Note: Whee! Three chapters in three days. Let's see if I can keep it up, especially with intermittent updates of The Battle.
For some reason, all of my updates have been getting a bit shorter in length. I don't quite know what to make of that.
This story WILL pick up soon, I promise. I just need to lay down some groundwork for upcoming stuff.
Heat 03
Nine hours after the botched hit on Lucky Spencer's wife, the Escobar family was at it again.
Manny lurked by the large wastebasket, adjusting the plastic garbage bag over the top of the container, but his attention was focused elsewhere. Elizabeth had disappeared inside the locker room to change for the impending surgery, and when he followed her down the hallway with his broom, he noticed another man lurking in the shadows behind her. He was dressed in orderly scrubs over a white turtleneck, and the sleeves came up just short of his wrist. Another black snake tattoo – another attempt on sweet Elizabeth.
She had been in the lines of the Escobar family's crosshairs before this night. Manny himself had been able to save her on at least three occasions when a gunman waited for her on her walk home. An Escobar agent had kidnapped Elizabeth about a month ago, and her husband had been injured in an attempt to rescue her. Naturally, her dear friend Jason Morgan had swooped in and chased the assassin off. But Mister Morgan's track record was nowhere near as impressive as his own when it came to watching over sweet Elizabeth.
Manny set the garbage container down and ducked out of sight as the bickering Drs. Quartermaine approached. But they continued on their way without even noticing him, and the hallway was clear as Manny quickly trotted toward the entrance of the locker room. The orderly in scrubs, who was already several paces away, produced a knife from his pocket and clicked it open just as he disappeared behind the swinging door.
He waited a brief moment, counting down the seconds in his head before he dared to slip in after the other man. Sweet Elizabeth wouldn't want to ruin her favorite pink scrubs with a little blood, after all. A shower was running somewhere toward the back as Manny slipped down the corridor to the main room, immediately confronted with rows of lockers and benches. His favorite black boots enabled him to move stealthily, and he soon spotted Elizabeth standing by her locker.
She was wearing a new pair of scrub bottoms and was pulling out the top. The ones she had been wearing for the past nine hours at the hospital were wadded up on the floor, ready for the massive laundry bin that sat in the corner of the room. Ducking quickly out of sight before she turned and spotted him, Manny darted down the next row of lockers and crept to the corner, knowing that the assassin was only a few steps away.
He leapt across the aisle and quickly hid behind the adjacent row of lockers, now having a clear, unobstructed view of both the brunette and the disguised killer. Elizabeth fingered her clean scrub top, clucking her tongue when she noticed a rip in the synthetic fabric, and walked away in her scrub bottoms and white bra to get another top.
That was the window Manny needed. In a flash, he was on the oblivious assassin and had clenched his arm tightly around the other man's neck. A brief struggle ensued as he managed to drag Escobar's man behind the next row of lockers and wrestled the knife from his hand.
And just like that, it was over – a quick swipe of the knife at the jugular and the man went down. Prying open a locker, Manny shoved the corpse inside and would have kicked it shut, but realized a bit too late that he had been heard.
"Hello?" Elizabeth had returned to her locker and quickly pulled on her scrub top. "Is anyone there?"
Quietly catching the door on the latch so it remained shut, Manny ducked behind the row of lockers and darted toward the back of the room. He heard Elizabeth's sharp cry when she saw the blood on the floor, and grabbed a pair of clean scrubs before he ducked into the shower area.
Manny waited until he heard the door being kicked open and the thundering footfalls of Elizabeth's sneakers in the hallway before he dared to come out. Dressed in scrubs and a surgical cap, he slipped out of the same door and vanished down the hallway.
"Elizabeth." A young blonde intern waved the still stricken brunette over as she helped Dr. Lee roll Sam's bed down to the operating room. "It's time to scrub in – Dr. Drake wants you to begin prepping Miss McCall."
"I…okay," she replied, sweeping her hair out of her face with trembling hands. "Do – do you know where Patrick is?"
The intern looked at her strangely, surprised that a lowly OR nurse would be calling the esteemed Doctor Drake by his first name. "Um, no, not right now. But he said he'd be scrubbing in while you were prepping. I remember Dr. Drake – the older one – lurking behind him, so maybe they're…consulting."
"You mean, bickering," the brunette replied, waving the interns on. "Okay, go ahead, take her in. I'll be in to scrub up in a minute."
The interns exchanged quizzical glances but did as they were told. The wheels creaked as the bed was rolled into the surgical room, and Elizabeth did her best to compose herself. She needed to calm down – going into the OR a trembling, shaken mess was not acceptable.
She took a deep, cleansing breath outside the operating room, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Whirling around, Elizabeth found a confused Patrick Drake studying her carefully.
"Hey," he soothed, giving her shoulder a comforting squeeze. "You okay? You look kind of pale."
"Fine," she smiled, hoping that she had become a better liar over time.
But her friend didn't buy it. "You haven't scrubbed in yet? You sure you're okay?"
"Patrick, really, I'm fine-"
"C'mere," he muttered, grabbing her elbow and pulling her away from the questioning gazes of the interns inside the operating room. "Look, we need to talk. I'm sorry about how I asked you – if I put you on the spot in front of Jason or otherwise intimidated you into saying yes, I didn't mean to. You can still back out, Elizabeth, and I won't think any less of you."
"I meant what I said, Patrick," she replied firmly, giving his large hand a squeeze before crossing her arms over her chest defensively. "I want to do this surgery with you – injunction or no injunction."
