After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

Grubby sighed. “We have a backlog. Christ, everyone has a backlog. Even our backlog has a backlog. Just go now, and get in the line. I’m expecting thirty or forty deaths today. That seems to be the average, so there will be beds becoming available. That’s the best I can do. Now, go!”

  The triage area—such as it was, because it bore no resemblance to anything that Nathan had experienced in the trips he had made to various emergency rooms over the years, for Tony’s asthma or Cyndi’s trials with preeclampsia during her pregnancy with their first son—was just a vast sea of people. There were perhaps five hundred or so, sitting on the floor, leaning against walls or rolled into balls, covered in blankets. The line to the triage point, if that’s indeed what it was, was a higgledy-piggledy mess that snaked at torturous angles back and forth across the floor space. There were children in the arms of their parents who had whey-colored faces, and sweating men coughing. Women with broken limbs. There were puddles of blood on the floor between the rows, patches of vomit, and other liquids that Nathan could only guess at.

  At the head of the line, three figures in white coats, a man and two women, were examining those nearest to them. When they’d finished with an exam, they wrote on a sticker and thumped it onto the shoulder of the patient, then pointed through a door into an area that Nathan couldn’t see into, at the back of the pavilion. There was only natural light flooding into the triage area through the pavilion’s widows, and it was as gray and lifeless as the figures standing in line.

  The three of them stood back. Nathan had no intention of joining the line, but didn’t want to be seen acting suspiciously, thus drawing the attention of FEMA soldiers to throw them out.

  As he looked at the front of the line, however, he saw that one of the women in white coats was also writing on a clipboard, and next to her, folded neatly over a chair, was another white coat. Perhaps it was a spare—a clean coat to put on if the one she was wearing got too dirty. It occurred to Nathan that, if he had a white coat, he might be able to move freely through the field hospital without arousing suspicion, to find Tommy and the others that way.

  “Free, I’m going to try and get that coat up there. You guys wait here, and when I get up there, do something to cause a distraction.”

  Free looked incredulously at the multitude of people moaning, crying, and groaning in the line. “What the hell could I do that’s going to distract the doctors from this?”

  Nathan didn’t know, but said, “Think of something. Anything.”

  And then Nathan headed forward.

  In some places, he had to step over people laying still on the floor, and around puddles of bodily fluids which could honestly have been anything. The floor in places was running like an open sewer. A man with a mop and a bucket, wearing a boiler suit, was making some attempt to clean it, but he was fighting an uphill battle.

  None of the people in the triage area seemed to mind Nathan pushing past them. Their various maladies seemed to have robbed them of any fight, or perhaps they were used to being treated this way.

  Nathan made his way almost to the head of the line, and there he began insinuating himself between two women standing silently, both of them holding babies. One of the babies was crying, but the other looked like it would never cry again.

  Nathan breathed an apology, and then he pushed through. He was almost in reach of the chair and the coat. The medics looked dog-tired and were dealing with intense exams of ill refugees. All it would take was for Free to take their attention toward the back of the hall for a moment, and if he did, Nathan was sure he could whip the coat away.

  “Come on, Free. Come on…”

  Somewhere behind him, a woman began to scream. “My God! Look!”

  Nice, Free. Good job.

  But then other people were gasping and yelling, and Nathan felt himself being pushed sideways, away from the chair and the coat, by a tide of humans trying to get away from something.

  Surely, Free and Dave hadn’t caused this…

  “It’s coming in!” someone shouted.

  “It’s gonna crash!” called another.

  As the press of bodies propelled Nathan some five, eight, and then accelerating past twelve yards away from the pavilion widows, he caught sight of a black shape falling from the sky.

  A Black Hawk helicopter, like the one that had found them on the road to Casper, belly-flopped onto the concrete outside the pavilion, its rotors still spinning crazily. The fuselage tipped sideways and the blades bit into the ground, snapping and whirling through the air. The pavilion windows shattered as shards of metal from the crashed copter exploded into the building, scything down people like wheat at harvest.

