Do No Harm

Chapter 75

David flew up Lincoln, narrowly missing a collision with a banged-up Pontiac, and floored it, screeching right on Wilshire and heading toward Peter's office. He was shouting into the mike and trying to listen to the earpiece simultaneously, which made both efforts ineffective. A blast of noise erupted through the earpiece, causing him to jerk back his head, then the unit went dead. What could have done that to the digital transmitter?

Concern did him little good, so he tried to think clearly and pragmatically. From what he had overheard, he knew Peter was in trouble, that Clyde had been planning on harming him to frighten David. The cops would arrive at Peter's building soon-maybe they even had by now-but David had to get there as quickly as possible. In the likely event of a standoff, he was certain Clyde would demand to talk to him.

The carpet cleaning van caught up to him after a few blocks but fell back again, and he lost sight of it when he ran the red at Federal. He spoke continuously into his mike, updating the cops on his location.

He careened through Westwood and pulled down an alley into the back lot of Peter's four-story building. Peter's car, a gray BMW with a hand brake sticking up near the wheel, was parked in its usual spot, but there were no police cars.

David got out of his car and glanced up the empty street anxiously. "Where the hell are you guys?" he said, bending his neck so he could speak into the mike. "Why aren't there police cars here already?" He stepped back, glancing up the side of the building at the third floor. No movement or light. Clyde could be there right now, torturing Peter.

David couldn't wait for the police to arrive. "I'm going in," he said to the mike and the empty parking lot.

He searched his trunk for a weapon, but he had nothing, not even a tire jack. An old-style otoscope was tucked into his father's doctor's bag in the trunk, the weighty metal handle protruding. He grabbed it, and snapped off the plastic head used for ear exams. It would have to do.

Tossing the Motorola and the dead earpiece into the trunk, he sidestepped a Dumpster and reached the building's back door, made of glass. The glass, evidently shatterproof, had been dented near the handle, but had remained intact. The lock had been gouged and scratched up with a tool of some sort. The door was slightly ajar, a Carl's Jr. Superstar wrapper wedged between it and the frame to prevent it from closing.

David knew he should wait for the police to arrive, but the possibility that Clyde was torturing Peter was too much for him to bear. He pushed the door, and it drifted open easily, the wrapper falling to the floor. Stepping into the dark interior, he closed the door slowly behind him, leaving it unlocked.

Not wanting to draw attention by using the elevator, David entered the dark stairwell and crept upstairs. He pushed the third-floor door open, peering up the hall, and immediately saw the triangular fall of light from the open door of Peter's procedure suite. He eased his way down the corridor, the thin carpet padding his footsteps. A deep wailing became audible. Mournful sobbing interspersed with violent breathing.

David drew near to the open door, inching his way forward, his hand curling around the metal shaft of the otoscope. The crying continued, broken by fragmented mumbling and a slapping noise. Reaching the door frame, David pressed his face to the wood and rotated his head slightly so he could see into the room with one eye.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the swinging lamp breaking the dimness. Clyde sat despondently against the far wall, holding a pistol limply between his legs. His face was red, his acne standing out in severe blotches. Sobbing and murmuring, he was rocking himself forward and banging his head back into the wall. He stopped only to rend his face with his hands, clawing at his cheeks, knocking the pistol against his crown.

David's chest tightened when he saw the pair of inert legs protruding from behind the desk, the metal bands of the braces visible at the ankles. The rest of Peter's body was out of view. A stun gun lay on the floor in the corner, near Clyde.

A humming in his ears. A tingling in his mouth. He wanted to run downstairs-either Yale or Jenkins should have arrived by now-but the possibility of Peter's needing immediate medical attention held him in place. David couldn't leave his unconscious body up here with Clyde.

Clyde's face was lined with scratches from his nails, some of them beading with blood. He was facing the door-there was no way David could surprise him.

Clyde directed his words at Peter's body. "You weren't supposed to do that." He scrambled to his feet and regarded Peter, like a problem he did not know how to solve. His face vacillated between agitation and confusion as he rocked back and forth. He scratched his head with the barrel of the pistol, then aimed it at Peter.

David had little choice.

Wedging the otoscope in the back of his pants, he stepped from cover, holding his hands out to his sides. Startled into a little leap, Clyde aimed the pistol at him. David made no sudden movements, and prayed Clyde's hands would stop jerking.

