Out of the Black (37 page)

Screams, darkness, blood, remorse, hope, and through it all the ringing of a dead man's blade.

Rae's scream was like nothing Ping had heard before. It had started with a word, but now was only the sound of denial. The lights went out and some kind of unseen turbulence snapped through the air like a puff of wind. The lights flickered back on and the door burst open, admitting a concerned-looking nurse of about fifty. The sword's ringing was muted by Alex's chest as it snapped back into the hilt.

Blood pooled on the floor beneath the new hole in the bottom of the bed. Rae was breathless at the end of a scream she still seemed intent at continuing. Her mouth was open and silent. She staggered, then fell in a heap and didn't move.

The nurse who'd burst in to investigate the cause of the silent alarm paused, unsure whether to proceed to the bed, or try to help the woman who had seemingly fallen dead. She looked from Alex to Rae, then back again before finally looking to Ping for assistance. He hooked a thumb at Alex's fresh chest wound. She rushed to the bed with her medkit and was joined seconds later by the floor doctor. Together, they worked feverishly to staunch the bleeding, then to reinflate his collapsed lung.

While they worked, they asked him questions, but Ping didn't hear. Amid bright lights and the crisp smell of fall, he sat in darkness that no coma therapy could breach. He turned the sword over in his hands. Spattered blood covered the end and spread with the motion to cover his fingers and hands. He didn't know to who or what, but he was praying for mercy, for undeserved providence.

***

Rae's tears were defocused here. Head in her hands. Solitude.

"So, you'll marry me, right?" Her dead man across the table said around a mouthful of cheeseburger.

"That's not funny." She moaned into her hands.

"Whew. I'm glad to hear that," he said reaching for his drink, "I was a bit worried you might laugh."

She cried harder, sobs crashing around her as the weight of her loneliness became clearer with the ghost's words.

Then his arms were around her, holding her tight. Sweet lies filled the air, "It's gonna be all right. Let it all out, you're not gonna need it."

She was lying on Roy's couch with Alex wrapped around her. Outside the window, the storm gathered as night and death approached. Lightning came and went but the thunder seemed to roll on and on. Time passed, or didn't. She lay curled on a dead man's couch with another dead man wrapped around her. He'd been talking, but she really hadn't been paying attention.

"...not a ghost you know... really." Alex finished.

"All ghosts say that." She said weakly.

"No way. Look at
A Christmas Carol
, each ghost was pretty frank about his nature... except possibly for the silent, pointy one. Anyway, I'm sure you cthink of plenty of other examples."

"Look. All the jokes in the world won't make me hope this ain't a dream. Just a second ago we were in our booth at Nell's and now we're on Roy's couch."

He chuckled. "You're beautiful when you're deductive. But I didn't say this wasn't a dream... I just said I wasn't a ghost."

"Lawyer."

"You're also beautiful when you're cynical... just so spunky. See? You're the perfect woman. I really wasn't kidding about gettin' hitched."

She was too weary for anything but easy conversation, so more sobs were out. "Ok then lover... wait! There's a snag... you're dead and I'm either unconscious or dead from a broken heart."

"Broken heart? Now that's just sweet." He patted her hand from across the table. "So, if I can work these little problems out... the wedding's on?" He said from across the food-littered table of their favorite booth. "Remember? This is where I proposed to you the first time."

"You are such a geek... always wanting to get married in any world but the one we're currently in... I still think you're gay."

"But I
am
in denial."

"Still gay."

"Then maybe you're a man trapped in a woman's body? I sure am sweet on you, sugar."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Zombikens."

"Listen, Scoobylicious, technically you're not here from a broken heart... I kinda knocked you out before you could start kicking the Detective's butt... you'd regret that later, by the way. Plus I haven't been able to talk to you much more than the odd word wedged around 'seek medical attention' for two days now- I thought we could spend some quality time together."

She looked up and into his eyes for the first time and instantly the world changed. She knew. She screamed and surged across the table into his arms.

***

Working together, the doctor and floor nurse had gotten the major blood vessels sealed after two minutes of struggle using only the doctor's portable kit. The trauma nurse arrived shortly thereafter with more comprehensive equipment. Now she and the doctor were working to stabilize the patient for transport to the OR.

No longer needed, the floor nurse stepped away from the wounded John Doe. She glanced at the patient still mumbling to himself in the wheelchair. He had a post-operative dressing on his head, so she wrote his behavior off to some serious brain trauma. She turned her attention to the female cop out cold on the floor.

The nurse had heard her scream as she'd entered the room, so she was surprised to find a beatific smile frozen on the unconscious woman's face. Though the paths of tears were fresh on her face, she looked like she was dreaming of Caribbean romance.

