Critical Condition

by CJ Lyons

  “Who was she, really?” Lydia dared to ask, not at all certain that she wanted the answer. As far as she knew, her mother had been only seventeen when she’d gotten pregnant and run away from this man, who looked like he had to have been at least a decade older.

  “Martha,” Black said, stressing the name, “was a silly girl from a dirt-poor Indian reservation, not even pure-blood Indian. Only her paternal grandmother was Plumas. But she was pretty—when she didn’t hit the needle too hard—and she did what I told her to do, which made her useful.”

  “You never loved her.”

  He scoffed at that. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. Is that what she told you? That I was some obsessed Don Juan chasing his lost love to the end of the world? Sounds like the kind of fantasy Martha would spin. Anything to hide from her reality.”

  “What was the reality? What was she hiding from?”

  “How about the fact that she got her own father killed?”

  Trey’s inhalation was audible as he pulled closer to her. Lydia felt his fingers slide the gun from the holster at the small of her back while his hand across her lap gripped hers and squeezed encouragement.

  “What happened?” Lydia asked, her voice small, child-like. The man—she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as her father—seemed to enjoy instructing her, correcting her idea of her family history, so she indulged him. The longer he talked, the longer they might live.

  “The only reason I hooked up with Martha was her dad. He was head of security at the Plumas casino.”

  “You killed her father to rob a casino?”

  “I encouraged him to give me the security codes and safe combo. Went a little too far with my knife—we’d snorted some meth to rev up for the evening.” His voice lost its cultured quality, revealing a Mexican accent. “Wasn’t counting on sweet Martha double-crossing me.”

  “If you think Maria—Martha—took your money, you’re wrong.” All this, nearly thirty years of pain and fear, and it all boiled down to money?

  “No. I’d never trust her with the cash. But she was smarter than I gave her credit for.”

  “What did she take?”

  “She stole my future.” Black paused for effect, the fire making his teeth gleam as he bared them. He wasn’t smiling. “Bitch took the security video that showed me and my guys torturing and killing her father. I didn’t even know she had it until we were long gone and she realized I was going to cut her loose, then she sang me a sob story about how she was pregnant and loved me and trusted me but after seeing what I did to her old man, she was leaving me and keeping the tape for protection. All she wanted from me was to leave her and her child alone, she whined, so she tried to blackmail me—after everything I’d done for her!”

  “She kept her end of the bargain. She never said a word about you to anyone. There was no need to send him”—she jerked her chin at Smith, who was still staring at her with venom in his eyes—“to kill her.”

  “You think I’d trust my future on the word of a junkie whore who sold out her own father?” he scoffed. “No way in hell am I going to risk that tape surfacing and destroying everything I’ve worked for. You have no idea how much I stand to lose.”

  He leveled his gun at her, then swung it to aim squarely at Trey. “So, I’m asking one last time. Where is it?”

  NORA WAS HELPING LUCAS SQUEEZE A RATHER STOUT cafeteria worker feet first through the opening between the two-by-fours when the sound of gunfire interrupted them.

  The worker, a Polish woman in her late fifties, began to scream and squirm, wedging herself tight. “Get me out! I don’t want to die!”

  Lucas, who had her feet, was being kicked mercilessly. Nora squatted down beside the woman’s head and took her face between her palms, forcing the woman to meet her eyes.

  “Calm down, just stay calm,” Nora said, at first loudly, matching the woman’s volume, then sliding down to a whisper. “It’s okay, we’re all going to be okay.” As Nora spoke, mesmerizing the woman into ending her struggles, Lucas tugged the woman’s legs and hips through the wall. “See, now, all you need to do is duck under and you’re through.”

  The woman blew her breath out, pulled her tummy in, twisted her torso, and made it through.

  Nora left her to see what was going on back in the auditorium. People too big to get through the wall—bigger even than the cafeteria worker—had hit the ground, hiding between rows of seats as the sound of gunfire grew closer. That wasn’t what frightened her, though.

