The Fixer

by Joseph Finder

  “Leave it . . . the fuck . . . alone,” the man said. It was the bouncer from Jugs, and the man clearly intended to kill him.

  He scrambled to his feet, as the ground beneath him tilted, and he lunged unsteadily toward his car. He tried to run but for some reason he found himself moving slower than usual; maybe it was the pain that had gripped his back and shoulders.

  The bouncer pulled the bat back and swung it hard at his face.

  Rick watched it come at him, as if in slow motion, and he knew that the bat would derange his face as soon as it made contact, break his nose and cheekbone and probably other bones he didn’t know he had. For a split second he considered contracting into a fetal position to protect himself. But at the last moment, as the bat came at him, he spun and flung out his hands to try to block the blow, try to grab the bat out of the guy’s hands, but he managed only to have the fingers of his left hand crunch against the shank of the bat, slowing its speed and maybe altering its trajectory just enough so it cracked into his jaw. His field of vision exploded in a constellation of stars. His left arm flopped uselessly against his side and he screamed in pain. The bones in his left hand felt as if they’d shattered like glass.

  He tasted the metallic tang of his own blood. A part of his brain, the project manager that was overseeing everything at a cool distance, wondered whether the bouncer intended to kill him or just inflict brain damage. Maybe he’d get hit on the side of his head and suffer a stroke, and he’d end up just like his father.

  “Hold on,” he huffed. “Listen.”

  Or maybe he only thought he’d spoken these words aloud. His jaw felt broken and his mouth wasn’t working.

  “Leave it . . . the fuck . . . alone,” the bouncer said again.

  He tried to lift his arms to ward off the next blow, but he couldn’t lift his left hand, and this time the bat connected with his trunk, slamming into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him, doubling him over. He couldn’t breathe. For a brief instant he saw stars again. He crumpled to his knees. He gasped for air uselessly like a goldfish out of its bowl. Everything went quiet, and all he could hear was a high-pitched squeal, like feedback from a microphone. He collapsed into a ball.

  But the man wasn’t done yet.

  The bat connected one more time, smashing into his right shoulder and his right ear, and somehow the starburst of pain was even worse, a crescendo of agony, and his field of vision went dark and he was gone.

  48

  He wasn’t able to move.

  “Stay still, sir,” a voice said.

  “No . . . no . . .” Rick moaned.

  Someone was doing something to his left arm. He tried to pull his arm away but it wouldn’t move. Then he remembered vaguely a baseball bat colliding with his hand and rendering it useless.

  Someone else was jabbing something sharp, a pin or a needle of some kind, into his other arm. He was aware on some level that it hurt, but he was in such a world of pain that one more hurt barely registered.

  A second voice, a woman’s, said, “Say your name. What’s your name?”

  Rick Hoffman, he may have said, or maybe he only thought it.

  “BP one hundred palp,” said the first voice, a man’s voice, high and nasal.

  “Out . . . out . . .” Rick said. He was trapped in something, he now realized. Or on something. His entire body was frozen in place, and he struggled with all his strength to get free.

  “Big poke again,” said the woman.

  “Ahh,” Rick groaned.

  “You get it?” the man said.

  “He feels that,” the woman said. “There’s the flash. Good IV.”

  “Here’s your liter,” the man said.

  Rick saw faces coming in and out of focus, in and out. “Run it wide,” the woman said. “You still with me, sir?”

  Rick moaned some more and tried to tell them to leave him the hell alone.

  The faces were gone now, and he could see blue sky, and then it began to move, and he saw shadows and a dark shape of some sort and he didn’t know where he was, somewhere inside now, not outside, and everything had gone dark, and he was gone.

  A couple of people stood over him now. They wore yellow paper gowns. One of them said in a low, hoarse voice, “Gimme the story.”

  A familiar voice—a man’s voice, high and nasal—said, “Thirtysomething male assault. Unwitnessed but the person who called 911 said something about ‘bats.’”

