Author's note:
First off, disclaimers, I don't own Hannibal or Clarice bla bla bla, just borrowing. I do own Erin Lander and a few associated characters, except for the ER doctor who, as you probably guessed, hails from the TV show ER (which I like. Incidentally, go have a look at the last chapter of 'Blood Ties' – they pop up there too.)
As you've probably noticed, this story differs from previous works in that it does not contain wholesale another-chapter-another-painful-death Susana-style killing and won't have it in future chapters. Well, yes, okay, there was the one murder at the end of Chapter 1. Don't be upset. It was a mercy killing. He had a certain naïve charm – but no muscle. (I'm sure a few people ought to be able to figure out where that came from.)
The end of this chapter ought to surprise a few people. My first attempt at such a thing.
Dr. Lecter sighed as he sat at the kitchen table. For the first time, he was beginning to feel some relief. He felt safe, and that was nothing to sneeze at. He was hungry, but knew he would have to forgo food if he was to go to the OR. But as for Erin, he hardly wanted his surgeon to be thinking about food. He rose and walked over to the toaster, where the Pop Tart was becoming fragrant. He lifted it from the toaster and stared at it in distaste. Holding it between his thumb and forefinger like a dead rat, Dr. Lecter carried it over to the wastebasket and gave it the burial it deserved.
Erin's refrigerator contained mostly food that was easy to cook. The kitchen was obviously the domain of a woman who regarded cooking as a chore. A pity, he thought. He glanced out the window and noticed a convenience store across the street. He wrapped his thumb again and left the apartment. He had no keys, but he believed he could get back to the apartment before Erin arrived.
The street was calm and quiet: it was too early for anyone to really be up and about. Dr. Lecter was the only customer in the store. The bleary-eyed clerk did not seem to notice his bloody hand. Calmly, Dr. Lecter selected some eggs, butter, and instant sausages. It wasn't terribly good food, he allowed, but it would be better than the chunk of dough and chemicals that Erin had planned on eating.
Back in the apartment, he set to work. Erin's stove was a simple electrical model, rarely used. He supposed the microwave was what she preferred. Poor girl, she really ought to try real cooking. Still, it was enough to get the eggs and sausage cooking.
A key scratched in the lock. Dr. Lecter turned. Just in case, he reached for his Harpy clipped to his waistband. Erin Lander entered the apartment and sniffed the fragrant aroma of the sausages.
"You shouldn't be cooking," she said mildly.
"And you shouldn't be eating that…swill." He pointed distastefully at the box of Pop Tarts. "Chocolate Pop Tarts." He shuddered delicately. "Do you know what they put in those?"
He served her the eggs and sausage but took none for himself. She glanced at him with a guilty look.
"Aren't you eating?"
"Not if I'm going into surgery," he said calmly.
Erin took the unspoken acquiescence and nodded.
"So what is your plan?" he asked.
Erin placed two bags on the table. One was plastic, the other paper. In the plastic bag he saw a dirty, old pair of men's pants, a ragged flannel shirt, and a cheap jacket. He scowled at it.
"Here," she said. "I'll help you change."
"Wherever did you get these rags?" he asked distastefully.
"Salvation Army thrift store down the block," she said after swallowing her eggs.
"Is it open at 5 AM?"
"No," Erin admitted, "but they don't have a burglar alarm either."
Dr. Lecter raised his eyebrows eloquently and said nothing.
"I didn't steal them. I left money. It's not my fault if they leave a back door open."
Dr. Lecter did not like the idea of those filthy rags touching his body, but he divined her plan. He took them into the living room and pulled them on. His lack of a thumb made it difficult, but not impossible. He noticed the clothing was authentically stained and dirty. When he returned, Erin had wolfed down her meal and gave him the paper bag.
Dr. Lecter reached into the bag and removed a flat glass bottle containing a shockingly bright red liquid. MD 20/20, the label read. His lips curved down in distaste.
"Mad Dog 20/20?" he asked bitterly. "You expect me to drink wino wine?"
