To Obey

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Kendall’s voice wafted to her. “…Should have seen it. Susan was brilliant. I thought the guy was going to—” Apparently catching sight of Susan, he fell silent.

  The first thing that caught Susan’s gaze was a bedside screen with multiple images from a head CT. As if in a trance, she walked to it, scrolling through the pictures, examining each one intently.

  Gradually, Susan became aware of voices behind her. “…Doesn’t even know we exist.”

  Reluctantly, Susan peeled her gaze away from the scan to place it on Jake and Kendall. The detective sat up in bed. A bandage enwrapped his head, but he otherwise looked fresh as a daisy.

  The enormous bags under Kendall’s eyes suggested he had come straight to the room after the questioning as well. Someone had supplied him with a faded and well-worn T-shirt, probably from the lost and found, to replace the one he had ruined to tend to Jake’s wound. Apparently, the police had released him earlier than Susan.

  Kendall stood up and held out his arms. “Ah, Susan. So you’ve remembered there are other human beings in the room.”

  “Sorry.” Susan had not wholly realized what she was doing. She stumbled into Kendall’s arms and allowed him to do most of the embracing. “Had to see it with my own eyes.”

  Kendall had apparently studied the scan, too, though she suspected he had had the politeness to greet Jake first. “Amazing, isn’t it? The bullet carved a perfect path between the galea aponeurotica and the periosteum.”

  “In English,” Jake demanded, just as Kendall had done when he slipped into what Susan now referred to as cop talk.

  Susan finally looked at Jake. “It means you have a hard head.”

  Kendall chuckled. “You’re starting to sound more and more like me every day.”

  Susan found herself on her feet and moving back to the CT scan without thinking. Now that she had dispensed with the social necessities, she wanted a more complete look, especially at the parts she had not yet seen when Kendall pointed out her rudeness. She scrolled down to the lower images, ones that no longer showed the soft-tissue injury. “There it is.”

  Kendall looked up. “There what is?”

  “Skull fracture.”

  Kendall hopped up, came beside her, and peered at the CT. “That’s not even where he got shot.”

  “Of course not. It’s where he banged his head on the floor. Small, linear, and only partial thickness, but it’s definitely there.”

  “Son of a—” Kendall started and stopped. “You’re doing it again, Susan.”

  Reluctantly, Susan took her focus from the scan to look at Kendall. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, it’s not even on the damned report! The radiologists missed it. Then you trot in and spot it in a New York minute.”

  “It was hardly a minute.” Susan shrugged. “And it’s not a clinically significant finding. It doesn’t need any treatment. The only hemorrhage is here.” She scrolled back to the area of the gunshot, outside the confines of the skull. “In the subgaleal plane, but the scalp always bleeds like stink.”

  Kendall refused to let go. “Susan, my point is, your powers of observation border on the spooky when it comes to medical issues.”

  Susan glared at him, not wanting to restart the argument from days earlier. “Well, I make up for it by being clueless about virtually everything else.”

  Jake broke in. “You know, you’re talking about my gourd here. I’d kind of like to know what you’re saying.”

  Kendall spoke to the patient over his shoulder. “We’re saying it looks remarkably good. You were really lucky.”

  “Skull fracture?” Jake reminded.

  “Insignificant.” Susan looked back at the CT. She had seen it all now, but it still fascinated her.

  “So, when can I get out of here?”

  Susan stepped back so she could see Jake around her fellow resident. “It’s not up to us, Jake. You’re on the Neurosurgical service. But I’m guessing they’ll want to keep you a few days.”

  “A few days?” Jake repeated. “Why? Don’t they need the bed for sick people? Now that they’ve pumped in a few pain meds and sewed up my scalp, I feel fine.”

  “You weren’t struck in the head with a marshmallow.” Susan rolled her eyes. “Delayed traumatic intracerebral hemorrhages can occur in people with perfectly normal initial CT scans.”

  Kendall took pity on him. “She’s saying there’s still a small, but not entirely trivial, risk for your gourd to leak.”

  Susan continued, “If it happens outside a tertiary-care setting, there’s a fifty percent mortality rate and a high likelihood of major neurological sequelae even if you survive.”

  Again Kendall translated. “She’s saying if it happens here, Neurosurg can probably fix it. If it happens at home, there’s a high probability you’ll either die or become…” He struggled for wording, trying to strike a proper balance between offensiveness and humor.

  Susan did not wait for him to find it. “Jake, if something happened to you because of a rush to discharge, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Kendall complied one more time. “She’s saying she likes you.”

