Jail's Bait: Parole's Victim (Book 4)

The whole crowd stared down at the unconscious cop-dressed form as two orderlies came into the room with a second gurney. “Excuse us,” the first orderly said, “we were sent to pick an assault vic- whooo,” he whistled when he saw the beaten man. “Somebody had a hate on for this dude…”

“We’ll get out of your way,” Danny replied then, motioning everyone to back up and away as the orderlies gingerly picked up the limp form and laid him on the gurney, then pulled it out of the room.

“Have a nice day,” the second orderly mumbled as they vanished.

Everyone looked at the retreating gurney, then as one they turned to stare at Joe, who stared back at them all. “Joe, are you sure that’s the same EMT,” Danny asked then, perplexed. “All that happened 10 years ago- 10 years ago tonight, in fact,” he reminded them all.

“I remember it well- you were… somewhat distraught,” Joe said then. “Malik had his hands full trying to keep Marquis calm, Rena was hysterical, and Lamar was too busy trying to console you, so none of you focused much of anything else. I talked to the EMT’s that accessed Robert, and proclaimed him catatonic. This is the same man- I remember his face.”

“Its true, I saw this kat too,” Joan said then in agreement. “Chile, I don’t miss NUTHIN. And I remember EVERYTHANG,” she added wryly. “Its da same kat, he dune gained mo weight, but he still the one dat took Rah-Rah off to the crazy farm.”

“What in the hell is he doing here then, questioning Lamar and me about Rah-Rah?” Malik said, bewildered.

“He what..?” Danny said then, coming closer. Tell us what happened before you knocked out that officer, Malik.”

Malik filled them in on the events leading up to the shooting. “And all of a sudden this idiot starts shooting, and Mar hits the floor. And I felt ‘Joop’ taking over again- that’s twice tonight I lost control.”

“Its understandable, son, with all that’s happened,” Joe said then, coming over to place his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Days like today don’t come along often. What I want to know is why the EMT who pronounced Robbie catatonic shows up ten years later, dressed as a uniform, asking questions about him.”

“I can answer that,” said a new voice from the doorway.

Everyone turned to stare at the man who stepped into the doorway, another EMT- he was middle-aged, dark-skinned and slim, with a sorrowful look on his weather-beaten face. “You’ve grown,” he indicated to a startled Marquis- then he looked around at the group. “Besides the papers and TV, I haven’t seen any of you up close since that night- the night that changed everything for Goody.”

“Goody..?” Danny frowned.

“Clint Good- the man who came in here and attacked you, sir,” he indicated to Malik. “I’m Bill Murphy, Goody’s EMT partner. Goody’s his nickname.”

“I remember your face now,” Joe said with acknowledgement. “You two helped Robert onto the stretcher.”

“Ten years ago I was green, it was my first assignment- assisting Goody as he assessed the patient- Robert Hill- as permanently catatonic. We loaded Robert into the same ambulance we still drive now- and took him straight to the emergency room at Oak Grove that night.” Murphy sighed. “He’s really not a cop, as you probably already guessed.”

“What the hell was his problem,” Malik demanded. “How did he know so much about my cousin and where we were tonight?”

“It was all over the hospital police scanners earlier, that you and your cousin fell off the side of Mt. Rainier,” Murphy explained. “Goody never believed for a minute that Robert died in the fall, and he knew the Rainier River flowed towards the Carthages- we argued for a while over whether he should go there, but in the end he pulled a gun on me and threatened to shoot if I didn’t mind my own business. That looks like the same gun he had,” he indicated to the discarded weapon in the corner near the door- no one had noticed that it lay there. “I don’t know where he got it from.”

“You said this started that night ten years ago,” Danny reminded the cop as he bent down to retrieve the gun, holding it with pocket tissue.

“That night, when we put Robert on the stretcher and set him in to take him to the hospital,” Murphy said, “Goody looked into Robert’s eyes, and he sort of froze- he said it chilled him, the look of horror on that poor boy’s face… he told me days later that he couldn’t stop thinking about that look, that it came to him in dreams. As weeks went on he kept dreaming about the look on Robert’s face, and then his dreams turned… weird.”

“What do you mean, weird?” Joe asked.

