Critical Condition

by Peter Clement

  "I have to check where you're bleeding, Ted," he said, carefully probing with his fingers through the bloody mess that had been the man's groin.

  "Noooo! Don't touch me. . . ." The young man writhed as if he'd never had any morphine at all.

  Richard felt the tip of a nail pulsing like a jackhammer. It had speared his femoral artery. It probably had gone through, and the blood was coming out the other side.

  Diving back into the equipment case, he grabbed a pack of gauze pads and jammed all of them into the site.

  "You bastaaaard . . ." Mallory roared, trying to hump away from him. Richard gave more morphine, the medics got a sheet underneath Mallory, and they hoisted him onto the stretcher.

  His screams trebled in volume. Blood pulsed in a crimson arch across the room. Richard bunched up yet more wads of gauze pads, but the protruding nail prevented him from compressing the vessel properly. In the process of trying, he disturbed a cluster of other spikes, adding more pumpers to the flow. He needed to close off the main supply, the femoral, but that required scalpels and a special clamp called a Kelly, routine equipment for an ER. The kid would bleed out before they ever got there. Time for a Hail Mary.

  As they moved toward the steps leading to the ground floor, he grabbed the first nail with his fingers and pulled.

  Mallory's screams were almost impossible to bear.

  The nail was so embedded into the bone of the underlying femur that Richard couldn't budge it. Jets of blood continued to shoot up around his fingers.

  "Hold it a second," he said to the technicians before they started upstairs, and ran to what was left of his workbench. Rifling through a tool kit, he grabbed a pair of vise grips and returned to the stretcher. He'd given Mallory all the morphine he dared without putting him into a respiratory arrest. This was going to hurt. "Hold him," he ordered.

  One of the medics gripped his arms and upper body, the other used the sterile sheets to protect his abraded legs and pinned him above the knees.

  It was as hard as pulling a nail out of wood. Blood flew everywhere, coating his latex gloves and making it difficult to get a grip. Mallory's shrieks reached new levels that nearly made Richard stop. A familiar cold gnawed at the pit of his stomach, making it feel empty as a waiting grave. But with a third yank, the spike gave.

  Immediately a hose of blood sprayed him and half the room. He cleared away a few more of the nails, then pressed another wad of gauze hard onto the artery. With nothing obstructing him, he finally stanched much of the flow.

  "Let's go," he ordered.

  When they got to the street he saw Chet turn white and recoil from the blood-drenched procession as they raced by him on the way to the ambulance. The policewoman at his side slid a protective arm around his thin shoulders.

  "Chet, you ride to the hospital with one of the officers," Richard called over to him, "and get to Kathleen. You'll be safe there." The officer who'd taken the boy under her wing pulled him closer. "I'll drive him myself."

  His youthful eyes grew darker. "What about Ted?"

  "I've got him. He'll be all right," Richard said. He helped load the stretcher into the rear of the ambulance and climbed in with one of the techs. He caught a last glimpse of Chefs anxious face as the doors closed behind them, and the vehicle took off, its siren wailing at full blast.

  As they rocketed down Thirty-sixth and reeled around the corner at Second Avenue, the movement must have widened the arterial tears around the many remaining nails because the bleeding got worse. Richard and the attendant hadn't enough hands to compress all the jets of red that rose from the glistening remnants of Mallory's limbs, soaking the sheets and spattering the racks of supplies along the walls. They'd no time to start IVs or hook him to a monitor.

  "I'm going," Mallory said, his voice barely audible above the roar of the motor.

  "Not if I can help it," said Richard, scrambling to find and stanch yet another pumper.

  "Tell McKnight it's the Legion of the Lord."

  "Are you Catholic?" asked Richard. "A priest will be at the hospital, if you want me to call him."

  "No! Tell McKnight it's the Legion of the Lord!"

  Shit, he must be getting delirious, thought Richard, recognizing the phrase Mallory had kept asking about this morning. "Don't worry, Ted, you'll soon be able to tell him yourself."

  Mallory grabbed him by the arm, and squeezed hard. "Tell him!" he yelled, half sitting, his voice suddenly loud again. "And quit fuckin' lying to me!" His black eyes held Richard's for a few seconds, then seemed to wobble, and he flopped back on the stretcher, muttering incoherently. Being upright, even for just those few moments, had drained off the little blood his brain had left.

