Cowboy Ending - Overdrive: Book One

by Adam Knight

  COWBOY ENDING

  Overdrive: Book One

  By- Adam Knight

  Smashwords Edition – July 1, 2013

  KnightFall Productions Inc.

  Copyright 2013

  Author’s Note and Legal Disclaimer

  The following work of fiction is intended for entertainment purposes only. Any reference to actual places is only to provide a sense of space and relevance for the reader, and is in no way meant to take advantage of or exploit other people’s properties or brands. In addition, any similarities between characters mentioned in this book and actual people is purely coincidental.

  As a proud, full time resident of the City of Winnipeg it seemed only appropriate to begin my literary journey in my hometown and display pieces of it prominently as set pieces in this novel. The axiom “write what you know” has been essential for me in this process and I am hopeful that this tale becomes a fun read for other citizens of Winnipeg, whether current, former or future.

  If you have enjoyed this book I invite you to join the OVERDRIVE Official Facebook Page HERE ( https://www.facebook.com/OverdriveSeries ) and start a conversation. I will be visiting it as often as I can to provide insights and updates for future stories and answer any questions you might have about this or anything else I might have written or done.

  You can also follow me on Twitter ( @OutlawAK) . Though I warn you in advance I also use this forum to talk about my upcoming Pro Wrestling dates, my workout routines and various other entertainments that make me laugh.

  Thank you very much for taking a chance on my work. Writing has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember.

  Hopefully I don’t suck at it.

  Regards,

  Adam Knight – July 1, 2013

  For Anne-Marie who pushed me to keep writing

  and for understanding why I needed to even when I didn’t.

  I love you.

  PROLOGUE

  St. Boniface General Hospital

  1979

  They say lightning never strikes in the same place twice. While that’s not precisely true scientifically speaking the people working at St. Boniface Hospital that night certainly prayed it never happened again.

  Rain poured out of the sky in waves as lightning streaked from cloud to cloud, illuminating the pitch black night to noonday bright. Thunder boomed menacingly in an audible retort to the vicious light show.

  Nurse Gregg cried in the rain.

  It was the middle of November. Which meant that everyone who wasn’t able to get the Christmas Holidays off was taking their vacation time now. This left an already steady hospital and emergency room perpetually short shifted. Doctors working doubles back-to-back. Nurses running off their feet for ten, even fourteen days straight. Interns and support staff were frayed at the seams from continually taking the brunt of frustrations from patients and medical personnel alike.

  The lightning started shortly after dinner time though the rain had been coming down in buckets since noon. Big fat heavy drops of rain; the kind that soaked you instantly to the skin, ponchos and raincoats be damned.

  St. Boniface Hospital was already the happening place to be if you were sick, excessively drunk or had managed to nearly cripple yourself with a common household item. As the evening progressed things quickly got out of control.

  After several close strikes, more than a few traffic lights were down. Reports indicated that one of the power stations had taken a direct lightning strike leaving several sections of the city in complete blackout. Including of course the street lamps around St. Boniface Hospital.

  With more than a few vehicle on vehicle (and vehicle on non-moving brick and mortar structure) collisions taking place around the city ambulance drivers were in motion non-stop transporting wounded people from crash sites to the E.R.

  A standard E.R. is callously forced to place people in a priority system. Severely hurt patients take precedence over someone with the sniffles. This is as it should be. However as this night wore on the hospital staff were forced to prioritize people in the horrible categories: Bleeding But Manageable and Seconds From Death. Sadly if patients from the first category were left unattended long enough they eventually became enrolled in the second category.

  Nurse Gregg never forgot this night. A relatively new member to the St. Boniface staff she had been fortunate to be shielded from the worst examples of human tragedy thus far. Even with the long shifts and oppressive patient volume Gregg had been very lucky. No one had died on her watch.

  Until tonight.

  With red rimmed and tear-filled eyes Nurse Gregg hustled from patient to patient. Tales of vehicular accidents. Lightning strikes. Severely burned flesh. Fires breaking out in apartment complexes. Chaotic assaults prompted by booze filled hooligans believing the storm was a sign of the Apocalypse.

  By one-thirty in the morning Nurse Gregg had witnessed doctors pronounce over a dozen people dead with many more barely hanging on.

  There was no break. Just when things began to stabilize another accident would occur. Power would shut down in another area of the city. Another fire would break out. One more brawl.

  It was too much.