"Don't you move," Clyde bleated. "You stay right there." He wiped his running nose with his sleeve. "I'm in control here. I know what I'm doing." Despite his agitated condition, Clyde was steady on his feet, and his slurring had stopped.

"All right," David said. "You don't need to hurt him. I'm here now. You can scare… you can scare me directly. Just let me check on Peter first." Calmly, slowly, he pointed at the two inert legs. "Let me… " His throat dried up, and he lost the end of his sentence.

Clyde's face trembled; he was still pulling himself back from the edge of sobbing. Raising the torn leg of his scrub bottoms, he rubbed a red patch on his calf. "He shocked me. Knocked us both down. I hit him on the head. He got still." He slapped his head, and the noise rang around the room. "He hurt me, and I've gotta… I've gotta take it out of him." He began mumbling incoherently.

The current of electricity from the stun gun must have shorted out the digital transmitter. Which meant the shock had somehow run through Peter's left leg brace. "Can I step forward and look at his body?" David asked. He spoke slowly and clearly, as if to a child.

The pistol snapped back up at his head. "It's a trick. You're here to trick me and-shit, shit… " Clyde began to rock his upper torso, his eyes pressing closed. "Three two one the door back from the

… "

David's head was humming. "Clyde. I'm going to take another step forward. And I'm going to look at Peter. I'm going to do this now." There was something comforting in the knowledge that all his words were being transmitted through the hidden wire to the police officers. It made him feel less alone. Even so, he wondered what was taking them so long to arrive.

Clyde continued to rock, his lips moving silently, but his eyes were open again. David eased slowly forward, and Peter's body came into view behind the desk.

Rage and sorrow mingled, rising from David's gut. He crouched over Peter and raised one eyelid, then the other. He was relieved to see both pupils dilate. Resting two fingers on Peter's neck, he counted his pulse for ten seconds, then multiplied by six. Slightly elevated, around seventy-five beats per minute. He walked his fingers along the back of Peter's head until he found a boggy spot near the base of his skull. A cursory feel revealed it to be a basic hematoma. Peter was going to be fine.

Clyde's body odor hung in the room. The smell was cut with something else, something bitter and medicinal, though David could not place it.

David's lips parted, trembling. He closed his eyes, not wanting to speak, afraid of what he might say. He needed hours to process the scene before him and find the correct words, but he had barely seconds.

David caught a glimpse of guilt and anguish in Clyde's face. Clyde became aware of David's gaze, and anger intensified in the flat stones of his eyes, the change so sudden it was as if he'd donned a mask. "He hurt me, the cripple." He crouched over Peter's head, leering down at him. "You weakling. You got it good." He rubbed the swollen spot on his leg.

David kept his body angled slightly away from Clyde, as if turning from a live bomb.

Clyde looked up at David, his cheeks glistening with sweat. He was breathing hard. "I promised I'd teach you about fear," he said. "It's deep and dark, like a well. I'm gonna put you in it."

David drew one hand slowly behind his back. He had just grasped the shaft of the otoscope when Clyde's eyes snapped back into focus.

"What are you doing? What are you reaching for? Turn around. Turn around! "

As David turned, Clyde shoved him against the window, his hand grazing the wound in David's side. David's forehead banged the glass, and his hands gripped the blinds, bending them. He stifled a cry of pain. Clyde ripped the otoscope from the band of David's pants, and David tensed, waiting for it to be brought down on his head.

But instead, Clyde's voice came, low and amused. "You were gonna hit me with a doctor's toy."

Through the bent blinds, David saw the carpet cleaning van in the alley across the street. Two flashlights dancing on the third floor of the building opposite them. David felt a sinking in his gut when he realized Jenkins, Bronner, and the other units had gone to Peter's old procedure suite-the one that was functional and directory listed. Like Peter's new suite, it was also on the corner of Westwood and Le Conte, so David's directions hadn't helped. If he could mention his true location, the mike would convey it to the cops in the field. Watching the flashlight beams play across the dark rooms across the street, David tried to figure out some way of mentioning his location that Clyde wouldn't find unusual. The cops would never spot his gesturing through the dark window. He only prayed Clyde wouldn't notice the flashlight beams in the other building.

