Caveat lector
Betad by Linda of Sentry Post fame, thank you kindly.
Thought for the day: life sucks and then you die
THREE BLIND MICE
By
Sealie
Prologue:
Blair knew that he was
pacing, and that it was irritating the watching detectives, but he simply could
not stop. He told himself it was the pain of his broken right collar bone that
kept him moving, he didn’t believe his own excuse.
Waiting and pacing…
waiting for the results from Jim’s cat-scan.
A passing nurse had
informed him that the last thing any doctor wanted to do was unnecessary
surgery but it did look like a subdural haematoma.
She hadn’t wanted to tell him anything but the student had hauled her into a
secluded corner and questioned her like Jim with one of his suspects. The sheaf
of forms that another nurse had handed him as Next-of-Kin mocked him. It would
be his decision—Jim was deeply and profoundly unconscious.
‘It must of happened when he banged his head on the window.’
“Mr. Sandburg?” a
compassionate voice spoke softly. The doctor was a small man, rotund and
busy-harried like most medical workers.
“Yeah,” Blair glanced at
the name tag, “Dr. Roget?”
“I understand that you’re
Detective Ellison’s Next-of-Kin?”
“Yes—what’s happening?”
Blair clamped down on the strident tone threading through his words.
“Surgery,” Dr. Roget said
succinctly. “The clot is typically subdural, that’s
something of a catch-all term, there is a large clot
under the membrane enveloping the brain. The clot is pressing on the optic
region and the medulla oblongata.”
“Is there any other
treatment?” Surgery seemed too invasive. “Jim’s really sensitive, allergies, I
don’t know how he’ll respond to anaesthetics or even painkillers.”
“Allergies?”
Doctor Roget inquired.
“Yeah,” Blair said, and
winced as his sling moved. It was as a neat sling designed to minimize the
newly broken bone by tucking his hand up by the base of his throat. “I told the doctor who treated me—he said
that he would go and speak to the doctor who was treating Jim—you, I suppose.”
“Tell me the details.”
Roget shepherded the exhausted student to a quiet corner.
“I’ve never managed to get
him to go to his doctors for sensitivity tests or even allergen testing, but…
like ibuprofen, ibuprofen gives him an upset stomach. He said that when he was
in the army one of his inoculations gave him hives, he wouldn’t tell me which
one.”
Roget sucked absently on
his knuckles, evidently deep in thought. “What’s the name of his local doctor?”
“It won’t help you,” Blair
said decisively. “He’s never reported his allergies,
he just grins and bears it.”
“Ideally I’d like to see
his army records but I don’t think we have time for that luxury.” With a
brusque motion he tapped the clipboard which Blair held, “I require your
signature before I can perform surgery.”
“What about his
allergies?” Blair asked hollowly.
“I’ll inform the
anaesthetist that we may have problems, some anesthetics
are tolerated better than others in these cases.”
“Surgery.” Blair swallowed. “Is there anything else you
could do?”
“We could treat him with
anticoagulants,” Roget said neutrally.
“But you don’t recommend
it?”
“Both treatments have
their risks.”
“Which one is less risky?”
Roget shrugged.
“Personally, I would go with the surgery. If the bleeding restarts the damage
could be irreparable. Anticoagulants increase the risk of bleeding.”
Blair chewed furtively on
a hang nail. “Surgery,” he decided.
Roget retrieved the
consent form and held it so the student could scribble his signature left
handed on the form. As Doctor Roget beetled away Blair wondered if he should
have asked another doctor for a second opinion.
Thoughts and fears
spiralled out of control. Blair braced his head against one hand and
concentrated on not breaking down. A hand on his shoulder broke the
nightmarish, terrifying thoughts assailing him. Blair lifted his head and
stared into the compassionate eyes of Simon. The captain’s cigar was bobbing in
his mouth, unlit but chewed down to an ugly stub.
“You okay?” Simon shook his
head at the stupid question. “Come on, Blair, please, sit down.”
Slowly, Blair realized
that he had been standing in the corridor like a zombie for some time. The
images of the firemen and paramedics gently extricating Jim from the ruin of
the Ford blurred before his eyes. Shaking his head, he made his way to the
Emergency waiting room.
