There Are People Who Care

by brokenheroes

"Stitch him up, no questions asked, and you can be a doctor again." For one brief moment Dr. Farooq Madan was back in Iraq— bright red blood, a living man on the gurney. And when the orderly—no, of course, not an orderly—came to the end of his plea and lowered his gaze to the floor, it struck Farooq that in another context he would have said the man was praying.

"There Are People Who Care"

He had always disliked the inanities people spoke in a crisis, the cliches of fiction, television, film— Stay with me! Just stay with me!—and the impossible promises—You'll be fine. I won't let anything happen to you—as if a wish or a command could make it so. Yet moments ago, knowing little of what had occurred, having only guesses and the terrible strain in John's voice, he had spoken such a promise himself—It isn't over, John—and understood, in this first true crisis of their partnership, the desperate need one feels to hold back a collapsing wall. To make promises you know you might not be able to keep. It isn't over John.

He had a contingency plan. Several, in fact. He ran through the possibilities very quickly as he drove, calculating all the factors in play: their location, the locations of his medically-equipped safe houses, the late hour, the resources he kept always in a hidden compartment of the car's boot—and the severity of John's injury.

So much blood.

The big town car protested as he took the turn too fast, southbound toward the morgue. John in the back seat made a slight sound, a brief grunt of pain, as the momentum rocked him sideways. Then in a whispery rasp barely audible, he said, "Slow down, Finch. Don't get pulled over."

Of course. He hadn't been thinking of that. They were now far enough from the parking structure to feel sure there was no pursuit—from Snow and his partner, or for that matter Detective Carter, should she have changed her mind. He let off on the accelerator slightly. Slow down, slow down. Don't get pulled over.

In the rear view mirror, the street lights illuminated John in surreal stuttering glimpses, like a film strip viewed frame by frame. He was slumped against the corner post, his head turned as if idly watching the city rolling past the window, but his expression was slack, indifferent—completely absent his usual extraordinary intensity. A grimace of agony would have been less frightening to Harold than this.

"Mr. Reese?"

John may have heard this for what it was—an alarmed request for proof of life. With obvious effort, he brought his attention back inside the car. "Finch," he said softly, "I told you not to risk it."

"Mr. Reese, that's exactly why I knew you would need me. I may not be able to assist you in other ways but I can at least—" he hesitated, seeking the right words—"drive the getaway car."

John's voice fell again to barely more than a murmur, but there was a brushstroke of amusement in it. "Afraid I'm dragging you into a life of crime, Harold."

"Hardly, Mr. Reese. After all, I'm the one who hired you."

No reply from the back seat. The absent look had returned to his face. Stay with me, John.

It took him less than half a minute to hack the entry code for the unmanned security gate at the morgue, and when the steel arm lifted he drove slowly to the rear of the building and parked near the bay doors where ambulances and hearses unloaded their macabre cargo. There were a few dim lights inside but at this late hour no sign of anyone nearby. He limped through the unlocked doors, went a short way down the hall into an empty office and grabbed a lab coat he found draped on the back of a chair. There were several gurneys nosed into the wall of the corridor; he pushed one outside and down the slight ramp to the town car, braked its wheels and opened the rear car door.

"John," he said quietly. It was not necessary to say, I can't lift you. Reese took in an audible breath and extended an arm, and as Harold gripped his wrist and his elbow to help him from the car, he levered against the door post with his shoulder—doing all he could to minimize the pull on Harold's body. He stood a moment, leaning against the car, waiting for his legs and his breath to steady, before shuffling a step, and half-collapsing on the gurney.

Harold retrieved one of three duffle bags from the boot of the town car, set it next to John, and strained to push the now heavy gurney back up the ramp, through the bat-wing doors and down the long hall to the elevator. When dim voices approached from around the corner to the left, he snatched a clean hospital sheet from a stack on one of the empty gurneys and fumbled to spread it over John—a quick shared glance as the sheet went over his face. A woman and a man rounded the corner, talking quietly, and the woman nodded at Harold tiredly as they passed him and went on down the hall and out to the parking lot. He was pushing John's gurney into the elevator when he heard a car start up, saw its headlights swing through the windows in the bay doors and away.