  Unable to stomach anymore Nurse Gregg forced her way out of the hospital and into the open air. Electricity streaked across the sky in an epic ballet while rain pounded the earth as she broke down and wept. Her chest heaved with sobs and tears spilled from her clenched eyelids lost in the rainwater. Her fingers pressed to her mouth as she bawled. Her free arm wrapped reflexively around her shuddering torso as what was left of her mascara streaked down her face in long dark tracks.

  Moments before she had assisted Dr. Stevens. Involved in a three way collision, the man’s left leg had broken at the femur. One lung was on the verge of collapse likely from the two foot shard of glass protruding from just beneath his ribcage after the windshield of his car had imploded on impact.

  Gruesome cannot describe the task of applying firm pressure to the belly wound. Nurse Gregg watched Dr. Stevens feverishly attempt to reset the bone in the man's leg while a burly orderly pressed firmly on the patient’s shoulders to hold him in place. Supplies of morphine and codeine were in preciously short supply and were to be saved for patients in recovery, but somehow Dr. Stevens had the man's heart rate and blood pressure close to stable levels.

  Dr. Stevens took a firm grip on the left ankle and inner calf. He paused to take a deep breath. Then a second. On the third, he gave a smooth but firm yank on the leg.

  There was a wet and squishy pop as the leg righted itself and slipped into place.

  Agonized, the patient started up with a horrific yell.

  "Hold him!" Dr. Stevens bellowed while trying to keep the leg in position. The orderly leaned heavily onto the man's shoulders, pressing him back to the gurney.

  Nurse Gregg felt her hands grow warm and slick. She looked down.

  In the commotion, the patient had twisted his torso, altering Nurse Gregg's position on the open wound. The wound had opened wider, and she was now pressing gauze into the very gash it was meant to staunch.

  Abruptly shouldering her out of the way, Dr. Stevens applied another bandage to the wound all the while hollering for more help with this man.

  There was no more help.

  The patient bled out in minutes.

  She wiped at her eyes mechanically and without conscious thought. Nurse Gregg believed she might never get the taste of bile off her tongue again. Or the iron tang of blood out of her nostrils. Her tears had finally stopped as the rain continued to pour down washing at her face. Sluicing the blood of her hands. Soaking her scrubs to her body.

  Her grief remained.

  Sh
e thought it might always remain.

  “Please,” an exhausted man’s voice called from a distance. “Please, help me!”

  Blinking her eyes and focusing through the rain, Nurse Gregg watched a heavyset man trying to support an incredibly pregnant woman up the ramp from the parking lot.

  She froze for a long moment. It was too much. Her brain did not immediately register what it was seeing.

  The woman’s knees suddenly collapsed as she cried out in pain. With a Herculean effort the heavyset man managed to get his arms under her in time to keep her from hitting the pavement. The strain showed on his face, the knuckles on his hands clenched to the whites as he levered the woman back up to her feet. His eyes swung forward again locking in on Nurse Gregg.

  “Please.”

  She shook her head once and stepped forward to take the woman’s arm.

  Despite everything the sight of a very pregnant woman being carried through the E.R. lobby provided some startling reactions. People with obvious injuries pulled back out of the way. A man with blood on his face and an obviously dislocated shoulder stepped aside allowing his spot in line to be taken. Two thugs involved in a violent pub brawl helped clear a path through the crowd.

  Sadly, not everyone’s a saint.

  “I have been waiting two hours to see a doctor,” cried one man plaintively holding one wrist delicately. His black leather jacket glistening wetly in the dim, flickering light. “I ain’t letting this broad in until you look after me!”

  There’s an asshole in every crowd.

  The two thugs stepped towards the leather clad complainant as the rest of the E.R. seemed to swell menacingly.

  To avoid another violent incident Nurse Gregg took the initiative and found an empty gurney in the hallway. It was in this inglorious and inappropriate location that the lady in question began to really cry out as her labor overtook her.

  “My God,” the man panted holding his wife’s hand and trying to smooth back her hair. Sweat and rain water soaked them all from head to toe. His wife began to rock back and forth on the gurney, her legs spasming.

  “How far along is she?” Nurse Gregg asked.

  “Linda’s weeks overdue.” A pitiful cry of agony erupted from her lips. He made appropriate shushing noises while looking at Nurse Gregg frantically. “Is there a doctor available? Any doctor?”

  “I’ll find one.”

  It took nearly twenty minutes, but Nurse Gregg finally grabbed Dr. Stevens away from setting bones and suturing open wounds. He took one look at the pregnant woman and ran to the nearest intercom, hammering on the command key. “Clear a ready room immediately. I’ve got a woman crowning and a baby minutes away from birth. Do it now!”