“Blair,” Simon tried
again, “can you tell me what happened? I need a statement.”
Joel was burrowed in the
far corner of the waiting room nursing a cup of vending machine coffee. He was
so lost in thought that he was drinking the unpalatable goop.
Shocky and grey, it was obvious that he hadn’t driven
from the precinct. Henri, no doubt his chauffeur, was watching him very
carefully. His friends were here, Blair realized, and felt just slightly
better. As soon as Henri saw Blair enter the waiting room he rose to his feet.
“Blair! How’s...”
A clatter and light
sensitive doors swishing open wrenched Blair’s attention from his friends and
colleagues. Blair looked down the long corridor. A gurney containing a deathly
still form, surrounded by attendants wearing green scrubs, was rushed out of
sight. Oblivious to Henri’s irritating and necessary, questions, Blair sat down,
hard, on the waiting room chair.
U U U U U
Three Blind Mice
By Sealie
Heavily sedated and
swathed in bandages, Jim was a pale reflection of his normal self. All the
brown hair had been shaved and replaced by an enveloping turban of bandages.
What was most disconcerting was the draining, fluid filled tube that was pushed
beneath the bandages spiralling up and inserted God knew where.
The doctor had been
cautiously optimistic when Jim had been finally wheeled out of surgery. The
swelling was extensive but the clot had been removed and there appeared to be
no evidence of serious postoperative bleeding nor had the detective reacted
adversely to the anaesthetic. It was just a case of waiting for Jim to wake up.
Every nurse who had come
in had implored the student to leave, stating that the patient would not wake
for another twenty four hours at the very least. Blair couldn’t bring himself
to leave, not when it was all his fault. Memories
assailed him...
U U U U U
“Jim, I think you’re
driving a bit too fast,” Blair said tightly.
“You want I should let him
get away?” Jim snapped.
Blair made no answer as he
braced himself against the dashboard. The criminal, in the black sedan, was executing
every illegal manoeuvre in the book and Jim seemed determined to play
one-upmanship. The truck swung around a hairpin bend and impossibly kept all
four wheels on the tarmac.
‘I think we just defied
the laws of physics,’ Blair thought nervously.
The suspect’s car slued to
the side narrowly avoiding a stationary bus and crossed three lanes of traffic
before coming back to the correct lane. Jim made sure that the truck crossed
all four lanes of traffic. Blair resisted the temptation to cover his eyes with
his hands. The black car paralleled them for a heartbeat and then crossed into
the oncoming traffic. A rickety old car continued happily down the road
apparently oblivious to the imminent head on collision. Blair held his breath
on seeing the decrepit old man at the wheel. At the last moment the black car
moved over missing the old car. Grinning
widely, Jim forced the truck over the carefully tended green grass separating
the traffic lanes to cut off the criminal’s car. The man inside had time to flash
a raised finger at them before he spun the wheel and disappeared down an alley.
“He’s good,” Jim said
begrudgingly as he shifted down through the gears and cannoned after him.
“Perhaps we better call
for back-up?”
“You do it!”
Breathing a contained sigh
of relief, Blair made the call. Then kept up a running
commentary of the pursuit as Jim enjoyed himself to the hilt.
The truck barrelled down
the alley, knocking away the debris kicked up by the sedan. A police car
narrowly missed them at an intersection as they bounced over the two lanes. The
police car continued down the road in the completely opposite direction.
“Idiot!”
Jim hurled at the disappearing vehicle.
If Blair had been Catholic
he would have made the sign of the cross. He could have sworn that he heard Jim
laugh. Leaving tire tread coating the tarmac, the black sedan executed a right
turn and joined the main traffic.
Jim wrenched down on the
wheel and screamed onto the road. It was a nice long stretch of road; the
detective’s foot hit the gas until the pedal touched the floor. Blair turned in his seat to implore Jim to
slow down when an immense vehicle suddenly loomed over them and then blindsided
the truck. The world went askew as the momentum swung the truck around—there
was a squeal of brakes as both the truck driver and Jim fought for control.
U U U U U
“Ow.”