  Rick was moving, rolling. He passed through glass doors that slid open on his approach. One of the people in the yellow paper gowns, alongside, said, “Sir, what’s your name, sir?”

  Rick said his name again.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Been that way the whole time.” The woman’s voice from before. “GCS maybe ten. BP one hundred palp. Pulse 120s.”

  He finally understood he was in a hospital. He saw beds with patients lying in them, uniformed nurses ducking out of the way, then there was a tight turn and he was in a large space, bright and hectic, filled with people.

  “Easy on my count.” The low, hoarse male voice. “One—two—three.”

  He was lifted high up into the air, then down.

  “No other medical history,” the nasal voice said. “He’s not talking much. We got a liter going.”

  Now he was aware of several people looming above him, men and women. They were making him dizzy. He let his eyes fall shut. Now all around him was a hubbub, yammering indistinct voices, and everything had gone dark.

  A man’s voice: “Field line in the right AC. Liter up.”

  A woman’s voice: “Open your eyes, sir! Tell me your name.”

  Obediently, Rick opened his eyes. He said Rick Hoffman but what came out sounded more like brick house. His mouth wasn’t working right. It hurt when he tried to speak.

  “Sir, do you remember what happened?” the woman said.

  Rick saw the woman’s face, looked into her eyes. He tried to nod.

  “Don’t move, sir,” a man said. “Got a second line, eighteen gauge left AC.”

  “Okay,” the woman doctor said, “protecting his airway for now.” She had a stethoscope in her ears and was putting the diaphragm end of it on his chest. Meanwhile someone was cutting his shirt open with a large pair of shears. “Bilateral symmetrical breath sounds.” Her voice was low and husky.

  A new voice now. Male. “On the monitor—BP 108 over 64, pulse 118, sats 92 percent.”

  “Good peripheral pulses all around,” said another voice.

  “Show me a thumbs-up,” said the woman. “Give me a squeeze. . . .”

  Rick tried to squeeze her finger, which she’d put in his left hand, but just moving it was ungodly painful.

  “He’s not following commands. Sir, can you wiggle your toes?”

  Rick obediently wiggled his toes.

  “Guess not,” someone said.

  The woman said, “Okay, two liters up, CBC and trauma panel.”

  “You want some fent?” a man asked.

  Some piece of equipment rolled up alongside his bed. He felt something cold and gelatinous being squirted onto his chest.

  “Fifty of fent to start,” the woman said. “You still with me, sir? Open your mouth. Wide.”

  Something cold and metallic, he assumed it was a probe, was moving in small circles on his chest.

  Rick obeyed, or thought he did. He moaned. His jaw was incredibly painful but only when he opened his mouth to breathe or talk. His chest and stomach ached terribly. He moaned again.

  “No pericardial effusion, good cardiac motion,” someone else said. A young man. “Multiple abrasions and bruises over the chest wall.”

  “Ahhh,” Rick moaned. He gasped in pain.

  “Sorry,” said the young man. “Good sliding motion on the lungs, no pneumo.”

  �
��Got a big lac over the left parietal scalp,” the husky-voiced woman said. “Stapler.”

  “No blood in Morison’s pouch. Left paracolic gutter dry.” The young guy.

  The woman: “Let me have twenty of etomidate and 120 of succs ready in case we have to tube this guy.”

  “Already got it,” a woman said.

  The young guy: “He’s pretty altered; you should tube him.”

  The woman: “Sir! Say your name.”

  Rick tried again to say his name, but this time it came out as Off me.

  The woman: “Sir, I have to put a tube in your throat to protect you. Do you understand? We need to put you to sleep for now.”

  I don’t want a tube in my throat, Rick tried to say. That’s totally unnecessary.

  “FAST is negative,” said the young guy. “Call the scanner and let them know we have a tubed blunt head on the way.”