  They wheeled Linda towards the ready room, her husband still gripping her hand fiercely. Nurse Gregg met the doctor’s eyes. No words were spoken. Nothing needed to be said.

  This baby was going to make it.

  Inside the ready room, Nurse Berry was preparing an IV drip. An EKG and heart rate monitor were also prepped and ready to go. Quickly the two nurses managed to get the woman hooked into all of the equipment as Dr. Stevens clinically cut away the billowing, floral skirt she was wearing while he rapid fired questions at the husband.

  “Who’s your family doctor?”

  “Dr. Robert Besant … He works out of the Medical Arts Building.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “He’s stuck with another patient. His wife wasn’t …”

  “Fine.” Dr. Stevens eyed the man askance, taking in the bell bottom jeans and the tye-dyed shirts under his sodden denim coat. Gesturing with his head at the man’s shaggy and unkempt hair. “Am I going to have to worry about hallucinogens in her system?”

  The man scowled briefly. “Lay off me, man! This is the first shirt I could find after I called the babysitters for …”

  Linda’s latest cry cut the air, high pitched and agonized. Dr. Stevens gave his full attention back to her. “Okay people, here we go.”

  Linda’s hand was held by her husband (Nurse Gregg never learned his name) who spoke soothingly while smoothing back her hair. Nurse Berry monitored the equipment and maintained a steady hand on Linda’s arm. Nurse Gregg stayed at Dr. Stevens’ shoulder, needing to see this through.

  And then the hospital’s generator blew.

  Darkness.

  Linda screamed, this time with fear. Dr. Stevens’ voice rose in alarm he still issued soothing words; coaching her through the moment. A sense of panic filled the room but Dr. Stevens fought down his own anxiety and struggled to keep everyone focused.

  Moments felt like hours while everyone remained motionless. Save for Linda who continued to push at Dr. Stevens’ command.

  After an event of this nature it is very common for eyewitness reports to be unreliable. There is chaos all around and often too many variables to get the facts right.

  But everyone who saw the lightning bolt strike St. Boniface Hospital said it was a sight they will never forget.

  Out of the storm there came a brief pause. A moment where even the downpour seemed to lay up. Like a child taking a deep breath before blowing out its candles on their birthday.

  One brilliant blue-white bolt split the blackness and struck the radio tower on the hospital’s roof, illuminating the sky around it. A surging charge flowed over the rooftop, down the concrete and brick walls along with the rainwater. Powerless exterior lights around the building suddenly flared to brilliance, more than a few bursting from the overpressure and sending shards of glass into the night.

  Investigators and engineers later speculated on what happened as a result of the lightning blast. It was universally conceded that somehow the lightning strike managed to reset the building’s generators. Firing them back in to motion and providing power to the hospital. Life sustaining machinery returned to sudden activity and lights flared in hallways.

  None of that could be explained scientifically of course, but no one questioned it too far. In the end all that anyone cared about was that it happened. Enough people had died that night.

  All Nurse Gregg remembered were the sounds. Linda’s screams. Her husband sobbing as the pressure and worry finally got to him. Dr. Stevens maintaining calm, his voice reassuring. Nurse Berry whimpering off to the side.

  By the time she realized what the sensation of her hair trying to rise up from the back of her neck meant the light in the room became blinding.

  Electricity arced from machine to machine. The darkened lights in the room flared up and burst into fiery fragments, glass shards spraying at random around the ready room. Nurse Berry screamed in fright as the EKG machine beside her lurched away from the wall, sparks blossoming in a fountain from the wall socket. Linda’s husband jumped up, covering his wife’s head and torso protectively. Dr. Stevens remained impossibly calm, leaning forward and hollering at Linda to push while thunder boomed impossibly loud inside that tiny room.

  The light continued to flare. And then it was gone. Returning the room to darkness.

  Nurse Gregg shook her head and tried to resolve the ringing in her ears. After a moment she recognized a new sound.

  A throaty child’s wail.

  Chapter 1

  I hate getting punched in the face.

  Makes me angry.

  And with respect to the late Bill Bixby; nobody likes me when I am angry.

  The stars that light up behind my eyes after a solid strike to the noggin are never fun. Even with only a glancing blow off my left cheekbone from a drunken frat boy caused the Tinkerbell fairy sparks to flicker up and cloud my vision. Immediate swelling. Blood trickled down, mixing with sweat. Stinging in the abrasion on my cheekbone. My neck torqued from the impact.