by Larry Hoy
“But the kid was dead for almost a decade by then.”
“Mister Moneybags had a lot of moneybags. I’m pretty sure he was one of the original investors that financed LEI’s creation, back when they were hunting al Qaeda.”
“So old money doesn’t like being lied to?” Sweetwater asked. “Who’d have thought it? But if that’s true about him financing the hunt for bin Laden, why would the company send a probationary Shooter instead of a seasoned vet?”
“I think you’re looking at it wrong. What if nobody else was available on such short notice, but Tarbeau insisted on Grace Allen being killed that night?”
“Huh, that could be it.”
“Remember, this is all speculation, but, yeah, that’s what I think. LEI pressed you into service because a powerful backer wanted his wife dead, and you were it for choices. The why is harder to say. Of course, you could just ask Grace Allen the next time you see her…” Warden raised her eyebrows and waited for his answer.
The room door swung open and the nurse came in, holding a paper folder in one hand and a pair of plastic bottles in the other.
“Mister Sweetwater, have I got a treat for you.” She pulled a rolling table to the side of his bed and placed the plastic bottles on the steel top. “As promised, I brought you some protein milk.”
“I thought that was a threat, not a promise,” he said.
“Don’t be like that. Each bottle has the same nutritional value as a full meal. I brought you one of each flavor.” She twisted the top off the brown bottle and inserted the straw from his water cup. “Give it a try.”
“Do I have to?”
Dottie smiled, but it was the faux sweet, knowing smile of a 7th grade home room teacher, or a night nurse at a trauma center who’d heard it all.
“We could do it intravenously,” she said. “Drinking it’s a lot of easier.”
“You can put that stuff into his veins?” Warden said.
“Not safely, no.”
Sweetwater motioned for her to raise it to his lips, and he took a short pull on the straw. The flavor reminded him of room temperature milk mixed with saw dust and dryer lint. He choked down a mouthful. “That’s terrible. Why would you give that to a person?”
“I’m supposed to tell you how good it is for you, but between you and me, I think they use this stuff to get people out of here as soon as possible. Voluntary checkout against doctor’s advice, see, most of our patients don’t have insurance.”
“We do,” Warden said. “We have excellent insurance.”
“Oh. I wonder if accounting is aware of that?”
“Water,” Sweetwater gasped.
The nurse handed him the cup of water and the carton of protein milk to Warden. “Can you take care of this for me? Give him as much as he can keep down.” Then she touched Sweetwater on the leg. “I’ll stop by before my shift is over, but I have other patients for now.”
Seconds after stepping into the hall, she stuck her head back into the room.
“Pardon me, Mister Sweetwater, are you allergic to flowers?”
“No,” he said. “Why?”
“Delivery for you.”
She stepped aside as a delivery man carried in a large basket of flowers.
“Who likes you that much?” Warden said.
“Nobody I know.” He motioned for the delivery man to put them on a table next to the bedside chair. “Excuse me, who sent those?”
“Beats me, sir,” the man said. Stocky and middle-aged, the man wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a surgical mask. “I just deliver where they tell me.”
“What’s with the mask?” Warden said, obviously suspicious.
The man answered on his way out. “They told me he was contagious.”
“Who told you that? He was shot.”
But the man had gone.
“What the hell?”
Sweetwater tried to think, but the needle on his energy tank was pushing E. He choked as the chalky flavor of the protein drink still coated his tongue and motioned for more water.
“More drink first,” Warden said. He sipped and made a face.
“Yummy for the tummy.”
“I get why the nurse is trying to poison me—she’s a sociopath—but what have I done to you?”
“Finish the bottle, you big baby.”
“You have no idea how bad that stuff is.”
“You’ll sleep better on a full belly, and I can do my work while you sleep.”
Warden searched the flower arrangement for a card, or any sign of who sent them, but came up empty. Not only did it not make sense, it was downright suspicious. Or maybe she was just being paranoid. Whatever the case, after a thorough inspection turned up nothing, she sat in the corner chair and dialed a secret number.
