by Aiden Bates
Dylan took a deep breath. His chest felt tight, but he didn't know if he was getting sick or if rage was somehow binding his lungs.
"Action!" Charlie shouted from his chair, safe under his goddamn umbrella.
Dylan brandished his sword. "Richards, you coward! Give her back!"
The loudspeaker responded the same way that it always did. "Come and get her, you Barbary louse!"
Dylan snarled and executed a perfect spinning leap, letting the metal of his fake sword catch what little light there was to see. Whatever, they could CGI a glint in post later on. His time in ballet served him well as he landed and slashed out toward the place where an imaginary enemy's neck would be. "That was for my father, you pig!" Dylan said in an icily calm voice, holding the sword in place for emphasis.
It looked dramatic as hell, and Dylan hoped that it would be good enough for Charlie. He stayed frozen in position until he heard Charlie yell, "Cut." Maybe it was pretentious, or goofy looking. Right now, Dylan didn't care.
That pretentious and goofy-looking pose was all that was keeping Dylan from crashing to the ground in a heap.
Charlie's cry came, and Dylan blocked out all extraneous sounds. He needed to concentrate if he was going to do this and survive. His heel was on a patch of ice. If he moved the wrong way, he was going to fall. He stood up slowly, so slowly that it probably looked like a dance or t'ai-chi to someone not doing it. The trick would be getting his foot into a position where he could move it without slipping and transfer his weight to the other foot.
Charlie was nattering on from the ground. "Why you couldn't do that from the beginning I don't know. I mean, for Christ's sake, Dylan, you're really half-assing it here. I mean, that was spectacular. It was perfect! It was swashbuckling! It was everything we wanted and we've wasted half a day standing out here in the cold while you kind of shook a stick at the job. Would you get your ass down here so that we can get you into hair and makeup for the next scene? For crying out loud, kid."
Dylan's shivers increased, and that wasn't good. He couldn't control how well he moved his sword hand, which affected his balance. "Oh crap," he whispered, and he fell over the right side of the building.
Filming had been done from the left.
He hit the edge of the sharply pitched roof and went over the side. Some little voice at the back of his mind told him not to tense up, that would just make it worse, but that was easier said than done when he had less than half a second to think. He bounced off the roof of a bright red pickup truck before he ricocheted off a tall tree and landed on the ground.
All of the air had been knocked out of his lungs, and he was face down in the mud. He tried to push himself up, but blazing pain in his arm told him right away that wouldn't be possible. He could lift his head, although that hurt like anything, and turn it to the side.
So he wasn't going to drown in the Syracuse mud. At least that was something.
He lay on the ground gasping for air for a long moment before anyone came to him. He heard a car driving up the long mud driveway to the historic site. Two doors slammed, and a woman's voice spoke into his ear. "Are you okay, buddy?"
"No," he croaked, trying to get some air into his chest. It wouldn't fill. "Call my union rep."
A scratchy wool blanket settled over his body. "The first thing I'm calling for you is an ambulance."
"Charlie will be mad." Dylan struggled to get up, but he couldn't. He couldn't get up, and he didn't have any ID on him, and he couldn't really breathe. He was in so much trouble.
The ambulance got there five minutes later, sirens blaring. Only now did anyone from set show up outside the fake-old palisade. "Ugh, Dylan, what the hell is going on now?" Stella, one of the PAs, waved her clipboard at him. "You're supposed to be in hair and makeup! It's going to take hours to wash all of that off of you!"
One of the paramedics trying to lift him out of the mud turned to Stella and gave her a look of unmitigated disgust. "The man is injured," he said very slowly, as though to a small child. "He's badly hurt. He needs a hospital."
"He can go to the hospital when he's done filming for the day." Stella tossed her long, black hair over her shoulder. "No way Charlie's going to let him go. Not after all of the screw-ups today."
The medic pursed his lips for a second. "Look. Just go and get his ID and his insurance card, and this Charlie guy can take it up with the doctors at the ER. 'Kay? Awesome."
Stella staggered back and then went to go do as she'd been told.
Dylan screamed when they finally turned him over and lifted him onto the gurney. It felt like his arm was being ripped off. He was usually better with pain management, but this? This was more than he could take.
He expected the paramedics to yell at him, but the shorter one just grabbed his hand and let him squeeze. "Sucks, doesn't it? We'll get you x-rayed up at Silver Oak, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't have at least a dislocation going on in there. We'll see."
They strapped him to the gurney and threw as many blankets as they could onto him. Just then, Stella returned with his wallet and his phone. "It's your lucky day, baby. I didn't tell Charlie a thing." Stella stomped back off to the set.
"Charming girl. Maybe she'll fall into the lake." The first paramedic shrugged as they loaded him into the ambulance, and they were underway.
Dylan couldn't stop shivering. They'd put everything they had on him, but it was a cold November morning in the frozen goddamn tundra, and Dylan was wet and under-clothed. He was going to freeze to death in spite of all of these blankets, all of their efforts. He couldn't be positive, he wasn't a medical professional, but the number of blankets was inhibiting his ability to breathe.