  The agitated guard had his machine gun at the ready and was spinning around in a circle, searching for a target.

  Nora was used to dealing with emotionally disturbed people in the ER as well as intoxicated ones, but never with a machine gun in the mix. She slowly walked down the steps at the edge of the stage, getting away from the work lights that framed her as a target, and approached the guard.

  “Those shots are coming from outside,” she said in a calm, level voice. “We’re not going to hurt you—you’re here to guard us, protect us, remember? We’re not your enemies, we’re unarmed . . .” She basically said anything that came to her mind, trying to get him to point the gun away from her and the others—or better yet, to surrender it.

  “Your buddy looks like he needs help.” She nodded to the sleeping guard curled up on the floor. “Why don’t you give me your gun while you check him? Or I can check him for you.”

  She heard the others behind her dousing lights, using the darkness to cover them as they moved behind the stage curtain. Even though most of the people left couldn’t fit through the hole in the wall, she understood why they’d feel that “out of sight, out of mind” was the safest course of action.

  The guard slanted a wary look at her. Another round of gunfire sounded from beyond the doors. He jumped, aiming his gun in their direction, away from her and the others.

  Crack! The sound of wood breaking came from the stage. The gun whirled around, firing his gun into the air.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted, his voice edged with drug-induced hysteria. “Show yourself or I’ll start shooting people!”

  GINA HADN’T GONE THREE STEPS WHEN THE FLOOR shook. The explosion roared through the narrow confines of the corridor, and she fell to her knees, covering her head with her arms, waiting for the ceiling to collapse.

  Instead all that happened was silence. She ran back to the chemical room. The barricade had toppled over but the door held. She tried to open it but it had buckled enough to jam it into the steel frame. She shone her light through the small space between the frame and the door. No sounds. No signs of life.

  The only thing moving beyond the door was smoke.

  Coughing, holding her sleeve over her nose and mouth at the acrid fumes and the stench of burned flesh, Gina turned away, retching. The need to purge, to run and hide in a dark corner and let all of her pain and sins and failures claw their way up her throat and out of her, was overpowering. Come with us, her demons whispered. Leave this horror behind, save yourself.

  Her knees buckled and she almost surrendered. No. LaRose. She had to save her mother. And stop Harris before he incinerated the hospital.

  She stumbled forward, hitting the wall in her blind rush. The voice in her head scoffed, You can’t do it, not alone.

  Alone. No Jerry or Ken to guide her. No Lydia or Nora to tell her the right thing to do. Not even Amanda to make her smile.

  She was no hero.

  She doubled over, clutching her belly, her strength consumed by her doubt and fear.

  But she was their only hope.

  Laughter ripped through her. Sharp and brittle and painful. If she was their only hope, they were doomed.

  Ken. Someone had to remember, bear witness to what had happened here today. She had to do it. For Ken.

  Gina straightened and pulled in the deepest breath she could, as if she could inhale Ken’s courage along with it. She reached for Jerry’s ring, rubbing it as if she were making a wish.

  It w
asn’t enough, not near enough, but it was all she had. Then she ran toward LaRose. What the hell—if they were already doomed, might as well die trying instead of standing here feeling sorry for herself.

  As her footsteps reverberated through the empty tunnel, she had the fleeting suspicion that the thought was the most mature one she’d ever had. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Finally figure out what she wanted from life, have something worth living for, and the world ended in a big bang?

  “Hell of a way to ring in the New Year.”

  The splintered echoes cheering her on from the darkness agreed.

  AMANDA WATCHED IN HORROR AS JERRY THREW himself to the ground, skidding across the atrium’s slate tiles. Keeping behind the corner as much as possible, she let off two shots, aiming at the lights of their attackers. A man cursed in a foreign language and the flashlights went out as the men returned fire.