  Screams of terror ripped the air apart, and gusts of wind blew snow into the building, sending the temperature crashing down in half a second.

  Nathan was pushed back further by the rush. He almost went down, the press of bodies making it impossible to see the window, the coat, or to the back of the room where he hoped Dave and Free were also getting out of the way. Nathan planted his feet, steadied himself, and let the stream of bodies go around him like a rock in a flooded river.

  Through the broken windows, he watched as the Black Hawk fuselage rolled completely onto its side, and the rotors chewed into the concrete, finally breaking apart, unable to cause more damage. As the broken hull rocked, soldiers began running toward it from all directions.

  Nathan took his opportunity as the crowd of patients stopped pushing—moving to fight his way back to the chair. The doctors who had been at the head of the triage line had abandoned their posts as the helicopter came down, and the coat was available for him to take, wrap up under his arm.

  The helicopter hadn’t caught fire—there was black smoke venting hard from the exhaust ports, but no licking of flames. Whoever had been in the Black Hawk had been blessed because of that at least. The soldiers who had rushed to the copter had gotten the side door open and begun reaching inside, pulling at the crew and passengers.

  What Nathan saw, though, with an increasing sense of dread and horror, made him wish the Black Hawk had caught fire on impact, because the first person the soldiers pulled from the wreckage to slither down to the ground, to then bend over and vomit, was Detroit Mayor Harvey Brant.

  22

  Nathan backed away from the windows as fast as he could, even as the still vomiting Brant was ushered away from the Black Hawk in case whatever fuel that was left in it did go up in flames.

  Nathan forced his way between the members of the crowd toward the doctor’s tables, trying hard not to add to their ills or injuries, but mindful that he had to get away now. A hand fell hard on his shoulder, and he turned with a clenched fist ready to punch whoever it was who’d laid a hand on him.

  It was Free, forcing his way through the crowd from the back of the room.

  “Did you see who came out of the ’copter?” Free asked, his face painted with shock.

  Nathan took Freeson by the bicep and pushed him ahead. “Yes, I did. Free, we have to get Tommy and the others now. If Brant’s here, he’s here for us. Where’s Dave?”

  “We got separated in the panic, but he wasn’t hit when the windows came in, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, so you find him, and meet me back at the entrance we came in. With Brant here, we need to speed this up. I’ll find Tommy or try to find some records that might tell us what happened to him. You guys do what you can to locate Syd and Lucy.”

  “Roger that,” Free said, and with that, he spun away into the crowd of ill refugees.

  Nathan pressed himself against a wall. As the panicked bodies swarmed past, there was enough space for him to take off his jacket and put on the white coat. The pockets felt heavy, and when he reached in, he pulled out a stethoscope and a name badge that told him the coat belonged to a Dr. F. L. Smart. There was no ID picture, so that was a plus, but the initials gave no sense of whether Dr. Smart was male or female. Nathan dropped the badge into his pocket—no point raising suspicions in people who knew Dr.
F.L. Smart. He put the stethoscope around his neck like he’d seen Doctor Grubby display when they’d come in. Nathan left the triage area, still carrying his North Face jacket under his arm, and found a place to stow it behind clean laundry cages that were being kept at the end of the main bed area.

  As Nathan had noted when he’d first come into the pavilion, there were hundreds upon hundreds of beds… and all of them were occupied. Nurses were tending to some patients, janitors mopped at puddles, and occasionally a doctor, face grim, would flit from bed to bed like a ghost. Nathan did everything he could to avoid eye contact with the medics; he didn’t need to get into a conversation about something he knew nothing about. Finding Tommy wasn’t going to be a case of just zeroing in on the Texan in a matter of moments. Many of the patients—those who weren’t sitting or throwing up into bowls, anyway—were hunkered down beneath the sheets, heads turned into pillows. Nathan was going to have to make a systematic search that he didn’t have time for, and hope that Tommy was able to walk out of the building with him to get back to the RAV4. That in mind, he picked up a clipboard and chart from the nearest bed; its occupant, an old woman with a cloud of white hair, lay sleeping beneath the sheets.

