Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) (5 page)

I nodded. ‘He’s in Florida. I guess he’d had enough of snow. We generally go down there for Christmas and he comes up to see the rest of the family for a week in the summer.’

‘Next time you see him, tell him Frank Harris from Baker Five asked if his balls have thawed yet.’

I chuckled. ‘I will.’

‘I walked out the whole way. I couldn’t feel my feet by the time we got to Wonsan.’

‘So, what’s going on today?’

He looked down and grumbled a bit before answering. ‘I been fallin’ a lot lately. I’m not gettin’ around like I used to. My kids want me to go into a home.’

I nodded in sympathy. He was a proud man; it couldn’t be easy to admit he couldn’t be independent. I noticed a glucometer on the nightstand.

‘Diabetic?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighed.

‘How’s your sugar running?’

‘It’s pretty good.’

I smiled. ‘So how’s it running?’

‘180, 200,’ he replied.

‘Your fingertips getting numb?’

‘Yeah.’ He stared ahead. ‘Vision’s getting blurry. Feet gettin’ numb too. Worse than Korea.’

‘How often you check your sugar?’

‘Couple times a week,’ he admitted.

‘How often did you clean your rifle?’ I asked.

‘OK,’ he sighed again. ‘I read you.’

‘Now, your sugar isn’t something they’re gonna fix at the ER, but you should call your doctor and get it under control. You do that, and maybe you can stay independent.’

‘Mm,’ he answered.

‘So, I’m gonna make you a deal,’ I said. ‘You show me you can get up and walk to the bathroom, and you call your doc and make an appointment to discuss your blood sugar, and then I’ll sign off on you staying home. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

He managed the trip, and called his doctor while Nique and I talked the visiting nurse down from her hysterics. No, he doesn’t have to go. No, we don’t have to take him, this is America, he has rights. Sure, call my supervisor, I hope foul language doesn’t bother you.

We did eventually clear up with a refusal of transport, and some very sour looks from about 300 pounds of angry nurse.

‘You were really compassionate with that guy,’ Nique observed.

‘He’s a proud old war hero, he’s lost his wife, obviously, and now diabetes is eating away at him. On top of that, Nursezilla is telling him he needs to have help to get up and take a piss. I’d be surly too.’

‘You think he’ll be OK at home alone?’

‘I think he wants to be. I think he’s not ready to be in some Elderly Storage Facility. Too bad he’s a diabetic. I friggin’ hate diabetes.’ I do. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Neither I nor medical science knows how to tell the islet cells to start making insulin again. It’s frustrating.

The radio shrilled, its piercing tone cutting short our conversation.

‘Medic 20, respond to 300 Broadway, Dugan’s Lounge, in the rear parking lot for the man down.’

‘Joy,’ I muttered. ‘20 responding,’ I said into the mic.

‘Drug interaction between alcohol and gravity, you think?’ Nique asked.

‘Probably. It’s six at night so the regulars will have been there long enough to tie one on.’

‘Eh,’ she said, ‘lightweights if they’re already in the parking lot.’

‘Maybe,’ I conceded. ‘Or real hardcore drinkers vomiting in the alley to clear the decks for round two.’

‘Oh, that’s disgusting.’ She winced. ‘How do you even come up with stuff like that?’

‘That’s just halftime at a Danet family reunion,’ I grinned.

‘There’s more like you at home?’ she asked. ‘You’re not some random fluke to embarrass a decent middle-class Franco-Irish family? It must be that Irish blood. My Mémère told me to watch out for your kind.’

‘Hey, I’m the white sheep.’

I pulled the ambulance down the narrow side street past the bar and into the potholed parking lot. There were many, many bars in Philips Mills. We used to joke that nobody dies of thirst in this town. Each filled a niche, served a certain population. Medics, EMTs, cops and firefighters generally drank at the Harp, which had Guinness on draught, good food and halfway decent live bands on the weekend. Plus the local college students tended to hang there, so there was always some relatively clean, young, freethinking tail, unlike most of the dives in town. Dugan’s fell at the other end of the scale of bars with Mick names. Working class who didn’t work, swilling Bud, Miller High Life or Keystone from bottles, or generous shots of low-end vodka, scotch or bourbon. Food was stale chips and seldom-cleaned bowls of peanuts that half the patrons confused with the ashtrays. No entertainment unless you counted spontaneous disjointed spoken word pieces and fistfights. We actually got called there once at closing time because a guy died and nobody noticed until they tried to throw him out so they could lock up.