A clicking noise as Clyde played with the otoscope, and then a beam of light on the back of David's head.

Clyde's voice was jumbled in his throat. "I'm talking to you."

David turned his head to the side so the intense light shone across his profile, through the bent blinds, and out the window. He hoped Jenkins and Bronner would spot it. "Yes, Clyde?" He turned his head slightly so the edge of his cheek caught the beam, then moved his head again, creating a flickering light to better catch the cops' attention.

Clyde clicked off the otoscope and tossed it aside. "Were you gonna hurt me with this?"

In case no one had picked up the otoscope light issuing from the dark building, David had to try to convey their location, no matter how awkward it came out. "Why are we here at-?"

"I asked you a question."

David was aware with a sudden certainly that his life hung in the balance of the next few seconds. He knew Clyde was going to press the pistol to his forehead even before Clyde did it.

Knowing his life could end with a one-inch movement of Clyde's finger sent a ripple of terror through David's body. Clyde studied him curiously. David's scrub top clung to his body with his sweat. He could feel the beats of his heart in the blood rushing through his face.

Clyde's uneven voice drifted from behind the gun. "You didn't help me at all. Not like you promised. You took away everything from me. My room and my car and my lye. I can't… I can't get at people anymore. To ruin their faces." He twisted the pistol, digging the barrel into David's cheek. David fought not to withdraw, not to react.

"I have no one left to scare." Clyde grumbled, a noise lost deep in his chest. "Except you."

From the jumble in his head, David pulled a thought and shaped it like a weapon. "What did you think about," he asked, in a calm, smooth voice, "when the nurses locked you up in the dark? When no one would take your hand? What did you think about then?"

Clyde drew back his head, as if he'd been slapped. The Beretta wavered slightly in his grasp, but remained against David's forehead. "I'm not… I don't… " He blinked hard, then pressed his eyes closed as David had known he would. "Three two one stand back-"

David's hand curled into a fist and, jerking his head clear of the pistol, he swung it sideways into Clyde's ear. He struck Clyde's head with bone-jarring force, and Clyde gasped, the pistol kicking in his hand and blowing out the window where David's head had been a moment ago. Clyde sank to the floor, landing with a hard slap. David crouched over him, pinning his gun arm with a hand, his knee pressing hard into Clyde's trachea. Clyde grunted and struggled against him. David dug his fingers into Clyde's forearm, but still Clyde did not drop the pistol. His hand clutched the weapon, the barrel sweeping back and forth, aiming across the open door.

"Stop fighting me!" David shouted through clenched teeth. "Stop-"

Jenkins and Bronner crashed through the doorway, shouting, their Berettas finding Clyde like compasses pointing north.

"Don't move!"

"Back away from the-"

A shot rang out, spinning Jenkins around. He knocked against the door, a growing spot of blood darkening his sweatshirt at the shoulder, and sank to the ground. His legs stuck out before him like a doll's, his pistol hand rendered useless by the shoulder wound. He tried with his good hand to take the pistol from his limp hand, but could not reach.

Bronner's pistol wavered; David was in his line of fire. Stutter-stepping forward with his pistol aimed, Bronner freed his cuffs from the case on his belt with an adept jerk of his hand.

Clyde's hand felt up David's side beneath his shirt and found his wound. A fat finger pried through the stitches. David felt a hot flash of pain and then his skin giving way. He relaxed his grip on Clyde for a split second, and Clyde hurled him off his throat. Ablaze with pain, David rolled into the far wall and knocked his head. Through a drunken haze, his cheek pressed to the floor, he watched Clyde find his feet and start to stand.

Bronner was already mid-dive across the room. He caught Clyde with a staggering right and fell on top of him. He was fighting to angle the pistol barrel at Clyde's chest, but Clyde bit his gun hand, tearing a mouthful of flesh from the fat muscle at the base of his thumb and spitting the pink plug on the floor. Bronner cried out, dropping his pistol. David tried to crawl to it, but was paralyzed with pain.

Clyde and Bronner struggled and rolled, and Clyde's pistol fired, blowing out a chunk of wall. Bronner managed to land on Clyde's back. Clyde's gun hand was pinned beneath his body, and Bronner grabbed his other arm and twisted it back, snapping a handcuff around the free wrist.