"Hey Chris, if you want to radio ahead and let them know that we've got a patient, twenty-one years old with upper limb and torso injuries, possible head injury, and possible hypothermia coming in that would be sweet. I am not a fan of his current body temperature and I'm a little concerned about internal bleeding."
"Roger that."
Internal bleeding? Head injury? Well, he was in a lot of pain. His chest hurt, too. That wasn't much fun.
Oh God. If they had to operate, there would be scarring. That would take forever to cover in makeup; no one would want to hire him now.
"Calm down there, buddy." The smaller paramedic put a hand on his good shoulder. "You feel up to telling me what you were doing up there on that roof in the first place? It's not exactly weather for rooftop shenanigans."
Dylan wheezed out a little laugh. "Work." He tried another word. "Actor."
The driver whistled. "Oh yeah, I heard they were filming a movie up here. We don't get a lot of that. Is it going to be any good?"
"No." Dylan struggled for air. "Barbary pirates in Upstate New York. Dumb idea."
The smaller medic barked out a laugh. "You can say that again." He checked Dylan's ID. "Well I'll be damned. You're a lot thinner in person. Silver Oak is the best hospital in the region, and we've got the best trauma center too. They're going to get you taken care of and get you right back to making movies in no time at all." He hesitated. "I thought you were pretty amazing in Shock and Awe."
Dylan smiled, in spite of himself, and shook the man's hand. "Thank you."
The medic glanced at the heart rate monitor and nodded once, as though he was checking something. He probably was; even Dylan, in his current pathetic state, could pick up on the fact that his heart rate had gone down. It hadn't gone down by much. Did that mean something? Was that something important? "Isn't that something? Hey, what was it like working with Joanna Henryson?"
Dylan closed his eyes. "She was fantastic. I'm going to miss her."
The drive took about ten minutes, considering that they could push people out of their way and cut red lights. They pulled into the ambulance entrance, and Dylan found himself immediately wheeled into a treatment bay, where a team of people in scrubs pawed at him and tried to look him over.
He tried to follow them with his eyes as they sp
oke over him. "We've got tachycardia and bruising on the right side."
"The right shoulder is not mobile and shows deformation. We'll want an x-ray and maybe a CT-scan of the torso."
"O2 sats are low."
"Where's my phone?" Dylan tried to sit up, but a strong arm pushed him gently back onto the gurney.
"We'll lock your things into a locker for you, but we'll just need your insurance card." This voice was female and came from someone carrying a clipboard. Dylan couldn't see anyone's faces, just their eyes, and he didn't like that at all.
"Heart rate is increasing, Doctor."
The person with the clipboard pulled out a pen. "I assume that considering how you're dressed this isn't a work-related incident?"
The paramedic that Dylan had been speaking to was still there. "Actually he's an actor. He was on the set of that movie they're shooting."
Dylan tried to cough. He couldn't get enough air into his lungs.
The man who'd pushed him back into a prone position leaned down, so that he could get his ear very close to Dylan's mouth. Dylan could see the man's gray eyes so clearly that he almost caught his breath. "Is this a worker's comp case? Just nod or shake your head."
Even that was easier said than done, but he nodded.
"Okay. We'll make a note of that. We're going to get some pictures now, but not what you're used to. Once we know what's going on we'll be able to give you something for the pain." He winked and gestured to someone else, and Dylan was whisked away.
He let the darkness overtake him. It was easier than trying to stay awake.
***
Rick didn't like what he saw on his patient's images. "We've got a dislocation here." He pointed to it on the film. "I could fix it myself if that were his only problem, but he's also got a broken bone here. If I reset the dislocation, I'll break that bone further. We're going to need an orthopedic consult with him here."
He moved down the line to the next set of films. "We've got a broken rib down here." He indicated the rib in question. "It's a painful one, but I think it should be something we can fix if we let him sit quietly. He'd be doing that anyway, thanks to the shoulder. Unfortunately that same fall caused some internal bleeding, but it looks like that's just bruising and no organs are actually damaged. We'll keep an eye on it and hope that it resolves."
"What about the head injury?" Accorsi was Rick's senior resident on duty. She'd noticed the blood mixed with the mud on the poor guy, and she'd been pretty concerned about it.
"No signs of brain injury or concussion. He'll have a bump. It'll suck, but it'll be a minor note in the heap of suck that's fallen upon him." Rick grimaced. "And that we can't give him much for, until we resolve the whole bleeding issue. So here we are."
"Not quite, sir." Singh pointed to the images of the patient's lungs. "Over here. I'm uncomfortable with what I'm seeing here." He pointed to a shadow on the young man's lungs.
