used to contain Lori Goody.
He drew back the curtain with a practiced hand. At minimum, he was a frequent flyer patient or visitor. This man not only knew his drugs, he knew St. Joe's uncomfortably well.
The demented patient now occupying room 14 issued an angry yell.
Bomb Guy stepped right out and back to his spot next to the secretary. "Where is she?"
So he was searching specifically for Lori Goody. She had managed to give him her room number despite being physically and chemically subdued during a Code White.
They certainly deserved each other, and it made sense now: he wasn't randomly cleaning out our stash. He was handing drugs over to his girlfriend/pal/thing.
"How did you know she was there?" I whispered.
His eyes flickered.
Recognition crept along my spine. He was big. He was surly. He was even still hanging out near the resuscitation rooms.
"Bill?"
He didn't answer, but he didn't deny the name, either.
Bill. The fat, angry male nurse who used to sit beside resus most of the time. The one Kris had said was gone. He's done.
Why hadn't Kris been more specific? "Done" could mean anything from "He's working at the Jewish Hospital" to "He flew to Tahiti."
Had Bill grabbed me in the parking lot? No wonder me stomping his foot hadn't made a dent in this colossus. Now he’d returned to flay me.
I shook that off and pretended to be pals. "We didn't have a chance to get to know each other. I've been away for a month on a research block." I figured that if I spoke normally, like we were buddies, he was less likely to blow us all to hell.
"Where's Lori?" he repeated, in his mechanical voice.
Right. He didn't care about my research in a stem cell lab, only about Lori Goody. How could I work that? Not sure, but while I tried to puzzle that one out, I told him the truth. "She's at the Glen. That's her sector."
His eyes blinked at me behind his mask. He didn’t ask what the Glen was, or what a sector meant. He understood immediately that she'd been sent to the Montreal superhospital, further confirming my suspicions. Except his next words made my heart thump. "No. Roxanne said she was here."
24
The secretary and nurses wheeled around to stare at Roxanne, who had crossed into the nursing station from the entrance near bed 2.
Now we formed a triangle: Bomb Guy at one entrance at 10 o’clock, Roxanne at 2 o’clock, and me at 6 o’clock. The secretary quivered between Bo
mb Guy and Roxanne. Andrea and the older nurse I didn’t know sat between Roxanne and me.
"That’s old information," I said, trying to glue Bomb Guy’s eyes to mine, even though my brain screamed at the idea that Roxanne had fed him any kind of inside scoop.
I’d felt betrayed when Roxanne blocked me from helping Patrick, but I’d understood it. This, I would never understand.
Unless he was lying. Yes, that seemed far more likely. Although how he’d figured out Lori Goody’s room number—
"You’re both right," said Roxanne. I’d never appreciated the melodiousness of her low voice before this appalling moment. She faced me, cheeks slightly flushed like her pink scrub pants, before she angled herself toward Bomb Guy. "I told you when Lori came in. She's gone now, though. She's safe."
"She's not fucking safe. You're putting her through hell." His mechanical voice made the swears almost comical, but his bomb kept my amusement in check.
"We're trying to help her," I told him.
"You have no clue what that means," he replied, eyes stabbing me. The voice changer made me envision a robot faulting me for insufficient empathy. "You're an idiot. I told my sister."
His sister? Who would have thought that obese Bill would have such a skinny sister. It was like Jack Sprat could indeed eat fat, and his sister Lori was naught but lean.
Bill informed me, "It's the nurses who hold this place together."
I knew what he meant. I write the orders, but the nurses usually have to unlock the medications, draw them up, and administer them. They literally hold the patients' hands, relieving their pain and cleaning them up.
That's why when patients come to the hospital, they don't remember the doctors who jab them with needles, cut them open, or wrench their bones into place. Or they often don't remember us fondly.
They remember the nurses who go hands-on to make them feel better.
On the other hand, someone has to slave away at school for a minimum of 22 years for the privilege of issuing orders and getting sued. So we work as a team, along with people like Julie. She fetches them crutches so they can walk again, and feeds Grandma if she's too weak to hold the spoon.
Not a good time to lecture Bomb Guy about #squadgoals, though. I agreed, "Nurses are very important."
"What’s happening?" called the old, male patient from bed 6. No one answered him.
"Bill," Roxanne cut in, taking two steps toward him.
Gasps echoed through the ER. I’d made the hypothesis about his identity. Maybe others had recognized him, but had held their tongues, hoping that he’d steal the drugs and leave, much like tossing your wallet to a mugger.
Now Roxanne had confirmed the bomber’s identity and, I suspected, her own complicity. Earlier tonight, she’d recognized Lori as his sister and kept him in the loop. Then Roxanne had deliberately ducked my inquiries about Friday night, feeding me questions about Ryan instead of telling me that Patrick had walked Bill out.
What had I said at the beginning of the night? Do not mess with nurses. They will stick together and mess you up.
I never expected them to bomb me, though. Florence Nightingale, where art thou?
Bomb Guy Bill lifted his black-gloved palm in the air. "Get out of here, Roxanne. I don't want to hurt you."
Uh oh. Automatic translation: I want to hurt everyone else.
Roxanne’s sneakers stilled, although her hands stretched toward him. "I don't want you to hurt anyone, Bill. Please. I'll help you and your sister get what you need. Then you can go, right?"
Bill paused before he answered. I’d noticed a slight lag before his live responses, presumably to mechanize his voice, but this pause was long enough for him to consider scooping the drugs and running.
Good idea, Bill.
Then his robo voice kicked in. "I only need one more thing. Where's Lori?"