A short ride down to the basement, then a long corridor under fluorescent lights into a well lit room where a man was just seating himself behind a computer. He glanced up at Harold.

"Another one?" the man said with mild amusement. "Busy night, must be a full moon."

Harold swept back the sheet and in a quick motion lifted the duffle bag, unzipped it, poured bundles of cash onto the steel examination table. "Your name is Farooq Madan, you were the best surgeon in Najaf but you can't afford lessons in the States because you send all your money home to family. Stitch him up, no questions asked, and you can be a doctor again."

# #

For one brief moment Farooq was back in Iraq— bright red blood, a living man on the gurney. And when the orderly—no, of course, not an orderly—came to the end of his plea and lowered his gaze to the floor, it struck Farooq that in another context he would have said the man was praying.

He hesitated only a fraction of a moment, for there really was no question. He stepped quickly around the gurney, dropped the bloody sheet to the floor and pushed the cart toward the back of the room. There were two autopsy bays there, overflow bays seldom used except on Saturday nights under a full moon-this was the joke around the morgue-and of course not meant for actual surgery, but equipped with steel sinks and counters, steel shelves and drawers, hanging mechanical scales, a few sterile tools.

"Close and lock the door, please, pull the blinds, dim the lights in the office." As the other man carried out this order—turning stiffly, moving with a halting gait, not a new injury but an old one poorly healed—Farooq parked the gurney alongside one of the sinks, locked it's wheels, flipped on the bright autopsy lights and began pulling things from drawers and shelves.

"I will need your assistance, please."

"I don't…"

"Come here, please, wash hands, put on gloves, you must help when I need you."

He was already scrubbing his own hands, not looking at the other man for agreement, and when he moved away from the sink the man stepped reluctantly forward and began slowly to wash his hands.

Farooq scissored through the wounded man's bloody shirt and lifted it back to expose the chest, then marched his fingertips around the entry wound in widening circles. Under pressure, blood poured from the bullet hole. The wounded man inhaled sharply, but only once, and this, as well as the free-flowing blood, Farooq approved of. "Good, good," he murmured.

With his hands still on the man's wound, still pressing, he leaned down. "I should like to know your name," he said. "I will speak to you while I am treating your wound, you will feel less discomfort if we are talking, everything will go better if we can speak as friends. I am Farooq. What shall I call you?"

The man's eyes were half-closed—it was a look Farooq had seen on the dead—and for a moment he wondered if his patient was conscious. But then the man said softly, "Call me John."

Of course. John Doe. "John, my friend, I apologize, but this room is for the dead. I have no anesthetic, as pain does not concern the dead. I will be quick, but there will be pain. I apologize again."

The man who called himself John opened his eyes fully and turned his head to meet Farooq's gaze. "I appreciate the concern." His voice was quiet, his expression indifferent. During the years of war, Farooq had seen a few men like this one, soldiers, specialists, who had been schooled to bear pain. Then the man's eyes closed again and he said softly, "Don't faint on me, Finch."

The man at the sink, the man named Finch, looked up, affronted. "Never, Mr. Reese."

Farooq realized with some concern that this exchange had given him their names. Actual names that he could report, names that might lead to their discovery and their undoing. Reese. Finch. It crossed his mind that they might have no reason to care, if their plan was to kill him in the end. But he could not think of that now. He was a surgeon, this was a trauma ward.

He gestured with his chin toward the man called Finch. "Come, please, stand here. Hand me these instruments when I call for them." The tools used for autopsy were few and crude, not surgical instruments—he would have to make do—but he did not say this to Finch. He pointed at an enterotome, and for Finch's sake used the plain name most pathologists used. "If I call for blunt scissors, hand me this tool. Hand it quickly." He pointed again. "These are scissors, just ordinary scissors. Needles. Suture. This is a probe." He named each thing only once. He pointed at a full tray of forceps. "These are called pickups. When I have finished with one I will hand it back, you will put it in the sink, not back in the tray. Hand me a fresh one each time. And you will use a pickup to hold a sponge. Like this. You will sponge away blood, please, when I nod, each and every time I nod. Change them out, the sponges, each time. Use a fresh pickup each time. "

He irrigated the abdominal wound with plain water, painted the area with betadine, and then asked for the probe and was mildly surprised that the man called Finch remembered which tool it was and promptly, if gingerly, placed it in his hand. As he began exploring for the bullet, the wounded man—Reese—opened his eyes narrowly and stared at the ceiling. Though his face was very stiffly set he didn't squirm, and he made almost no sound. Yes, a soldier. A well-trained and stoic soldier. It was the other one, Finch, whose labored breathing he could hear in the quiet room, his barely suppressed sounds of anguish and worry. Finch had addressed the other man quite formally as Mr. Reese, but surely they were more than just criminal colleagues. Friends? Lovers?