“He said that the boy would …come to him in the dream and beg Goody to set him free. He started saying that he thought the boy was sending him the dreams from the asylum, like psychic visions. I thought it was just some left-over trauma or something, we EMTs get shaken sometimes when we’re out on a call- but this plagued him on and on; it even ended his marriage. Their son was just 7 years old; his wife took the baby and left him.”

“Oh my god, another ‘creep-show’...!” Joan groaned.

“After his wife and son left he began drinking, started becoming sloppy on the job- I covered for him a lot because I knew that besides these nightmares, being an EMT was all he had left. Except a couple of years ago, he started smiling again and he cut down on the booze. I breathed a sigh a relief and asked him what made him so much happier- I figured maybe his wife and the kid had come back. But he told me that the reason why he was happier because after all the time he had been to Oak Grove to talk to Robert, the man was talking BACK, having actual conversations.”

The whole room was silent with fresh shock. Danny shook with anger. “Are you telling us that Robert’s BEEN awake all this-”

“No- not at first,” Murphy said with a stricken look, the kind of look a child wore when they had no choice but to tattle on a schoolmate. “As I said before, I was green, and Goody had been on the job in this area so long that everyone respected his opinion. As I got better at assessing trauma patients myself, I realized that the type of catatonia Robert Hill had was only temporary- any seasoned EMT would have noticed that right away- its in the reaction of the irises to strong light. A simple hypo of neuro-muscle relaxant would help the patient out of the catatonia state- gradually.”

“And you’re saying that Goody knew all this- and Robert’s doctors and nurses at the clinic DIDN’T double-check his ‘assessment’?” Joe said suspiciously. “What doctor would take an EMT’s word about a patient...?”

“You don’t understand- you wouldn’t believe it to look at him, but Clint Good has the full respect of the medical community here in Seattle, and he is 99.9% correct in his official assessments on all the patients he brings into the ER,” Murphy explained. “The babies he’s delivered, the cardiac arrest patients he’s brought back, he’s almost never wrong. Everyone knows that, and he was even offered scholarships to continue to full med school. He turned it all down, he wanted to ‘stay in the front lines’… he gets a doctor’s respect. Everyone is so impressed by him, they would never second-guess any diagnosis he made. The doctors at Oak Grove just went along with him.

“So he mis-diagnosed my nephew,” Joe proclaimed in anger, “on PURPOSE.”

Murphy went on. “In the beginning, though, Robert really WAS catatonic- but Goody never told anyone that he gave Robert the NMR hypo before he took him off to Oak Grove. The only reason I know is, a couple years ago he asked me to go to his apartment and find something in his personal records, and I stumbled across the research he’d complied on Robert’s case. It seemed like a great solution to trauma-related catatonia. The potential problem was the side effect.”

“Side effects…? Did that muscle relaxant do something to my father..?” Marquis asked.

Murphy frowned. “It’s not what you think. Given the intense state your father was in that night, the NMR would work, but only gradually. According to the research I’ve done, it differs from person to person. Once worked into the bloodstream; the process could take days, months-”

“-Or maybe ten years..?” Malik asked.

“Well, to tell you the truth, it wouldn’t take that long at all, from what I’ve learned about the condition,” Murphy said then. “A year, half that again, tops.”

“So my father could have been awake all this time, acting like a vegetable on purpose…” Marquis swore, pulling away from Carmen to land his fist onto the nearest wall with a THUMP! that shook the room. “Why would he do that to himself- to ME?!?” Another THUMP! against the wall as he hung his head, angry tears threatening to spill forth.

Danny went over to him, the dried remains of Lamar’s blood still on his hands. “Marquis, think about it. From all you’ve heard and seen of your father, can you picture Rah-Rah letting everyone KNOW he was all right now, and ready to go off to prison...?”

Marquis slowly looked over and stared at his godfather sheepishly, lowering his fist. “I guess I see your point,” he conceded somberly, as his knuckles began to sting from the assault on the wall.

Carmen came over to her boyfriend and examined the back of his hand as everyone else turned back to the EMT. “Goody wasn’t too surprised when Robert actually DID come out of his coma,” Murphy went on. “He had been going up to Oak Grove for years, faithfully- he even met someone else there who had sympathy for Robert, a part time PT, a British girl, from what Goody said. I never met her.”