  As he walked, pretending to consult the charts, his head remained bent, trying to give the best approximation of a harried, overworked medic, and he scanned the beds as he went. When it came to those with their faces turned away, he paused momentarily to check over their heads and ascertain gender or age. Those whose hair didn’t match Tommy’s peppery, iron gray stubble were passed over. Nathan wondered if Tommy would still be wearing the USMC baseball cap. He’d put it into Tommy’s hand before he’d been driven away from Drymouth, and as the royal-blue, gold-embossed Marine Corps cap had been a permanent fixture on the Texan’s head, it seemed worth looking out for here, too.

  Nathan walked on as slowly as he dared without arousing suspicion, checking beds left and right, and doubling back a couple of times to check on people who had their heads below the covers, trying to shut out the noise and stench of the hospital.

  A quarter of the way down the ward, Nathan saw him. The blue cap was in place. Tommy was sitting up in bed, and there was a good color to his cheeks. His knees were drawn up under the covers, and he looked like a coiled cobra ready to strike.

  It was clear Tommy wasn’t happy to be here, but he looked a lot better than Nathan had been expecting. The Texan was three rows of beds away, and he had his head turned, neck craned, looking toward the triage area of the pavilion—trying to see, Nathan guessed, what had happened after the Black Hawk had come down.

  Nathan quickened his pace, but even though he wanted to go in a flat run, he still didn’t want to present himself as being anyone out of the ordinary. There might be a commotion, and a sense of horror rippling through the building because of the crash, but there would surely be members of the medical staff who might raise the alarm if they felt Nathan was a dangerous interloper.

  Nathan and Tommy locked eyes as the Texan moved his gaze back along the ward. It took a moment for Tommy to parse out what he was seeing—Nathan in a white doctor’s coat—but when the recognition blossomed on his face, Nathan returned the smile.

  He was fifteen yards away when Tommy’s expression changed, just as Nathan’s arm was taken in an iron grip and a voice barked. “This way, Doc, you’re needed. Now! The civilians can wait.”

  Oh hell.

  Nathan’s arm was being gripped and his body turned by a FEMA soldier who immediately began pulling him away from Tommy. With one last desperate look back at his friend, Nathan let himself be dragged back the way he had come. All he could do was remember a couple of significant landmarks on the wall—a poster about boiling all water, and a widow with a broken pane covered by cardboard that would lead him quickly back to Tommy when he’d finished whatever he was being taken away for.

  The soldier marched Nathan double-time through the crowds of beds, through the triage area, and through the door at the back, to the immediate area where the doctors he’d stolen the coat from had sent the patients who’d been triaged. There were soldiers at the door now, pushing out people who had stickers on their shoulders and chests.

  “But I’ve gone through already! Why are you sending me back here?” one yelled, and he was given a rifle butt to the temple for his trouble, sending him to the floor with a crash. “You need to get that triaged now!” the soldier said, pointing at the new gash he’d created in the man’s skin.

  The soldier looked at the other people who’d been pushed out of the room. “Anyone else want another reason to see a doctor? Coz I got plenty more where that came from!”

  Those with stickers shook their heads and moved out in an orderly fashion. Nathan was brushed past them, and on through the door.

  Inside was what might have been a further assessment unit, or a holding and overspill area to be used until beds became available in the main part of the hospital.

  Doctor Grubby was there already with a medical light in his fingers, checking over Mayor Brant’s eyes and getting him to follow his finger. Nathan stopped in his tracks at the sight of the old enemy.

  The soldier placed a hand in the small of his back and mercifully propelled him out of Brant’s eye-line, toward another bed where a woman in a pilot’s uniform was laying, her arm at a crazy angle looking broke as hell. Her face was a mask of pain, her jaw tight, her lips just a slash where they were compressed. Her name tape identified her as Major Champion.

  Nathan was impelled to the side of the bed, and there he looked down on Champion.

  “Give me something for the pain!” she spat at him.

