June 8, 1999
Washington, D.C.
7:45 AM
No music in Kevin's car this morning. Without the bombastic squeals of electric guitars, the shimmering scales of keyboards, the silence might have felt wrong on any other day. Kevin and Carlos were discussing something, Kevin speaking to the backseat over his shoulder with his eyes on the road under a pair of dark aviator sunglasses, Carlos' forearms leaned over the shoulder rests of the front seats. Their conversation had a strangely muted quality, as if speaking too loudly might have been a violation of decorum.
Like how people speak at a funeral, a part of Jill's mind thought, and then released it.
"Can we listen to the news?" Jill asked. "Maybe they've got an update."
"Sure thing," Kevin said, and turned the radio dial until he found the resonant, businesslike warmth of a radio host's voice.
—motional, explosive first day of testimony. Public opinion, however, seems to be split.
A man's voice—a clipped, brusque northern accent, underpinned by the distant honking of car horns.
"Yeah! Yeah, I do have an opinion about the trial. Look—I been using Umbrella medicine all my life. I got a bad heart. I've never even heard of a FBI Commission. Or—what? FBEIEIO. Or whatever it is. What's that? Who is this Kennedy guy? Why should I care what he says? Why should he get to say who I get my medicine from?" What's your opinion on the explosion at the FBC building, immediately following the first day of the trial? "Why the beepshould I care? What's that got to do with me?"
It didn't take long to find opposing opinions, of course.
A woman's voice, timid and stuttering. "I-I-I just don't think it's right. They've got… kids up there, going through all this, and… no. No, I don't think it's right. I think they should pay for it if it's true." Do you think it's true? "Well, I don't know. That's the point of a trial, right?"
Did you watch the Umbrella trial yesterday? "Most of it." Do you think one way or another that you were convinced by the first witness' testimony? "Yeah. Maybe. He seemed honest. Would someone who isn't honest tell you the stuff he screwed up? No, he'd try to make himself look good. I think he was telling the truth." Do you support the dissolution of Umbrella? "…I don't know. That's a big company. What would it do to the economy, you know?" So even if Umbrella was guilty… you wouldn't want them dissolved? "…probably not. You know, I don't know."
Umbrella's spokeswoman, Gabrielle Alonzo, offered these remarks to WLFM-5 when asked for an official statement:
"It's just a very sad day for America, Kellyanne. What we're seeing here is the world's largest producer of life-saving medicine, from insulin to beta-blockers to pediatric chemotherapy treatments, being threatened on the world's stage because of outlandish conspiracy theories. We're confident the truth will be brought to light and this will just be an embarrassing memory by this time next year, and then we can get back to business — our only business — which is saving lives."
Jill sighed.
"I think I've heard enough news," she said. There was no argument, only the steadying warmth of Carlos' hand on her shoulder. Kevin pushed the volume knob, and with a click, there was silence once again.
Washington D.C.
Capitol Hill
10:00AM
Doctor Hamilton laid his hand against a Bible, pledged to tell the truth, and was seated beside Congressman Graham. His morning was nothing like Leon's; he'd eaten breakfast. Hadn't been sick. Slightly nervous, perhaps, but the only emotion that reached his face were the sensible creases of thought across his forehead. He drank from the provided bottle of water on the table, and listened while a Congresswoman—Suzi Bradley, her name was, from a district in Michigan—was introduced by the Justice. She was impossible to tell apart from the others, same business suit and understated jewelry, except for the fact that she looked very, very young, her long, straight black hair worn down over one shoulder.
"Good morning. If the witness may please state his name and title?"
George adjusted the microphone before him so it was closer to his face. "My name is George Louis Hamilton. My title is Doctor of Surgery."
"I see. Do you prefer doctor, then?"
"Either Doctor or Mister Hamilton is fine."
"Thank you, doctor. And what job did you hold pertaining to the case we're hearing this morning?"
"I was the Chief of Surgery at Spencer Memorial Hospital. I performed cardiothoracic procedures."
"Can you explain to the court what you mean by that term?"
"Of course. I performed surgeries within the thoracic cavity—the ribcage. Mostly surgeries on the heart and lungs or the surrounding spaces, though I could also operate on the liver, kidneys, and stomach if necessary."
"Quite an accomplished man, then. What years were you chief of surgery?"
"Two years, as of December 1998."
"And you oversaw other surgeons?"
"Correct, when our late Chief Operating Officer, Doctor Nathaniel Bard, was unavailable."
"So—I'm looking over your record, if you'll forgive me for saying so bluntly… it says here you were dismissed from your position on September 20th, 1998."
George nodded. "That's correct."
"For gross negligence?"
Even now, the words struck him somewhere in the center of his brain that controlled panic—and maybe shame. "That was the reason given, yes."
"That's severe. May the record state that the definition of gross negligence, medically, refers to 'conduct so reckless or mistaken as to be virtually obvious to a person with no medical training'. Could you please explain the case which lead to your firing?"
"There were multiple cases."
"How many is 'multiple'?"
"Over eighty. I don't remember the exact number."
