by Larry Hoy
The bomb had been more of an experiment than anything else; Herbert’s idea of how to carry out the rest of their mission. The boy pointed out the dangers inherent in going toe to toe with professional killers, people whose very job title was “Shooter.” Herbert’s bomb suggestion evened the odds. It just took a little research on the internet to find plans for a simple pipe bomb, and an even simpler activator. He bought a lot of fireworks for their gunpowder but hadn’t needed much of what he’d bought since the car’s gas tank provided the majority of the explosive force. The bomb acted more as a trigger than anything else.
Now he just had to figure out the best way to use it in a hospital. Assuming Sweetwater lived, of course.
Chapter 23
Elvis Presley Trauma Center, Memphis, TN
Voices, faint and muffled…followed by nothing. Not blackness, not dreams, not even the ghosts of Cooper and Grace Allen, just…nothing.
Until…something? A faint line of light, maybe? Beeping, the scuffing of shoes on linoleum, words…and Sweetwater realized he couldn’t move. He was aware of his body again, but he couldn’t move it. His brain felt like it was stuffed in cotton. Thinking was hard, exhausting.
He slept.
Another sound; a soft beep. Different from the earlier one. Beep. Beep. Beep.
He slept again. Time had no meaning, no way to separate and organize the visceral memories that were all he could recall later.
After the beeping, his next memory was that the air smelled different. Still not fully conscious, Sweetwater tried to take a deep breath, but it hurt his chest too much. Short shallow breaths didn’t produce pain. But the air smelled different, or didn’t it smell at all? Now there was no odor, just air passing through his nostrils on the way to his lungs. His nose itched, now it was clogged. The beeping came…back, beep, beep. Sweetwater made a concerted effort to open his eyes, but they were so heavy, and he was so tired.
He slept.
Someone held his hand and there were voices around him. Sweetwater listened, trying to make sense of what he heard, but his brain was like a rusty generator coming back to life, slow and sputtering. Was that crying? Someone squeezed his hand. Did they say his name? He tried to squeeze back, but his hand wouldn’t obey. He tried to…and then he slept.
Sweetwater scrunched his eyelids as sunlight burned through his eyelids. Was he still in that hotel room in Dallas? He wanted to sleep. He was so tired, but the light wouldn’t let him. The dry mouth and headache felt like the whiskey hangover. He fought down a moment of déjà vu and groaned.
“It’s about time you came back to life,” said a harsh woman’s voice with a British accent. “I can finally go home now. Keep me informed.”
Am I in hell?
A second female voice had a different tone.
“Stop it, Mother! Sweetwater? Luther, are you in there?”
Sweetwater tried to bring his hand up to cover his eyes, but he didn’t have the strength to lift it more than a few inches from the bed. He turned his face away from the sunbeam with another groan and tried again to open his eyes.
This time his eyelids parted. His vision swam, but he was able to blink the blurriness away. He took it all in with a few glances: hospital bed with him in it, wires, monitors, tubes, and IV lines. In the far corner was a small desk with a laptop and a rather uncomfortable looking office chair. Then the sunlight became too much, and he closed his eyes again.
“Luther,” the nice voice said. “Thank God you’re back.”
“Light,” he rasped. He coughed, which brought with it a spasm of intense pain. He hissed through his teeth as the pain leveled off then slowly subsided. Someone gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Where?”
“You’re in the hospital, Luther. You were shot.”
“Which?”
“They call it the Med, but its real name is the Elvis Presley Trauma Center.”
Name, name…He knew her name. He knew that he knew it but couldn’t place it. She was the computer hacker…Teri something. Her name was Teri. He tried to open his eyes again, but they seemed to be glued shut.
“Teri,” he tried, although it sounded more like “tay-ree.” “Teri Warden.”
“Good job, Two-Bit!”
“Hate that name.”
“I know. Sorry. I’m here, Luther.” She squeezed his hand, “I’m going to get the doctor. I’ll be right back.”
“Mmmrrr…”
He gave a shallow nod. Everything hurt; his chest, his head, even his feet were cramping. He focused on shallow breaths as he waited for Warden to return.
“Mr. Sweetwater, how nice to finally meet you.” It was a woman’s voice, strong and confident, but not a voice he recognized. “I’m glad you have returned from the dead.”
He opened his left eye enough to allow in a sliver of light. A tall black woman in scrubs and a doctor’s coat stood beside the bed inspecting him.
“Not as glad as me.” It was barely a whisper, but the doctor smiled.
There was a rustling and the sunbeam that was tormenting him seemed to fade.
“That help?” Warden said.
“Mmrrr…”
A hand reached out and took his wrist, two fingers slipping to the inside. “I’m Doctor Tamika Wilson. You give us quite a scare, Mister Sweetwater, but your vitals are fine now. How are you feeling?”
“Hurt like hell.” This time his voice was stronger and clearer, as his body seemed to be waking a piece at a time. “Feels like I’ve been shooted.”
Wilson squinted at him until she realized he’d used the wrong word on purpose. After giving him a brief examination and making notes on the clipboard, she hung it up and waggled her fingers goodbye. The Mona Lisa smile fit her face better than a broad grin.