  No sooner had they wheeled him through the ER doors than Steele's team had two central lines in him and a pair of large-bore IVs. A minute later blood infusions were up and running, catheters and monitors in place.

  But nothing brought his pressure back.

  "Too many fucking holes," Richard muttered. As his team worked to keep him alive and vascular surgeons heroically cut down to the mangled arteries, clamping them off as they went, Richard was reduced to once again holding the man's hand. He stayed crouched over his head, and talked constantly to him. He knew from all the others who he'd watched slip away that hearing would be the last to go. "Okay, Ted, no more bullshit. Whoever is dear to you, I'll personally help them through this, because you gave me back my son, who's so dear to me. And I'll tell Cathy how magnificently brave you were, that you spoke her name."

  His pressure fell until it became undetectable, his pulse vanished altogether, and shock quickly carried him off, his cries fading to a mere murmur.

  ". . . Legion of the Lord . . . Legion of the Lord . . . Legion of the Lord" he muttered until he died.

  One of the doctors made a last-ditch effort, cutting into his chest and massaging his heart with her hand.

  Richard walked out, knowing it was over.

  "What about his fiancee?"

  "She's in L.A., on a business trip," McKnight said.

  "Did he have anyone else?"

  "A father. He's already on the way in."

  "Did anyone tell him yet?"

  "No. Mallory was still alive when we reached him."

  Richard sat in his office staring at an untouched cup of coffee. Half an hour ago it had been he who'd been rushing to what he feared would be the worst of all possible news. Now it was another father who'd been summoned to meet that fate. He shuddered, a free-for-all of relief, guilt, grief, and gratitude careening through him. "I'll tell him," he said.

  Mc Knight, sitting across the desk from him, his eyes leaden as pewter saucers, didn't say a word.

  Richard pulled the chaos in his head to order. "Ted Mallory told me before the explosion went off that he thought he knew who'd planted the bomb, but he didn't have time to explain. He also seemed to realize right away that it was a pipe bomb and would be detonated by a remote, not Chefs movement."

  "A remote?"

  "Yeah. One that triggers an automatic car lock."

  The detective snapped forward. "Did he say anything else?"

  "Not really. After the blast, he seemed to be talking gibberish. Going on about 'Legion of the Lord.' "

  "What?"

  "They were his next to last words to you as well. 'Tell McKnight it was the Legion of the Lord,' he told me. He'd been dwelling on the phrase a few hours earlier while taking my statement."

  "How do you mean?"

  "When he took my statement about how the attacker ranted at me last night. At one point I said that the creep hollered, 'I am a soldier in the Legion of the Lord,' and it grabbed Mallory's attention. He kept asking me was I certain the man used those exact words."

  "Holy shit!" McKnight muttered, his pupils igniting and burning off the fatigue that had been there seconds before.

  "Why? Does it mean something to you? It sure didn't seem any different to me from the other ravings that maniac was spouting off."

  "
Yes! But it doesn't make any sense," said McKnight, wearing the intent stare of someone traveling through their own thoughts at a thousand miles an hour.

  Before he could say more, Jo O'Brien knocked and opened the door. "Mr. Mallory's here," she said and showed in a slender, wiry man with a stubble of white hair that occupied only the back half of his gleaming scalp.

  "Is Ted all right?" he asked, his eyes darting desperately from Richard to Mc Knight and back again.

  The moment Richard dreaded more than any other in medicine hung between them— the held breath waiting to be expelled.

  "Mr. Mallory, sit down, please. I'm afraid I have very bad news."

  It was two o'clock that afternoon when, after making sure the nurses had cleaned up the body and covered the mangled legs with a sheet, he led the father to view his son. Trembling, the old man walked hesitantly between him and Jo O'Brien as they supported him by each elbow. McKnight followed closely behind. When the elderly man gazed down at the slack youthful features, blanched by the loss of blood, his face folded in on itself and he let out a bellow of grief stripped so raw, the sound ripped through every corner of ER, casting anyone who heard it into silence.

