Fascinating Villains

{41} - Doctor Russell

I distractedly follow Scott away from the cop car containing Mike's deceased body.

Perhaps I despised Mike, a feeling that was preceded by my disgust for everything he stood for. What I know for certain, though, is that recognizing a cadaver is the opposite of light-hearted.

/At least, when they're already dead, you don't get any false hope./

My colleague's thought is not cynical, it is rather an emotion resembling relief that I hear beneath it.

His point of view troubles me, but there is not time to pause and discuss our values in a long philosophical conversation. In a high school debate, our question would be "Is there such a thing as false hope?". Two of my close friends were members of our high school's debate club, and I attended many of their sessions. I loved the principle of it, even if I would not have dared to join. My frequently unmanageable fear of public speaking was the reason I gave to those who asked for one. My real reticence came from my fear of inadvertently revealing my beliefs to people. I knew I was developing many opinions that contradicted my friends' views and our families' judgments. I did not want my disagreements or my identity to be exposed through hearsay, I wanted to explain it on my own terms to the people I cared about.

What I believed to be an improbable coincidence, being acquainted with deceased victims of the abnormal road incident, keeps occurring. With growing unease, I find more and more people I have met in the giant, flooded wreck of shattered vehicles.

All of them dead.

An unsettling proportion of them are people I have briefly engaged with as Esperanza, which does not steady my nerves in any manner.

Dragging my boots through bloody puddles of rain, lifting fragments of cars, prying open automobile doors and cutting through seat belts... My flashlight hovers upon their lifeless faces and the memories strike me in the stomach like knives.

A woman I distracted at a pawn shop. A mobster who kicked me in the shin. Gangsters, crime lords and petty criminals alike, individuals Foul Play and I stole from, tricked, knocked out... Now, misfortune or a twisted destiny, maybe God's impenetrable ways in a divine plan, or more obviously death itself has robbed them of a chance at redemption.

There are also insignificant beings, who I remember vaguely, but their existence getting cut short is equally unfair.

A cashier from a terrible gelato shop. An employee at the grocery store who did not know where the tortilla chips I was looking for were, but accompanied me through four alleys to find them. A waiter who dropped my glass of water. A substitute mailman that I have encountered at my apartment building.

Scanning the web of thoughts around me, shoving away the eery feeling of knowing a proportion of the people who perished and directing the focus I have left on stitching up a young boy's lower leg, I barely register that someone is knocking on the back doors of our ambulance, that I left ajar. Scott knocks again, nervously calling my name over the commotion as he opens the right door.

"Tanza! You've got to see this."

Once I am done with the patient, I hurry behind him. He leads me three minutes of fast walking away from our transport, nearly at the opposite end of the accident's site.

The ginger indicates a currently crushed luxurious car with his left hand.

"You recognize that car?"

It is a pretty standard expensive vehicle, painted in once shinning white, now covered in dark scratches... We keep advancing, and I catch a glimpse of the plate. I immediately connect the dots.