“He was crazy,” Gavril said. “I know that. But he was family. You protect family. You fucking protect them.”
“Blood doesn’t mean anything,” Izzy told him, and he felt an involuntary twinge deep in his chest. He knew the wisdom of those words better than most, and wished more now than usual others grasped it.
The X-ray tech groaned, dropping a few inches like a jack beneath a heavy truck. Gavril jerked, then slapped the tech’s face with his free hand.
“In there,” he said to the tech, motioning for the quiet rooms. Of the three, only one of the doors was closed. An officer had been stationed outside of it since they put Noah in there, but now that neither he nor Izzy was considered suspects the officer had since left. “Come on, you cunt.”
Tentatively, the tech made a step toward the door, hauling the weight of Gavril’s arm with him. Gavril scooted his good leg along with the motion. The bad one twisted and dragged. His lips curled back and he grunted.
Esperanza whispered, “Can you get a clean shot?”
The deputy sucked his lips in, his gaze fixed down the sight on the barrel, and shook his head.
A commotion erupted outside the ER, beyond the admittance desk in the waiting room. More officers were responding to the scene, but no one ventured into the emergency room. Izzy watched the entryway for them, for anyone, but it remained just them—he and the deputy, Sergeant Esperanza and a few patients, a couple of nurses—and Gavril with his hostage. One of the nurses was beginning to panic, on her knees and shaking her head back and forth behind the cover of the Pyxis machine.
With the X-ray tech’s inadvertent assistance, Gavril made it, step by step, to the closed door of the center quiet room, which he ordered the tech to open.
Inside, Noah Flaherty lifted his head from the thin pillow beneath it and stared back at Gavril as he entered. Izzy tried to move forward some more, but Esperanza pulled him back by his hospital gown. The tech helped Gavril all the way to the bed, where the Ukrainian spun on his foot, fell upon Noah, and shoved the tech to the floor.
Gavril’s massive hands were on Noah’s throat before the tech hit the ground.
The deputy charged the room, leading with his gun. Esperanza pulled his free as well, and fell in chase. Gavril lifted Noah up by the neck and pulled him over his midsection like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Noah’s tongue lolled and his eyes spilled tears.
“One more step,” Gavril croaked, “and I crush his larynx.”
Izzy’s eyes stung. His heart tried to pound out of his ribcage. Both cops in front of him now, he ducked behind the nurse’s station at a low stoop and followed it around to the nurse cowering on the floor. She squeaked with alarm at the sight of him, and he clamped his hand over her mouth.
“You know the codes for the Pyxis?” he said.
She nodded.
“I want twenty CCs of Haldol.”
He took his hand away, and she swallowed, shaking all over.
“Might only be 10 CC units in there right now,” she said.
“Then get two.”
She hesitated, afraid to move, so Izzy seized a fistful of her scrubs and pulled her up. He turned her around to face the Pyxis medstation. It looked like an old school automat with meds instead of hot meals. The nurse tapped in her password and the codes for the Haldol.
“What patient do I charge it to?” she whimpered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Izzy said. “Me. Bishop. Hurry.”
She found him in the unit listing, tapped his name, and the attached cabinet unlocked. Izzy opened it up slowly and quietly, snagged the syringes, and pushed past the nurse, who flattened herself against the medstation.
Removing the caps with his teeth, Izzy arranged the syringes in his left hand, the plungers beneath his extended thumb, and wormed the rest of the way around the nurse’s station to the end. He peeked around the corner, just enough to get Gavril and Noah in his line of sight. He couldn’t see the deputy or Esperanza, but Noah was now between Matveev and the cops. His eyes were only half-open and he was losing consciousness. Gavril Matveev moaned wildly and said, “For Ruslan.”
With a deep breath, Izzy moved clear of the desk and sprang at the quiet room. Gavril turned his head as Esperanza shouted, “Bishop!”
Izzy swung his left arm high and thrust it down, the steel shafts sinking to the barrels at Gavril’s shoulder muscle while he pushed the plungers home. The antipsychotic flooded into Gavril and he snarled, taking one hand away from Noah’s throat and swinging around to strike Izzy—but Izzy was quicker.
“Don’t touch him,” he snarled, and he threw his full weight behind broad arc of the cast on his right arm, smashing it against the enormous man’s temple.
Gavril’s eyes rolled. Pain far more agonizing than the original fracture stunned Izzy and he dropped onto the bed. Noah collapsed on top of the X-ray tech on one side of the bed while Gavril rolled over the other, out cold from the blow and the Haldol. Esperanza and the sheriff’s deputy rushed the room, the former booming, “All clear!”