Clyde bucked and spun, whipping the loose handcuff around his wrist. The sharp edge bit into Bronner's temple, splitting the skin. Clyde wormed his other arm free. Tightening his fingers around the pistol, Clyde punched Bronner in the mouth with it, knocking him off. Bronner fell to the floor, unconscious, and Clyde scrambled to his feet and flashed past Jenkins.

Though his wounded arm did not move, Jenkins's hand contracted around the pistol, angling it up at Clyde and firing. By the time the report echoed through the empty room, Clyde was out the door into the hall. There was the sound of a door splintering-maybe being smashed in-and then silence.

David and Jenkins regarded each other from their respective slumped positions. Jenkins's head was tilted forward so his chin rested on his chest, his breath fluttering the tattered fabric at the edge of the gunshot hole in his shoulder. His arm lay limp-the shot to the shoulder must have compromised the brachial plexus.

The floor was icy cold against David's cheek. He willed his lips to move. "Do you have an exit wound?" he asked.

His face stretched in a grimace, Jenkins reached behind his shoulder and patted his back. "Not that I can reach," he said. "How's Bronner? Peter?"

"Peter will be fine." David pushed himself up onto all fours. The pain in his side spread quickly through his abdomen, but he started to crawl toward Bronner anyway. Though it was bleeding heavily, the gash above Bronner's temple was superficial. David grabbed the otoscope off the floor, raised Bronner's eyelids, and shone the beam of light into his pupils. They constricted nicely. "Equal and reactive," he said. The wound on Bronner's hand was fairly deep and would need to be treated for infection, but it was not bleeding badly.

Still slumped against the door, Jenkins grimaced again and spoke. "We responded to the wrong location. Six units across the street. Me and Bronner saw the light and came to check it out."

"It was my fault," David said. "I should've thought to clarify which building." He was just about to speak into his mike when he saw Jenkins fumbling for his portable with his good hand. Jenkins held it close to his lips. "Eight Adam Thirty-two. Officer down. Officer down. Officer down. Shots fired. Ten eight hundred block Le Conte. Third floor. Where the fuck am I?"

David looked up from Bronner's hand. "Ten eight seventy-five Le Conte."

"Be advised it's Ten eight seventy-five Le Conte." Jenkins's words were slowing down. When he spoke again, it was little more than a mumble. "Roll an RA. Suspect possibly still in the building… considered armed." He released the button on his portable, and his good hand slapped to the floor. His breath came in jerks.

David pulled himself to his feet. A sticky band of blood ran down his side, pooling at the top line of his pants. For a moment, he thought he might faint, but then his adrenaline kicked in, granting him clarity and a momentary relief from the pain.

He trudged over to Jenkins. Jenkins's eyes flickered to the door. "Go get him," he said.

David crouched over Jenkins and pulled him slightly forward off the door, causing him to cry out. There was no exit wound. David pulled the stethoscope from his jacket pocket, balled up the jacket, and handed it to Jenkins. "Apply pressure," he said. Using the stethoscope, he checked Jenkins's lung beneath the wound. Good breathing sounds.

David strung his stethoscope across his shoulders and stood. His wound was running. "You're going to be fine," he said. "I'm going to leave you here."

Jenkins nodded. In the distance, the pleasing sound of approaching sirens.

David dropped the otoscope, pried the Beretta from Jenkins's inert fingers, and stepped into the hall. The pistol felt weighty and awkward in his hand. One of the doors across the hall had been kicked in, and he trudged over to it, leaving a thin trail of blood drops on the carpet.

He looked down and noticed another trail of dripping blood preceding his own. Clyde had been hit.

David peered past the splintered door, ready to draw back at the first sign of Clyde. He flipped the switch with a trembling hand and blinked against the light. The window across the empty room had been opened. The pistol lay beneath the sill where Clyde had dropped it.

Heavy footfalls thundered in the stairwells-cops on the way to Peter, Jenkins, and Bronner. David limped across the room to the window. The fire escape outside wound down into the construction site of the building that fronted on Le Conte. The building was a confusion of Sheetrock planes and crisscrossing boards. The crooked scaffolding up front had been repaired.