Pissed ’em off when we wouldn’t take him, as he was long since cold. The bartender was horrified he had to wait for the Medical Examiner. Actually asked if we could write a note for his loanshark to excuse him for showing up late.

We drove over to a group of raggedly dressed men in a corner of the lot, clustered around a man on the ground. They looked like the usual Dugan’s crowd, shaggy haired, skinny white guys dressed in dingy quilted flannel and blue jeans grey with dirt, ball caps and work boots. Pretty much like the crew at a construction project but not as clean.

A few turned and waved us over. People always feel the need to point to the guy on the ground, like they think we’ll take some random bystander instead. For once, there were no police, firefighters or nurses to get in the way, just a bunch of drunken white trash.

‘You comfortable with this?’ I asked Nique.

‘Coupla drunk scrotes?’ she said. ‘No problem. You?’

‘These are my people,’ I replied. ‘I speak fluent drunk.’

I put the truck in park and hopped down, heading around the back to pull the cot as Nique got the bag out of the side door.

I was at the rear door of the ambulance when I heard the tone of the crowd change. I didn’t exactly hear a scuffle, just a deliberate, concerted movement, which means trouble in any crowd, and more so in a crowd outside Dugan’s.

I took a few quick steps around the truck and saw two men break from the startled mob, unwashed alcoholics falling back in confusion as the pair, dressed the same as the rest but cleaner, better muscled and with a glint of determination in their eyes and knives in their hands, came at me.

At me. Not us. I noticed that part.

The closer of the two was almost on top of me as I rounded the truck. He lunged with his blade, and out of instinct I sidestepped, caught his sleeve and banged his wrist against the side of the ambulance. I put my whole weight into the move, dragging him off balance and slamming him against the truck. I drove a knee into his groin and, still clutching his wrist with my left hand, threw a few short, hard rights into his temple, his neck, his kidney. He went slack and I started toward the second man.

That guy shoved Nique aside and headed toward me, wary, knife held ready, low and close to his body. He knew what he was doing, which was bad. I was unarmed—no time to scramble for his buddy’s weapon. I had to hope I could hold him off, keep the blade out of my vitals until I got a clear shot, or Nique got away, and hope he wouldn’t have any more friends in the crowd.

I looked at Nique to see if she was hurt. I saw no fear or pain in her expression, just the offended shock only possible in a very pretty girl of French descent ignored and rudely pushed aside by a man.

She hit him.

It was a telegraphed punch. Possibly the least cunning fist ever thrown in or near Dugan’s, a place not known for subtle and strategic pugilism. If the guy was halfway competent, which he certainly looked to be, he’d see the blow coming and avoid it or hurt her very badly.

Except he wasn’t looking. He made the mistake of ignoring Nique. Few men do. Underestimate, yes, but ignore, well, that took a certain singleness of purpose. His eyes were on me and only me, so he failed to see the windup or the delivery.

For all its lack of guile, it was one of the most emphatic punches I’d seen in a long time. She cocked not just her arm, but her whole body, and uncoiled in a fluid, vicious snap like the strike of a cobra. Nique was a strong girl, used to lifting overweight patients and hefty gear all day, and she put a step, a twist of the hip, and all the strength of her shoulder, arm and wrist, as well as a large measure of Gallic indignation, behind her blow. It caught him, by careful aim or Divine providence, right in the jugular. Her fist met his neck with the sound a filet mignon makes when the butcher slaps it down on the counter.

The man dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

She looked at me, her face a study in righteous indignation. Her retreat to the truck was quick and efficient but dignified. She was leaving because she chose to, not because she was afraid to stay.

I’d been in enough retreats that I wasn’t concerned with the image I projected. My eyes darted back and forth like a hunted rat, scanning the crowd for threats.