“Problem?” said Cynthia Witherbot, in place of hello.
“I don’t know. Last night I pulled the file on our suspect Adrian Erebus, and there wasn’t much there. Hacker’s intuition told me it felt scrubbed, so today I tried some of the federal databases directly, without going through the LEI interface.”
“And you discovered information not contained in our file.” Witherbot said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“The implication being that this Erebus person…what? Bribed one of our techs?”
“I don’t know; I’m just telling you what I found. Those are dots I can’t connect.”
The pause that followed made Warden wonder if the call had ended, until Witherbot finally said, “Is there a place on the dark web where someone goes to sell access?”
“Sure.”
“Start your search there.”
“There are a lot of sites like that!”
“Then wasting time speaking with me seems contra-indicated, does it not? One last thing, though, stay out of harm’s way.”
“Now you tell me.”
“I mean it. If I have to attend your funeral, I’ll be very displeased.”
A new nurse walked into his room in a strange mood. Some might say she was downright chipper.
“Now who’s ready for their first round of physical therapy?” She was singing it. She walked over to the bedside and unclipped the lines to his heart monitor.
“What are you doing?”
“You can’t do therapy all hooked up.” She didn’t even look up from her work.
“I got shot,” Sweetwater said. “I was in a coma. I don’t need therapy.”
“Stop being a baby, Luther,” Warden said. “And stop fighting the nice lady.”
He extended his fist, then slowly turned it palm up and raised his middle finger.
“That’s not very nice,” Warden said.
The nurse kept right on humming, ignoring him.
Sweetwater spotted a well-built man standing in the doorway. He was at least six feet tall and looked like he might have been a strong safety in high school. His body was just starting to turn from hard muscle into hard muscle wrapped in a burrito.
“This is Scott, Mr. Sweetwater. He also works in the physical therapy department.”
Scott nodded and pushed an empty wheelchair to the bedside. Without any effort he lifted Sweetwater and gently set him into the seat. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“I don’t trust this guy,” whispered Cooper’s voice in his ear. Sweetwater jerked his head to the sides, but he couldn’t see the ghost/delusion.
“Me either,” he said.
“You either what, dear?” asked the nurse.
“Uh…I either ride or walk, and I’d rather ride.”
She smiled.
Scott smiled.
Sweetwater frowned.
A short elevator ride took them into the physical therapy room. It had all the regular implements of torture that you’d find in a five-star gym, including the infamous wall of mirrors. Scott wheeled him past all of them. They stopped in the corner of the room where there were a couple of folding chairs and a card table.
“Are we going t
o play some poker?” Sweetwater asked.
Scott smiled again, which only added to Sweetwater’s suspicions; anybody who smiled as much as those two couldn’t be trusted.
“Not yet,” Scott said, “but we are going to have a bit of fun.” Then he removed the armrests from the wheelchair and tucked Sweetwater’s wheelchair under the table. “First things first. I need to see where you are at the moment.” He plopped down a bowl of runny oatmeal, followed by a soup spoon. “Please eat some.”
“Why would I do that?”
Scott grinned like they were old friends.
“To keep me from holding your nose and force feeding you.”
Sweetwater doubted he would actually do that but didn’t want to find out. He grabbed the spoon until electric agony shot through his ribs as if he’d been stabbed by a cattle prod turned up to max. The spoon fell to the table as he snatched his arm back and hugged his wounded side. He was left sucking air through clenched teeth. When he was able to breathe normally again, Sweetwater looked up at Scott. “Fuck you.”
Scott smiled yet again. “Just go slow, we have to gauge what level of mobility you’ve got.” He tipped his head towards the oatmeal. “Left hand this time.”