A wide smudge of blood darkened the painted rail in three distinct lines-finger marks. "Clyde's been hit," David said into the mike. "He dropped his gun. And I think he exited the east side of the building." He ducked through the window, biting his lip against the pain in his side, and stood on the metal structure. The wind blew through the skeletal boards and beams, rattling the plastic wrapping covering the wheelbarrows.

David began the slow, painful climb down the metal ladder, stethoscope swinging from his neck, pistol heavy in his hand. He walked through the dark, hollowed interior of the building. The wheelbarrows and slanted boards threw shadows thick and fearful. The hiding places were countless. He lifted the plastic covering on one of the wheelbarrows, but there was only gravel beneath.

One piece of Sheetrock hung off a 4-by-4 beam from a single nail, swaying slightly in the breeze like a weighty pendulum. Tucking his elbow to his wound and taking in air erratically, David walked to it, trudging through sawdust and nails.

As he drew near, the Sheetrock smashed toward him, going to pieces and scattering at his feet. Behind it, three flashlight beams shot out at his face. The planks and boards around him rustled and creaked, then the whole interior of the building suddenly was alive with loud, booming voices and beams of light.

"Put down the fucking-"

"— hands on your-"

"Drop it! Drop it!"

David dropped the pistol immediately. The chopping approach of a helicopter reached a deafening decibel, then a spotlight laid down over David. He raised his arms, even though it sent a screeching pain through his side.

One of the figures stepped forward from behind the Sheetrock, waving his arms, a pistol in one hand. He entered the spotlight, his face glowing in the wan yellow light. Yale.

Behind him, the other men relaxed. Dalton turned his back, barking orders into a portable.

Yale popped out his earpiece. "Are you injured?" he asked.

David shook his head weakly. "Peter, Bronner, and Jenkins are upstairs. They're all injured, but no one's critical. Jenkins sustained a GSW, but he'll be all right."

"The building's already secured. Medics upstairs. What the fuck are you doing with a weapon?"

"It's Jenkins's."

"Oh," Yale said. "Even better."

The officers who'd been hidden in the building around David cleared the area in groups, their loud, forceful footsteps and jangling equipment belts reminding him of platoons deploying.

The helicopter flew away, spotlight sweeping the street. Police cars were suddenly everywhere, herding people off the sidewalks, setting up sawhorses.

Yale glanced down at David's bloodstained shirt. "How bad?"

David shrugged.

"We need to get you to the hospital."

"So you didn't get him?"

Yale's jaw tightened. "We'll get him. He couldn't have gotten far."

"How long ago did you secure the area?"

"Just as you stepped out onto the fire escape."

"He got out the window at least four minutes before that. Look for blood."

"You said he was hit?"

"I believe so. Jenkins got off a shot. There was blood and Clyde dropped his gun, so I think he might be wounded pretty badly."

"Maybe he went somewhere to curl up and die." Yale slid his pistol into his shoulder holster with a quick, practiced movement. Shaking his head, he crouched and picked up the Beretta that David had flung to the ground. "Stepping into bad lighting and a tense situation with a loaded weapon. Good thinking."

Yale's portable squawked and emitted an indecipherable burst of staticky voice that Yale seemed to understand. "We've got some drunk frat boys messing with the perimeter at Weyburn and Broxton," he said, starting to jog off. "I assume you can find your way to the ER?"

David nodded. Dalton trudged after Yale, face downturned into his own portable. He patted David on the hip as he passed, ballplayer style.

The building was suddenly deserted again. In the space where the dangling piece of Sheetrock had been loomed the sturdy outline of the hospital against the night sky.

David began the tedious walk across Le Conte toward the ER, pain coursing through his gut with every step. Some people had gathered behind the sawhorses at the sidewalk. A news photographer leaned forward into David's face and shot what must have been an entire roll of film. An officer stopped David with a gloved hand on his chest. "Sorry, buddy, no one gets through."

"I'm going to the ER," David said, turning to show his wound. The officer, evidently impressed, let him pass.

Trying to keep pressure on his wound, David walked up the slope, through the clusters of trees near the PCHS structure where Clyde had been arrested, down the curving sidewalk where he'd assaulted Nancy, into the ambulance bay where he'd attacked Sandra.

Manning the security desk in the lobby, Ralph watched David speechlessly as he limped in and shoved through the swinging doors into Hallway One. David spotted the UCPD cops before he saw Diane. They looked on edge; clearly, they'd been alerted that Clyde was in the area.