Blair shook his head gingerly. Pain that was both numbing and agonizing ran
across his chest. He had no intention of moving for as long as he lived or at
least until the pain ebbed away. Miraculously, the truck was still upright.
Opening his eyes, Blair breathed a sigh of relief that the Ford’s body work had
held—they were sandwiched between a truck and the side of a building. They were
lucky to be alive.
“Hey, Jim, are...”
Jim was sprawled face down
across the gear stick, half lying in the foot well and half lying on his seat.
The seat belt was wrapped around his waist.
“Jim?”
At the last moment, Blair
managed to stop himself shaking his friend. Oblivious, now, to his own injuries
he bent over to... he wasn’t too sure what he was trying to do.
“Youz
guys al’ right?” a voice yelled.
“Get an ambulance!”
The heavyset man nodded
once and then ran.
‘Don’t move him—God, is he
breathing?’ Over the clamour of people yelling and vehicles he couldn’t hear a
thing. ‘A.B.C—something to do with the alphabet. Yes,
airway has to be clear—how do you do that if you’re face down? It’ll be clear
if he’s face down. Breathing’
Blair released his seat
belt, which—judging from the pain—had broken his collarbone, and pressed his
ear against Jim’s back. The air whistled
in Jim’s cramped lungs. Circulation, that’s bleeding—pulse? Blood was welling
up from the large gash in the back of Jim’s head. A small blood tinged fractured
zone in the centre of the driver’s window was mute testimony to Ellison’s head
impacting against the glass. A hollow clunk disturbed him as the heavy man
clambered onto the Ford’s hood and wielding a crowbar pried out the windshield.
“Ambulance is on its way,”
he informed the pair. “Is he al’ right?”
“I don’t know,” Blair
wailed.
Paramedics and fire
fighters boiled over the car, yelling orders and instructions. He could hear
the familiar barking orders of police officers directing traffic and demanding
answers. Every emergency service in the city seemed to have arrived on the
scene together. The heavyset man relinquished his position to a trio of
paramedics. The youngest man came into view over the student huddled in the
passenger’s seat.
“Can you move, sir?”
“Yes, but you have to see
to Jim first.”
“No,” the paramedic said
patiently, “if I can get you out of the truck, my colleagues can get in and
help your friend.”
Blair considered the logic
of this as another paramedic reached into the car and felt for Jim’s pulse.
‘Yes, it would be easier
if they can get into the truck’.
His arm refused to help
him squirm out of his seat. Simply thinking about it made the bones grate
together. Gritting his teeth, Blair held his arm to his chest and twisted to
stand on the seat. The paramedic realized instantly that he was injured and
moved into help him.
U U U U U
The respirator was
mesmerizing, the black bag inflated—deflated—inflated—deflated. Was Jim
breathing or was the ventilator breathing for him? Blair didn’t know. The intubating tube inserted in Jim’s mouth, secured by tape,
terrified the student on a deep, visceral level. He could handle the
intravenous drips and their dripping plastic bags, the catheters hidden beneath
the intensive care blankets. The tube, however, seemed such a base invasion of
Jim’s body. A nurse passed the room and Blair tried to make himself
as small as possible on the chair beside the bed. The nurses kept insisting
that he leave, get some rest. Another nurse came into the room and modified
an intravenous drip. She nearly covered her scrutinising of the student by
reading the chart at the base of Jim’s bed. Blair smiled tiredly up at the woman.
“You’re not helping yourself.”
Blair shifted his sling
and covered a wince. “I read somewhere once that people who are unconscious can
be aware of... friends near them. That it can help...”
The nurse’s sympathetic
smile cut him to the quick. She crouched next to the student. “It would be
better if you headed home for a while.”
“I can’t. I have to stay.”
It was not negotiable.
“Your ten minutes are up.
You have to leave.”
“No! You don’t understand.
I have to be here. I mean… what if…?”
She leaned in close, and
Blair felt that she was reading his very soul. Her eyes were not a simple
uniform dark brown, but the irises were flecked with amber.
“There is a cot in the
staff room, if you promise me you’ll get your head down, I’ll let you sleep
there.””
“Thank you,” Blair said simply.
U U U U U
“Jim?”