  McKnight then guided the broken figure to the waiting room where a gathering of men and women in dark blue gently engulfed him. Murmured words of solace filled the air, somber and solemn as chanting in a church.

  Richard watched and wondered should he say something now to Mallory Senior. Tell him who Ted had saved? But he checked himself, imagining what it would feel like were the situation reversed. How would he feel if he had to endure condolences from the father whose son had been spared, the death of his son having been the price? He might know in his head it hadn't been an either-or pick, but he'd be raging at the unfairness of the choice in his gut, and loathing himself for it. No, better he say nothing that might unleash all that now, and spare the old man the added anguish. There would be a time later, when his grief was less fresh. Then Chet himself might offer comfort, if there was such a thing in the face of losing a child.

  His sadness deepened. Part of him wondered if he hadn't copped out just now. Was he really protecting Ted Mallory 'sfather, or himself? Was he hiding out rather than facing the man's wrath over whose son had lived and whose had died? After all, he had a flaw when it came to facing feelings that cut to the bone. And the trouble with having run once, bullshitting himself every step of the way, was that he couldn't be sure he wasn't doing it again.

  He slapped himself out of such morbid thinking. Enough, damn it. Hell, if he was feeling so torn up over Ted Mallory's death, how would Chet take it? He didn't know yet. Better he got the news from his own dad before he simply overheard the nurses talking about it. He'd be damned if he'd let Chet slide into some sort of survivor's guilt.

  Mc Knight didn't look as though he'd be leaving Mallory Senior's side anytime soon. Finding out from him what the Legion of the Lord was all about would have to wait. Richard signaled to the detective that he'd phone him later. Rather than wait for the elevator, he took the stairs and reached the floor in a matter of minutes, entering through the sliding doors to ICU.

  Chet looked up from where he sat, his hand in Kathleen's. Some of his color had returned, but his eyes were red from crying. Behind him stood Lisa, her slender arms around his shoulders, her green eyes also red. A policeman hovered at the entrance to the cubicle.

  "You told me he'd be all right, that you'd save him," Chet said as Richard approached. There was no recrimination in his voice, just incredulity, as if he'd still believed his father was infallible, at least in ER.

  Kathleen, the tiny movements of her face making a white mask brimming with sadness, held her good hand out to Richard while still holding onto Chefs with the other. He walked over, clasped them both, and slid his arm far enough around Chefs narrow shoulders that he reached Lisa. Infused with grief for Ted Mallory and gathering all that was precious to him in a single small circle, he feared for the Mallory three lives in his embrace. Would the police be able to protect them? Obviously this monster didn't care who he killed, and whatever his purpose, he might very well try to use both Chet and Lisa as bait again.

  "Who did this, Dad? And why?" Chet asked, his voice quivering.

  Not since Luana died had Richard seen such anguish on his son's face. Lisa seemed just as lost, her skin the pallor of paste. "I don't know," he said, realizing neither of them knew all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He quickly added, "But until we get some answers and catch this guy, the police will be guarding us all better than Fort Knox." As he launched into talk of police protection, he watched for the tight folds at the corners of Chefs mouth and the pinched lines adjacent to Lisa's eyes to flatten, his barometer of how well he was reassuring them. He could explain later about the other attacks and their tie to the murders. It would only raise more disturbing questions than provide satisfying answers— such as why was this shit still coming at him now that the cat was out of the bag? It wasn't as if by getting rid of him at this point the killer could prevent anyone else from investigating the hell out of Hamlin's former patients and finding what had been done to them.

  He shuddered. This last attack seemed all the more vicious because it made no sense. What if the game had become something different? Like an attempt to kill Richard to make sure he didn't come after the killer. But why? Was it because he might see something the cops wouldn't? What? Richard couldn't even guess. Unless of course it was medical. Well, if that bastard thought he'd frightened him off, he had to think again. Whoever he was and whatever he was up to, he messed with the people Richard loved. One way or the other, he was going to track that creep down for sure, and when he did, if the law wouldn't put him away, Richard would.

  He wanted to talk to McKnight and find out about the Legion of the Lord. He resisted the urge to pull away and get to a phone, because everything in Chefs expression pleaded, Don't leave.

