Duby's Doctor (20 page)

Jean side-hopped right in order to stay
vertical. His leading left arm drooped, but he jerked it back into
position. Blood seeped through shoulder of his shirt, forming a
slowly spreading red circle.

Rico’s grin grew even nastier, and he winked
at the bleeding shoulder.

Jean’s not-quite-useless left leg slapped the
grin off Rico’s face by slashing Jean’s left foot across Rico’s
nose. Cartilage and bone splintered with an audible crunch, and a
geyser of blood erupted from the center of Rico’s face. Jean winked
at the bloody nose and, for the first time, smiled.

Rico wasn’t grinning any more.

Both men returned to ready position,
circling, bleeding, panting, sweating, leading with their left.

Rico switched to lead with his right, closing
in, circling Jean’s face with a right, open fist. “You got only one
good arm and one good leg, Dube,” he taunted. “How long you think
you can last?”

“Long enough.” Jean shifted his weight to his
left leg and sent his right foot crashing into Rio’s chin. Rico’s
head snapped backward, but it wasn’t enough to knock him out.

Circling, shaking off the chin blow, Rico
emitted a wicked laugh. He said, “Once you’re down and immobilized,
maybe I’ll let you watch what I do with your woman before I kill
you bo—“

“I am NOT ‘his woman’!” Mitchell shouted from
doorway.

Jean didn’t react, as if somehow he had known
she was cringing just outside the door for the past few minutes,
listening to the sounds of battle. Rico, however, involuntarily
glanced toward the noise of Mitchell’s shout.

That split-second diversion was all Jean
needed. Lightning-quick, he pounded four left knee-kicks into
Rico’s ribs, armpit, throat, and jaw – bam-bam-bam-bam.

Rico fell like a sack of cement. He did not
move.

When Jean’s left foot returned to the floor,
the knee was too badly battered to support any weight at all. Jean
swallowed a shout of pain when the foot hit the floor and again,
less successfully, when his body fell to the carpet, landing first
on the shattered knee and then on the bleeding shoulder. He nearly
passed out from the pain. He rolled onto his back and toward the
right, writhing to escape the pain permeating the left side of his
body.

Mitchell ran toward Jean, but before she
reached him she kicked the unconscious Rico hard in the ribs. Then,
she stomped hard on his foot, on her way to Jean. Then, she sat on
the floor, laid Stone’s pistol on the carpet, and took Jean’s
bloody head into her lap, cooing comfort sounds and gently stroking
his hair. She didn’t hear or see Carinne enter the room.

Carinne crossed to Rico’s prone body and
watched until she saw that he was breathing. “Thank you for not
killing him,” she said to Jean, but he was scarcely conscious and
did not answer.

Mitchell, startled, snatched up Frank Stone’s
pistol. When she saw that only Carinne stood before her, she again
placed the gun on the floor. “Don’t tell me you care for that piece
of...,” Mitchell began. “...well, I don’t know any of the right
words, but you know what I mean.”

Carinne smiled wanly. “Yes, I know. I know
what Rico is, but he’s someone I need to help me run my father’s
business ... for now, at least.” She approached Jean as Mitchell
began helping him to sit up. “Will he be okay?”

“Can you help me get him on the bed, please,”
Mitchell said.

The two women were able, with Jean’s minimal
help, to get him from the floor to the nearby bed, where they laid
him atop the duvet. Trish, lying unconscious at the far side of the
huge bed, remained undisturbed. If Carinne was concerned about
Jean’s blood staining her elegant bed linens, she gave no
indication.

“I need some ice,” Mitchell said when they
had him settled. “Can you call nine-one-one?”

“Already done,” Carinne said. “We had a, sort
of, situation downstairs, so the EMTs are on the way.” She pointed
toward another part of the suite. “You’ll find ice and towels under
the bar in the TV room.”

Mitchell took half a step away then paused.
She looked from Carinne to Jean and back again. Jean seemed to be
asleep or unconscious.

“I’ll stay with him,” Carinne said.

Mitchell nodded, gave Jean a long look, then
absently picked up the gun from the floor and walked toward the
other room with Stone’s old pistol hanging, forgotten, from her
hand.