In seconds the emergency room was swarming with deputies, officers, and security personnel. Two patrolmen hauled Gavril Matveev from the so-called quiet room, who dragged him carelessly across the floor before turning him over to cuff his wrists behind his back. A doctor stormed in from where the police had restrained him from entering and gasped.
“Be careful with that man,” he admonished the cops. “He’s obviously hurt.”
“Fool me once,” said one of them.
The doctor frowned.
Sergeant Esperanza picked Noah up from the floor and maneuvered him back onto the bed, crammed up beside Izzy. The deputy took the tech up into a fireman’s carry and hurried him to another bay.
Izzy’s head rotated on his neck until he heard Noah make a short choking sound, deep in his throat. Izzy shook it off, ignored the pain, and hunched over Noah. His neck was purple and bruised, broken blood vessels and spotty red peticiae on his face. No blueness presented, so he hadn’t reached cyanosis. Izzy was thankful for small mercies.
Esperanza hollered, “Can we get a goddamned nurse in here, please?”
“You got one,” Izzy said.
With his left hand he tilted Noah’s head back gently and nudged his chin up with the side of the cast. Izzy positioned his cheek over Noah’s nose and mouth, listening for breath and intently watching Noah’s chest. There was no rise, no fall. Izzy put two fingers along the groove of Noah’s neck. There was no evident pulse, either.
Izzy gave a single, sharp moan. His eyes flooded.
“No,” he said. “No, Noah.”
Quickly, he pinched the nose and clamped his own mouth over Noah’s. First he gave him two, slow breaths, gradually filling the lungs. He then counted three seconds, gave another breath, counted again, breathed into Noah’s mouth again.
The emergency room was a din of tumult and activity and noise, but Izzy did not hear a sound. Only his own heartbeat, the hiss of his breath transferring from his lungs to Noah’s.
Count. Breathe. Count. Breathe.
Please, Noah, Izzy thought. Please don’t go.
He pried open an eyelid. The whites were pink and webbed with veins, but the pupil contracted. The eye focused.
“Please.”
Someone tugged at Izzy’s gown. He jerked away.
Esperanza said, “He’s a nurse, he’s a nurse.”
Izzy blew another breath into Noah. His tears splashed against Noah’s cheek and neck, running down to a darkening spot on the bed beneath.
Safe, he thought. Be safe.
Be safe with me.
Noah gasped a sharp, wet intake of air. His eyes popped open, one at a time, and his shoulders jutted forward as he pushed back against the pillow.
Izzy sobbed. He rasped, “Noah…”
Noah drew in a long, ragged breath, his face losing the darkness from the blood that rushed up to the skin, and expelled enough to take in a fresh one. His wet, bloodshot eyes searched the room until the
y landed upon Izzy. He looked genuinely surprised to be alive.
“Noah.”
“Baby,” Noah said softly, gravelly.
Izzy fell upon him then, resting his cast against the wall above the bed and wrapping his other arm tight around Noah’s shoulders. He wept against Noah, shaking with each heaving sob, until the charge nurse finally pried him loose. César Esperanza gave him a sympathetic smile and stepped aside, allowing the nurse to guide Izzy from the room while the doctor wedged in, accompanied by the other nurse who’d helped Izzy with the Haldol.
Still panting, but breathing, Noah strained to lift his head and locked eyes with Izzy one last time before the door clicked shut.
“He’s safe,” said Detective Sergeant Esperanza. “You did good, Bishop.”
“I don’t drink,” Izzy said. “I don’t smoke. I feel like I’m about to explode. I don’t know what to do with myself right now.”
“They’ll want to look at that arm,” Esperanza said. “Twenty bucks says you broke it worse with that move.”
Izzy nodded vaguely, watching the closed door of the quiet room.
“He’s safe,” Izzy said.
The sergeant helped him back to his bay, across the ER, and Izzy shook with relief.
“He’s safe.”
Thank you for reading Izzy Bishop’s first mystery, THE IRISH GOODBYE. Izzy will return in THE MAIN THING.
If you enjoyed this novel, please take a moment to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you prefer to discuss your favorite books.
KASPAR TOTMANN is the author of the Izzy Bishop mysteries and the horror/thriller novella, Snuff. He lives in New England. Visit Kaspar Totmann online at http://www.facebook.com/KasparTotmann.
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The Irish Goodbye (Izzy Bishop Book 1) Page 22