As he probed he kept up a running patter which was, as he had suggested to John, a way of distracting his patient as much as might be. "I have three sons and four daughters, John. Perhaps you can imagine what this is like, how in Najaf I was never at peace, never alone in a room. If you have children you will understand, how they are always pestering you for something, your children. But now I am alone, living alone, and I miss the pestering, the noise. I find I do not care much for being alone in a room after all."

He nodded, nodded again. "When I nod…" he began to say, and gave Finch a scowling look, and the man woke from wherever his mind was, awkwardly grasped a sponge with forceps and reached in to daub away the blood. Tenderly, afraid to hurt his friend.

"You can, bring your, family, over now," John said, in a series of separate tight breaths.

"Yes, yes, thank you. You've made that possible. I will send for them. Not be alone any longer." He offered a slight smile. "Then I will surely complain again about the pestering, the noise." He hoped this was true. Hoped he would not be killed when he finished here.

The bullet was lodged in the meaty part of the man's left side, below the last rib. He had perhaps been shot from a great distance, for the bullet had not penetrated deeply. No damage to kidney. No tearing of the bowel. Lucky man. Or not so lucky, judging from a puckered scar in the upper left quadrant of his chest, and a long scar (knife wound?) scribing a crescent below his left nipple. A man of violence, surely. If Farooq examined him more thoroughly, how many more scars would he find?

"Pickups," he said, and waited with his hand extended while Finch considered the tools and then tentatively and correctly handed him a forceps. The autopsy forceps were long-handled and toothed, quite blunt instruments, but he had once used kitchen tongs to pull shrapnel from a wound—he was not unacquainted with "making do." He reached into the wound deftly, gripped the bullet, pulled it straight out in a steady single motion.

"There," he said, delivering the slug to the steel tray. "I will stitch you up now, John," deliberately using Finch's own terminology. He nodded, and as Finch was sponging away the blood he said, "Autopsy needles are large, like sailmenders' needles, John. Quite heavy thread, I am afraid, not the fine sutures used in an operating theater. Your scar will be crude. And again, I apologize for pain." It was not John but Finch who made an audible sound at this news.

At request, Finch handed him the hagedorn needle and the twine and he began sewing closed the wound. Big, crude stitches, just as he had warned, unavoidable with such heavy implements. With each needle puncture Reese took a silent controlled breath, his half-closed eyes fixed on the ceiling. The morgue was always quite cold, but the man's face and chest now gleamed with sweat.

When he had tied off the last knot, Farooq asked for the scissors—"No, not the blunts, just the scissors"— snipped the thread, and immediately turned from there to cut away the leg of the man's bloody trousers, which drew from Finch a sudden wordless sound of surprise, of confusion. Dark blood on the dark trousers. Of course the man had not realized. "A second wound," Farooq said, glancing toward him. "Perhaps you did not know?" The man's mouth tightened, though he said nothing as he watched Farooq irrigating the neat hole in John's thigh.

"We see a good many Johns—John Does—in the morgue," Farooq said, and smiled to let the men know he was in on the small joke. And of course to engage his patient's attention again, away from his pain. "So many John Does we have to number them. Homeless men. Unhappy men who jump from bridges. A gangster now and then with fingerprints burned off." He glanced up at Finch to reassure himself he hadn't trod too close to their truth, but Finch was frowningly intent on Farooq's hands wielding the probe. "Jane Does as well, poor women. Discarded in trash bins. Bodies dropped into the river. Prostitutes I suppose, some of them. But the young ones, runaways probably, I am sad for them. So many having no one to care about them, no one to save them, protect them from bad things."