  “Sure,” Nathan answered, trying to ban from his voice any suggestion that he had no damn idea how to do that, or who to ask, or where the painkillers might be kept.

  There was a tinkle of keys behind him as Doctor Grubby said, “Here. Get me some Ibuprofen while you’re there.”

  The soldier caught the keys Grubby had tossed to the bed and put them in Nathan’s hand. “Make it quick. She’s in agony.”

  “I can see that,” Nathan said, and then he walked away from the bed. It occurred to him again that he didn’t know where the drugs might be kept, but he couldn’t risk making it obvious he didn’t, so he took three steps toward the back of the room. No one said anything, so he guessed he was at least going approximately in the right direction.

  “I’m going to have you hung for this!”

  Brant’s voice cut across the room, and they stilled Nathan’s heart. Had he been busted?

  No.

  Brant continued his tirade, and it clearly wasn’t directed at Nathan, but Champion. “You should be able to fly that thing in all weather. That’s what I pay you for, you damn imbecile!”

  “I’m… not a miracle worker, sir… I said we should have… waited for the storm to pass before we attempted the flight! The Black Hawk hadn’t been serviced in… an age. Pointing a gun at the pilot doesn’t make an aircraft more… airworthy!”

  “Don’t answer back, you moron! Shut up, and hope I change my mind about lynching you in the nearest damn tree!”

  Nathan’s blood chilled at the threats made by Brant to Champion. He remembered how, back in Detroit, Brant’s men had gone to the Masonic building and executed a number of the residents on his orders, just to make sure Nathan had nowhere safe to return to. Brant held human life in such low regard, it was a wonder he wasn’t telling Grubby to give Champion a lethal injection where she lay.

  Nathan had reached the back of the ward now. A series of white cupboards sat beneath worktops stacked with medical supplies, blood test tubes, bandages, empty syringes, and all manner of other first aid materials. There were no drugs to be seen.

  He’d been given keys, so it followed that there would be a locked cabinet to find. None of the lower cupboards had locks on the doors, but there was a row of metal cabinets above them. Two had locks.

  It had to be two, didn’t it?

  Which one?

&
nbsp; Nathan made a play of working his way through the keys while he tried to work out which was the cabinet he should go to first.

  Fifty-fifty.

  His life might hang in the balance if he chose wrongly, if Grubby or the others, only ten yards behind, became suspicious.

  “Hurry up, man!” Grubby yelled. “We don’t have all damn day!”

  Nathan chose.

  He raised what he suspected was the most likely key to the cabinet on the right. His hand was trembling, and he shielded it from those behind him as he pushed it into the lock.

  Please turn. Please turn.

  The key stuck.

  No.

  He shifted his weight, pushed harder, and the key turned in the lock. The door swung open. Relief rushed through him as he eyed the boxes and bottles of pills. He found Ibuprofen quickly, but would that be enough of a painkiller for Champion? Ibuprofen was for headaches and general aches and pains. It wasn’t going to touch the pain in her busted arm.

  Think. Think.

  When his daddy had been dying, the doctor had prescribed strong painkillers for him. A morphine derivative, the doctor had said. It had come in a liquid form.

  Could he remember the damn name?

  Nope.

  It began with a D, he was sure. He remembered pouring it into a medicine cup for his daddy to sip through trembling lips. Lips that had trembled like Nathan’s hand was shaking now.

  He thought about making a dash for the door, taking his chances with the soldiers. Maybe he’d be able to push through; maybe they wouldn’t open fire because of all the civilians who might get hit… No, don’t be stupid, Nathan. They won’t care a damn about collateral damage.

  He turned a bottle around so that he could see the label.

  D… Demerol.

  Yes. That was it. Demerol.

  Nathan took the bottle and picked up a small plastic medicine cup from the counter, turning back toward Champion and the others. Brant was moving from his bed toward the pilot, though. He was preparing to harangue her where she lay, his finger already pointing. Nathan took one step and then another. Steps that would take him ever closer to Brant. Ever closer to the moment where he would be busted and his life would be over.