More bad news at Presby:
Only
“I was told they sent you five,” Deke said.
The harried supervising ER doc shook his head. He looked like he hadn’t slept, combed his bushy hair, or shaved his gaunt face since the previous weekend. Strangely, his teeth were freakishly straight and white and perfect, as if he were merely an actor playing a harried ER doc on TV.
“No. We got four. Three were DOA. The other one doesn’t look too good.”
“Where’s the fifth one?”
“We weren’t sent a fifth one. Just the four.”
“I mean the fourth. Let me see number four?”
The ER doc swept his arm out in a help-yourself gesture. He’d probably dealt with cops and feds before. He knew the futility of arguing for patient privacy.
Deke was directed down a hallway into a receiving area. At first he thought he’d been misdirected, but then he came to a room where he saw three bodies on gurneys. There hadn’t even been time to cover them with sheets. All three of them, dudes. None of them Charlie Hardie.
Back out in the ER, Deke tapped shoulders until he finally had someone take him to the fourth victim from the 11804 Bloomfield massacre. Deke wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that it was a woman, and definitely not Charlie Hardie. She was a plain-looking thing, tiny face and deadly serious eyes. She was dying, the ER doc whispered.
Deke looked at the woman. A girl, really. The doc was telling the truth. She couldn’t even speak, and she kept fading in and out of consciousness.
The idea of a fifth victim nagged at Deke.
What if the ER staff had been mistaken, and Hardie had been brought here? Maybe he was languishing away in one of these rooms while Deke kept spinning around out here. It was something to check out, at least. Otherwise, Deke had nothing. No choice but to return to 11804 Bloomfield and
But after checking a series of rooms again and finding no sign of Hardie, Deke had a brainstorm to check the security footage from the ER. Maybe Hardie had been here and gone. The man had an uncanny ability to survive an insane amount of injury. Unkillable Chuck, they called him back in Philadelphia, and Deke couldn’t disagree with that. Considering what Hardie had been through.
Deke went to the security office and had the old man with the runny nose behind the desk roll back the last two hours.
And there he was.
Charlie Hardie, in a neck brace on a gurney, rolling right into the front doors. Goddamn it, he
So where was he now?
The old man rolled the footage forward; Hardie was not seen again. Deke asked if any cameras covered any other exits. The old man groaned and nodded, then cued up the footage from a side exit. After a few minutes of fast-forwarding, Deke told him to stop. There was Hardie again, same neck brace, same gurney, only rolling
“Get what you wanted?” the old man asked.
“No,” Deke muttered. “Not at all.”
—Timothy Bottoms,
KENDRA HARDIE NEVER liked it when her husband got sick.
Which wasn’t often. A cold in the summer, usually, sometimes a minor bout with the flu in winter. But when it hit, Kendra pretty much left him to die. For the longest time he couldn’t figure it out. Weren’t wives supposed to be all mothering and shit when their spouses were ill? Was she just keeping her distance, afraid she’d fall ill, too? No, it was more than that with Kendra. She’d seem actively
So three years ago, when Hardie been nearly shot to death and was clinging to life in an ICU, Hardie half expected the reaction he received: the cold shoulder. Didn’t mean it hurt any less. Here he was, going through the most traumatic moment of his life—the senseless slaughter of his closest friend and his family—and still, Kendra kept her distance. As if he had nothing more than a bad cold.
The day he arrived home from the hospital Hardie wanted to shout at her, Please, put me out of my misery. What’s going on? Why aren’t you speaking to me? Isn’t this what you wanted? Me, not working with Nate? Me, home more often? Was she furious because the Albanian hit men had shot up their house—and it was a stroke of luck that she and the boy weren’t home? If so, fine, let’s have it out, yell at me, do something…
But at the time, Hardie believed himself too weak for an argument. He merely asked if she’d call his doctor to find out whether he would up his pain meds a little. She did, and the doctor said no, he should try to cycle down, in fact. Kendra Hardie didn’t like her men sick.
The next time Hardie woke up he was staring at a bright light, listening to the murmured conversations around him. For a moment he thought it was three years ago, that he was at Jenkintown Hospital, fighting for his miserable life, and that his recent limbo-style existence was just a fever dream. He blinked. The light was fiercely bright, ridiculously bright. Like the shining gleam off a tooth in God’s own pearly smile. The voices kept murmuring, which was rude. Didn’t they know he was dying over here?
“…seen anything like this, have you?”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t you wonder?”
“Wonder what?”
“Where he’ll end up.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’ve been hearing stories.”
“Oh, boy.”
“No, seriously, I hear that these near-death cases we get, we end up patching them up just good enough so they can be transported to, like, Kosovo or Thailand, only to be pulled apart again a piece at a time, packed in ice, and—”
“Hand me a suture, will you? Anyway, I recognize him. We’ve got a minor celebrity here.”
“So who is he?”
“If you don’t know, you don’t want to know.”
“Give me a hint.”
“I did, actually, and no, I will not give you another.”
“Dick.”
“What time is it?” Hardie asked, his voice dry and weak and cracked.
“The hell?”
“Was that…?”
Hardie tried to blink, as if that would help his eyes adjust.
“Christ on a cracker. Our guy’s awake.”
“You’re the anesthesiologist. What did you give him?”
“Not enough, apparently.”
“What time is it?” Hardie asked.