Erin took the bottle from him and opened it. She spilled a bit on her hand and patted it on his cheeks and clothing like cologne. Dr. Lecter submitted to this indignity with a sigh.
"They probably thought I was nuts, buying cheap booze at five in the morning," Erin said as she worked. She pointedly ignored his query. "But it'll do. Now drink some."
Dr. Lecter shook his head. "If I must stoop to wearing this, then I shall. But this pig slop shall not pass my lips."
Erin sighed. "Then just rinse it in your mouth and spit it out."
Dr. Lecter complied. The awful wine hit his tongue and burned. It was sickly sweet and its aroma rose nauseating in his sinuses. He stepped to the sink and spat it out several times. His features pulled down in distaste. He wouldn't be able to look at wine the same way anymore. Behind him, Erin watched calmly.
"Dr. Lander, sadism in a physician is unbecoming," he managed. "If I gave that to an animal, that would be cruelty. And you wanted me to drink that?"
"It's for your own good," she said, unmoved. She replaced the silk napkin covering his hand with a paper towel, and then handed him a Styrofoam cup filled with ice. "You want to pass for a bum, don't you? No one will think about it if you're a bum." Dr. Lecter glanced inside and saw his thumb neatly nestled in the ice. He nodded. She was right: if he walked into the hospital in a suit and tie, that would draw attention. As a homeless person, he would go unnoticed. They would treat him and send him on, presuming him to be just another one of the human flotsam that washed into ER's all over America every day.
"Here's your story," she said archly. "You were sleeping in the alley over on Fifth, when Freaky Freddy found you and said you were in his spot. Once you say Freaky Freddy, the staff will know who you mean."
"I see," Dr. Lecter said. "And who, may I ask, is Freaky Freddy?"
"He's a homeless guy," Erin explained. "Completely crazy. Every now and then they bring him in and stick him in the psych ward. He's fine –well, not fine, but all right—when he's med compliant. So then they release him, he goes back to the streets, loses his meds, and then the whole cycle starts all over again. Freaky Freddy also hurts people when he's loose, he's hurt them bad. One day he'll hurt someone who isn't homeless and then they'll put him away for good. But as long as he only hurts other bums, no one seems to care enough to put him in an institution. We know Freaky Freddy very well, and we know what he does."
"A modern tragedy," Dr. Lecter observed.
"Freaky Freddy gives me a lot of work to do," she said. "Especially if you're in his spot." She checked her watch. "I have to go now," she said. "Rounds."
Dr. Lecter waved at her with his good hand. "Go, then." He accompanied her as far as the door, not wanting people to see her leave with the bum. She locked the door up behind them.
"The hospital is three blocks up," she said, pointing. "You know the drill."
"ER, then ask for a surgical consult."
Erin nodded.
"Go, doctor," he said. "I'll see you in a bit."
Her footsteps echoed on the stairway as she ran down the stairs. The stairway had a window, and he was able to watch her get into a well-maintained Civic and drive off. Odd that she drives to work when it's three blocks away. Then again, she's a single woman. Probably for safety.
Altogether, he was not displeased with how things were going. He did not like the idea of being in the hospital, but she was right in that it wasn't a button on his shirt. Dr. Lecter did not hold it against her that she could not do it in her apartment. He could have, but she was not his peer. No one was. He wouldn't hold her insistence on the hospital against her. So long as he wasn't apprehended while under anesthesia, he might be able to get out unscathed. Once he was up, he would escape, of course.
He allowed her fifteen minutes and then walked briskly from the apartment. The stolen Cherokee was parked across the street. Dr. Lecter took the keys from his pocket and started it. In short order, he could see the hospital, a large ugly building looming over the others. He eschewed the Emergency pull-through. Instead, he pulled into the parking garage. He could leave the Cherokee here if he had to: far better than leaving it on the street right by her apartment for any police officer to find.
