Get Katja (13 page)

With the sudden eruption of violence around her, Lady D is carried backwards by the crowd, away from Patty and from Soelberg. She fights her way back through but time and again has to duck away from a wayward punches and before she knows what is happening she finds herself next to the stage.

Lady D pulls herself up onto the rear of the stage, lashing out with a heeled foot when one of the roadies grabs her, and gets to her feet. She surveys the room, searching for Patty or Soelberg but instead notices the club’s owner hurrying away down the rear corridor.

“No you don’t,” Lady D says to herself and then charges after him. Something sails through the air and crashes into the wall behind her and, glancing back, she sees flames are spilling down to the ground.

Ignoring them she hurries down the corridor as the man struggles to open the locking bar to the emergency exit door. He sees her coming and his attempts become more frantic until finally the latch releases and the door swings open. Before he can escape, however, Lady D lands a hefty punch to the back of his neck. He’s thrown forwards and slams into the door, rebounding off of it and back towards the debt collector. She is ready for him, stepping to one side to let him stagger past just enough to deliver another blow.

He slumps to the ground and she reaches into the coat pocket he had earlier patted when confirming he had the gig fee. She smiles as she touches the wad of cash and pulls it out. She thumbs it quickly to check the full amount then kneels next to the man.

He groans softly when she strokes his head.

“I always get my money, sweetheart,” she says, then stands up.

Lady D retrieves her clutch bag from the spare mike stand she had hung it on before the gig and stuffs the cash inside. For a moment she hesitates, deciding whether to go back to see if Patty still has Soelberg or whether it even matters now she has her money, and it’s as she is still mulling the decision over that she becomes aware of the creaking noises.

She ducks her head out of the corridor, back into the gig-come-riot, noticing the flames which are now spreading around the rear of the stage and climbing up to the ceiling, to the patchwork of beams that are supporting the place’s roof, beams which look as if they are beginning to bend.

And she realizes that the place’s owner wasn’t just escaping to keep a hold of his money.

“Oh shit . . .”

The punches stop flying.

The music is gone.

Stasko is let go by the skinhead who had a hold of him and he follows his attacker’s gaze upwards.

“Oh shit . . .”

Bridget is shoved out of the crowd and towards the bar and crashes into the counter, the Tgirl still with a fistful of her bright pink hair. Bridget closes her eyes and braces herself for another series of blows but instead is dropped to the ground when the debt collector’s grip is released.

High above, the sound of metal rending. Bridget opens her eyes.

“Oh shit . . .”

As Katja comes to, a vicious blast of fluorescent light floods in and her nostrils flare with the stench of disinfectant. She blinks and lifts her head enough to realize where she is.

A hospital bed.

A split second after the realisation hits she panics, certain that the mad surgeon has once again captured her, her thoughts swirl in a mist of confusion as she tries to recall if she had ever actually escaped. Then she thinks of Nikolai. Of the squat and the pink-haired nurse.

And the gig.

The building caving in on itself.

She groans as her brain slowly sparks back into life, bringing with it an array of pain signals from nerve endings all across her body. Her throat and chest burn as she breathes in and she starts to cough. An almost deafening ringing fills her ears.

Someone touches her arm and her hand is already balled into a fist before she recognises Nikolai.

“Wait!” he protests.

He’s standing beside the bed, his skin covered in a coating of sweat and dirt and one side of his face darkened with bruising, a deep cut at the centre of it. He puts a finger to his lips to quiet her. Katja’s vision finally clearing, she looks around and she’s not back in the surgeon’s dungeon—it’s an ER.

Doctors and nurses scuttle around, dragging IV units and portable defibrillators behind them, calling to one another in that strange abbreviated language they share. The ward is lined with beds, some with curtains drawn around them, others revealing bloodied, battered bodies draped across them. Announcements crackle over the PA system in a constant stream and people are herded from place to place.

“Can you hear me? Look at me, Katja.”

She blinks again, his words muffled by the ringing in her ears.

“We have to get out of here.”

She waves him away, still trying to clear her head, trying to make sense of it all. Looking down at herself, she sees that she is covered in the same grime as Nikolai, her clothes singed and grubby. They all are. She swings her legs across the bed and almost loses her balance, slumping towards the floor. Nikolai catches and holds her until she is steady.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

The truth is she doesn’t know. She eases herself away from him, waiting for new pain to shoot up her legs or back, but nothing comes. There is just the background buzz of the ache which envelopes her.

