The basement stairs led to a modest living room, and from there, the front door brought him back to the thick summer air.
“She said something about a car and driver,” Jonathan thought aloud.
“I’m voting that it’s him,” Boxers said, pointing to a late-model Expedition, where Dom D’Angelo sat on the flatbed under the open tailgate, waiting.
“Well, well, well,” Jonathan said as he strode across the grass to greet his friend. “What on earth-” The dour look on Dom’s face froze Jonathan’s words in his throat. “What?” That’s when he noticed that his old friend was wearing his priest uniform, clerical collar and all.
Dom stood. “It’s Gail,” he said.
Jonathan didn’t ask how Dom had arranged for the private Lear from El Paso directly into Scottsdale Airport. He was sure it had involved Venice and her access to his credit card, and all of that was fine. While he worked the phone, trying in vain to get meaningful information from a medical staff who feared HIPAA lawsuits far more than they cared about close friends and relatives, Dom and Boxers left him alone in the aft end of the plane while they clustered in conversation up front near the door to the flight deck.
Big Guy looked especially uncomfortable in the luxurious leather of the passenger compartment. He’d told Jonathan before that he hated the view from the cabin. “Who the hell cares where you are or where you’ve been?” he’d said. “I want to look at where we’re going.”
The flight was blessedly short, and since Scottsdale Airport specialized in executive charters, and therefore understood the peccadilloes of wealthy, busy people, the time from wheels down to having his butt in the seat of a moving car clocked in at something less than ten minutes. And nobody gave a crap about his filthy appearance or camouflaged clothing.
That would come when his driver whipped into the Osborn Medical Center’s driveway and disgorged his passengers into the emergency department via the space normally used to park ambulances. He’d left his body armor and weapons in the Lear-all but his.45, which was legal to carry in Arizona, but he had nonetheless concealed in a high hip holster under the flap of his shirttail.
He strode to the triage station, and as he approached, he drew the attention of an armed security guard, who stepped forward to intercept. As he closed the distance, though, and got a really good look at Boxers, he seemed to lose some of his resolve.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” he said.
Dom took the lead. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Can you direct us to the trauma intensive care unit?”
The guard’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Good afternoon, Father,” he said. Something about that collar brought out politeness in people.
It was all Jonathan could do to endure the navigation instructions. He wanted to be with Gail, to see for himself what those animals had done to her. Having just navigated the length of a country and survived a running firefight, he was more than capable of finding a hospital room on his own.
A beefy hand landed on his shoulder. Boxers’.
“Hey, Boss,” Big Guy said, barely above a whisper. “You need to take a breath and settle down. We got no enemies in here. Everybody’s on Gunslinger’s side.”
Point taken. The main problem with adrenaline was that once it got into your system, it took its own sweet time going away. It was time to shift from war mode to peace mode, and he didn’t have the luxury of his typical transition time.
“Thanks,” he said.
Dom led the way from here. The walk turned out to be far shorter in execution than it was in description. Once they got to the door of the unit, Dom stepped aside to allow Jonathan to press the buzzer.
“I’m here to see Gail Bonneville,” he said to the harsh voice of the woman who answered his push of the button over the intercom.
“She’s already got one visitor,” she said. “Only one more is allowed.”
“I’m bringing my priest with me,” Jonathan said. There wasn’t even a hint of request in his tone.
The nurse didn’t reply, but the lock buzzed and Jonathan pulled the door open.
He looked to Boxers. “Sorry, Big Guy.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Boxers said. “I’ve seen plenty enough hospitals. I’m gonna go find the cafeteria and clean them out of food.” He started down the hall without waiting for a reply.
Jonathan paused at the door and looked at Dom. “How bad?” he asked. Again.
“She’s been shot, Jon.” Dom’s tone had a what-do-you-want-from-me edge. “Three, four hours ago, last time I saw her, she was still in the ER and they said they thought she’d live, but there were no guarantees.”
It was pretty much what he’d reported the previous two times Jonathan had asked the question. Word for word, in fact.
Jonathan realized that he was stalling. He hated hospitals. He’d logged too many hours in them getting himself repaired, and he’d lost way too many friends in them.
The locked double doors led to an anteroom, and from there to another set of double doors that remained closed but unlocked.
Stepping through those doors into the trauma ICU itself was like stepping back in time-into a past where you could bring modern technology along for the ride. In recent years, hospitals had undergone face-lifts that made them look like happy, inviting places, their hallways resembling high-end hotels.
In here, though, where life was as fragile as a single missed symptom, nothing counted but efficiency. Glass- walled rooms guaranteed a lack of privacy as mostly naked patients lay plugged in to more technology than a space shuttle. Swollen yellow bags of urine hung from every side rail, the specific color and quantity of their contents serving as important indicators of their owners’ health.
Gail lay in the room that was directly diagonal from the entryway, requiring Jonathan and Dom to pass assorted victims of varied traumas. Most appeared to be unconscious, and of the two whose eyes were open, both showed no interest in the television that played in the bracket near the ceiling. Instead, they stared out through their drug- induced hazes into whatever images their brains had manufactured for them. At least they didn’t appear to be in any pain.
Jonathan saw Irene Rivers in the chair at Gail’s bedside before he actually saw Gail beyond the enormous wrapping that encased her head.
“You didn’t tell me that Wolverine was here,” Jonathan said sotto voce to Dom.
“She didn’t tell me she was coming.”
Irene seemed to sense their approach and turned in her seat to see them. She stood and extended her hand. When Jonathan took it, she covered it with her left. “I thought she deserved a little company,” she said, answering the look she saw in Jonathan’s face. “She’s tough. I wish we still had her on the payroll.”
Jonathan smiled at the compliment, then eased past her for a closer look at Gail. Her face was swollen and bore purple highlights, but he’d seen worse. He knew to look past the drain lines and the intravenous tubes, and was heartened to see that the dressings and bandages were pure white. That meant she wasn’t bleeding and she wasn’t leaking cerebrospinal fluid, both good signs.
“Shot in the arm, the chest, and the head,” Irene said over his shoulder. “And she was still able to take out four bad guys.”
Jonathan turned to face Irene. Again, his face spoke for him.
“We don’t know the details,” she said. “I’m not sure we ever will. A worker at the Crystal Palace heard noises in the stairwell and stepped out to investigate. He found a blood trail and followed it to Gail. The worker called nine-one-one from his cell phone, and thank God he did, because if he’d called on a landline, it would have gone to the same security desk that turned away the police that responded to my first call. Scottsdale Police and Fire responded and because I had been knocking around for information, they dialed me in, too. Our people followed the same blood trail back up the stairs, and we found the guys she’d killed.”
Irene paused to make sure she had Jonathan’s full attention. “Wait till you get this,” she said. “Your girlfriend made it down eleven floors with those injuries.” She looked back to Gail. “One tough, tough young lady.”
Jonathan had known that since the day they’d first met. But he’d known a lot of very, very tough people who’d lost their battles against bullets.