  She huddled against the wall, cringing as bullets crashed against glass windows and pinged against rocks. A few thudded into the wall perpendicular to her, but none came close. She felt more than heard Jerry’s movements as he crawled to safety under the barrage of bullets.

  Then there was a sudden silence that made her ears pop. Jerry grabbed her ankle, letting her know he was okay. She fired off two more rounds to keep the bad guys on their toes before helping him to his feet. They stumbled through the doors, finding half a dozen panicked escapees waiting for them.

  “Quiet,” Jerry ordered. His voice sounded strong, in control. As if coming under fire had triggered his policeman reflexes, something so ingrained in him that no head injury could erase it.

  Amanda left him to race into the pantry and warn Lucas that company was coming. He’d crawled up onto the stage, where he and another man who had his leg in a brace and was on crutches were battering a two-by-four that was preventing the larger-built hostages from escaping.

  “Lucas, they’re coming!” she whispered. “Get down from there.”

  “Almost got it,” he muttered, straining at the wall stud. It was the one they’d cut the bottom of earlier, so all he needed was to wrench the top part aside. It cracked, the sound cleaving the silence, echoing into the auditorium.

  An obese man who’d been standing behind Lucas and the man on crutches, watching for his opportunity, pushed them aside to squirm through the gap. The man on crutches went sprawling, and Lucas stopped to help him up.

  Gunfire sounded from within the auditorium. The fat man yelped, finally got through the hole, and fled.

  “Show yourself or I’ll start shooting people!” a man’s voice shouted.

  Amanda lunged, reaching for Lucas to yank him through the wall, back to her. He gave her a look filled with sorrow and yearning.

  “Told you I’d make a good decoy,” he whispered. Then he blew her a kiss, turned his back on her, and marched to the center of the stage, silhouetted perfectly by the work lights near the patient cots, his white lab coat making him an impossible-to-miss target.

  A cry of panic escaped Amanda. She grabbed the step stool, ready to follow him, when Jerry’s arms pulled her back. “No!”

  Bullets screamed through the air. Lucas fell to the ground.

  “Hide,” Jerry told the man with the crutches, who was still caught on the stage.

  Melissa came running in, grabbing at Amanda’s other arm. “We need to get out of here.”

  “No. Lucas—we have to get him,” she protested, her gaze fixated on the scarlet streams that shone bright against Lucas’s white lab coat. Blood.

  Her breath escaped so fast it was as if her body had suddenly been turned inside out and then shuffled right side in again, leaving her disoriented, feeling as though she were in a dream and none of this were real.

  Then she heard Lucas groan.

  She twisted in Jerry’s grip, fighting to get to Lucas. He and Melissa hauled her out of the pantry back to where the others waited in the cafeteria.

  Jerry said nothing, just pointed at the hostages gathered in front of them, six of them focused on her, hope in their faces. The fat man wasn’t among them, she saw, and was glad because she wasn’t sure she could have reined in her anger.

  “Where do we go?” Melissa asked in a small voice.

  They trusted her; they thought she could save them. Fools, Amanda wanted to scream. But she didn’t. Instead she adjusted her grip on the Smith & Wesson, pulled Lucas’s otoscope from her sash, and stood up straight, bare feet already numb from standing still in the cold cafeteria.

  “Follow me.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  GINA’S TEARS HAD DRIED BEFORE SHE REACHED LaRose’s hiding place. She didn’t have time or energy to mourn for Ken now. She had to save her mother, try to save the others.

  Knowing what to do was one thing—having any idea how to do it was another. She couldn’t simply evacuate LaRose and the others out of the hospital; they’d die in the blizzard. She needed a place to send them to, someplace with shelter from the storm and out of Harris’s range.

  Out of range of any danger if the hospital did go up in flames would be nice as well. Which brought her right back to her original idea of hiding out in the tower, as far as she could get from the hospital.