I heard the first man moan and try to crawl, so I hastily applied a size nine combat boot to his solar plexus. As he folded up and retched, I snatched up his knife, brandishing it at the mob as I beat feet around to the driver’s door. The drunks still on their feet seemed as surprised by the events as we were, so I imagine they weren’t directly involved, but you can never be sure how a man’s going to respond to seeing a fight after a bellyful of Keystone and Mad Dog 20/20, so I wanted them to see the knife and take it into consideration.

I got into the ambulance without further violence, dropped the knife in my jacket pocket, and peeled out of the lot.

‘Medic 20 to Operations,’ I called. ‘Be advised, dispatch PD to this location. Patrons attempted to assault crew. We’ll stand by on Broadway.’

‘Received, P 20. You guys OK?’

I looked at Nique. She nodded.

‘We’re OK. Thanks for asking.’

‘P 20, head back to quarters. Police and Ambulance 36 will head over. 36, wait for PD. Do not enter the scene before the Blue Canaries.’

Nique turned toward me, her voice quick and loud, still riding the adrenalin of the encounter, ‘So what the hell was that? I thought these were your people.’

I shrugged, fear and anger draining away, leaving me shaking. ‘Dunno. Maybe they heard you make that Irish crack.’

As we drove away, Nique looked at me. ‘You’re bleeding,’ she commented.

‘What? Damn.’ I saw blood running down my left wrist and over the steering wheel. I inspected my left hand and saw a clean slice across the pad on the pinky side of my palm. I hadn’t noticed in the heat of the moment. I must’ve gotten that when I grabbed my attacker’s knife hand. Now that I saw it, it hurt.

‘Pull over in that parking lot,’ she ordered calmly. ‘I’ll clean it out and wrap it up.’

I pulled off the main street into the lot of a corner
bodega,
and climbed through to the back of the truck. Nique grabbed a bottle of sterile water from the cabinet, broke the seal and poured it over my cut hand. I flexed my fingers, just to make sure they worked. No tendon damage, which was good.

‘Looks like it went down to the fat pad,’ she observed. ‘You’re gonna need to get that stitched.’ She quickly dressed the wound with a four-by-four pad and some roll gauze. ‘How’s it feel?’

‘Not bad,’ I replied. ‘It didn’t hurt until I saw it.’

‘You should get it looked at anyway. I’ll drive.’ She grabbed a container of bleach wipes from the cabinet. ‘After I clean up the mess you made in the cab.’

‘You sure you’re OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Since I didn’t let them cut me.’

‘Silly of me not to think of that. Where did you learn to throw a punch?’

‘I’ve been doing Tae Bo and Cardio Kickboxing for years,’ she answered. ‘An ass this phenomenal doesn’t just happen.’

That explained why the punch had such nice form but so little guile. I prefer a sneakier and less pretty knee to the groin, myself. Can’t argue with success.

We drove over to the ER where I got my hand stitched and my tetanus shot updated. The doc confirmed that there was no damage to the tendons, gave me a note for a week off, since I shouldn’t be wearing sweat inducing gloves, obsessively washing my hands and lifting fat bastards with that cut on my palm. The stitches would come out in a week.

I would heal a lot sooner, but I didn’t tell him that. If he insisted, I was willing to not work for a week.

Chapter 6

I SLEPT IN THE NEXT DAY. I made a pot of coffee and let my body wake up slowly. After half a cup, I felt confident to make breakfast without hurting myself too badly. Fire and knives are dicey enough without a bandaged hand, but I wasn’t spending a week off eating cold cereal. A man has to have standards.

Peeling and cutting up potatoes and onions for homefries was the only challenging part. Bacon, eggs and toast were easy enough to do one-handed. I blanched the potatoes in water before frying them in some bacon grease from the cup I kept in the fridge. When the homefries were well under way, I placed two more slices of bacon in a second pan. Once they started to crisp up, I moved them to the side and dropped two eggs in the pan, letting them float in the fat. I put a slice of oat nut bread in the toaster. Gotta eat healthy.