Her preliminary scan came up clean. She seemed to be sleeping... deep REM.

"Officer?" She looked at the holographic nametag at the bottom of the woman's badge, "Officer Woods?" She shook the fallen officer gently, then slightly less so.

"Yeah. Ok, but just one more, 'kay?" Woods slurred out sleepily. The sentence terminated in the puckering of imaginary kisses. In mid-pucker, the officer's eyes flutteredopen. Pucker frozen on her face, her eyes shifted about, finally settling on the floor nurse's confused face. The pucker dissolved into a self-conscious smile. "Hi." She said.

"Hi." The nurse gave the quick nod most reserve to ease the pressure of awkward meetings.

"So, now that my nap's out of the way... back on the job, eh?" the officer wiped at her tear-streaked face. "Whoo! Sure was tired!"

"Uh... what's happening here?"

"You tell me, I just woke up." The officer sat up and looked around.

"Less than five minutes ago you were screaming like your foot was stuck in a blender."

"You sure that was me? I really feel much better now." She stood up in one graceful move that looked like it was cut from the middle of a Russian ballet.

"Whoa!" the nurse fell out of her crouch and onto her posterior.

"Oh, sorry!" The officer said, offering her a hand up.

"You know these folks?" The nurse asked, regaining her feet.

"Well, that sweet guy over there with the sucking chest wound is my fiancé." She giggled like a junior invited to senior prom. She seemed to realize this was less than appropriate and cleared her throat before continuing. "The muttering guy over there stabbed him just now... Boy, I'm so going to bust him for that... stabbing is a serious offense." She said, elbowing the confused nurse conspiratorially.

"Uh..." the nurse waited uncertainly for the punch line, not sure if she'd just heard it. "That wasn't funny."

"Yep. Sure wasn't funny before I got my nap. I was screaming like my foot was stuck in a blender." Her smile was dazzling.

"Are you sure you're ok?" the nurse said, looking down at her scanner again.

The doctor and trauma nurse stumbled away from the bed where they were working on the John Doe. "You see that?!" the doctor shouted.

The trauma nurse nodded. They took another step back amid a shocked intake of breath. The floor nurse followed their stares back to the bed.

"What?" Alex said, sitting up in the bed, prodding the closing wound in his chest with a finger.

Minutes passed and eventually the door to the semiprivate opened and the doctor and two nurses sauntered into the hall.

"Nope, those were not the droids we were looking for." The floor nurse said as the door swung closed behind them.

The doctor concurred, "Yep, not those droids at all- it was about time for us to move along." His head moved through a slow, thoughtful shake.

The trauma nurse was less sure. "Yeah... but what's a droid?"

"Well, obviously not those!" the doctor gave the short laugh that often accompanies blatantly obvious assertions.

"Why were we looking for droids?" The floor nurse wondered.

"What are droids?!" the trauma nurse demanded, shaking her head harder.

"I'm hungry." The doctor said, rubbing his neck. They all shuffled toward the break room.

"So, what's a droid?" Rae said into Alex's ear.

"Uhhg! Chest wound!"

"Oh." Rae disengaged the bear hug, feeling a bit self-conscious. "Sorry."

Alex sat back on the bed, concentrating. He swayed a bit, so Rae sat down next to him. She put an arm around his shoulders to steady him."

"That your work, too?" Rae nodded toward Ping, who was now snoring in his wheelchair.

Alex nodded, "We owe him our lives again... what's this, like three times?"

Rae thought for a moment. "I think we all owe each other a lot. He is pretty amazing, though... you know he started out as a family counselor?"

One of Alex's eyes popped open. "Nah... really?"

Rae nodded, "It's actually a really sad story."

Alex shook his head as if to clear it. "Tell me later... it's gonna take me about forty minutes to finish patching the two of us up.

She looked surprised. "You are getting better, Mr. Potter. It took you forever to fix him the first time."

"Well, he was a lot worse then. Shhh, now. I'm probably being a bit too optimistic. What I really meant was that we've got about forty minutes before they make another try for us."

"What?!"

"How do you get this metal diaper off? It's really beginning to chafe."

The buzzer sounded and Chase looked up from the current edition of
Hypercar Quarterly
. "Whoa!"

Before the camera outside the door was the most beautiful federal agent he'd ever
seen. Of course, that cop had been a different kind of hot, but this woman was something special. Porcelain skin, straight red hair, swimmer's body... he could tell these things even through the suit. He went through the motions of verifying the FBI ID that she presented before the camera then buzzed her in.