“I’m okay,” she says finally, doing her best to look it and failing miserably. She waggles an index finger in each ear as she could knock the ringing sound loose.

“We need to go—the Policie are on their way and fuck knows who else . . .”

She stumbles past him before he can finish the sentence, tugging an IV line from one arm. He tries to put an arm around her for support but she pushes him away.

“Which way?”

He points towards a large desk at the opposite side of the room, almost lost behind the mass of bodies. More gurneys are being wheeled in, the devices and their inhabitants abandoned wherever there is space. Together they negotiate their way through it all until Katja stops suddenly.

“What is it?”

She looks down at a gurney, a sheet pulled up over the body laid on it and a dark patch of blood staining one side. Sticking out of the end of the sheet are a pair of large feet cradled in six-inch heels and attached to one of the heels is an identification tag. The name
Jane Doe
has been written on it then crossed out and replaced with
John Doe
.

“That’s one way to get her off our back,” Katja says.

There’s a burst of activity nearby and the two duck back against the wall as another body is wheeled through, one badly burned arm reaching out aimlessly, desperate for any sort of help.

“Come on,” Nikolai says, pulling her after him.

“Wait,” she says. “My guitar.”

“What?”

“My
guitar
,” she repeats. “Before the roof came down . . . I still had it on me.”

“So?”

“
So
I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be seeing the gig fee any time soon and I didn’t bring the fucking thing all the way from the island and spend what little cash I had getting it fixed up just so some thieving paramedic could keep it for himself!” she says.

She snatches her arm away from him and stalks past Lady D’s body back to the bed she had awoken in. She pulls open the door of the small unit next to the bed but it’s empty. She then checks under the bed and behind it.

“They put it all in a safe room,” Nikolai says. “Personal belongings I mean. Whenever there’s a big incident like this and a sudden influx of people they don’t have time to sort out all the possessions so they just bag it up and stick it in a safe room.”

Katja stops and looks up at him.

He shrugs. “I spend a lot of time in hospitals. You pick these things up.”

“Uh-huh. And you know where this safe room is?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

She holds up her arms in exasperation when he says nothing further.

“Well let’s go find it so we can get the fuck out of here!”

They hide around the corner from the room Nikolai had identified moments earlier, just long enough to see a nurse unlocking the padlocked door. He drops the green plastic bag he holds into the room then closes the door, snapping the padlock shut before rushing back into the ER.

As soon as he is gone the two cross to the door, attempting to look inconspicuous. When she is sure nobody is looking Katja tries the padlock on the off-chance the nurse had been in too much of a rush to close it properly.

No such luck.

“Let me,” Nikolai says and she turns to find him standing next to her, unwrapping a scalpel still sealed in its sterile packet. He tears into another packet and takes out another tool, this one with a narrow hook on the end.

“Where did you . . . ?”

Nikolai nods at an instrument trolley a few metres away then goes to work on the padlock. Katja hurriedly positions herself in front of him, nervously watching the people rushing back and forth past them, spotting the a pair of Policie officers in their distinctive dogwitch-black uniforms at the end of the corridor.

“Policie are here,” she says without looking at him. “Hurry up.”

And as if on cue the lock clicks. Nikolai opens the door and lets her in, coming in behind her and closing the door again. He reaches for the light switch but Katja stops him.

“Wait,” she whispers.

Together they listen to the sound of four heavily booted feet stomping towards them, Katja’s shoulder pressed against the door just in case the Policie had spotted them and were going to barge in.

“You still have that scalpel?” she asks, again in a whisper. She sees a glint of light as Nikolai holds it up.

The footsteps grow louder. Louder.

Then pass by and are swallowed up by the sounds of the ER.

Katja flicks the light switch to illuminate the room. Nikolai stands next to her, the sweat rolling down his face mixing with blood from his wound and turning pink where it collects along his jaw. He’s still holding the instruments in his hand.

“You and locks, huh?” she says.