David nodded at them and peered into the crowded CWA. His walk over had opened the wound further, drenching his shirt. Diane handed off an armful of folders, barked a few orders into the phone, and wrote an order against her knee.

The taller of the two officers directed an exasperated expression David's way. "She's like the Energizer bunny on coke. We're having a tough time keeping up." He gestured at David's bloody shirt, then inside the CWA. "You'd better get that looked at."

Diane wiped a patient from the board with an eraser and tapped the slot below. "I'll take Van Canton in Four and I need the- " She froze when she saw David in the doorway.

The room fell silent. The nurses and doctors watched them both.

Diane wore an expression of blind panic.

"I'm all right," David said. "It's not a gunshot wound. Just broken stitches."

She dropped her chart on the ground and crossed the room in four furious strides, embracing him hard around his neck. He held her clumsily with one hand, the other pressed down over his wound. When she came away, her scrub top was stained with his blood.

She flicked her bangs out of her face, the color slowly returning to her cheeks. "Let's get you to a room," she said.

The CWA remained silent behind them as she helped David down the hall. The officers followed Diane a few paces behind like obedient puppies. She brought David into Exam Fourteen, Clyde's old room, and sat him on the table.

"He attacked Peter," David said. "I managed to get there before he killed him. We fought, but he escaped. He's somewhere in Westwood-the cops are sweeping the area now."

Diane hugged David's head, burying his face in her chest. "Enough, okay?" she said. "Okay?" She drew back and crouched, raising his shirt. She tested the edge of the wound with a finger. "You need to be restitched."

David reached down and touched her face. Her wounds were closing over nicely, drying out and resolving themselves into faint scars. He felt himself brimming with emotion and knew it showed in his expression. Diane stood and her face softened, laying the foundation for a smile that had not yet come. Her eyes, cool and emerald, were vulnerable and deadly serious.

"I don't love you," David said, a smile touching his lips.

It took Diane a moment to find her voice and respond. "I don't love you either."

Guiding her face with his hands, he kissed her tenderly on the mouth. She leaned into him, and he inhaled the fragrance of her hair.

A loud knock on the door, then it swung open. Jill leaned into the room. "We have a thirtyish Caucasian male, GSW to the right shoulder, just hit the ambulance bay."

From David's embrace, Diane regarded Jill, who raised her eyebrows expectantly.

"Jenkins," David said. "Go."

Diane turned and headed for the door, grabbing a pair of gloves from a nearby cart. "Don't go anywhere," she said over her shoulder.

David sat on the examination table fighting the pain, which was proving to be an exhausting job. He removed the wire from his chest, wincing as he pulled off the tape, and dropped it on the floor.

A gurney swept past the open door on its way to the trauma room, a cluster of shouting nurses and doctors surrounding it. Diane was hunched over the front of the gurney, backpedaling, adjusting the placement of the bell of her stethoscope and shouting orders. Through the flurry of bodies, David saw Jenkins's face, drawn and unamused, but fully conscious.

David wondered about himself. His career at UCLA was likely over. He would receive plenty of opportunities to work elsewhere, he was sure of that. The chief of staff at Cedars-Sinai had been pressuring him for years to come run their department. Switching hospitals seemed appealing, but David thought he'd take a few months off first, for the first time in his adult life.

Bronner came in next, walking unevenly but under his own power, pressing a bloody bandage to his hand. A uniformed cop escorted him. They walked past the open door of David's exam room without noticing him. Peter's gurney followed shortly afterward, surrounded by ER staff. Peter was stirring, but still seemed groggy. David couldn't get a good look at his face, but he saw the braces against his bare legs. Peter straightened his leg, and a patch of cloth fell from the metal joint at his ankle to the floor. Hospital blue. A torn piece of Clyde's scrub bottoms.

One of the doctors pulled up, letting Peter's gurney continue up the hall, and turned to face David through the doorway. He wore a white coat, outdated eyeglasses, and a Zantac pocket protector. His peppery black hair, collected in tufts, was matted down around his skull. The mousy, red-rimmed eyes were magnified through his thick lenses, and David was stunned to realize that he was looking at Ed's latest persona.