He did take a moment to put a blanket over the body in the back. Once this was over, he had to dump the body somewhere. Perhaps Erin would be able to tell him where in this city he could find a good dump site. He took a moment to observe himself in the side mirror of the Jeep before walking down to the ER's red sign.
The illusion was not complete – his hair was neatly cut, and he lacked the desperate look of those who live on the streets. But Dr. Lecter thought it would do. He certainly reeked of that horrible wine, at any rate. He walked carefully to the stairs, the Styrofoam cup clenched in his good hand. When he reached the ground, Dr. Lecter began to stagger, as if half drunk. He licked his lips and spoke to himself.
"He cut off my thumb," he whispered. No. His syllables were too nuanced and proper. Needed to be more mushmouthy. He thought of how Miggs talked. He remembered back to his own days in the ER. How did the bums speak when they came in?
"'E cut off my fuckin' thumb," Dr. Lecter groaned in a choked voice. Much better. "Freaky Freddy, man. Cut off my thumb. My goddam thumb." He nodded approvingly.
The ER was busy, and no one really looked at him as he came in. Dr. Lecter made a note to keep this in mind: with a lab coat and the proper ID, he could probably loot as much drugs and equipment as he could possibly need. There were screams, chattering, and gurneys going back and forth. Machines beeped and children cried. Dr. Lecter nodded. Standard ER, anywhere in the world. It was all the same.
Dr. Lecter lurched up to the ER admissions desk. A young girl seated behind it looked him over, snapping her gum.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"Cut off my thumb," Dr. Lecter cried. You would have thought he had few teeth, or perhaps a numb tongue, his words were so mushed and incomprehensible. "Freaky Freddy, man. Cut off my goddam thumb." Dramatically, he removed the paper towel from his hand and displayed the gory wound.
The girl seemed unperturbed. "OK. I just need your name, then go see the triage nurse."
"Tom," Dr. Lecter said, the first name that came to mind. "Tommy Daum."
"Any insurance, Mr. Daum?" the girl asked, writing it down on a clipboard.
"Naw, honey," Dr. Lecter mumbled. "I'm..onna street, you know?"
"See the triage nurse over there, please," the girl said politely, and pointed.
What a nice girl, Dr. Lecter thought. Respect to those in need of help is so rare these days, especially in the young.
The triage nurse examined both his hand and his thumb. Dr. Lecter told her in the mushmouth voice he had adopted that Freaky Freddy had attacked him early that morning, claiming that Dr. Lecter was in his spot. Erin had not led him wrong: the nurse simply nodded and led him to a treatment bay.
"Freaky Freddy, huh? He's a bad one," the nurse said sympathetically.
"Yeah," Dr. Lecter said. "My thumb, 'e cut off my fuckin' thumb."
The nurse helped him onto the treatment table. Dr. Lecter laid back against it and sighed. He heard the nurse talking to someone outside. Probably an ER physician.
"This one's quick," he overheard. "One look at him, CBC, tox and drug screen, and boom, he's surgical."
Perhaps ten minutes or so later, a bald man pulled back the curtain separating Dr. Lecter from the unfortunates on either side of him. He entered and pulled the curtain shut behind him with a screech of plastic rings.
"Mr. Daum, I'm Dr. Green," he said in a tone both concerned and patronizing. "Understand you had some trouble with Freaky Freddy this morning."
"Yeah, the sumbitch cut off my thumb," Dr. Lecter groaned again. He had briefly been back in his memory palace, reviewing various case histories of bums he had treated a lifetime ago at Maryland-Misericordia. So far, he was simply discovering that his first idea had been correct – say the same thing over and over, groan, act like you're going to have the DT's. It seemed to be working. None of the ER staff around him seemed to have the slightest idea who he really was.
"Do you have it here?"
"Yeah, inna cup," Dr. Lecter grunted. He gave the cup to the doctor and showed him his hand. "Can dey put it back on? I dowanna have no thumb, yanno?" He hoped they sent him up to surgery soon. Speaking in this lumpenproletariat manner was beginning to make his tongue hurt.