"She went to the Glen."
I relaxed slightly. Roxanne had stuck to the facts, corroborating me, so now he knew I’d told him the truth. No reason to bomb us, Bill.
"With the police?" he asked.
Roxanne licked her lips. She lowered her hands to her sides, not wanting to piss him off, but unable to lie. "Yes."
"FUCK." His robot voice couldn't convey emotion, but it could and did blast us with sheer volume.
Roxanne’s narrow shoulders jerked as if he’d hit her.
Bill said, "Sorry."
An apology! I grew still, watching him for any other sign of humanity.
"I want Lori here," he added.
Everyone comes to the emergency room because they want something. Remember that, a female emergency doctor had instructed me in medical school. Bill had repeatedly named his big two: free drugs and Lori Goody. We could hand him the first one, but not the second. Maybe Roxanne could placate him.
"My sister comes back with me, or I'm detonating this." He tapped his chest again.
Or not.
If nothing else, he kept confirming the location of his bomb. Unfortunately, I knew almost nothing about explosive vests except that suicide bombers wore them. And what if he’d rigged up a dirty bomb?
A med student who'd worked in Israel as an ambulance driver had told me about his first dirty bomb. First the bomb itself had exploded, and then it launched some extra surprises. "There was this girl, a beautiful teenager, holding up her hand. A nail had gone through her palm. But we couldn't pick her up because there were other people who were hurt worse than that."
In addition to nails and screws, which could lodge in your eye or up your yoni, Bill could have added some hepatitis-infected needles. Or blood, urine, feces, or vomit. The only limit was his imagination and his willingness to strap it to his chest.
I bet he’d looked after Lori since they were kids. Their blood ties ran deeper than girlfriend or wife. He really would kill us if we didn't serve her up.
Solution: give him Lori. Or at least promise her to him. I opened my mouth, but a man’s voice behind me and to my left, at 8 o’clock, spoke first.
"We’ll get Lori to you as soon as humanly possible."
Dr. Dupuis had exited his ambulatory exam room, quietly closing the door of room 4 behind him. "We can help you with this. You have to give us time to get her here."
I started flashing back to 14/11—woman panting in labour, gun firing—and fought it hard, trying to ground myself with concrete details. Right now, I could smell wet wool. I could see a man sweating under a balaclava and a full length coat. I could hear the IV pump still beeping and taste the remnants of butterscotch in my mouth.
I was in an emergency department with patients, staff, and at least three different exits. With God. I wouldn’t pin all my wishes and dreams on him, because I’ve had to haul my own ass out of the fire every. Single. Time.
Still, if I had to choose getting bombed with God or without God, of course I’d choose God!
We outnumbered Bomber Bill. I’d rarely seen the guy walk, let alone run. Mentally, he was a few fries short of a full meal deal. We might be able to take him.
His only ace was the bomb he claimed to have.
And possibly Roxanne. I couldn’t trust her any more.
We could call Bomber Bill’s bluff. He'd been fired less than 48 hours ago. What were the chances that he'd managed to build a real, effective bomb in that period of time?
On the other hand, he might have stolen some dynamite from a construction site. I heard gangs did this back when the mafia ran everything in Montreal. Plus it was supposed to be easy to build explosives using instructions online or in a physical book.
If I challenged Bill and he really did have a bomb, we’d all lose. Instantly. Even those not in immediate range could be taken down by shrapnel or a collapsing building.
And our patients were so debilitated, it wasn't like they could jump out of bed and flee.
No, we’d have to play the safe game, give him the drugs, and pretend to gift wrap Lori Goody.
"Let me call the Glen," I said, nice and loud. For once, my voi
ce obeyed me.
Dr. Dupuis cut in. "Hang on."
I enunciated my words to Dr. Dupuis, trying to convey my plan. "They don't know that Bill is looking for Lori. We need to contact the Glen by phone right now, okay?"
God glared at me.
I raised my eyebrows back at him. God should understand that we desperately needed to communicate with the outside world. We should summon the bomb squad ASAP. As long as Bill kept us as silent, still hostages, no one would know to come rescue us.
With luck, a patient or a staff member not immediately in Bill’s line of sight had already called 911.
I couldn’t bet on it, though. My only sure-fire way was pressing 911 with my own fingers. And contacting Lori Goody guaranteed me phone access.
"I can call them right now," I said. "I know the phone number." Please don't keep me on hold. "I'll call her unit, tell them I was her treating physician—"
"You're a baby." Bill glared at me. "You're a resident. They'll need Dave."
I’d take insulting me over exploding my body into microscopic bits. Even so, I struggled to keep my face expressionless.
"I'm right here," said Dr. Dupuis, walking toward Bill. Maybe he’d caught on to my plan. "I'm happy to negotiate—"
"No. No negotiation. Either she’s here in the next 45 minutes, and we both get out safely, or you're all going down."
"I'll talk to them. I’ll tell them exactly what you said. You can listen to make sure." Dr. Dupuis looked him straight in the eye. Maybe they could get their man/buddy/friend vibe going. Whatever worked.
Bill rolled his neck from side to side. The balaclava and wool coat and explosive vest and boots probably kept him uncomfortably toasty, but he met Dr. Dupuis’s eyes for a good fifteen seconds. Finally, he said, "You talk to them in front of me. You put it on speakerphone. You say one wrong thing, and it's over."
"Understood," said Dr. Dupuis. "I'm pressing zero now. I want to talk to the operator."
If it was anything like St. Joe's, that would only net him the security guard replacing the operator overnight.
I brightened. An alert security guard would come in handy right now.