A small mumble of concern from the crowd behind. George's face burned, whether with embarrassment or anger, he wasn't sure. He never had been sure, not when it came to this.
"So—I would like the record to reflect that upon reviewing Doctor Hamilton's employment record, which we've retrieved from the national licensing database, there were no stated violations against his medical license until… August 29, 1998. Would you like to explain?"
"Raccoon City is average for health problems among the Midwestern belt. High rates of obesity, and comorbidities related to diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. But at the end of August, 1998, and into September we saw… spikes like I'd never seen before in gross, systemic organ failure."
"Objection," said Arthur Miller from his seat across the aisle, where he sat spearheading the copse of attorneys, separated from the rest of the crowd. "This is a very heartbreaking story, but it has nothing to do with why Mister Hamilton was fired."
"Doctor Hamilton," the Congresswoman corrected, "his license has not yet been revoked."
"Oh," the attorney replied, "on a technicality then, I suppose he is still a doctor."
"Counsel," the Justice said, warning in his voice, "remember where you are, please. And Doctor Hamilton, please get to the point."
"Yes, your honor. I'll try to be quick, but it is a bit of a longer story. Suddenly where per week I may have been treating four or five heart transplants or drilling out blockages, now there were five a night, which became ten, then twenty, twenty five a night—but with no common cause other than hypoxia. Lack of oxygen. After the hospital was threatened with lawsuits by the families citing gross negligence with my procedures as the common cause when all of those patients eventually died, that's when I was relieved of my position."
"All of your patients died?"
George paused. "Yes. These people were breathing, mechanically, but the oxygen wasn't getting to their organs. Our hospital treated... well, it had to be hundreds of people with the same symptoms in late August, early September. All ages, all backgrounds, no comorbidities that we could see. Just massive amounts of heart and liver failure. Sudden, no explanation. The transplant wait list quadrupled within…" he stopped. His dark eyebrows raised and wrinkled his forehead, as if still surprised by the fact. "Well, weeks. Not even weeks. But I remember, very clearly — they all had what we thought was Raynaud's phenomenon. Where the arteries and blood vessels constrict too much and result in a very distinct blue-gray discoloration of the fingers and toes in response to cold. But it was the wrong time of year for it, and increased bloodflow didn't improve the condition. Later they would present with cyanotic organs — blue, from lack of oxygen, just like the fingers — mostly the heart and the liver. But we eventually realized something else had to be causing systemic failure. Some underlying comorbidity or chemical agent. No disease kills people that quickly and that efficiently across all backgrounds and ages without there being some sort of outside cause. But by then we'd buried all of those patients we'd operated on."
He stopped. Shook his head, as if reminding himself to stay on task.
"We became overwhelmed and attempted to send them away to other hospitals, but these patients would die before we even got them loaded into a helicopter. Literally strangle to death while their lungs were still mechanically expanding and drawing in air. Their bodies dying from the fingers and toes inward. The same patients, even after receiving donor organs, would reappear days later with the same syndrome. Completely healthy donor organs from young people, sometimes teenagers with no health issues, installed and then failing three, four days later. It didn't apply to a certain race, or socioeconomic class. I saw grandmothers, small children, babies, college students. All with the same syndrome."
"And this syndrome you speak of-have you seen it anywhere else since?"
"It's the exact same symptoms as victims of the T-virus infection I saw while attempting to escape Raccoon City, yes."
"Objection," Miller said again, "Doctor Hamilton is an accomplished surgeon, but he is not an expert in immunology or the T-virus pathogen simply because he operated on victims of it."
Jill glared in his direction so hard her head started to hurt.
"But we do have testimony from an expert who is unfortunately no longer with us," said Congressman Graham, silent until now, "that agrees with Doctor Hamilton's accounts."
"...sustained," the Justice sighed, "I understand the prosecution has suffered a tragic loss with the untimely death of Doctor Behara, however we can't start substituting witnesses for one another without considering their credentials. We'll review the medical evidence from Doctor Behara's files at recess, but for now, please rephrase, Congresswoman."
The young Congresswoman also leveled a glare at the attorney for a second longer than she had to, and then turned back to Doctor Hamilton. "And they threatened your license."
"They did."
"That sounds like a very terrible thing to live through."
"It was a nightmare. For everyone involved—the patients, the families, the medical staff. As a doctor you try to help. To save people, but when you do everything thats been working before and they continue to die under your hands… I wouldn't wish it on anyone. That feeling of helplessness. The sheer human cost was overwhelming."
"We've pulled the list from the United Network of Organ Sharing, which is the centralized repository of information for organ transplant statistics, and the requests from Raccoon City in particular and surrounding counties did in fact spike by over 765% from July to September of 1998. So there was suddenly an overwhelming demand for organs where there were none before. Did you have any botched, failed surgeries before?"
To that, George sat straighter. "I can say very confidently that I have not. Not all surgeries end well, but none of mine ended poorly because of negligence or gross human error."
"So this couldn't have been simple human error? How long were your shifts at this hospital?"
"At its worst, I lived there. I would work the surgical theater for 16 hours—as long as I was allowed to, legally—and then do paperwork, and spend the rest sleeping in my office."