Blair was curled up on a
chair in the far corner of the room out of the way of the medical equipment He
kept up a running, one sided, conversation with Jim as he watched the shadows
and light moving on the ceiling. Every time another ambulance screamed into the
hospital, colours played along the white plasterboard. .
“Looks
nice. Kinda crappy, though, to put intensive care so near the emergency room.
It’s noisy, I hope you’ve got senses turned down.”
The soft swish of a nurse,
on night duty, walking along the darkened corridor interrupted him. Blair held
his breath until the nurse had moved out of earshot. His ten minutes in every
hour, could be stretched to fifteen if he kept quiet.
“It’s that weird time of night, isn’t it? You know what I mean, Jim. The world’s
stopped dead and... this is usually where you say
something snarky. I remember when I was studying as
an undergrad—I always did my best thinking at this time of night. Well, I still
do. Everybody else would be asleep (unless they were out clubbing) and I’d
wander around making up essays and stuff and there’d be no interruptions. I guess you do your thinking in the morning
when everybody’s just about to get up. I do my thinking when everybody’s just
gone to sleep.”
Blair shifted his aching
shoulder, trying to find some relief.
“I remember the first time
I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my bed just like this looking up at the ceiling. But
the shadows were frightening, I tried burrowing under the covers but I knew
that they were coming, so I kept completely still so that the monsters wouldn’t
know I was there. Naomi found me in the morning curled up in a ball at the
bottom of the bed. She had to strip the covers off before she could get me out
to go to school—I’d wound myself up in the blankets so much. She was surprised
that I could breathe.”
“Mr. Sandburg. Blair?”
‘Shit!’
Blair struggled out of his
slouch as the matronly nurse entered the intensive care unit. She stood over
him, tapping her foot with a decidedly maternal expression on her face.
“I thought our deal was
that you could stay if you got some sleep.”
“Don’t they let you go
home?” Blair deliberately changed the subject.
“No rest for the wicked.”
Blair actually laughed. The
nurse made a rapid scan of the various monitors surrounding Jim and then turned
her attention back to the student.
“Mr. Sandburg...”
“Blair.” He smiled a
lopsided smile.
“Blair,” she corrected
herself, “I know with that collarbone you’ll have a prescription for
painkillers, have you taken any?”
She was as perceptive as
Jim, reading the scurrilous evasion on his eyes, as he searched for a
believable lie. “Uhm.” He
shook his head.
“Why do you people do
that? We don’t give medication for fun, you know.”
Bowing to her authority,
Blair rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the vial of pain killers. He rolled
the container in his hand and then dissolved into giggles, albeit hysterical
giggles.
“They put a child-proof
cap on the bottle.” He hadn’t a hope in hell of getting it opened one
handed.
The nurse popped the cap
off with practised ease and dropped two of the large tablets into his
outstretched hand.
“Quit making excuses and
take your medicine like a good boy. And then go back to the staff room and get
some sleep.”
U U U U U
The agonizing ache in his
shoulder and neck had eased to a dull hypnotic throbbing. M’benga,
the nurse, had also supplied milky hot chocolate. Sleep was prowling around the
edges of his waking world. Twice he’d caught himself nodding, almost asleep. He
thought that he could hear Jim’s pulse monitor from across the corridor. The
rhythm, slow and repetitive, soothed him with its steady music. The door of the staff room opened and M’benga’s presence filled the room.
“He’s doing fine, Blair,”
she whispered.
Blair managed a grunt
before he fell asleep.
U U U U U
Blair sipped on his café
latte. Twenty hours since coming out of surgery and Jim showed no signs of regaining
consciousness. There was a sense of nothingness in the region where Jim’s body
was lying which was horribly disconcerting. Maybe it was the complete lack of
movement, movement that was even present in sleep, which was missing, that made
Blair feel that it was not Jim lying in the hospital bed.
‘Yeah, and if it’s not Jim
who is it?’ he thought acerbically.
Blair edged around the
bed. The technology intimidated him, too many monitors and devices that seemed
to tie his friend’s body to the bed. In retrospect, Blair realized that that
was probably a good thing.