“Try to not get shooted again, if you can help it,” she said and left.
Opening both eyes in the reduced light, Sweetwater could squint enough to see Teri Warden’s young face. She was prettier than he remembered.
“Did I hear the British Bitch?”
“Don’t tell her I told you, but she’s been here for a couple of days. Making sure anybody and everybody knew they’d better save your silly ass.”
“I have a silly ass?”
“Her words, not mine.”
“How would you describe it?”
“Somebody’s feeling better, but your drip is shit.”
Sweetwater glanced at the IVs feeding into his arm. “Huh?”
“Don’t go 404 on me now, Two-Bit.”
“English?”
Warden closed her eyes and shook her head, but her tight smile was indulgent. “Jeez, dude, it’s like talking to my dad. I said you look terrible. 404 means don’t be a moron. As to your ass, it looks like it’s on your face. You need a bath and a shave and maybe a haircut.”
“How close did I come?” he said, turning his head away from her.
“To dying, you mean?”
He nodded.
“You flatlined on the operating table and again in post-op, but it wasn’t the bullet that got you, it was the blood loss. The bullet struck the sixth right rib at an oblique angle and deflected out your side. It broke the rib and the force drove it inward, where it nicked the lateral thoracic artery. That’s what nearly killed you. If it hadn’t punctured the artery, they’d have wrapped you in gauze and sent you on your way.”
“The story of my life. Can I have some water?”
“Sip it. If you gulp you could choke.”
Warden held the blue hospital cup close enough for the straw to brush his lips. He caught the end and sucked in cold water, gulping anyway.
“I thought I told you not to gulp,” Warden said, giving him a look that obviously meant “are you trying to kill yourself again?”
He grinned and laid his head back, barking a laugh at his own joke before he even spoke.
“Don’t expect me to ever tell you that.”
“Oh Christ, that’s gross.”
Sweetwater laughed harder, grimacing
as pain shot through his chest. He coughed, which hurt even worse, but he kept giggling anyway.
It was like the time in high school when he fought an offensive tackle nicknamed Rolls, for the rolls of fat around his neck, when he tried to snake his date to the junior prom, right there on the dance floor. The guy outweighed him by 130 pounds and, as expected, Sweetwater got his ass beat, but not before kicking Rolls hard in the nuts. Although bleeding from a busted nose, Sweetwater stayed at the prom, got slapped on the back by most of the other students and got laid afterward. Rolls collapsed and crawled away, crying most of the way. Regardless of how bad it hurt, Sweetwater and his friends laughed until they cried then, too, like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they were drunk out of their minds.
“I’m sorry,” he said once he stopped laughing, which happened when the pain got his full attention. “Oh fuck, that hurts.”
“Serves you right, but since I’m so awesome I’ll get the nurse to bring you something for the pain.”
“There are those pretty gray eyes, I heard so much about,” said another voice, almost cutting Warden off as she spoke. A thin African American woman in a nurse’s uniform came in and raised her eyebrows at Warden. “I brought you something for the pain, Mister Sweetwater. Are you allergic to anything?”
“Work.”
“Aren’t we all? But what about drugs?”
“Not that I remember.”
“He’s not,” Warden said.
“Are you his wife, sister, or girlfriend?”
“No, but I work with him and we have access to his medical history.”
“HIPAA allows that?”
“In our line of work, yes, it does.”
“Do you work for the government?”
Warden pursed her lips, as if trying to think of how to phrase her answer. “Hypothetically speaking, if we did have government jobs that were so sensitive that HIPAA laws didn’t apply to us and I shared that with a nosy nurse who didn’t have a security clearance, what do you think would happen to her?”
The nurse’s face went completely blank, but there was no mistaking the animosity in her eyes.
“Take these,” she said to Sweetwater, placing two oblong white pills into his hand, followed by the water cup and straw. He wasted no time doing as she told him.
“I’m sorry about my friend,” he whispered. “She’s not a very nice person.”
“No, she’s not.”
The nurse left without another word. Sweetwater couldn’t help giggling again.
“They stitched your artery back together,” Warden said. “But if you keep this up and rip out the sutures, don’t count on me calling anybody.”
“They bring dinner around six, but that’s three hours from now. If I get you something to eat, do you think you’ll keep it down?”
“No promises, but a Big Mac would be great.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a protein shake. They have them downstairs in the gift shop.”
“Not my first choice.”
“We have chalk and brown chalk flavors.”
“That sounds yummy,” Sweetwater said. He closed his eyes and lay his head on the pillow. The pain meds had started to kick in. “And who can resist brown chalk?”
“Good choice. And if all that protein makes you puke, I won’t have to clean it up.”
Sweetwater heard soft footfalls as she left the room, then he slept.
He jerked awake at the scrape of a chair, which caused him to cry out in pain. Coughing brought more pain, which led to him sucking in air in shallow breaths, which led to him hyperventilating. He clenched his teeth and grabbed the rails of the hospital bed.
“Fun times, huh?” Warden said.
She held out a rectangular carton of chocolate protein drink with a straw in the top. He took a sip and leaned back.
