“Good evening, Trooper Wyatt,” greeted the nurse behind the counter. “I assume you’re here to see the Korean patient with the gunshot wounds?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lonnie replied.
“He’s in the secure ward with two AST guards at the door. He started to get violent, so we had to pump him with some drugs. He is pretty sedated, but still mumbling a lot in Korean. The troopers with him wouldn’t let our hospital translator in for fear she would get hurt.”
“Thanks. I’ll head back there.”
Wyatt left the nurses’ station and walked down the carpeted corridor to the electronically locked doors that lead to the security ward of Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The security ward consisted of a pair of halls with ten patient rooms on either side of a nurses’ station and video cameras in the rooms and corridors. It was reserved for violent or suicidal patients who needed to be kept under guard.
Faloa Tualoloa, a huge Samoan man, was the uniformed night security guard at the booth in front of the double-door entry that lead into the security ward. A twenty-something white man in a white janitor’s smock and scrubs leaned up against the podium, chatting with Faloa as Wyatt approached. Both men stopped mid-conversation and stared at her as she moved toward them.
“Evening, Trooper Wyatt,” said the Samoan guard in a deep voice with an easygoing South Pacific accent. A sheepish grin spread on his face as Lonnie Wyatt approached. “Always a pleasure to see you here.”
“Hi, Faloa. Quiet night?”
“It was, until your crazy man came in and tried to trash the place. He sure did a lot of damage for such a little guy. It took me and two troopers to hold him down. He’s in 2-5.”
She approached the door and held her ID badge to the small gray box on the doorframe. A red LED light turned green on the box. A high-pitched beep emanated from the lock, followed by a metallic click that signaled the door was ready to open. As she walked through the heavy wooden doors, Wyatt heard the voice of the janitor behind her. “Man, I’d like to have her frisk me. Good God! That is one hot cop.”
“Shut up, Arnie,” Faloa responded. “That’s Lonnie Wyatt—she’s a really nice lady. And besides, you’d end up getting your butt kicked. She’s pretty, but she’s a black belt, too. I’ve known her since high school.”
The janitor snickered. “I wouldn’t mind a little rough stuff with her.”
“I’m warning you, Arnie,” Faloa said sternly. “If you talk about her like that, I’ll kick your butt.”
“You like her, don’t you, you big Samoan teddy bear.” The janitor laughed. Their voices faded as the doors closed behind her. She walked to the second corridor and then around a corner. A tall trooper stood outside the door of 2-5.
“Hey, Edwards,” Wyatt greeted the trooper standing at the door. “What’s going on?”
“Wyatt, glad you’re here,” replied Mike Edwards, a calm and gentle giant. Even without his smoky hat, Trooper Edwards stood six-and-a-half-feet tall. With the hat, he was seven feet. Edwards poked his thumb toward the door to room 2-5.
“That guy has been jabbering in Korean non-stop for the past half hour. He was unconscious when we got him here, but woke up as we wheeled him down the hall. The little bugger jumped off the freakin’ gurney and walloped the medic who was next to him, busted the poor guy’s jaw. He started going nuts on everyone around. We had a hell of a time trying to restrain him.”
Edwards shook his head as he relived the wild moment in his mind’s eye. “It took me and Harland and Faloa everything we had to hold that dude down. He was doing all kinds of serious martial arts crap on us. Once we had him down, they doped him up pretty hard until he was out again, and we got him strapped down to the gurney.
“He’s still drugged up, but they had to lower the dosage because of the wounds on his chest—they were afraid his heart or lungs might fail. I guess the beanbag SERT hit him with was a little too close range. It shattered a couple ribs and may have bruised his heart. Harland is in there with him now while the nurse is checking his IV connections.”
“Thanks for the info,” Wyatt said. “I’ll go in and see if I can figure out what he’s saying.”
She went through the heavy wooden door into the room. Trooper Harland stood just inside. Where mild-mannered Trooper Edwards allayed children’s fears with rows of stuffed animals in his cruiser window, Harland was the opposite. He was a short man, barely matching Lonnie’s five-foot-four height, but built like an iron battleship. He had a troll-like face that could frighten a Rottweiler. He nodded to Wyatt as she walked past him and approached the single hospital bed in the center of the room. The patient lay with his upper body elevated. A nurse stood next to the bed, writing on a page attached to a clipboard.
A clear plastic IV bag hung from a metal stand. Its tube ran through a computerized box that dripped a mechanically metered injection of medication slowly into the flow of saline solution. A sick-looking yellow-tinged bruise circled around the outside of the deep purple bruise where the IV was inserted. The patient’s chest was bared, revealing a massive deep purple, red, and blue bruise across the left half. His right cheek was raw with a bright red abrasion, rug burn from the fight in the hall.
The nurse looked up from the patient. She was young, about twenty-five, probably just out of nursing school. Her straight, yellow-blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and tied with a red cloth scrunchie. A stethoscope hung around her thin neck, the ear pieces dangled over