  Something glinted—a blade of some sort? The doctors and nurses seemed to shift position around the bed. A baby or a kid was crying nearby.

  “RT here?” asked the woman.

  “He’s here,” someone said.

  Someone ran past with a heavy tread. He heard a hissing noise. Then somebody put a mask, loudly hissing, over his face.

  “Sats going up ninety-six.”

  “Okay,” the young male doctor said. “Push the etomidate, then the succs.”

  “I got your tube,” the husky-voiced female doctor said. “You do C-spine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Drugs are in.”

  “Sir!” said the woman doctor. “Sir! You’re going to feel sleepy now. Just relax, just go to . . .”

  49

  Andrea Messina is talking to him, looking more gorgeous than ever, backlit as if in a TV commercial for shampoo. But he doesn’t understand what she’s saying. He asks her to repeat it, but now she doesn’t understand what he’s saying, and he can’t keep his eyes open, and when he opens them again, she’s gone.

  The next thing Rick was aware of was light, blindingly bright. He wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven, but he also felt as if he’d been hit by a truck—no, as if the truck had rolled over him and was still parked on top of his body—and he didn’t think you could be in heaven and also be in a world of hurt.

  Everything was bright and glary, and he realized he was only looking out of one eye. His left eye wouldn’t open. He heard steady beeping and another sound, a strange sound that went whoosh-click, whoosh-click, whoosh-click. He heard a hubbub of loud voices as if he were in the middle of a crowd.

  He coughed and realized something was in his throat, something big, and now he began to gag, to choke, and then he tried to breathe in, but it was like breathing through a straw, he could barely get any air, and he had to get that thing out of his throat or he’d choke to death. He was overcome by panic. He struggled, tried to get up, tried to rip this thing out of his throat, and then there was a loud beeping and he heard a woman’s voice saying, “He’s awake, he’s bucking the vent.”

  “The doctor’s right here,” said another voice.

  He couldn’t clear his throat, couldn’t stop choking.

  “Okay, relax, relax, you’re feeling the ventilator,” a woman said. “You need to show me you can breathe on your own. I need you to breathe out and cough.”

  Rick, in full panic mode now, struggling with all his strength, managed to free one hand and reached up toward whatever the hell it was that was lodged in his throat.

  “Mr. Hoffman, relax, you have a tube in your throat, you’re on a ventilator, but—Mr. Hoffman, if you understand me, give me a thumbs-up, okay?”

  Rick stuck his thumb up, with the only hand that seemed to be working, thinking, There’s your goddamned thumb, get this thing out of my throat, but unable to say anything.

  “Mr. Hoffman, take a nice breath in and out.”

  Rick tried to breathe in, but he could barely suck in any air.

  “Okay, excellent,” the woman said. “Now I want you to cough for me. Or push out really hard as if you’re coughing. Make a big cough. On three, I want you to cough. One, two, and three—excellent.” Rick coughed, though it felt more like he was gagging, he hacked and then caught his breath—and a moment later he was taking a deep, wonderful breath, and it was like coming up from the bottom of a pool; he gulped the air in and it was great. And then at almost the same instant, he felt a terrific stabbing pain in his chest.

  “Good, there you go. Now spit.”

  And someone was holding a pink plastic bowl under his mouth and he spit out gobs of something and it felt terrific.

  “Mr. Hoffman, I’m Dr. Castillo. You were intubated because they were worried you might not be able to protect your airway. Do you remember what happened?”

  The doctor was out of focus. Rick blinked a few times and she began to swim into focus, but he was looking at her only with his right eye.

  “Uh,” he said.

  “Your vital signs look good. Can you say your name?”

  “Uh . . . Rick Hoffman,” he said. His voice was hoarse and his throat hurt.

  “Excellent. Now, it looks like somebody beat you up pretty good. Do you remember what happened?”

  Rick just looked at the doctor, who was dark-haired and pretty and looked barely out of her teens. “Uh,” he said. The room was white and dazzlingly bright and mostly out of focus.