John had been intently focused on the effort to suppress any sound of pain—this was something Farooq was aware of—so when the man turned his narrow gaze briefly to Finch, and Finch returned the look, it seemed to Farooq that they were communicating in some cryptic way—that they were reacting to Farooq's words. He was struck suddenly by the thought that these men might be sex traffickers—the young ones, the runaways, no one to care about them. Such a terrible crime. He was flooded with anger and dismay. He might have found the courage to refuse their money if he had known. His own daughters were of an age….

"Everyone is worth saving." Finch said very quietly. "Everyone is important to someone." Then, after a moment's pause, barely audible, "There are people who care."

This was so unexpected, so startling, that Farooq lifted his head and looked right at Finch. Finch met his gaze briefly and then looked down. There are people who care. And Farooq knew suddenly, without a whisper of doubt, that these men were not criminals at all. Not in the ordinary sense.

He lowered his own eyes. "Yes, as you say. Everyone is worth saving."

He returned his attention to the leg wound, and to the technical problem of retrieving the bullet without an x-ray to guide his hand. He was principally concerned not to nick the femoral artery, and so he probed with slow care, which he knew was causing his patient a great deal of pain. When John could not suppress a soft grunt Farooq stopped his hand briefly and said, "I'm sorry, John. I am forced to go slowly now, as this bullet appears to lie quite close to a major artery."

John's eyes were fixed on something invisible in the middle distance, but he quirked his mouth in a near-smile. "Take your time," he whispered hoarsely. "No hurry."

This drew from Finch a slight sound of exasperation, which Farooq took to mean Not a matter for joking, John. Perhaps this was their usual way of handling grave situations? Farooq wondered if it might have been Finch joking and John demurring when Finch had suffered the injury that left him with a limp and (as he guessed) a fused vertebrae .

"I will need a second pair of hands, now, please. Come here, take the blunt scissors, I will need you to hold them as I tell you, to keep the wound open."

Finch released a groaning sound of dismay and his friend said softly, through a series of closed breaths, "Feeling, weak, in the knees, Finch?"

Yes, their usual way, joking about serious matters. Or it was John's way.

Finch said nothing, only flattened his mouth as he gingerly took hold of the scissors. In autopsy the enterotome scissors were most often used to cut open a bowel, but Farooq, lacking clamps, intended them for another purpose. He grasped Finch by the wrist and guided his grip until the bulbuous tip of the scissors entered the wound. "Open the scissors now, slowly." Finch made a faint whimpering sound but tightened his hand until the blades opened, their blunt outer edges pushing back the margins of the wound as Farooq required. "Hold," he said, "just so." When he released the man's hand he waited a moment until he felt sure that Finch could continue holding the tool exactly as needed; until he was fairly sure, even if Finch's hand slipped, the long inner blade would not puncture the skin or cut into the muscle. Then he reached in past the enterotome with both a forceps and a probe and felt about, exploring deeper and wider seeking the tip of the bullet. John made a small sound, a sustained low groan. Farooq murmured, "Almost done," and after several long moments said, "I'm sorry, John, almost done, almost done," and then took a tight grip with the forceps and gently drew out the bullet.

"Just so," he said, as he dropped the metal shard onto the tray.

Finch's hand immediately began to tremble slightly. Farooq reached for the scissors, took the tool from him and slowly closed the blades, letting the wound sag into itself. "I will stitch this up now and all will be well. Simple wounds, really. You are a lucky man, John."

Neither man replied to this.

It was necessary to take several small stitches in the interior of the muscle before closing the epidermis-a slow, deliberate process. And painful, he knew. When Farooq had finished, he stripped off a glove and allowed his bare hand to rest lightly on John's forearm. "Done," he said softly. The tricep under his hand was taut. John blinked several times, and the sweat from his lashes spilled off at the corners of his eyes. After a moment he closed his eyes, and under Farooq's hand the muscle slowly relaxed.

"You will wish to wash off the dry blood," he said to Finch. "This is always everyone's wish, to clean up afterward, but you must take care to keep the wounds dry until the stitches come out. No showering , you understand. Warm water in a basin with a squirt of soap—I will write down the name of the soap, you will get it at a pharmacy. Wring out the cloth very well, wipe only where it will not wet the sutures.