“Ah, come on, Jim, wake
up. M’benga, that nice nurse who keeps checking on
you, said the sedative was only for twenty hours or so.” Blair glanced
theatrically at his watch. “It’s time for you to wake up—Now!”
Jim’s face remained still,
no flicker of consciousness moved across his features.
“Damn,” he swore and
turned to the window.
“Blair,” there was a light
tap on wood.
Blair was surprised to see
that the Simon had come, since he had stayed late the night before. Judging by
his rumpled clothes, the captain hadn’t slept. Blair wondered distantly what
had kept Simon chained to the desk overnight.
The captain waved the student out of the intensive care room. Blair cast one glance over at Jim as he left
the room for the first time in over twenty hours.
“How is he?” Simon nodded
over Blair’s shoulder at the patient.
“His blood pressure’s gone
down a little which is a good thing. The doctor’s been in and out this morning.
M’benga, his ICU nurse, says he’s doing okay.”
“Good.”
“I’ll believe it when he
wakes up,” Blair said under his breath as he allowed Simon to steer him to a
waiting room. With the utmost gentleness the big man settled him on the sofa
and then sat next to him.
“Blair, son, can you tell
me what happened, now?”
U U U U U
“So you think that this
Jacob Tree is the burglar who has been targeting the penthouses on the
“Yes.” Ellison pushed open
the door of the
The detective made a slow
turn looking around the opulent foyer. Blair thought it was decked out very
tacky. He leaned over towards Jim. “It’s a bit… gold.”
The sentinel’s eyes were
wide; he seemed to be storing the sight for future use. Blair wasn’t entirely
sure what he was going to do with the memory but the whole foyer was in such
bad taste that it deserved an award.
“It’s just an advert,” Jim
said icily, dismissing the grandeur, “saying: ‘I’ve got money.’”
Blair raised an eyebrow, a
bit surprised at Jim’s reaction. The detective flashed his badge at the doorman
who was decked out in a black uniform edged in gold braid.
“What makes you think Tree
is the criminal?” Blair asked as they entered the gold lamé
lift.
“Whoever is doing the
burglaries has to be familiar with the layout of the buildings,” Jim began.
“Seems like a good
inference.”
Jim pursed his lips.
“Henri, Rafe and I watched all the security videos
for the buildings on the entire
“What did you see?” Blair
asked obediently.
“A
delivery man, a mail man, a pizza delivery boy, a florist and a tarot reader
all who had a cough.”
“A
cough?”
“Yes, a cough.” Jim demonstrated
a hacking cough.
Blair contained a laugh
behind a well-placed hand at the unexpected mimicry.
“They all would spit into
a handkerchief. Then I saw a video of Mr. Jacob Tree, new resident at
“So we go talk to this guy
and see if we can get him to...”
“Slip up?” Blair
interjected.
“Got
it in one, Chief.”
U U U U U
“Jim was going to pretend
that we’d had a report of an intruder at Tree’s penthouse,” Blair continued his
story, “but it wasn’t necessary; he wasn’t in.”
“So how did you get in?”
Simon asked knowing full well that the detective would have found some legally
stretched way of getting into his suspect’s apartment.
“His housekeeper was
putting the garbage on the landing for the apartment’s super’. Once I explained
the situation to her she was more than ready to let us look around.”
U U U U U
“That wasn’t very nice,
Jim,” Blair chastised. “I think you frightened that poor woman.”
“Whatever,” Jim said
offhandedly as he scanned the sitting room.
“When you showed her your
badge she actually blanched; I thought she was going to faint.”
“She was just experiencing
déja vu.” With his pen, Jim opened a drawer on the
telephone table and rifled through the contents.
“Why
déja vu?” Blair inquired. As far as
he knew, they had never met the woman, who had been last seen running down the
corridor, in any of Jim’s cases or their nights out.
“She didn’t want to go
home.”
“Oh?” Blair mulled over
Jim’s comment, it didn’t make much sense. “Where do you suppose that she has
gone then?”
“Home as in
“Ah,” Blair said, finally
understanding.
The apartment was well
appointed and ultimately sterile. No personal knickknacks were spread around, no magazines were strewn on the coffee table and no
sense of home.
“Doesn’t look as if anyone
lives here, does it?” Jim noted.