  Gina glanced at her watch. Eleven twenty-seven. Almost four hours since LaRose presented with her stroke symptoms. Okay, first things first. She had to get her mother’s TPA begun. Then she’d figure out an evacuation plan. Followed by a rescue plan. Followed by a stopping-the-hospital-from-burning-down plan.

  Breaking it down into tiny steps didn’t help as much as she’d hoped.

  “You okay?” she asked LaRose as she unlocked the wheelchair’s brakes.

  LaRose nodded, her mouth moving but only guttural sounds emerging. Gina felt her pulse—too fast, but strong. She didn’t want to guess what LaRose’s blood pressure was doing with all this exertion and excitement.

  Excitement? Hah—there wasn’t a word for what they’d been through.

  “Ken’s gone.” The words tasted of bile, more rancid than anything Gina had ever purged. “But he bought us time. I’m going to get you to the ER and we’ll start your treatment.”

  LaRose’s good hand fumbled for Gina’s.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.” Gina wished she felt half as confident as she pretended to be. She steered the wheelchair through the dark tunnels to the staircase leading to the ER. Now came the hard part: carrying LaRose up the steps.

  Pulling her up in the wheelchair was too dangerous. One slip and LaRose would fall. Not to mention too noisy. Even though Harris’s men had already cleared the ER, she couldn’t take the risk that he might have left someone behind to patrol it. “I hope you didn’t overindulge at all those holiday parties.”

  She reached under LaRose’s arms and hefted her into a poor imitation of a fireman’s carry. Nothing like having your mom’s ass block your vision. She staggered against the handrail, using it to guide her up the steps, trying hard not to bounce her mother too much. Maybe hanging upside down would break up the blood clot that had caused her stroke? Or the strain might cause a new bleed, make things worse.

  Each step brought with it new and more dire imaginings. Her father would kill her if anything happened to LaRose. He was bound to find some way to blame her for this mess, no matter how it turned out.

  “Let’s not tell Moses about this part,” Gina huffed as she reached the final landing.

  She was desperate to take a break, her back screaming in pain, but she knew it would be next to impossible for her to lift LaRose again once she put her down. She pulled the door open, peered into the darkness. No signs of Harris or any of his men. A frigid breeze whistled through the open waiting room wall, rustling the debris left behind by LaRose’s car crash. God, that seemed ages ago.

  She was on the other side of the triage desk, which meant that there should be a wheelchair nearby. She took the chance and flicked her penlight on. Nothing. Of course, they’d used them all to evacuate the patients. Shit. Then s
he saw Jason’s wheeled desk chair sitting among the rubble of the nurses’ station. Good enough.

  LaRose almost slipped out of the chair, but Gina caught her in time, pushing her around and over the debris until they reached the back hallway. It was quiet there, quieter than the morgue. Just as freezing, though. LaRose shook with cold.

  “Not much longer. I’ll get you some blankets and we’ll get your medicine started.” Gina flicked her penlight down the hallway. No debris here. Gina wheeled LaRose through the dark into the OB-GYN room. Located at the end of a corridor in the back of the ER, it was a small room, easily overlooked. And it was the only patient care room with a privacy lock on it—plus the door was solid, no windows, and it would block any noise. “Here we go. Home sweet home.”

  LaRose tried to chuckle, but it sounded more like a death rattle.

  “ I DON’T KNOW WHERE ANY VIDEOTAPE IS,”LYDIA said, edging herself closer to Trey, trying to get between him and Black’s gun. As she moved, she pulled the afghan with her, covering his right hand—the one that held her gun. “Maria never told me any of this. Those two pictures are the only things she left behind after you had her killed.”

  Black frowned at her, obviously not believing. “No. Maria wouldn’t have left you without protection. She knew I’d never stop until I had that tape.”

  He paused, scrutinizing Lydia, exploring her weaknesses. “Maybe he’s not enough to get you to talk.” He pushed his jacket aside with his free hand and pulled a small radio from his waistband. “How about an entire hospital full of people, Doctor? What are their lives worth to you?”