"Without an x-ray I cannot be certain, but the bullet has likely nicked or cracked the femur. He should stay off his feet, completely off his feet, a week at least. Even two. You should cover the sutures with light bandages—any pharmacy will have them, but here in the morgue we do not keep any. In a week, ten days, you can perhaps remove the stitches yourself. Or I will come and remove them if you call me. Call me, as well, if there is swelling or fever, redness or visible pus." He was fairly certain the man would know how to contact him; that he did not need to offer his number. And indeed Finch did not ask him for this information.

John had let his breathing slow and deepen, now that he was released from the need to hold back pain. His face was pale and slack with exhaustion under the sheen of sweat. Perhaps he was even unconscious—a brief syncope not unexpected after stress and a drop in blood pressure. Both Farooq and Finch looked down at him in silence.

Then Finch, without taking his attention from John, said very quietly, "Thank you."

It took Farooq a moment to realize this was meant for him. Then another moment as he considered how he wished to respond. "I am glad I could be of assistance." Both he and Finch went on studying the patient a minute more.

"You have a safe place? Where John will have the time he needs to recover?"

Finch briefly sent him a glance. "Yes." He visibly gathered himself and looked around the room. "I will need to cover him. To get him out of the building."

"Yes. Of course. I will get you a clean sheet." He rummaged about in the closets, and when he brought the sheet back to the autopsy bay he found that John had slightly roused, and the two men were speaking together softly, something about numbers and a machine, though they fell silent as he approached.

He helped Finch open out the sheet and spread it over John, over his ruined bloody suit and the coarse black sutures. John, with a brief smirking look, said "Dead again," in a hoarse whisper as Finch brought the sheet over his face.

As Finch took hold of the rail of the gurney, it struck Farooq that the man's whole body was drawn down—that he was perhaps as exhausted as Reese. "I will walk out with you," he said, and took the rail out of Finch's hands. "He is weak, you will need my help transferring him." He gestured at the floor. "Step carefully. The blood is slippery."

He pushed the heavy cart out and down the corridor to the elevator with Finch limping tiredly behind. They rode up in silence. Then as they went along the first floor hallway toward the parking lot, Finch said, "The architecture program at Rensselaer is very well regarded. The dean of admissions is…someone I know. I will tell him to expect your son's application."

Malik, his eldest, was a first-year architecture student at a small, poor college in Najaf, a college that had been bombed twice in recent years. Rensselaer was a dream Malik had had since he was twelve.

Farooq looked at Finch, who only briefly returned the look. There were no words. There was only speechless astonishment.

They passed no one on the first floor, which was fortunate. How to explain taking a dead body back to the parking lot rather than down to the morgue or autopsy? He rolled the gurney down the ramp and followed Finch to a black town car. The night air, suddenly, was wonderful. He took several deep breaths to clear his head, clear his lungs of the smell of the morgue.

As Finch unlocked the car and opened the rear door, Farooq drew back the hospital sheet and helped John come to sitting, then held him steady while he inched his legs over the edge of the gurney. When Finch reached out to help him stand, John said softly, "No, Finch," and shrugged away the man's hand. Of course: They were more than colleagues-friends, certainly, if not lovers, friends who cared for each other. John would have needed Finch's help getting into the car, and getting out of it and onto the gurney. But now, with Farooq to lean on, he would do what he could to keep his friend from straining that old injury.

There was a skill all nurses learned for transferring patients, a matter of balance and pivot-Farooq knew the principles. He helped John from the gurney to the car without a great deal of fumbling, and when the man was settled on the seat he leaned in and said, "Take care, John, my friend."

John, with his head slumped on the seat back, smiled slightly. "Take your children to Coney Island, Farooq."

For no reason except a sudden spurt of joy, he laughed. "Yes. I will."

He swung the door shut softly. Finch had already moved to the driver's side. No handshake, he thought, and for some dim reason this distressed him. But then Finch looked at him across the top of the car. It was a look he had exchanged with surgeons, with nurses, more than once, at the end of a terrible frenzied crisis. A look of deep, but inarticulate, understanding. And after a moment Finch nodded. There are people who care. Then he got into the car and drove it slowly through the parking lot and out to the dark street.

Farooq stood watching until the car was gone, and long after it was gone.

-end-