Black

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

An ambulance rumbled into the emergency entrance bay at Hollywood Methodist Hospital with the third gunshot wound of the night - Fridays were big ones for trauma physicians all over town, as drug deals went south and passions ran hot ahead of Saturdays, which always set records for man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Something about weekends brought out the killer instinct, the desire to rob that liquor store, jack that car, teach that bitch a lesson. The emergency room was the province of the uneducated, the stupid, and the desperate at that late hour, and the staff had the air of combat medics doing triage after a particularly bloody assault.

Sick babies hacked their colicky coughs at the ceiling as immigrant mothers who spoke no English tried to comfort them. Drunks held broken arms and bloody faces while waiting their turn, and the aged and dying did so in quiet misery seated in uncomfortable plastic seats, attended to by indifferent receptionists who would gladly have been doing anything else in the world for a living - and soon would be the second they got a chance to update their resumes. The harsh glare of cheap fluorescent lighting gave even the healthy a sallow, sickly look, accenting shadows under tired eyes and flesh tugged earthward by gravity's unforgiving pull.

Upstairs in the critical care ward the graveyard shift was on duty, only two harried nurses to mind the forty-six rooms. Every night on that floor at least two, and sometimes more, patients would go to their final reward, requiring reports be filed and relatives notified and rooms cleaned and cleared for the next unlucky winner. It was an unending grind that wore the nurses down over time, and required nerves of steel and an incredibly positive disposition that could withstand the corrosive effect of watching people die every day.

Freddie Sypes was in a private room, hooked up to an array of monitors, having been CT scanned and MRI'd before having his jaw wired and his broken wrist put in a cast, an appointment already made with a cosmetic dentist who could repair the damage from the beating. There was no intracranial bleeding that the doctors had been able to detect, but he was due for another MRI in the morning to confirm, and had a concussion, the extent of which was currently unknown. He'd regained consciousness only briefly and had been incoherent, and was now on high-dosage pain medication, drifting in and out of slumber when interrupted by the staff, who tried to keep patients with concussions awake for observation, but with only marginal success late at night.

The door of his private room eased open on silent hinges, the only sound the beeping of the monitors and the hiss of the air conditioning from the overhead vent. A figure in hospital greens approached his bedside, a surgical mask in place, and after a long glance at Freddie's bruised face, produced a syringe and swiftly emptied the contents into the IV line. The figure hesitated for a second, then reached out with a trembling hand and smoothed Freddie's hair before retreating back to the door and slipping out as quietly as a wraith.

Four minutes later Freddie slipped into a coma. Alarms sounded on his monitors as well as at the nurse's station, and the staff sprang into action. The ward physician came running from the employee lounge, and after a quick evaluation, ordered another scan.

Within half an hour Freddie was dead.

Nobody saw the intruder.

An autopsy would reveal in forty-eight hours that he hadn't died from the blows, but rather from lethal injection.

By which point, none of it would matter.

Not that it did anymore for Freddie.

~ ~ ~

Black pulled up outside of the Hollywood Community Police Station and lowered his passenger window, ignoring the various shifty lowlifes that were loitering in the vicinity as he searched for Hunter.