Dead Beat

"Well," I said, "I’m kind of a wimp."

"Nasty," commented the burly orderly. He produced a clipboard layered in forms and a ballpoint pen and handed them both to me. "They’ll have to cut this out."

"We’ll let the doctor decide that," the nurse said. "How did this happen, sir?"

"I have no clue," I said. "I was walking down the street and all of a sudden I thought my leg was on fire."

"You walked here?" she asked.

"A helpful Boy Scout brought me most of the way," I said.

She sighed. "Well, it’s been a slow day. They should be able to see to you shortly."

"That’s super," I said. "Because it hurts like hell."

"I can get you some Tylenol," the nurse said primly.

"I don’t have a headache. I have a four-inch piece of steel in my leg."

She passed me a paper cup and two little white tablets. I sighed and took them.

"Heh," the orderly said after she left. "Don’t worry too much. They’ll get you something when the doctor sees to you."

"With this kind of loving care, I probably won’t need it."

"Don’t be too hard on her," the orderly said. "You should see what people try so that they can get to some painkillers. Vicodin, morphine, that kind of thing."

"Yeah," I said. "Hey, man, can I ask you something?"

"Sure." He had brought a bowl of ice with him, and he started sealing it into plastic bags, which he started packing around my leg. "This should numb it a little, and maybe take down some of the swelling. It ain’t a local, but it’s what I’ve got."

The ice didn’t actually burst into steam upon touching me, even though it felt like it should have. The pain didn’t exactly lessen, but it did suddenly feel a little more distant. "Thanks, man. Hey, I was hoping I could talk to a couple of guys I know while I was here," I said. "They’re EMTs. Gary Simmons and Jason Lamar."

The orderly lifted his eyebrows. "Simmons and Lamar, sure. They drive an ambulance."

"I know. Are they around?"

"They were on shift last night," he said. "But it’s the end of the month and they might be on their swing shift. I’ll ask."

"Appreciate it," I said. "If Simmons is there, tell him a school buddy is here."

"Sure. If I do that, though, you gotta do something for me and fill out these forms."

I eyed the clipboard and picked up the pen. "Tell the doc to sign me up for carpal tunnel surgery when he gets that thing out of me. Two birds with one stone."

The orderly grinned. "I’ll do that."

He left me to fill in forms, which didn’t used to take terribly long to fill out since I didn’t have any kind of insurance. One of these days, when I had the money, I was going to have to get some. They say that when you pay for insurance you’re really buying peace of mind. It might make me feel peaceful to think of how much money the company was probably going to lose on me in the long run. If I lived my whole life in the open, as I had been since I’d come to Chicago, they might be dealing with me for two or three centuries. I wondered what the yearly markup would be for a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old.

A young doctor came in after I was finished with the forms, and true to the orderly’s prediction, he had to cut the shuriken out of me. I got a local, and the sudden cessation of pain was like a drug all by itself. I fell asleep while he was cutting and woke up as he was wrapping my leg up.

"… the sutures dry," he was saying. "Though from the looks of your file I suppose you know that."

"Sure, Doc," I said. "I know the drill. Do you need to take them out or did I get the other kind?"

"They’ll dissolve," he said. "But if you experience any swelling or fever, get in touch. I’m giving you a prescription for something for the pain and some antibiotics."

"Follow all the printed instructions and be sure to take them all," I said, in my best surgeon-general-slash-television-announcer voice.

"Looks like you’ve done this as often as I have," he said. He gestured to the steel tray where the bloodied shuriken lay. "Did you want to keep the weapon?"

"Might as well. I’ll have to get a souvenir in the gift shop otherwise."

"You sure you don’t want the police to look at it?" he said. "They might be able to find fingerprints or something."

"I already told you guys it must have been some kind of accident," I said.

He gave me a look of extreme skepticism. "All right. If that’s the way you want it." He dropped the little weapon into a metal tray of alcohol or some other sterilizer. "Keep your leg elevated. That will ease the swelling. Stay off of it for a couple of days, at least."

"No problem," I said.

He shook his head. "The orderly will be by in a minute with your prescriptions and a form to sign." He departed.

A minute later there were footsteps outside the little alcove they’d put me in, and a large young man drew the curtain aside. He had skin almost as dark as my leather duster, and his hair had been cropped into a flat-top so precise that his barber must have used a level. He was on the heavy side-not out of shape or ripped out, but simply large and comfortable with it. He wore an EMT’s jacket, and the name tag on it read LAMAR. He stood there looking at me for a minute and then said, "You’re the wrong color to have been in my high school. And I didn’t do college."

"Army medic?" I asked.

"Navy. Marines." He folded his arms. "What do you want?"

"My name is Harry Dresden," I said.

He shrugged. "But what do you want?"

I sat up. My leg was still blissfully numb. "I wanted to talk to you about last night."

He eyed me warily. "What about it?"

"You were on the team who responded to a gunshot victim on Wacker."

His breath left him in a long exhale. He looked up and down the row, then stepped into the little alcove and closed the curtain behind him. He lowered his voice. "So?"

"So I want you to tell me about it," I said.

He shook his head. "Look, I want to keep my job."

I lowered my voice as well. "You think telling me is going to endanger that?"

"Maybe," he said. He pulled open his jacket and then unbuttoned two buttons on his shirt. He opened it enough to show me a Kevlar vest beneath it. "See that? EMTs have to wear them around here, because people shoot at us sometimes. Gangbangers, that kind of thing. We show up to try to save lives and people shoot at us."