  Jake jumped in, “I think I got that one. Thanks, Kendall.”

  Kendall’s tone changed from light to accusatory, “So, what’s your hurry to get out of Hotel Hasbro, anyway? You so much of an adrenaline junkie you can’t wait to get back on the streets with a gun in your hand?”

  Susan could not help staring. It was out of character for Kendall, who usually took things in stride and used humor to cover everything remotely uncomfortable. She had only seen him so confrontational twice before: the first time when she suggested he might be gay, the second a moment ago when they were reading the CT scan together. She wrestled with the pattern, seeking the common feature that served as Kendall’s trigger.

  Jake sank into the bed. For a spare instant, Susan got the impression he might cry, but it passed so quickly she discarded the possibility. “This has nothing to do with my job. Assuming I still have one, they won’t let me back on the streets, especially with a gun, for a very long time.”

  That jarred Susan from her psychoanalysis of Kendall. “What? That’s stupid. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have protecting people than you. You’re a hero, Jake.”

  Jake ignored the praise. “I’m what’s known in the trade as a shit magnet. Something about me makes people want to shoot me, and that’s not a liability any police department wants or needs.”

  Susan sat back down in her vacated chair. “But they weren’t shooting at you. They were shooting at me! That makes me the”—Susan tried to avoid cursing, so she subbed in the medical term—“stool magnet.”

  Jake did not seem to expect that to help. “Maybe if you explained that to my supervisors, but I doubt it. I was involved in four shoot-outs in three days. That’s probably a record. Plus, I killed other law enforcement officers. That’s…” He tipped his bandaged head, seeking words strong enough to get his point across. Instead, he finished lamely. “…very bad.”

  Susan refused to consider the last point, aware that one of those law enforcement officers had died at her hands. She did not want to contemplate having killed anyone, especially not one who put his life on the line for the safety and security of the United States and its citizens.

  Kendall seemed even more agitated. “Doctors have a name for a similar phenomenon. When all the disasters and codes seem to come in whenever a particular resident is on call, we say he or she has a black cloud. But we consider them lucky; they get all the best experience.”

  Jake shrugged, as if none of it mattered, but he was not fooling Susan. Police work defined Jake; he was a cop first and a man a distant second. She did not know if anything came third. “Maybe my superiors will see it that way, too. Best-case scenario, I spend several weeks disarmed and suspended, then several months on the rubber-gun squad. When it all gets sorted out, they reassign me.”

  Concerned about elevating Jake’s
blood and intracranial pressure, possibly contributing to a bleed, Susan changed the subject. “What about me? Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life running from snipers?” She added only to herself, Without you, I wouldn’t last long.

  Jake seemed to be trying to smile. “I don’t think so, Susan. There’s not a whole lot NYPD can do about a citizen’s action group like the Society for Humanity, other than prosecuting those members directly involved in the crime. But Cadmium has their own ax to grind against the SFH now, and they have RICO.”

  “Who’s Rico?” Kendall asked.

  Jake chuckled. It was his turn to translate once again. “RICO’s not a who, it’s a federal law. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Basically, it allows them to capture and try the leaders of a syndicate for crimes they ordered others to do.”

  A lead weight seemed to lift from Susan’s chest. “And Cadmium? Are they still after me?”

  A hint of a smile finally made it to Jake’s lips. “The NYPD has less than no patience for cop killers. I may have survived, but they made their intentions abundantly clear.”

  An involuntary shiver traversed Susan. Mike’s deep voice filled her memory—“I’ll kill the cop”—followed immediately by a gunshot to Jake’s head. She would never forget that cold moment of brutality as long as she lived.

  There was no humor whatsoever in Kendall’s voice now. “If a standard response is describing that incident twice, I NSRed it.”

  Susan concurred. “They heard it from me a minimum of seven times, too. Maybe more like seventeen. I kept coming back to it; I couldn’t help it.”

  “It won’t be pretty,” Jake continued, “but I’m guessing politics will carry the day, and the feds will think twice before pulling anything else against you or U.S. Robots again. At least not in our jurisdiction.”

  “Is that a nice way of telling me not to leave town?”

  “You’re free to go wherever you want, but I believe it would be in your best interests to stay.”

  Susan was glad to hear it. “I think I’d like to finish my residency. And I know I want to spend a lot more time with USR and robots.”

  Kendall made a highly visible gesture that suggested Susan had left out something important.

  Uncertain what he wanted, Susan hesitated just long enough for Kendall to add, “And if you left, you’d miss us.”