“We know who she is,” Marquis groaned with some pain; “so they knew each other, huh?”

“Well, they got real tight for a while, and I even caught him taking her a bag of clothes recently,” Murphy said. “I asked him about it and he said she knew of some one down on their luck that needed something to wear…”

“So THAT’s how she got Rah-Rah’s old stuff back to him,” Danny said in surprise.

“What do you mean?” The EMT asked.

They explained how Rah-Rah was wearing the old jewelry he used to wear. “Goody must have kept all his clothes for him since the day they brought him to Oak Grove,” Murphy said in awe, “right down to the socks…”

Joan shuddered again. “Like I said, another creep-show…”

Just then the doctors that rushed Lamar out of the room came back in, their scrubs stained with blood. “Oh good, you all are still here,” the first doctor said, pulling off his face mask.

Malik rushed over to them. “Is he- is he ok..?” His voice sounded like a little-boy, scared and lost.

The doctor took a deep breath. “The bullet hit some serious areas, but in spite of this we were able to repair the damage pretty quickly. He’s survived.”

A chorus of cheers filled the room- while Malik stood stock-still before the tired-looking physicians. “What else is wrong..?” he asked the doctors shrewdly.

“Well, there was an unforeseen complication,” the second doctor admitted. “Is anyone here blood-kin to our patient..?”

“I’m his… father,” Danny stepped forward, a nagging echo in the back of his mind- AM I REALLY..? OR AM I HIS UNCLE…? “What complication do you mean?”

“Oh good, just the man I’d hoped would be here,” the second doctor said with a sigh.

“The bullet grazed the side of the left ventricle, which revealed a pre-existing condition,” the first doctor explained. “How long has your son had the abnormal heart condition..?”

“What do you mean,” Danny said with alarm as Malik turned to him, his face stricken as well. “Besides the occasional broken bone when he was young, he never spent time in any hospital. I was never told that Lamar was in any poor health..!”

“That’s probably because its something one doesn’t test for in a general physical- we just determine if the heart is beating regularly or not. It would take a much more detailed exam to pick up on this,” the first doctor explained. “It was the bullet that alerted us to the problem. Going in the direction it traveled, the anterior wall of the left ventricle should have been torn, but it was only grazed, meaning that the wall is much thicker than normal. This is a symptom of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy- known as HCM.”

“That’s like… heart disease, right?” Malik asked quietly.

“Of a sort,” the second doctor replied grimly. “HCM, in this case, is a gradual thickening of the left ventricle of Lamar’s heart, causing blood to collect in that area slowly. Yet, over a period of time, this imbalance will weaken his heart until… well, it can get bad. Is there a legacy of heart disease with your father’s family..?” he asked Danny.

“I… don’t know,” Danny answered truthfully. “I don’t know much about my… my father’s family, at all.”

“Try to find out anything you can- what we saw looks like he was born that way,” the first doctor said; “and because it’s a genetic birth defect, the only recourse is to have a heart transplant. Otherwise, the condition will worsen over time.”

Everyone stared at each other with growing fear; they all knew where the doctors were leading with this…

“If we can’t find a heart donor, give me the worst case scenario- straight out, please,” Danny said gruffly.

The first doctor spoke up. “Okay, I’ll be as blunt as you need me to. Your son could develop congestive heart failure, and the symptoms might not show up until the last possible moment.” His eyes narrowed in sympathy. “When that happens, without a donor… he will not survive.”

Danny looked at Malik, not trusting himself to speak. Malik looked back at him, his face betraying the same reaction. They both knew Lamar well enough to know he would never take someone else’s chance to have a donated heart from them, so that he could live.

“His only indicating symptom may be a lack of energy as the condition worsens,” the second doctor added; “there will be no pain. He’ll only get tired more often down the line, and soon not be able to participate in any strenuous activities. After some time, he’ll then become bed-ridden and sleep most of the days he has left away. After that, he’ll just… go to sleep one day… you understand?”

There was a moment of shocked silence. “We understand, doctor,” Danny finally said in a flat voice.

“He’s being de-prepped in post-op,” the first doctor said, turning to leave, the second poised to follow. “The post-op nurse will let you know when you can see him… and try to get him on a donor list immediately.”

“Thank you for all your help,” Malik said, his voice also lifeless and distracted.