"I'm gonna call a surgeon to have a look at it," the doctor said calmly. "They can tell you if it's reimplantable or not. Now have you had anything to drink this morning?"
"Naw," Dr. Lecter said. "Jus' a swig afore I came here for couritch, yanno? But I ain't had nothin' since las' night."
The doctor seemed unconvinced, and took a blood sample. Fool, Dr. Lecter thought. You could have done a few sobriety tests if you wanted to know if I was intoxicated. You needn't let the machine do all your work.
He lay back and relaxed. It wasn't until the doctor left him be that he realized he had no weapon. If they happened to realize who he was, he would be largely helpless.
No. Wait. This was a treatment room. That meant there had to be scalpels, scissors, and forceps. Not exactly ideal weapons, but he could defend himself with them. He slid off the table and swiftly went through the drawers with the nimbleness of a master thief. A pair of scissors and a few scalpel blades presented themselves. He pocketed most of them and placed one scalpel blade under the pillow on his gurney, still in its sterile wrapper. He wasn't concerned that they would hear the drawers. Dr. Lecter had worked himself in emergency rooms. ER's were invariably swamped and always undermanned, which meant that patients spent a long time before they were seen by the doctor, which in turn meant that they got bored. Anyone who had ever been in an ER eventually played with the drawers out of sheer boredom.
A few minutes later, the curtain swept aside, and there she was. Dr. Erin Lander, five feet tall, in scrubs and a lab coat. She favored him with a smile and closed the curtain.
"Hello," she said for the benefit of those outside the curtain. "I'm Dr. Lander. I'm going to have a look at your hand."
She took his hand and solicited his story, even though she knew what it was. Dr. Lecter played out his role in the shadow play and recounted the sad tale of his fictional encounter with Freaky Freddy, bete noire of the local ER. She nodded sympathetically and left for a moment. She left the curtain slightly open, and he could see her pick up a phone at the ER desk and dial a number.
The din of the ER prevented him from hearing her. Dr. Lecter closed his eyes and focused. Years of living on a ward of madmen had given him the ability to tune out noise and home in on what he wanted to like a laser beam. He did so now, concentrating on her conversation.
"Hi. Yeah, I have a guy I want to admit. Thumb is severed at the base. I want to admit him for reimplantation." She paused. "No, he doesn't have insurance. He's homeless." Dr. Lecter could not tune in the voice from the speaker, which chagrined him. On the ward, he had amused himself occasionally by eavesdropping on Barney's phone calls and telling him what the other person had said.
She seemed frustrated. "But I've been dying to do a reimplant," she said in the tones of a girl denied permission to go out with her friends. "No…no…I've observed and I've dissected tons of mice, though. Mice probably hate me. Yes. No, all you need to do is supervise. It's good. Straight cut all the way through. He even missed the bone." Dr. Lecter was not surprised. He had deliberately cut where it would be easy to reimplant.
She smiled triumphantly. "Thank you," she said. "You're great. Really." She returned to the bay he was in and ran the curtain shut. She seemed pleased with herself.
"We're going to admit you and try to surgically re-attach your thumb," she said in a businesslike tone. "I'm going to have the nurse give you something to help you relax and then we'll take you up."
Dr. Lecter tilted his head. In a tone quiet enough that no one outside the curtains could hear, he asked, "What are you giving me?"
"Pentathol," she whispered back. "Standard quick-acting sedative. Why?"
"Double the dose," he urged. "I metabolize drugs very quickly. The standard dose won't do anything for me."
She looked peeved. "Dr. Lecter-," she began. He raised a warning hand. She blushed, realizing her error.
"Mr. Daum, I can't exceed the normal dosage."
He shrugged. "I'm not arguing with you, doctor." How much better it was to speak in his normal voice, instead of the horrible mushy bum voice. "I'm advising you."
"I'll give you the first shot and then increase it," she said. "They watch resident prescribing habits, you know."
That, Dr. Lecter could accept, and he nodded graciously. Erin took a gown from a cabinet and held it out to him.