  Susan supposed he had a point. She turned her attention to Jake, who no longer looked so fresh, so self-assured. “After you’re discharged, will we see you again?”

  Kendall stiffened, then froze in position, clearly trying to hide something. Susan got the idea the answer to that casual question meant a lot more to him than to her.

  Understanding finally clicked into place. Kendall’s got his first real crush. She found it almost impossible to imagine the two of them together in any capacity, even friendship. Despite Jake’s repeated claims, Susan still half suspected he had lied about his sexual orientation, and Kendall had a lot of issues to work through. Even without that, they came from two wholly different worlds. Stranger relationships have defied the odds.

  If Jake had noticed Kendall’s discomfort, he gave no sign. “I think we can arrange something, though I’d prefer it under less lethal circumstances, if you don’t mind. Cops are allowed a social life.”

  Susan wondered if she could get things moving. “You did promise me a dinner, Jake. Remember? Instead, we wound up at my apartment…”

  “Eating the world’s weirdest salad,” Jake finished. “I remember.”

  “How about we celebrate the day you’re finally discharged by letting Kendall and me take you out for a restaurant meal? Anywhere you want to go.”

  Kendall all but trembled with excitement. “Believe me, Jake. After a couple of days of hospital food, you’ll be begging for even a half-decent meal.”

  “It’s a date,” Jake said.

  “Great. I’ll check in on you tomorrow, after I corner the neurosurgery team.” Susan headed for the exit. “I’m going to find the nearest bed that doesn’t have a patient in it and sleep for a week.” She groaned. “Afterward, I’m going to have to kiss my attending’s butt, give him credit for everything I’ve done, and convince him it’s his idea to do all the things necessary to make Winter Wine Dementia Facility a safe place for chronically brain-injured people.” She almost made it through the door.

  “Susan, wait.” There was need in Jake’s voice.

  Susan stopped. She turned and looked at him.

  “The message from John Calvin. I have to know.” Jake studied her intently, clearly trying to read her, a fool’s mission. Susan had bluffed an experienced team of federal agents; no one would get anything from her face again unless she wanted them to. “You decoded it, didn’t you?”

  He’s every bit as thorough as I am, in his own way. None of the police questioners had touched on it or even asked Susan to reveal its existence. She shoved her hand into her pocket, pulled out the crumpled piece of paper, and smoothed it between her fingers. She handed it to Kendall. “Read it,” she instructed, having trouble keeping her voice audible. If she tried, she knew it would reduce her to tears.

  Kendall cleared his throat and read: “Susan, the Three Laws are irreversibly intrinsic to the positronic brain. There is not, and has never been, a code to uncouple them.” He paused there, lips pursed, nodding. “My love for you has always been as clear and real as any father could have for his daughter. Never forget you were my everything.”

  Tears sprang to Susan’s eyes, and she bowed out of the room with a lazy excuse and a not wholly explicably heavy heart. It was not the contents of her father’s last missive; she had already come to grips with it, with the realization she would never see him again. She knew she ought to feel happy for Kendall. He had, apparently, worked through his lifelong anxiety enough to allow his feelings for Jake to emerge, at least into his own mind. Somehow, though, it only emphasized her loneliness, her own sense she might never realize a romantic future of her own.

  The first time her world had exploded into violence, Susan had found her soul mate in Remington Hawthorne and had promised him her virginity. The neurosurgery resident had died before he could collect that prize. Instead she had wasted it on a man she would always consider a friend but with whom she had no conceivable amorous ties. She had saved her virginity twenty-seven years, only to deliver it to a gay man she loved only as a brother. In another time, before her life had become so complicated, she might have found it humorously ironic. Now she just wanted to rediscover the healing that came only from her robotic psychiatrist.

  There was nowhere for Susan to go. She felt certain Kendall would spend the next several days and nights watching over Jake, and her own apartment still did not seem safe. Instead, she descended to the first-floor charting room, where she had so often met with Nate. She could not imagine she would find him there tonight, but she needed the comfort of a familiar place to rest. All the stress hormones her body could produce had withered away, leaving her feeling hopeless, exhausted, and desperately depressed.

  Susan opened the door, only to find Nate standing there silently, arms outstretched. Shocked, she stood there while her body struggled to find the energy to allow her to move, to react, even to smile. “Nate,” she finally said.

  “I knew you’d come here. And I knew you needed me.”

  Susan fell into his arms.

  Also by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  I, Robot: To Protect