Dr. Sidney Freedman scowled as he watched the nurse let the stranger wheel his patient away. He may be new here, and he may not know the ropes, but he knew that this was so against the rules that it wasn't even funny. The fact that he'd always been the laid back sort when it came to the rules and regulations, and was beginning to circle the drain towards retirement didn't mean that he'd just let this slide by like everyone else did though.
Murdock's previous doctor had thought that letting the man out on occasion was good therapy, and would help the man acclimate himself to life on the outside when he was eventually released, as he had believed the man would be one day. He used the fact that before the man's friends had started popping by a couple times a month to take him out for unauthorized outings, the man had been exceedingly depressed as reasoning for this decision. According to all reports, the man's mood was much improved on the days immediately following the days and sometimes weeks that he went AWOL.
According to several accounts however, despite the mental improvement, the man was almost always returned in a worse condition than when he left physically, often looking as if someone had tried to beat the shit out of him or worse. He suspected that it was the man's friends. Either that, or the man's friends were deliberately putting his patient in danger for their own sick amusement, and Murdock, happy to be outside, went along with it if only to experience what little freedom they gave him.
He had seen men like Murdock back in Korea, and men who had nearly become Murdock due to all of the stress they had been placed under. Had Murdock been born in a different decade, he probably would have fit in quite nicely with the crew from the MASH 4077. He had the right sort of quirkiness. Unfortunately, he had it to a degree that made him unable to live in the regular world, and it was coupled with an easily exploitable innocence that a scam artist like the stranger who was busy busting him out would know how to use like a pro.
It had been his concern for his patient that had caused him to make his next decision. As the stranger wheeled Murdock who was nice but mostly out of it away, he returned to his office for the gun he kept mostly out of habit these days, as Los Angeles was by all accounts a dangerous place to live, with all of the bullets that went flying around every day. There had been a time when he hadn't been the elderly and mild mannered doctor he was today, a time when he had been a soldier, and he decided to use all of that steel it gave his resolve in order to do what was best for his patient.
"Exactly where do you think you're taking my patient?" he asked when he arrived just in time to see Murdock hopping into a black and gray van with a red stripe running across it that was parked about a block away from the VA.
"It's okay doc, we've already cleared it with the nurse." the amiable con artist said with a smile that reminded him of Hunnicut after he'd pulled a prank and no-one had caught on.
"You haven't cleared it with me, and I say that Murdock goes back into the hosp-..." he started before a car screeched into the grocery store parking lot in which the van was parked. He barely managed to get down in time before one of the passengers in the car started spraying the van with bullets.
"Sorry doc, no time to argue." Murdock said as he hopped out of the van and dragged him back inside while his charming friend laid down cover fire with an automatic weapon of his own.
As soon as he was inside, the driver hit the gas, and they were flying down the road with the car in hot pursuit.