"Now we need to get you in a gown for surgery," she said in a brisk, nursey tone. "I'll help you get changed."
Dr. Lecter fingered the paper gown and eyed her. "From bad to worse, Dr. Lander. I can't say I think much of your taste in men's clothing."
"Okay," Erin said promptly. "I'll go get your thousand-dollar suit, and you can bleed on it in the OR."
Dr. Lecter tipped his head, grinning. "Touchè, Dr. Lander." She reached for the buttons on his shirt. Her hands trembled just a bit as she undid the buttons. Her fingers were light and quick on his chest. Dr. Lecter supposed she had probably heard of the nurse back at the asylum. Well, he thought, she was rude. If she had only bothered to say 'Please move', instead of 'Move it,' I wouldn't have harmed a hair on her head.
There was fear in her eyes as she slid him out of his shirt. Some was fear that he might attempt to bite her; some, he supposed, was fear hidden deep within her for five years. Dr. Lecter simply lay back on the table and helped her as best he could. She bent across him in order to get his wounded hand out of the sleeve. He could hear her breathing, quick and shallow, a prey animal exposing her neck to a predator. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose as she bent awkwardly across him. Her scent filled his nostrils and he read the tale it told.
"You washed those scrubs in your own washing machine, not the hospital's," he said gently. He inhaled again sharply. Scent is strongly related to taste, and he fancied that the scent he drew into his nose was pulled down to his tongue. He tasted it and considered. "You don't wear perfume while you're at work," he observed, "but on your days off you wear Isabel Calla, don't you? But not much. A tiny bottle, the smallest one they make so you can justify the expense. You buy it alone and spirit it into your medicine cabinet like contraband, and you're parsimonious enough that you just spray the tiniest bit you can on yourself. And you use scented shampoo. Rose and jasmine, I believe. You're growing accustomed to the idea that you're actually allowed a few luxuries, are you not?" He inhaled again. It was a quite pleasurable scent, Dr. Lecter thought.
She worked his hand free from the sleeve quite gently, mindful not to bump the wound that had replaced his thumb. Dr. Lecter watched her as she took his hand out of the cloth tunnel. The hateful shirt was below him. Dr. Lecter rather hoped that she would throw it away. Or burn it. No human being deserved to wear such a horrid garment.
She was looking at him with a mixture of fear and thought on her face. Dr. Lecter knew the look and tilted his head. She was thinking about something. What, he wasn't sure, but he was fairly confident she was not supposed to do it. He was quite familiar with the way someone looked when she considered an irrational action. She looked to and fro to see if anyone was watching. No one was. She had drawn the privacy curtain when she came in. Her feet were visible below the curtain, but nothing more.
Then she lunged. At first, Dr. Lecter thought she meant to bite him and started in surprise. Her arms curled around his neck, meeting at the back of his head. Hannibal Lecter tensed for a moment before realizing she was not attempting to choke or restrain him.
Then her lips were soft and smooth on his, and he breathed in a great snuffle of the clean, rose-and-jasmine scent of her hair. His hands fumbled against her back and he blinked. How long had it been since a woman had done this to him? Far too long. He held her gently as she held him. Then she broke the kiss, blushed, and pulled her hair back out of nervous habit. Dr. Lecter admired the flush of red at her cheeks.
"Was that standard treatment?" he asked quizzically.
"No," she said, embarrassed. She helped him remove his pants with the utmost in detached professionalism to cover her prior lapse. The horrid clothing went in a green plastic bag labeled PATIENT BELONGINGS. Then she stepped away from him and opened the curtain again. She asked the nurse to administer a sedative and bring Mr. Daum up to surgery, please.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter watched her departing back. He paid only token attention to the nurse who gave him a shot and handed him over to an attendant who began to roll him up to the surgical floor. Luckily, he ended up in the same elevator as her. She faced forward stiffly, fidgeting as she waited, and he did not need to see her face to know she was furiously blushing.
Leaning back against his stretcher, he smiled.