"Right. Right, sorry." Rick shook his head. "Jeez, how does a guy like this get to be such a mess? Right. He's got pneumonia, because he needs the extra fun of coughing and misery with the broken bits and the blood." He shook his head. "Poor guy. Anyway. The good news is that whatever happened, it's not because of substance abuse issues. I took the liberty of ordering a test while we were doing the other work, and everything came back clean."
Accorsi frowned at him and crossed her arms over her ample chest. "Dr. Wade, isn't that illegal?"
"Actually, no. We need to know what he's on if we're going to treat him, so we don't cause a bad reaction. But I was also hoping to prove that he was sober in case the producers try to get out of paying for his care by claiming that he was inebriated." He grinned. "So now the kid's protected."
Singh nodded. "Good thinking, Doctor."
"That's why they pay me the big bucks. All right. We've got a car wreck and a burn case coming in. I'll see you guys later." He grabbed his tablet and headed out of the treatment area, intent on heading up to the room where his patient had been hidden away.
To get there, of course, he had to cross the lobby. The ER was kept separate from the rest of the hospital, on account of some of the patients being a little unpredictable at times, and the easiest way to get from the ER to the patient rooms was on the main elevators. Poor Palmer had been brought up along the back corridors and elevators, of course; no one wheeled patients through the lobby, but people on foot could just walk through the halls and go on their merry way.
Commotions weren't unheard of in the lobby, and Rick had seen more than a few people try to get aggressive with the little old ladies who volunteered their time behind the desk. Few things pissed him off more. When they came in a group of men to loom menacingly at a ninety-seven-year-old woman whose camp tattoo was visible on her arm, he got downright angry.
"What seems to be the problem here?" he asked, stepping behind the desk to help Rose out. He put a hand on Rose's back to reassure her.
"We're trying to find out where one of my employees is, and this old bitch is too senile to find him." A short man with a red face and a bald head slapped his tiny hand onto the desk.
"Charlie, she's told you five times that the hospital policy is not to give out information about patients, to include whether or not they are a patient." The younger man was taller, and thinner, than the first. His classical good looks seemed familiar to Rick, and it took a minute for him to recognize the man.
"Tino Bartos, right?"
Bartos smiled, a kind of mask coming over his face. "Yes, that's me, and this is Charlie Neville. He's the director on a production I'm working on with the young man we're looking for, and I'm sure you can understand why we're so eager to find him."
Rick could understand why he would adopt such an artificial persona at a time like this. He probably slipped into it without meaning to, whenever he dealt with the public. It couldn't be easy, dealing with fans all the time. "Well, Mr. Bartos, I'm sorry to say, but the law prohibits me from saying anything to anyone who isn't next of kin for any patients. It's hospital policy, just as Rose said, but it's also the law. I'm sure that when he's feeling better, after whatever happened, he'll call in as soon as he's able." He passed his card to Bartos.
Neville shoved his way in between Bartos and Rick. "Hey, no eyeing the talent, pal. How about you get one of those cards for me and we'll talk about obstruction?"
Rick considered punching Neville in the face. He wondered if anyone had ever stood up to him before. He knew the name. He'd heard it mentioned in conjunction with a whole bunch of awards he didn't care about. "Actually, I think you're going to have to step outside of the hospital. I'm not going to have you trying to intimidate hospital staff." He gestured toward the big, bulky men that were clearly there as private security. "You and your enforcers or whatever."
"I have a right to protect my assets!" Neville shouted. "That little turd's stunt has already put me behind schedule by an entire day in this cat box of a town." He slammed his hand down on the information desk again.
"Rose, call the police." Rick made eye contact with Neville.
"Yes, Dr. Wade."
Neville continued to shout and rant for the two minutes it took police to put down their doughnuts and get to the hospital. By this point plenty of people had noticed the commotion, which had Bartos looking pale and antsy. Rick made a snap decision and dragged him behind the desk. "Here, hide down there."
Bartos didn't look like he needed any encouragement. He folded up his frame to fit under the desk while the police carried his boss away. Once he was gone, the hired muscle were willing to step back, although they made it clear that they weren't going to leave Bartos unescorted.
Rick waited for attention to die down, and then he dragged Bartos into a back room. "Look," he said with a sigh. "I can't tell you anything. I meant what I said, and I wouldn't let the other guy in even if he was my patient's father, because he's just that much of a dick. But seriously, I can't tell you anything."
Bartos relaxed once they were out of th
e public eye. "I respect that, Doctor. I do. The thing is, Dylan doesn't have any next of kin. There's no one for you to call. He's got a small apartment in Vancouver. That's all. I mean, he's friendly with a lot of people, but he doesn't have anyone that he's close enough with right now to call. I'm probably it."
"No agent or anything?" Rick raised an eyebrow. Bartos seemed sincere, but he was an actor. He made money, and a lot of it, seeming sincere.
"His agent is trash. I'm trying to get him to sign with my agent, because my agent actually wants people to succeed, but so far he's reluctant to shift. Anyway, Charlie called his agent before he even tried to call around to other facilities. Would you believe that we had an ambulance on site?"