Ed's tongue shot out from his mouth, small and pointy, and moistened his lips. He blinked a few times in rapid succession, a perfect imitation of a facial tick, then flipped something up like a coin and caught it. The digital transmitter from Peter's brace. Ed raised two fingers and tapped them to his forehead in a salute. Before David could react, he turned and vanished.

David leaned back on the exam table and focused on breathing evenly. He found the jarring sounds of the ER oddly soothing-gurney wheels on tile, scalpels clinking on trays, monitors beeping as they traced hills and valleys.

An orderly left a covered body on a gurney across the hall from David's room, and shouted into the CWA, "Someone call morgue for a pickup!" before disappearing back down the hall.

David stared at the dark, lumpy body bag. The cadaver inside was obese and tall, like Clyde. The pain in David's side flared when his feet hit the floor. He shuffled to the gurney and leaned over it, taking a deep breath before unzipping the bag.

The face of an elderly black man peered out at him. David let his breath out in a rush. Though the cadaver was fresh, a bitter, medicinal smell wafted from the fabric of the body bag. Just like the odor he'd noticed emanating from Clyde in Peter's office. He bent over slowly, though it pained him, and picked up the swatch of fabric from Clyde's scrubs. He pressed it to his nose, and inhaled.

The stench of formalin.

At once, David knew with the same gut assurance that came when he pulled a cluster of symptoms together and produced a diagnosis. He trudged slowly down the hall, past the frenzied trauma room, back into the heart of the hospital.

"Hey, Dr. Spier," a lab tech called out. "Get back to the room. Someone'll stitch you up in a sec."

David kept walking, drawing looks from patients and other physicians. Blood dribbled from his wound, leaving a vivid red drop every five or so feet-his spool of thread through the labyrinth. He headed down the quieter halls of the hospital.

Punching a four-digit code into the Omnilock, he stepped through the door into the back corridor. He walked slowly to the freight elevators used for hauling dead bodies up to the crypt. The elevator whirred and creaked on its way up, the bright light overhead assaulting his senses.

It halted with a definitive thud on the seventh floor, and the doors spread. David stepped out into the unlit corridor and walked to the anatomy lab. Another door, another four-digit code. The dissecting-table doors that closed up over the cadavers were all laid open, the units resembling hatched pods. The tables were bare and scrubbed clean. David noticed a ball of wadded cheesecloth at the head of one of the tables. Clyde had used it as a pillow these last days; he'd slept on the dissecting table like a vampire in a coffin. Beside the table was a mound of food that looked to be scavenged from trash cans-sandwich rinds, skins of oranges, bent yogurt cups. Next to that, a scattering of scalpels, scissors, and beakers. And, of course, a container of liquid DrainEze.

The light in the prep room was also off. David stepped through, approaching the mighty wooden door of the crypt. The door clicked loudly when he tugged the handle, then he was standing in the flood of light from the interior, the strong odor of formalin gusting around him. Row upon row of bodies hung from their heads, swaying ever so slightly on creaking chains and forcipiform clamps. Propped against the far wall, at the terminating point of a messy band of blood, was Clyde. A handcuff encircled one hand; the other was pressed to the gunshot wound in his side. He'd been crying.

He reached for David shakily, the loose cuff swaying beneath his wrist. No sensation of fear flickered through David; he felt only a steady, hardened calm. He propped the crypt door open.

Clyde's voice was jerky from his irregular breathing. "They don't

… they don't look at me here." He gestured to the hanging bodies. "And they don't leave. They can't up and leave me." His face trembled, his lips down-bending and spreading in a guttural cry. "It hurts… it hurts a lot."

"I know," David said.

"I just wanted to be better. That's all I ever wanted." Clyde banged his head against the wall, sending a dull vibration through the room. "I took the pills, so many pills, but they didn't work. Nothing worked."

Still swathed in a blanket of veritable calm, David moved toward him.

"Don't take me to them," Clyde moaned. "Please don't let them have me."

David crouched over him, ignoring the hand Clyde curled in his shirt. Jenkins's bullet had left a neat hole in Clyde's right upper quadrant abdomen. The entry wound was just beneath the ribs, angled upward. The bullet had probably nicked the liver. Clyde gasped, sending a spurt of blood through the wound and across his spread fingers.

"God, don't let them poke and pry at me. I'm scared of them. S-so scared." His legs kicked dumbly against the blood-slick floor. "It hurts oh Jesus it hurts."