Then turns to the piles of plastic bags, all the same green colour as the one they had seen the nurse dropping in. Each one is held shut by little metal-lined ties of the sort you would normally seal a sandwich bag with and each one has a label attached to it, pierced by the tie. On the labels are names or physical descriptions.

None are big enough to contain her guitar and so she pushes them to one side, revealing other, larger items lain out beneath them or stacked against the wall behind them.

“Hurry,” Nikolai says. “I think I hear more Policie.”

Katja mutters something then cries out. “Got it!” she shouts, and pushes aside more bags. She climbs over more bags to reach the instrument, grabbing it by the neck and pulling it free. She examines it quickly. It’s covered in a layer of grimy soot and scorched in one corner near the base, the paint there cracked and curling but aside from that and some snapped strings it’s in a pretty decent condition.

“What’s that?” she asks when she sees that Nikolai is looking down at one of the plastic bags.

This one hasn’t been sealed properly and lies open, revealing the glittery clutch bag within. Nikola reaches inside and takes it out then looks to Katja who nods for him to continue. He pops open the clip that holds the bag shut.

“Hello there,” Katja says when the wad of cash inside is revealed.

“You think it’s the gig money?”

“Does it matter? From the look of her out there I don’t think she’s going to be making much use of it anymore do you? Anyway the debt wasn’t even ours in the first place. Right?”

Despite her assertions they both continue to stare at the money as if it is somehow cursed. Finally Katja snatches it and stuffs it into the pockets of her oversized trousers before she can change her mind. Then she picks up the guitar by its neck and flicks off the light switch. She listens though the door before opening it barely an inch and peering through the gap.

“Okay,” she says, stepping out into the corridor. Nikolai closes the door behind them.

Katja takes a moment to regain her bearings then starts back up the corridor again, dissolving into the human traffic and heading for the exit, her guitar in one hand, the money in her pockets.

The crowds thin and they reach a junction. There’s a sudden burst of static from around the corner and the two of them freeze.

And a moment later a single Policie officer, one hand clamped over the radio strapped to his shoulder in an attempt to muffle it, steps into view.

Lady D sits upright, an alarm of some kind going off nearby, and for a few moments she’s reaching around blindly to switch it off before realising that she isn’t in her own bed—or even her own home.

A nurse charges past her, grabbing the plastic curtain which hangs from the rail of the bed next to her and pulling it around as the figure lying on the bed thrashes around. Through the curtain Lady D can see the bleary outline of several figures tending to the patient before the alarm goes silent.

She flips away the thin sheet which has been spread over her, rubbing her head to clear it. Swings her legs off the side of the bed, watching the medical staff rush back and forth between the beds which line the room. In the middle is a circular reception desk, and only the top of the head of the person sitting at it is visible. A large whiteboard is suspended from the false ceiling above, names and numbers hastily scribbled across it in different coloured inks.

She stands up, assesses herself. Her muscles are stiff and her left arm throbs with a deep ache and her skin is covered in an oily grime which won’t come off no matter how much she rubs it but compared to most of the others she can see in the emergency room, she’s gotten off lightly.

Lady D runs a hands across her head and is appalled to find her wig gone, suddenly feeling exposed. Her dress is torn at the hem and stained with the same oily residue yet otherwise fine but she can’t find her heels. She attempts to get everything clear in her head and remembers the gig, then spotting the nurse, Soelberg, in the crowd. Going after her. Then . . .

She looks up the ceiling, momentarily blinded by the fluorescent lights.

Her bag.

The memory of taking the money from Dimebag Dexter and stuffing it into her clutch bag unfolds itself and the panic returns.

She blinks away the purple-red cloud which fogs her vision then searches around the bed, the checks inside the plastic-coated cabinet next to the bed. She lifts the mattress, checks the end of the bed in case it is hanging there. Nothing.

She grabs a young doctor as he strides past, snatching his coat by the sleeve.

“Where’s my stuff?”

His eyes are wide with fear at the sight of her and he attempts to form a response but none comes.

She jerks him closer, close enough that he’ll be able to see the fine grains of stubble beginning to emerge along her jawline. “I want my stuff.”