"Are you sure you realize what you're risking?" the tall doctor inquired, his warm brown eyes boring into hers. "Elizabeth, this isn't a joke. This is very, very serious. What we're doing is, by all counts, illegal. We're both risking our jobs at General Hospital, not to mention our careers. And we could very likely get our asses tossed into jail for this. There's no telling if Sam McCall will live or not – she could die on the operating table and then we'd be labeled murderers. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes," she replied softly, her sapphire orbs conveying the depth of her conviction. "You can do this, Patrick – you can save her. You always told me about those defining moments in a doctor's career while we were studying, right? Well, this sure looks like one."
"Okay," Patrick replied, nodding once. "Okay. I'm going to scrub up – we'll prep her together."
Elizabeth nodded, forcing a tight smile as he moved toward the operating room. "All right – I'll be right there." His dark eyes swung back to meet hers, and she shifted under the silent question lurking there. "I-I have to talk to Jason. I promise it'll only take a minute – probably less."
He quirked a brow, but restrained himself from commenting on that when he saw the look in her eyes. He wasn't quite sure what the deal was between Jason and Elizabeth, but he sure had been seeing a lot of them together over the past few weeks. Clearly, something was bothering Elizabeth and if it would calm her nerves to talk to the mobster, he could spare her for that long. He didn't need a fidgety, distracted OR nurse next to him during this crucial surgery. "Hurry it up."
She nodded and took off down the hallway, knowing that Jason was most likely waiting in the lounge. Turning the corner, she found him lingering near the elevators, talking with Sonny. Her eyes met the older man's obsidian orbs, and Sonny frowned when he saw the serious expression on her face. With a shrug, he excused himself and pushed the button for the elevator down.
Jason, sensing her presence, turned and looked at her questioningly. "Elizabeth, what's wrong? Is it Sam?"
She shook her head mutely, suddenly feeling awkward for coming to him with business at a time of personal turmoil. "No, no – Patrick's just scrubbing in, and I'm supposed to go, too. I just – can I talk to you for a minute?"
He looked around, his brows furrowed. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Not here." Grabbing his arm, Elizabeth tugged the enforcer toward the waiting room, kicking the door shut with her heel. Perplexed by her behavior, Jason simply waited for her to speak.
"I…I'm sorry to come to you with this right now," she started softly. "I know you're going out of your mind worrying about Sam, and this is the last thing you need, but…"
"Elizabeth." His deceptively calm eyes pierced into hers as he cut off her rambling in that soft, concerned voice he reserved just for her. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. Just say it."
"I…I think I'm still a target of the Escobar family," she blurted out, wringing her hands nervously. "And this time, it's putting the whole hospital at risk."
He was looking at her as if she had sprouted a second hand, but in a flash, the enforcer mask had descended and he was pumping her for information. "What happened? What did you see?"
"Someone came after me in the locker room," she informed him quietly. "I was changing and I went to get a clean scrub top, and when I got back I heard a scuffle. I looked around and didn't see much, but in the aisle one row behind my locker, there was a puddle of blood on the floor."
His eyes widened, but Jason remained silent, waiting for her to continue. "I opened the nearby lockers and…there was a man dressed in orderly scrubs shoved into one of them. His throat had been slit. There wasn't anything I could do for him – he was already dead. I checked him for identification, but he didn't have his label pinned on, and I didn't recognize him, so I don't think he's an orderly here. I think he's someone planted by the Escobar family to get inside the hospital."
Jason crossed his arms over his chest, his features hardening into stone. "And you think-"
"-I think that the timing is too close," she finished with a slice of her hand. "Sam was just shot ten hours ago, and now someone's tailing me at the hospital. I know the Escobar's have been after me for a while, but I thought they had backed off. What if the guy that tried to get me was working for the same people that ordered the hit on Sam? Or you, if you think that it was meant to be you instead of her. Now those same people are prowling around the hospital. What I don't get is how someone already managed to stop him...and why."
"I'll take care of it."
She met his eyes directly, blue on blue. The resolve and conviction she found therein wasn't the least bit unfamiliar, and Elizabeth knew that Jason would fix this. "Thank you."
Having nothing else left to say, she quietly excused herself and trotted back to the OR where Patrick had just finished scrubbing in and was beginning to prep the patient without her.
Jason, on the other hand, waited until he knew it was clear and then headed out into the hallway, his hand straying close to the gun he always kept tucked into his jeans. Noah Drake passed him by, shooting him a curious look and no doubt wondering why the enforcer was patrolling the hallways instead of sitting with his dying fiancé. Jason waited until the older man was out of site before heading straight to the wing of the hospital where the locker room was located. Everything was clear, and he withdrew his gun and slipped quietly into the room.
There was a rolling cart with a mop parked near the door, and Jason almost walked into it as he stepped inside. Carefully, he crept down the aisles keeping his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. It would have helped if he knew which locker was Elizabeth's but since he didn't, he just had to take it from there. Soon enough, he saw what she had described – a pool of blood on the tiles, and a thin trail of the dark red liquid leading to the lockers nearby.
It only took him a minute to find the corpse, and Jason jumped back before the blood trickling from the floor of the locker could splatter onto his shoes or jeans. He shut the locker before the body could fall out, and turned on his heel, already pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
Securing the door that led into the locker room so that no one would be able to enter for the next ten minutes, Jason grabbed the mop and cart as he waited for Stan to pick up. "Morgan. I need you to take care of something for me. Meet me in the locker room on the fourth floor of General Hospital right now."