The Survivor

Chapter 49

The security guard overflowing the folding chair next to the elevator glanced up from the L.A. Times, then returned his gaze to the print. Misha glided to the nurses’ station at which Janie had been standing moments before.

“I am looking for Nurse Jane Overbay.”

“I’m sorry, she’s not working today.”

Misha walked past the nurses’ station, heading down the crowded hall. Still he didn’t spot Janie and Nate, frozen in the bustling corridor.

“Sir, where’s your visitor pass? I’m sorry, you can’t go in here without a visitor pass. Sir!”

Without breaking stride Misha drew a handgun from inside his jacket, aiming over the counter as he passed, and shot the nurse through the hip point-blank. The force blew her straight off the chair onto the floor, where she began convulsing. Behind him the security guard could barely wobble to his feet before Misha pulled a second gun with his free hand and fired twice, streaking the wall behind the man. A newspaper section fluttered down atop his body, soaking up blood.

A beat of stunned silence.

And then the medical ward erupted. Patients shouting, wheelchairs overturning, bodies stampeding for the stairs. As Misha powered down the hall, kicking aside gurneys and toppling IV poles, Janie shoved Nate through the doorway into his room. He scrambled across the bed and grabbed his jacket, flipping it around, looking for the pocket, willing his weak hands to work faster.

Footsteps. Screams. Another gunshot, followed by a primal howl.

“He’s just shooting people,” Janie said.

Nate had the gun out finally, in his trembling grasp. He pushed Janie behind the dividing curtain and tugged it. In the ceiling track, the nylon wheels gave a screech, the sound lost beneath the crash of a cart overturning in the hall and more shouts of panic.

The boom of a door being kicked in up the hall. A startled shriek. Then a matching screech of a curtain being raked back.

Seconds later another boom. Another screech.

Janie’s panicked breaths against Nate’s ear. “He’s going room to room.”

They waited, the scrubs-green sheet rippling before their faces. With an unsteady thumb, Nate pushed the safety off his Beretta.

Heavy footsteps-probably boots. The complaint of a desiccated voice, a crash, then a faint moan. Boom. Screech.

Dr. Griffin’s voice, right outside in the corridor. “Don’t, just don’t-”

Gunshot.

Janie gave out a faint cry, pressed both hands across her mouth. They could hear Dr. Griffin’s wet, labored breaths.

Now right next door. Boom. Screech.

Janie’s whisper came again, a rush of hot air. “We should run.”

Nate firmed his hands around the stock and mouthed, No time.

The door to Nate’s room was open; they’d get no benefit of a warning. But the footsteps neared.

Tap tap tap.

Pause.

Somehow, even through the opaque curtain, Nate sensed a change in the quality of the air. A presence. Misha was in the doorway. One brisk pace into the room. Another.

Nate willed his forearms still. He took a silent step back and raised the gun. The barrel wavered ever so slightly in his weak grip.

Janie leaned against the wall, her face tense with anticipation. Nate aimed at the curtain, chest high, ready for the burst of movement.

A scream came from down the hall, then feminine footsteps skittering toward the stairs.

Misha stopped.

He must have been debating whether to continue on toward the curtain or go after the footsteps in the hall. Was he pondering whether the fleeing woman was Janie? They could hear him drawing breath. Calm and steady. The guy’s heart rate probably hadn’t ticked north of sixty.

Nate sighted on the rubbery partition curtain, knowing that Misha was a few feet beyond but unsure where. A missed shot would be answered with a barrage.

The woman’s footsteps in the hall grew louder.

Misha set down his boot again, the faintest scuff against the tile. Nate shifted the gun toward the noise and felt it slip soundlessly through his weakened fingers.

With all his focus, he willed his hands to clamp, but the muscles wouldn’t obey. The gun spun in slow-motion rotation, the checkering on the handle grazing his fingertips. And then it was free, in the air, tumbling toward the hard tile.

He tried to suck in a breath but found his lungs already full. Bending, he lunged for the gun, missing, but then Janie’s hand shot into sight and caught it two inches off the floor. She had made not a noise.

Crouching, they stared at each other, wide-eyed, neither daring to breathe. A squeak of Misha’s boot on the tile, just beyond the curtain.

In the stillness they heard the woman’s footsteps veer up an adjoining corridor, the sound starting to fade. And then another noise chimed in, that of distant sirens.

Misha retreated now, sprinting off, presumably after her.

Nate and Janie exhaled together, an explosion of relief. Moans reached them from the hall-Dr. Griffin, in agony.

Janie inched the curtain aside, and they peered through the still-open door. Dr. Griffin lay in the corridor, hands across his thigh, blood spurting through his fingers at heartbeat intervals and painting thin lines on the floor.

“Arterial bleed,” Janie said, pushing the pistol into Nate’s hands. “I’ll stabilize him and be right back. A minute, tops.”

She started up, but Nate grabbed her shoulder. “Misha’s still out there.”

She pointed at Dr. Griffin. “He will die if I don’t go.”

The frantic look between them couldn’t have lasted a second, but it stretched to an eternity, one objection after another shuffling through Nate’s mind. The determination on Janie’s face told him he didn’t really have a say anyway. He removed his hand from her shoulder.

“Take the gun,” he said. “I can’t grip it.”

Pocketing the Beretta, she was up and into the hall, a quick glimpse bringing into view only a few knocked-over patients and a resident hiding behind a gurney. No Misha.

Tearing a manual blood-pressure cuff from a cart, she sprinted across to Dr. Griffin. The slick red of his hands was all the more pronounced against his skin, which had gone dusty gray. He applied feeble pressure, too stunned to bear down on the wound. Supplies rolled in the growing puddle; he’d knocked over a cart on his way down.

“I think I went out from the shock,” he was mumbling. “But I’m back now.”

Janie tugged off his loafer and worked the cuff over his sock, sliding it up along his saturated pant leg and over the gushing rupture above his knee to the proximal side of the wound. His body went rigid with pain, but she ignored his reaction. Her hand pumping furiously, she inflated the cuff to full pressure, the bleeding slowing, slowing, then stopping.

Grabbing at the scattered supplies, she came up with a cylindrical pack, which she ripped open with her teeth. Crouching over him, she plugged the gauze into the wound, readjusting the doctor’s hands. “Not outta the woods. Tamponade the bleed. Here. Hard. Harder.” With one hand she thumbed an edge of paper tape up off a roll.

He looked up at her, his expression of gratitude turning to alarm. She didn’t have time to turn around before a hand set down on her head, fisting her hair and ripping her straight back off her feet.