“Well, we do know that
Tree has just moved in; maybe he hasn’t had time to unpack his personal
possessions.”
“He’s the sick puppy who’s
been breaking into the people’s apartments. I can feel it in my bones.”
“You’re taking this very
personally,” Blair pointed out, realizing for the first time, that there was
more here than met the eye.
Jim chewed absently on the
inside of his cheek as he mooched through the wooden unit’s drawers. The
question hung in the air but the detective was deliberately not answering.
Straightening his backpack on his shoulder with deliberation, Blair interposed
himself between his sentinel and the bureau. Resignation showed in Jim’s eyes
as he came up against the immovable student.
“You have told me that a
person, unspecified, has been breaking into apartments. And —” Blair raised a
Spock-like eyebrow, “—what haven’t you been telling me?”
Jim neatly sidestepped the
student, leaving his personal space. Antsy, the detective moved across the room
scanning the area. As he moved, he spoke,
“When I was just out of
uniform; I followed this investigation where this weirdo was taking one thing from
each bedroom he broke into. The items got deliberately more ‘personal’—” Jim
did not elaborate on the euphemism, “—until he found a victim who he decided to
kidnap. We managed to get the kid back. The creep did it for fun, though, just
to pull one over on the police. He didn’t care that he frightened this little
boy half to death and hospitalized his mother with a nervous breakdown—he just
liked running us through rings.”
“A
strange sort of fetish.”
“Fetish?”
“Yeah, you know, he does
it for ‘kicks’.” Blair mimed the speech
marks. “So you think that this is a reoccurrence?”
“Yes....” Jim moved into
the open plan bedroom. “I wasn’t really involved with the case, just pulled in
during the legwork looking for the kid. I heard all about it from this old FBI
agent who was pensioned off after the whole fiasco. He called me the other
night and told me that he’d been reading through the local papers and he
thought the creep was back in town. I clicked that our Penthouse Burglar and
that creep might be one and the same.”
“You must have made
friends with this FBI agent.”
“Well, it happens.” Jim
shrugged, deprecatingly—even FBI agents were human. “We got to talking one
night while on stakeout....”
“And?”
Blair prompted.
Jim eyed the student. “We
spent a lot of time together; we shared a few stories. He’d been in the
FBI—forever.”
“He must have been a font
of knowledge,” Blair supplied. He was very fond of fonts of knowledge.
“He was an interesting old
guy,” Jim finally seemed to admit.
“You don’t have to defend
yourself, Jim,” Blair said picking up on his friend’s tone, “some of my best
friends are old aged pensioners.”
“Yeah,” Jim responded as
he began to rifle through another drawer, “that explains a lot.”
U U U U U
“So you didn’t find anything?”
Simon interrupted.
“A
whole selection of cough medicines and tissues with balm and moisturizers.”
“So that was your
evidence?” Simon asked.
“Well, it was typically
Jim. Tree had some cough syrup with Ipecacuanha—I’ve
no idea what that is—Jim sniffed it. Any rate, we were going to the apartment
complex over the street to investigate another break in and we were walking
through the foyer and Jim suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and lifted his
head up...”
U U U U U
Blair looked up from his
conversation with an obstreperous doorman—who didn’t think the ragtag student
matched the wallpaper in the foyer or something,
therefore they couldn’t come into the building. Jim seemed to be enjoying the
tête-à-tête—mainly for its entertainment and blackmail value—but Blair fully
expected the sentinel to stop them very soon. Canvassing the high-class
apartment complexes in the area on the off chance that they would find Tree was
driving the student to new depths of boredom.
“Ah.” Jim inhaled deeply.
He edged past them and catfooted over the plush
carpet towards a side corridor. He angled around some large, vibrant green
rubber plants and hanging vines. As Blair watched his friend, he wasn’t even
consciously aware of the fact that he was automatically holding his breath. Jim
had rocked onto the balls of his feet poised to act. Bushes obscured his view;
Blair couldn’t see, or smell, what had triggered the sentinel’s interest.
Brushing off the doorman with a hissed ‘call the cops,’ Blair attempted to move
smoothly after the hunting sentinel.