Although it pissed him off to admit it, Sweetwater grudgingly conceded that Scott had a point, so he held his breath and reached out. Tremors shook his hand and sweat trickled into the corners of his eyes. He lifted the spoon, gently, like a baby bird fallen from its nest. He felt pressure across his side but not the stabbing pain of the first attempt.
He pushed the spoon around in the grayish sludge, which felt more like stirring the runny mess with a sledgehammer than an eating utensil. He scooped up half a spoonful, he held his breath and focused on forcing it closer to his lips through sheer will. It stopped just a couple inches short of his mouth. The sweat running down his face increased as he strained to push it the last two inches. Then, desperate, he lunged forward and caught the spoon between his teeth.
His arm dropped to the table, spent. He tossed back the oatmeal and spat the spoon onto the tabletop. “That was disgusting,” he said, exhausted but satisfied. “If I’m gonna have to work that hard for it, next time bring me a steak.”
“So, you could choke?” the nurse said, still wearing a smile that Sweetwater increasingly felt was more sadistic than sympathetic.
“At least the juice would be worth the squeeze,” Sweetwater said. “Do you have a name? Most hospital personnel have name tags, but you don’t. How come?”
That erased her smile. He got the impression she didn’t like patients knowing her name. “Of course, I have a name. You may call me Millie.”
Cooper spoke again, and while Sweetwater couldn’t see him, he smelled cigarette smoke and something nasty, like spoiled meat.
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Millie what?” Sweetwater said, doing his best to focus on one conversation at a time.
“Just Millie.”
“Oh, just one name. I get it, like Cher. But you know, even she has a last name. And as a patient, I’m pretty sure I’m entitled to know it.”
The nurse’s smile had been replaced by a set jaw and stony scowl.
“Ratched,” she said.
Sweetwater’s eyebrows lifted, and he couldn’t suppress one quick laugh. “You mean like the movie?”
“Yes.”
She said it in a way that reminded Sweetwater of when he’d been chewed out in basic training for somebody else’s screwup. You couldn’t rat out your platoonmate, but that didn’t mean you had to like eating shit that rightfully belonged to somebody else.
“Nurse Ratched,” he said, shaking his head while trying to suppress a grin. “If that’s not the story of my life—”
“Should I point out,” she said, “that you’re making jokes about the person who brings you food and determines when, or if, to change your bedpan?”
That cut through his amusement. “It’s probably a bad idea.”
She nodded. “Yes, it probably is.”
“Can we get on with it, please?” Scott said. “That was very good, Mr. Sweetwater. Let’s see how you do with liquids. Here’s something to wash it down.” Scott dropped a straw in a bottle of protein mix. Sweetwater took a pull and swallowed, then turned away like he’d sucked up battery acid.
“Does this hospital intentionally serve the most disgusting food available? As bad as this shit tastes, it better be good for me.”
Ratched left for other duties, but the torture continued until Sweetwater had finished the oatmeal and half the protein drink.
“Add some rat poison next time, it couldn’t make it taste any worse.”
After which they started some light physical therapy. First, he moved his arms in little circles to loosen the muscles. His right arm, he could bend fine at the elbow, but when he used his shoulder, the ribs screamed like his Scout Sniper School instructor had done the time he’d sneezed in a hide. The left arm, though weak, moved more easily.
Scott guided him through a series of stretching and strength exercises. Each successful repetition was toasted with a sip of the protein fuel. When they finished the session, Scott gave him a tennis ball. “Use this to work on your grip strength and you’ll be back in the game before you know it.”
“What am I missing?” Sweetwater said, more to himself than for Scott to overhear, but the therapist did anyway.
Scott patted him on the shoulder. “You’re not missing anything. You did good.”
“I don’t know why,” Cooper said, from wherever Cooper was, “but there’s something else going on here. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Chapter 26
The Elvis Presley Trauma Center, Memphis, TN
Sweetwater’s shirt was sweat stained from the workout. Nurse Ratched rejoined them as Scott wheeled him back to his room, patting his back and then looking at the wetness on her palm.