Mitchel had barely walked out of the room
when Frank Stone appeared in the doorway and looked warily at his
niece and four prone bodies. He lifted an eyebrow at Carinne.

“They’re alive,” she answered his unspoken
question.

He sighed. “Good. Looks like only one
fatality, so far at least. That’ll make the paperwork a helluva lot
easier. How’s Duby?”

Carinne was still sitting on the bed beside
Jean. She took his hand in one of hers, using her free hand to
gently brush his hair back from his blood-streaked face. “Doctor
Oberon went to get some ice for the knee. We should get him to the
hospital.”

“No prob,” her uncle said. “EMT’s are
downstairs. I’ll go tell ‘em to get up here with a gurney ASAP.” He
turned as if to leave, but stopped and looked back at her. “You
okay with all this? It’s a lot, losin’ your dad and all.”

Carinne looked up from studying Duby’s face.
“I don’t think of it as losing a father; I think of it as gaining
my freedom plus my own business.” She had never looked more like
the Stone side of her family than she did at that moment.

Frank nodded and left the room.

Carinne turned her attention back to Duby’s
unconscious form. “Thank you, my friend,” she whispered, and she
leaned down to press a kiss to his lips.

A shot exploded behind her. Carinne leaped to
her feet and spun around.

“I-I’m s-sorry,” Mitchell stammered, dropping
the gun onto the hole she had just shot into the carpet beside her
feet. Her eyes had gone wide with shock. “I f-forgot I h-had it. I
g-guess I-I squeezed the t-trigger thingy.”

Carinne relaxed and exhaled in relief. “It’s
okay. It’s easy to do. You found the ice?”

Mitchell looked at the stack of towels and
the ice bucket in her opposite hand as if she had never seen them
before. “I found the ice,” she murmured.

Carinne stepped aside to give Mitchell access
to the bed and Jean, but Mitchell only stepped forward as far as
the foot of the bed, where she laid the ice and towels.

Frank Stone rushed through the door,
red-faced from running back upstairs. “What happened?” he cried.
“Oh,” he said, taking in the gun and the hole in the floor.
“Everybody okay?”

“We’re fine, Uncle Francis,” Carinne said.
“Doctor Oberon was holding that pistol and it went off. Nothing
that can’t be fixed.”

“I’m sorry,” Mitchell said, looking from
Carinne to Jean and back again. “Just pack that knee in the ice,”
she told Carinne. To Stone she said, “Can I get a ride home,
please?”

“You’re not gonna ride with him in the
ambulance?” Stone said, surprised.

“Carinne can do that. Right, Carinne?”

Carinne nodded. “Sure. If you like. You’ll
come later?”

“They’ll call me if they need me.” Mitchell
walked as far as the door and waited for Stone to shift his bulk to
one side so she could pass him.

“I’ll have a unit drive you home,” he
said.

She nodded. She took a halting step and
seemed about to turn back and look at Jean or Carinne, but she
forced her eyes forward and continued walking toward the
stairs.

Several hours later, near midnight, Jean
stirred against a pillow and blinked in confusion. In seconds he
identified the antiseptic smells and subdued sounds that told him
he was once again in a hospital. The light was dim in his room,
but, when he turned his head one way and then another, he could see
that the room was empty except for himself.

He was aware of aches and discomfort in many
parts of his body, but they were nothing compared to the burning of
his shoulder wound, which was a close second to the agony pulsing
through his left leg. He felt around on the sheet beside his hand
and located the call button. He centered his thumb on the button
and crushed the device in a desperate grip.

Yes, he was injured. Yes, his pain was
terrible. Yes, waking up alone was disconcerting. He was not
desperate because of those things, however. He pressed the call
button hard, again and again as if demented, because he had an
overwhelming and ominous conviction that something was horribly
wrong. Something outside of himself and his physical pain.
Something he needed to fix immediately, but first he would have to
find out what it was.

The door swung open and a white uniform
approached his bed. As the person drew nearer he realized it was a
nurse and it was someone he knew. “
Madame
Erskine,” he
breathed, and smiled at her.

Gently prying his hand from its grip on the
call button, Nurse Erskine smiled back at him. “Hello, John. We’re
sorry to see you in here again. I gather you’ve had a life of
adventure and excitement while you’ve been away from us.”