“The doctor came back while you were gone,” he said, “and said what I needed more than anything now was sex. Lots and lots of sex.”
Warden considered that for a moment. “I think I agree.”
“You do?” he said, surprised.
“Yeah, and I can’t think of any reason not to do it while you’re here.”
“You can’t?”
“Nope.”
Was he really hearing her right? In truth, sex was the last thing he wanted, but Sweetwater would never admit that to Warden. He’d noticed how the cheeks on her otherwise heart-shaped face had tiny little bulges along the bottom, which he found adorable. So if she wanted to screw him in his hospital bed, patched artery or not, sign him up!
“Lock the door before that nasty piece of work nurse comes back.”
“I don’t lock hospital doors, Two-Bit. Besides, it’ll take me hours to get to your place and back anyway. I’ll need your key, and you need to tell me where you keep your blowup dolls and if there’s a special one you want me to bring.”
A light knock at the door got their attention. A balding, heavy-set man holding a tray of dishes covered in plastic wrap stood in the doorway beside a cart filled with shelves.
“Dinner?” he said nervously his eyebrows raised. “I can come back.”
The monitor showed spikes for Sweetwater’s blood pressure and pulse rate. Warden laughed until tears ran down her cheeks.
“Easy, cowboy,” said Teri Warden’s calm voice from the right side of his bed. The cup with the straw returned to his lips. “Drink some.”
“You’re not my mom,” he said in a scratchy whisper.
“Thank God for small favors. But ssshhh…you overdid it last time.”
“How long was I out this time?”
“Just a couple of hours.”
“Why do I feel like shit?”
“That’s a side effect of getting shot.”
The lighting in the room was dim and darkness showed around the closed blinds. Despite that, Sweetwater squinted to study her face. She really was cute…not that he’d tell her that. He grabbed the end of the straw in his lips and sipped the water between coughing spasms. It took him just under a half a minute to quiet the coughing fit.
“There’s more you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
“Huh.” Rising from the orange-seated chair, Warden walked over to peek through the blinds into the darkness outside. “She really did underestimate you.”
“Witherbot?”
“Yeah. All right then, here’s the rest of it. When the bullet hit your rib, it didn’t just puncture your artery, splinters hit your lung and it collapsed. Apparently, that really complicated what the ER surgeons had to do to save you. Somehow, they found out about you being a Shooter, and when you died they wanted to let you stay dead right there on the table…”
“What happened? Did you do something?”
“Not me, no. Shit, Luther, look at me, what could I do even if I wanted to? It was Witherbot. She was here less than two hours after you were shot, and the surgical staff got the impression that their lives depended on them saving yours.”
“Holy fuck, she did that for me?”
“You’re a Shooter now, Luther; she’d do that for any of us…I mean, you.”
“Because of her I’m still here?”
“More or less, yeah. I know she’s not the most cuddly boss you could ever have, but once you’re in, you’re in. She takes care of her own. And let’s face it, this isn’t a cuddly sort of business.”
“How long have I been here?”
Before she could answer, a nurse came in, followed by the doctor. Apparently satisfied with the readings on his chart, she handed the clipboard to the nurse. Her stony-but obviously unhappy expression hadn’t changed from her first visit. She pulled out a pen light, stepped close to Sweetwater, aimed the light into his eyes one at a time, and straightened. The whole process took no more than five seconds, which told Sweetwater all he needed to know about the quality of care he could expect.
“You have been with us for five days. You came in with a single guns
hot wound to the right side of your chest. You underwent a complex surgery and died twice but were revived both times.” She dropped the pen light into her pocket and stuck two fingers in Sweetwater’s right hand. “Squeeze my fingers.”
Sweetwater made fists around the doctor’s fingers. The grip was there but the strength was gone.
“That’s fine.” As if reading a perp his rights off a laminated card, the doctor informed him of his condition. “The bullet struck your sixth rib and exited, most of the damage was caused by bone splinters in your lung. By the time you came in you’d also lost a lot of blood.”
The doctor pulled down the bed sheet and raised his gown to inspect a couple of tubes that disappeared through a cut in his belly. The clear tubes were full of yellow pus and blood.
“That’s appetizing,” Warden said.
Sweetwater snapped his eyes closed. “Oh god, Doc, warn a fellow, would you?” He turned his head to the side, but even with his eyes closed and head turned he could still see the image of the tubes in his brain.
“I was told you were a tough guy.” Her tone could have flash frozen boiling oil.
“I’m just not a fan of asshole doctors.”
Warden half jumped out of her chair. “Luther!”
The doctor ignored her. “Next time I’ll let you stay dead, Mr. Sweetwater, and I’m willing to bet there will be a next time.” She didn’t storm out, however, as Sweetwater expected she might. “You are now in recovery. All that’s left is letting your body recover from the trauma. How fast your strength returns depends on how well you follow the rehabilitation protocols, but you should be fully recovered within three months. Do you have any questions for me?”
“How long will I be in here?”
“That is mostly up to your body. Probably another five days to a week.”
“A week?”
“Yes, and even then you’ll have to take it easy. Stay in bed. If you try to do too much too soon, you’ll just be putting undue stress on your body.”