  "Where will we live, Dad?" he said after a few moments. His voice still had a quaver or two, but was less shaky than before. "I don't want to go back home."

  "Don't worry. We're not going back there anytime soon."

  "But I can't stop thinking about Ted, of what happened to him down there. All that blood, and I keep hearing his screams. . . ." His voice trailed off as tears made a path down his freckled cheeks.

  Richard hugged him harder. "Shhh. I know it seems impossible, Chet, but that will pass—"

  "What if it doesn't?" The boy's stare appeared so wide with fright it was as if everything he'd witnessed had reappeared before him, an apparition the rest of them couldn't see.

  "It's okay, Chet," said Lisa, running her fingers through his wild black curls. Kathleen reached up to touch the boy's face, but couldn't quite extend her arm far enough. Richard looked helplessly on, then said, "Chet, maybe it's time all of us, you, me, Lisa, and Kathleen, thought about consolidating our little band under one roof."

  The two teenagers gaped at him, and Kathleen's pupils narrowed to pinpoints.

  "You mean we move into their apartment?" Chet asked. A momentary look of wonder swept aside the tight creases around his mouth.

  "Cool!" Lisa added. "But it would be crowded as hell." Kathleen said nothing, her gaze all at once more blank than the rest of her face.

  "I mean we find a new house for the bunch of us," Richard said. "You three are as dear to me as life itself, and I want you around me forever."

  Lisa at least grinned. "Hey, Chet. My mother, your dad, living in sin. That'd make us a common-law brother and sister. Scandalous!"

  Chet gave her a tenuous smile, then looked up at him. "For real, Dad?"

  "If Kathleen will have us," he answered, turning to look at her and expecting to see some show of delighted surprise.

  Instead she looked away.

  He hadn't risked waiting around to see the outcome of the explosion, immediately retreating to his new hidey-hole, a gray, unlit coffin on Wooster Street little different from the one he'd evacuated that m
orning. He spent the next few hours perfecting the application of a small mustache to match the curly wig of black hair he'd been provided. By the time he satisfied himself that the effect would disguise him, not draw attention, the radio was breaking the story."... one dead, the identity being withheld pending notification ..."

  He began to fret that he'd messed up again. "Settle down," he kept repeating into the noise of jackhammers from the street. He'd know soon enough how he'd done and there was nothing more he could do about it now anyway. If he got Steele, only three more on the list to go, and best he remain focused on them.

  He changed into the greens of an OR orderly, pulled on his jacket, and set out.

  Despite all the cops being around, he had little difficulty in slipping back into the hospital. The cops were concentrated around the main entrances, checking credentials of staff at shift change and visitors at all hours. But he knew other ways to come and go, and was familiar with the routines that could be put to his advantage.

  The laundry. Pickup at seven, delivery at five. The truck would back down into a basement loading dock that was still a popular hangout for the hard-core smokers— the ones who couldn't make it through to their scheduled breaks without sneaking out for a few desperate drags. They'd be looking out for their supervisors rather than paying attention to him.

  A few minutes before five, standing on Thirty-third, he lit his own cigarette and watched the laundry truck reverse down a ramp outside the big corrugated metal doors. When the driver honked and the doors rattled open, he simply stepped through. The sallow-faced gang of puffers inside scrambled like startled mice to get clear as the vehicle lurched back into the loading bay. Nobody so much as glanced at him.

  "My, God! You're sitting up." McKnight walked into the cubicle and saw Kathleen in a chair.

  She gave him her faint sketch of a smile. Gravity accented her weight loss from the tube feedings by pulling the loose skin down over her cheekbones.

  Richard stood behind her, aware that she wasn't so much sitting up as strapped in, and that it was her third ten-minute session that day. He'd seen the nurses put her there and knew the cost— her back muscles coiling into spasms until they stood out like ropes. Sobs of air exploded out the tube in her throat, and her face twitched in extreme agony. Throughout the ordeal she steadfastly kept her eyes on him until he felt he was under a microscope. She was studying his reactions, seeing if he could take it, watching for his flaw to reappear and send him running again. Lord knew, with his record, she's had cause.