  He remembered the baseball bat and the guy with the shamrock tattoo swinging it at him, remembered shouting at the guy to stop. And the guy not stopping. He couldn’t figure out how he got here, how he ended up in this hospital, wherever it was.

  But why could he see out of only one eye? He reached up to touch his left eye, pulled it open, and he could see blurry shapes, and when he let go, his eye closed again.

  “Well, you got banged up, quite a bit,” the doctor said. “You’ve got a left lateral nondisplaced clavicle fracture—that’s a collarbone fracture. Plus you’ve got some fractured ribs on your left side—posterior ribs three, four, and five on the left. The CT scan showed you have a fracture of your left cheekbone, a zygomatic arch fracture.”

  He took a deep breath and gasped as he felt the stabbing pain in his chest once again.

  “Yeah, you’re going to hurt a lot, pretty much all the time.” She gave a low chuckle. “We’ve got you on some pain-killers but you may need some more, looks like. You’ve got some big bruises on your back and on your chest and over your left kidney. You had some blood in your urine, what we call hematuria, from the renal contusions.”

  Rick suddenly realized he felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation down there, and he reached down and felt it.

  “Yeah,” the doctor said, “you’ve got a tube down there, a Foley catheter, and we can get that out of you in a couple of minutes. Your urine’s going to be pink for a little while. Oh, and it looks like you may have a sternal fracture—you got hit in the solar plexus. I don’t know if you want to take a look.” She handed him a mirror with a white plastic handle. “Maybe it’s better if you don’t.”

  He took the mirror. He wanted to see how bad he looked.

  It was bad. He barely recognized the face in the mirror. One side of his face looked mostly normal, just some scrapes here and there, but the left side of his face was swollen and misshapen and eggplant purple. His left eye was shut and dome-shaped. He looked like a boxer after twelve rounds. Like a purple Pillsbury Doughboy. He put his hand to his face and pulled open his left eyelid again, just to make sure his left eye worked. It did. He moved his jaw up and down and was pleased to discover that worked. Gingerly he rolled his head back and forth on his neck a few times. It hurt, but it worked, too. He handed the mirror back to the doctor.

  “Looks pretty bad, huh?” she said.

  “Pretty bad.”

  “But really, I’d say you were lucky.”

  “Lucky.�
� He laughed mordantly, which made his head hurt.

  “I’ve seen a lot worse. You’ve got a lot of contusions, anterior and posterior, but apart from the rib fractures and the clavicle, you came out of this okay. You had a concussion, so we want to be careful about that. You’re going to look pretty swollen for a week or so—you’re going to have raccoon eyes for a while—and you’re going to have a lot of pain.”

  “What pain meds am I on right now?”

  “A fentanyl/Versed IV drip.”

  “It’s no good. It’s not working.”

  “We titrated the meds down until you woke up.”

  “Yeah, well, it hurts to breathe.”

  “It’s going to be that way for a while. Everything’s going to hurt. You’ll feel like a pro football player the day after a big game. But we’ll give you some pain meds for breakthrough pain. Oh, and stay out of fistfights. A concussed brain is a lot more likely to get a repeat concussion.”

  “Okay. Where am I, by the way? Mass General?”

  “North Shore Regional Medical Center in Salem. I think the EMTs picked you up in Marblehead?”

  He nodded, groaned. He wondered who called 911. Conklin? The bouncer, when he was finished working with his baseball bat?

  “When can I get out of here?”

  “Maybe later today when your friend comes back.”

  “My friend.”

  “Ms.—Messina, I think? Given your condition, I’m unwilling to release you except into somebody’s custody.”

  “Andrea? I don’t understand.”

  “Anyway, do you have your own doctor, Mr. Hoffman?”

  “Doctor . . . yes, I think so.”

  “Good. You’re going to have to follow up with your doctor or a trauma clinic. The staples will need to come out in a week.”