“Wait, do you know anything about the man dressed like a cop- he was wheeled into surgery a while ago..?” Murphy called after the retreating doctors.

The second doctor turned again to Murphy, and looked at him a long moment. “Are you his next of kin?”

“No, his EMT partner,” Murphy said. “We service this hospital, Mercy and General…”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” the second doctor said, “but his internal injuries were worse then expected. The triage team tried to stabilize him but his ribs were shattered. One of the broken ribs sliced through and punctured both his lungs… most of the doctors on staff tonight are either in surgery or they ran out with the crowd when that shot was fired. In the middle of our other surgery, before we could finish up and get over to his OR he coded; the nurses and orderlies we have left here couldn’t bring him back.”

Murphy’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “But why didn’t one of you go in and see him,” he cried in a panic. “That small surgery you did needed BOTH of you???”

“There are two surgeons in on every procedure,” the first doctor explained grimly. “One to perform, the second to assist in case the performing doctor misses something crucial. That’s ER triage; you should know this as an EMT.”

“How do I tell his wife and son about this...? You don’t know who you let die,” Murphy said in bewildered grief.

“Acutally, his name was Clint Good, top EMT of his peers, here in Seattle,” the second doctor said matter-of-factly, to Murphy’s surprise. “Everyone knew who Goody was. Please give his family our regards.” And with that the two doctors strode from the room as Murphy leaned back against the nearest wall, stunned with grief of his own.

Marquis looked over at Kap and motioned for him to follow. They went to the other side of the room, away from the others. “Do you realize that when right before you came in here, I was kicking that Goody guy in the side, really HARD...?” Marquis whispered.

“Shut-UP, Marquis,” came Malik’s voice from right behind them- making the boys jump as they whirled around; apparently he had followed them over. “Don’t say anything ELSE,” he warned; “I did everything. The nurse can testify to seeing ME attack Goody, and no one else…”

“Pop, I can’t let you take the whole rap for this,” Marquis began. “That’s not fair-”

“None of this is FAIR,” Malik interrupted; “but what’s NOT fair the most is you having to hold off on going to college because you get charged with 2nd Degree Manslaughter…! So SHUT UP and let me take the blame.”

“Pop, you have a record- and you’re a celebrity- judges make examples out of people like us,” Marquis pleaded. “Don’t YOU get locked up again and-and- I mean, what happens if Uncle Mar gets.. well, sick, like the doctors said..?”

Malik’s grim visage was suddenly replaced by a trembling awareness. “That won’t happen,” he declared with some heat.

“Do you really want to be locked up while Uncle Mar starts getting weaker..?” Marquis pressed intently. “Y’all may not have much time left… and even if I get locked up I’ve still got my whole life ahead of me when I get out.”

“DO AS I SAY,” Malik threatened, but his face was pale. “I’ll handle this.” And with that he went back over to where his parents and Danny stood.

Marquis stared after Malik; “I gotta get outta here,” he muttered. He headed for the door. “Carmen, come on,” he said as he stepped over the spots of blood and walked out of the room.

Carmen looked stunned for a second, then she and Angelina followed him out of the room without a word. Kap got to the doorway and looked back inside. “I’ll make sure he’s okay,” he said distractedly to no one in particular, and then he was gone as well.

Before anyone else could say anything, the post-op nurse appeared. “You the people waiting for the shot victim?”

“His name is Lamar Clark,” Danny said- “can we see him now?”

“He’s in Recovery Room One, down the hall. One at a time right now, family only,” she began, but everyone pushed past her and headed down the hall to where Lamar rested.

Danny made to follow them, but Murphy grabbed his arm, holding him back. “For what its worth,” he said as Danny looked back at him, “I am truly sorry that Goody messed around with your family- with your son.”

Danny looked at him; nodding grimly, he pulled away from Murphy and as he walked away he said, “Just be lucky we don’t charge you with aiding and abetting after the fact.” And then he was gone.

Murphy stared after Danny, his face a twist of emotions. The nurse touched his arm. “Were you Goody’s partner?” she asked in sympathy.

“Yes,” Murphy said in a gritty voice, blinking back his eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to… inform his family.” And before the startled nurse could say anything else, he strode from the room, wiping his eyes on his sleeve as he got out his cell phone and began to dial.