“Did he cry?” she said, obviously still remembering Sweetwater’s earlier comments about her name. Then she used baby-talk. “I hope our big boy didn’t cry.”
“Not this time,” Scott said, as he pushed the chair down the corridor. Sweetwater could tell from his tone that Scott didn’t approve of the nurse’s barely repressed hostility. “Lay off, Millie, he fought through every exercise and kept asking for more. By next week, I think we’ll be on the bench press.”
Sweetwater knew it was bullshit, but the kid had that unique ability that the best physical trainers possessed, a gift for pushing you past your limits to achieve more than you thought possible. And here he was defending his patient as he should have done.
“Isn’t that wonderful? Keep working your magic, and we’ll have him out killing people again in no time.”
“What’s that?” Scott asked.
“You didn’t know? He’s one of those LifeEnders people.” She picked up a folder from the desk. “I have to make my rounds. Scott, would you take him back to his bed?” She turned and walked off without waiting for an answer.
“You kill people?”
“Yeah, you know how it is. Kill people, get paid. A guy’s gotta eat.”
“That explains it then. Millie lost two brothers to hitmen. She tried to have them prosecuted, but…”
“But it’s legal.”
“Yeah.”
They were outside of Sweetwater’s room, where Scott had just propped the door open, when Dottie LaForce called out from down the hallway and hurried over to them.
“You’re late,” she said with a mock scowl at Scott. “I need to take Mister Sweetwater’s vitals before my shift ends.”
“Sorry, Dottie, he was doing so well I wanted to push him.”
“It’s all right. Oh, that delivery man came again with more flowers, Mister Sweetwater, somebody really likes you.”
“Flowers?” Sweetwater blinked, then panic flooded his brain. “Where’s Teri?”
Scott nodded toward the room.
“She’s asleep in the chair.”
; Cooper materialized and screamed in Sweetwater’s ear, “Run!”
“Get her out!” Sweetwater cried.
Then the bomb went off.
Since he was standing in the doorway, Scott absorbed most of the blast’s energy. It blew Scott into Dottie LaForce like a speeding bulldozer, and they both hit the opposite wall and collapsed. Sweetwater was bodily lifted from his wheelchair and slammed into the linoleum floor, where he rolled over several times before coming to a stop, face down. Dust boiled down the corridor in both directions, making it nearly impossible to breathe. The overhead lights went out and battery-powered emergency lights came alive. Sirens wailed.
Sweetwater rolled onto his back. His chest felt as if it were being crushed by an elephant. Someone grabbed him by the arm. Scott. Somehow, the physical therapist could still move. Scott’s face swam in his vision as he dragged Sweetwater down the hallway. Through a semi-conscious squint, he saw smoke billowing from his room. A part of his brain recognized that it was only the bed and curtains and was no real danger. Hospital rooms didn’t have much to burn.
He blacked out for a few seconds and woke to see Scott staggering out of Sweetwater’s room, his shirt pulled up over his nose and sagging under the weight of a limp Teri Warden. He laid her beside Sweetwater and then slid to the floor himself, his back braced against the wall and blood oozing from dozens of cuts to his face, neck, arms, nose, and mouth. The Marine first aid course had emphasized that concussion wounds, like from IEDs, often resulted in internal wounds you couldn’t see. Scott had every sign.
So did Warden, who also had lines of blood running from multiple cuts on her face. There were matching blood trails running from her ears. Her eyes wide with panic, she gasped for air. Sweetwater reached out and squeezed her arm. She looked at his hand on her forearm, and when she met his eyes there was recognition. Against the odds, they were both alive.
People in green, blue, and pink scrubs ran to and fro, some with white labs coats flapping. Not all ran toward the burning room or injured people, either. Nurses and other staff ducked into nearby rooms and pushed, pulled, carried, or threw an arm around other patients to help them into the elevators or down the emergency exit.