The top of Clyde's fist pressed hard into David's cheek. David shoved Clyde's hand away roughly, and Clyde whimpered. Panting and grunting, Clyde tried to slide himself up the wall to a standing position, but collapsed. David watched him with an angry calm. He thought of Nancy's distorted face, and Diane's cringing as he kissed her, and felt his anger intensify until it burned hard and gemlike.

Clyde slid away from the wall, using a hand to move his legs. He eased himself onto his back, trembling, the stray handcuff chattering against the cold floor. He reached gently for David, but, again, David pushed his hand away.

Clyde's voice was a hoarse, terrified whisper. "It's so awful out there. The cops and people who want to pry at me." He looked at David with a startling clarity. "I don't want to leave this room," he said. "Not ever."

Crouching, David slid his stethoscope from his shoulders and into position. He checked Clyde's heart rate. Tachycardic. His ER instincts flared. Call for a gurney, rush the patient down to the ER, get lines into him. "I need to get you downstairs," he said. "You need help."

Clyde's entire face quivered. "No, no, no. Don't make me. I don't want to anymore. I don't want any of it anymore. Give me a pill to make me end in here."

"I can't do that," David said.

"… please?"

"No. I will not."

Clyde watched him for a moment, his eyes beady and glinting in his wide head. "W-why?"

"I'm your doctor."

"Then let me… " Clyde's breath hitched in his throat, a hiccup of a sob. "Let me stay here." He broke down, weeping pitifully. "Please don't take me to them. Any of them."

David felt emotion welling in his throat, his eyes, his face. His voice was shaking. "If I don't get you downstairs right now, you will die," he said, with a slow vehemence. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Clyde said. "Yes."

David's fist tightened on the branch of his stethoscope. He should be irrigating Clyde's wound, paging surgery, pushing morphine. He felt something break inside him.

"I'm sorry," Clyde said. "For everything I've done. I wish I could take it back."

David watched Clyde through his thawing numbness.

Clyde's breath hitched in his chest several times. When he spoke again, his voice took on an eerie calm. "It hurts all the time. Into my head. Sounds and noises and such. Like a train. The only calm is around the edges, where there's quiet dark and no one to look at me." His eyes were watering, steady, silent streams of tears carving down his broad cheeks. He reached and clutched David's leg pitifully. David stood and took a step back, his stethoscope falling from his shoulders. Around him, the yellowed bodies hung and swayed.

David thought of the blood Clyde had lost, and the long and painful surgeries he'd have to endure if he hoped to survive. He thought of the slow, agonizing recovery, the grueling courtroom trial, vicious prison-yard tauntings and cell-block beatings, and he realized that the choice Clyde was making was not much of a choice at all.

"Hold me," Clyde cried. "P-please. Don't leave me… don't leave me alone." He gasped and bled, his eyes never leaving David's. He tried to touch David's leg again, but could not reach.

David watched Clyde writhing on the floor. After a few moments, Clyde's face blurred before him. David sat down beside him on the cold, hard floor.

He took Clyde's hand. It was warm and sticky with blood.

Clyde's breaths were growing more shallow. They were the only sounds to break the silent hum of the crypt. "You'll stay with me?"

David nodded.

"You won't… you won't leave? Until it's over?"

David shook his head.

Clyde squeezed David's hand, his lips trembling. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

He kept his eyes on David, his breaths jerking his chest. An expression of resignation settled across Clyde's features. His body loosened, then his head rolled up and to the side. The wrinkles smoothed from his forehead. David lowered Clyde's limp hand, bringing it to rest on his chest.

He closed Clyde's eyelids with a thumb and forefinger, and stood.

The freight elevator doors opened loudly down the hall. He heard a cavalry of footsteps, and Diane's worried voice calling out, "David, are you here? Where are you?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but was still too close to weeping, so he took a step back from Clyde's body and studied the floor, gathering the scattered threads of his emotions. His stethoscope lay on the tile, curved like a caduceus snake.

Diane cried out for him again, down the hall but growing nearer. Wincing through the pain, David crouched and picked up his stethoscope. He turned to the door, pulling the stethoscope across his shoulders, and began the painful shuffle down the hall to Diane.

"Here," he called out. "I'm here."