He watched her as if waiting for her to
answer a question he had not asked.

She moved to the foot of the bed and picked
up the chart hanging there. “Are you having a lot of pain?”

“Some,” he said.

She looked at him accusingly. She knew he was
lying.

“A lot,” he amended.

She nodded, accepting this answer as truth.
“Your doctor has left an order for pain meds; I’ll get them right
away.” She replaced the chart and turned to go.

“Merci
,” he said. “Where is
she?”

Erskine stopped in the doorway. “She
who?”

“My doctor.”

“Your doctor is a he, and he’s gone home for
a few hours of sleep. He’ll be in to see you in the morning. I’ll
be right back with those meds.” She was gone and the door closed,
before he could gather his wits to ask what had happened to Dr.
Oberon.

He must have passed out again at that point.
He didn’t remember the nurse returning and adding the pain
medication to his intravenous drip. It must have been effective,
though, because he slept with no awareness of pain until the noise
of breakfast carts in the corridor roused him.

Hector Velez called “
Buenas días
!”
as he pushed through Jean’s door with a tray balanced on one hand.
“One vegetarian breakfast for my main man,” the orderly said with a
grin as he rolled the over-bed table into position in front of his
friend.

“
Bonjour
, Hector,” said Jean with a
bleary smile, still not quite focused after several hours of
drugged sleep. “It is good to see a friend.”

“Yeah,” Hector said while he raised the head
of the bed until Jean was sitting up. “Not so great to see you in
here again, but good to see you, too,
amigo
.”

Jean looked at the breakfast tray as if he
hardly recognized it and didn’t particularly wish to consume
it.

Hector observed his friend a moment then
asked, “Think you can eat, bro?”

Jean shook his head slowly.

“Okay.” Hector suggested, “I’ll leave it here
while I go deliver meals up and down the hall, then I’ll come back
and see how you’re doin’. Cool?”

Jean nodded. Hector was almost to the door
when Jean said, “What is the matter?”

“Wh- what's the matter with what?”

“Has something bad happened to
Michel?”

Hector was nonplussed. “Doctor Oberon? I
dunno, man, I think she’s okay. What’s the deal?”

“Nobody is telling me anything, and I have
not seen her. I do not think she has been here at all. And
Madame
Erskine said my doctor is a man! Where is
Michel?”

Hector walked back to the bedside and placed
a consoling hand on Jean’s left shoulder. Jean flinched almost
imperceptibly, and Hector quickly moved his hand to the right
shoulder with a quick, “Sorry!”

“Look,
amigo
, you been here, what,
about six, seven hours? They brought you in, in the middle of the
night, and you been unconscious just about the whole time. You
haven’t seen anybody, okay? Relax. Try to eat something. I’ll come
back in a little while. And, if I hear anything about Doctor
Oberon, I’ll let you know. All right?”

“Okay.”

“Good. See you later.” Hector left the
room.

Jean leaned back against his pillow and
stared unseeing at the breakfast cooling on the tray in front of
him. He could not eat; nothing could get past the bowling ball of
anxiety that had somehow lodged itself in his esophagus.

Hector returned an hour later with no news of
Dr. Oberon. He took the cold, untouched breakfast away with
him.

After Hector left, Jean picked up the phone
from the bedside table and set it on the bed beside him. He dialed
the hospital operator and requested that Dr. Oberon be paged.

Seconds later, the nurses on Jean’s floor
heard the announcement over the hospital’s public address system.
“Dr. Oberon, Code Green, 2114, please. Dr. Oberon, Code Green,
2114.” The page was repeated five minutes later, and again five
minutes after that.

The nurses looked at one another and at
Jean’s closed door. Obviously, Dr. Oberon was not answering the
page to call Jean’s room. Either Dr. Oberon was not in the
hospital, or she was deliberately avoiding the man in room 2114.
Both options would have been out of character for the good doctor.
The nurses shrugged or shook their heads.

In his room, Jean listened to the first page,
then the second page, and then the third page, which he knew would
be the last if no one responded. In the silence that followed the
third page, he watched the phone beside him on the bed. When it
refused to ring, he picked it up and dialed Mitchell’s home phone
number.