“It’s . . . you’ll have to ask at reception,” he tells her. “Any valuables—”

She pushes him away, letting him stumble into a crash-cart, then crosses barefoot to the circular desk in the middle of the ER. A pair of Slavic-looking women shove themselves back and forth on wheeled stools, going from phones to computers and back again, being shouted at by the doctors and shouting back. One of them spins around and scribbles on the board suspended in the air behind them, adding a series of indecipherable symbols next to one of the many names written on it. When she turns back Lady D is leaning over the counter towards her.

“I want my stuff,” she says.

A nurse calls across and the woman waves an acknowledgement to them. “I’m sorry,” she says in a thick accent. “You need to excuse us, we very busy.”

“Then tell me where my stuff is and I’ll get out of your way.”

“Personal belongings in secure room, they—” She turns away, shouts something to the other receptionist who has just rushed to hand one of the doctors a small stack of papers.

“Where is the room?”

The woman grimaces, sweeps a hand across her forehead to clear sweat-clotted strands of hair. “In the
secure
room,” she insists, briefly pointing towards one of two corridors which lead out of the ER. “You’ll have to put in a request but I don’t think we—”

“I’m
putting
in a request,” Lady D says, leaning in a little closer. “This is my request.”

The woman shakes her head, retrieves a pink form and hands it to her. “This is the form. You fill this out and wait. Someone will get your things for you. Please, we’re very busy.”

The phone goes and she picks it up, turning away and scoring out a couple of names on the whiteboard. Lady D waits a couple of moments then stalks away, across the ER and into the corridor the woman had indicated. It’s quieter than the chaos of the ER but there is still a steady stream of people. She finds the door that the receptionist pointed to and sees that it is padlocked. She cups a hand to her eyes and peers in through the little window adjacent but the blinds drawn across it afford her little view.

She becomes aware of an elderly man watching her, gnarled hands gripping a walking stick in front of him.

“You stare any longer and I’m going to have to start charging you, honey,” she snaps and he shuffles off, muttering to himself.

She tries the padlock and is surprised to find that it isn’t actually locked. The curved metal peg is in position but hasn’t been fully clicked into place. She pulls it out of the handle and opens the door, steps inside. She flicks a switch and a single light blinks into life, illuminating the mass of green plastic bags stacked against one another. Some are upturned and emptied, their contents strewn across the floor.

Someone has beaten her to it.

She grabs bags at random, instantly discarding those which are too heavy or too light to be her belongings, noticing that each one has a tag tied to it with either a name or a description on it. She tears open a couple of them and empties out their contents, kicking the items across the floor in frustration.

Then she spots another bag, this one also torn open and with its tag still attached. She bends down and picks it up, reads it.

Female
Male
  \  
6'
  \  
dark shaven hair (cheap blonde wig)
  \  
Leopard print dress. Items: clutch bag, wig.

“
Cheap?
” she says angrily, then checks the torn bag to make sure it is empty. She throws it across the room in disgust. Someone
has
beaten her to it.

This, she realizes, is the point where most collectors will give up and decide that the money isn’t worth it . So this, she knows, is exactly the point at which she will
not
give up.

She scans the room, looking for any clue as to who had gotten there before her, and quickly spots another tag and bag. This time the bag isn’t torn but instead twisted, as if it has been wrapped around something. She checks the tag. Again no name, just a description.

Female
  \  
5'5"
  \  
shaved head
  \  
multiple tattoos. Items: guitar.

Lady D crumples the tag as her hand becomes a fist. She stands up, rage boiling inside her now. It’s only when she uncurls her fingers that she notices the blood drops which stain the tag, then another couple of splashes on the floor. She touches one of them with a toe. Still tacky.

She drops the bag and leaves the room, not bothering to shut the door behind her, not caring if anyone saw her. Instead she looks for any more drops of blood and finds them, a little trail which leads into the corridor, most of them smeared by footfalls.

An orderly wheels a gurney towards her, shoving it up against a wall then rushing back into ER. A pair of shiny gold lamé heels stick out from beneath the bloody sheet which covers the body laid out beneath it.

“It’s what you would have wanted, Patty,” she says, taking them then stroking one of the corpse’s ice-cold feet.

She slips the shoes on, an almost-perfect fit, then follows the trail of blood drops up the corridor and around a corner into a farther, quieter passageway.

Smiling to herself now.

Knowing that she is going to get her money back, no matter what.

She follows the blood drops.