"You were also going through a divorce at this time. This couldn't have impacted your work? Cumulatively?"
"It couldn't have. The divorce came after the firing. My late ex-wife served me with papers the day after my suspension came through."
The Congresswoman's face turned slightly sympathetic, and she shook her head in disbelief. "Something I don't understand—if the situation was so severe. Why didn't you reach out to the government for help?"
"We did. We petitioned our Chief of Staff, Doctor Nathaniel Bard, to reach out to the CDC on our behalf."
"And was anything done?"
A long pause. "No. Not that I was made aware of."
"No additional staff?"
"No, ma'am."
"Supplies?"
"We were told that we were running a business, not a charity, so we had to make do with what we had. I personally had to send one of my nurses three hours away to Louisville, Kentucky to buy out the entire stock of a Gould's Discount Medical for their PPE out of my own pocket so I could continue to work. Gowns, gloves, face coverings. We were using so many supplies every single day that it ran out, but… no, no additional supplies were sent."
"So I'm understanding your account correctly, Doctor Hamilton: you, Chief of Surgery, were fired, while people were dying of a mysterious widespread disease which required a cardiothoracic surgeon to treat, and regular measures were not improving the survivability of."
"That's correct."
"The requests for transplant organs jumped almost 1000% in just over two months."
"Yes."
"You had to buy personal protective equipment to treat these people out of your own pocket."
George nodded. "That's correct."
"And you tried to lobby your hospital's Chief Officer to contact the CDC, but he declined."
"As far as I know, nothing was done. No."
"And they pointed at you, a single surgeon, as the reason for the deaths?"
"Objection," Miller said again, exasperated, "Doctor Hamilton had almost a hundred surgeries in a single month where the patient had died. It's not beyond the scope of reason they'd point to him for those people dying, if he's who actually operated on them when they were still alive."
"We're getting to that, thank you Counsel," the Congresswoman said, "but I do wonder why, if his negligence is the reason, why they allowed him to operate on so many people before suspending him?"
"…continue," the Justice said, grudging.
"I was the common denominator, as I was told." George said.
"And did Doctor Bard relieve you before or after the appeal to the CDC?"
"It would have been after."
"Let the record show that Doctor Hamilton had performed over seventy procedures over a course of almost two months that ended in these failures. His dismissal was only suggested by the Chief Operating Officer after the petition to the CDC, which was requested when?"
"September 15, madam Congresswoman."
"Quite interesting timing, considering internal documentation also suggests September 15 was the day where Umbrella sent out recruitment calls to its contractor forces which were to be sent into Raccoon City as 'riot patrol'."
Something pulled at the corner of Jill's eye, and she turned. On the far side of the room, three of the Umbrella attorneys had huddled together, speaking in guarded whispers.
"Objection," spoke Arthur Miller from his seat across the aisle one last time in his smooth, high-pitched voice, "conjecture. Raccoon City is also the home of Umbrella's very expensive pharmaceutical operations, and the city had yet to contain the riots over the mandated lockdown. Umbrella is within its rights to protect its product. The timing is coincidental at best."
"…I'll allow it," the Justice said, "rephrase, Congresswoman."
The Congresswoman's mouth was open to retort, but Doctor Hamilton spoke first.
"Was."
She looked to him and Doctor Hamilton faltered, for a just a second, with the air of a man who was aware he was committing a grave transgression, but now that the action was done, had committed to it.
"Raccoon City was the home of Umbrella's operations." He said. "It's gone now."
Washington D.C.
Capitol Hill
5:05PM
"So," Carlos' voice broke into Jill's head, uncoupled the runaway train of her thoughts. "We still on to watch the fight tonight?"
Jill had been quiet, of course, thinking about something serious. This was their way, as sure as the sun set and the moon took its place in turn: her brain would be barreling down one track, ignoring the world around it and focusing on her destination ten stops ahead, while his pollinator's mind landed on multiple bright, colorful, interesting things before fluttering back towards her. When they had first become close, it was a habit she'd mistaken for inattention, but was quickly disproven as his own way of gently redirecting her when her thoughts got too intense, too deep in the wrong direction. Hey Supercop, Earth to Supercop, you read? Stop thinking about heavy shit for a sec, what'd you think about this?
"Fight…" She blinked, searched Carlos' face for a moment while her brain switched tracks. He watched her with quiet amusement. "That is tonight, isn't it?"
"There she is," Carlos laughed, "and yeah, it's tonight. After today, watching Gracie beat some wholesale ass is just what the doctor ordered, I think. What you think, pizza or wings?"
There was a brief moment where Jill's logical mind wondered exactly why he'd ask about something like that right now, four or five hours before any sort of event. But her stomach had other ideas, and began to protest. She thought she might be able to drink an entire gallon of pizza sauce on the spot, now that the thought was put into her head. "I think I'd slap someone for some pizza right now." He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off, "With extra green peppers."
Carlos nodded. "We can do that."
"Oh! And mushrooms?"
"'Course."
Jill wandered towards him, against him, her arms winding around the closest of his. "Oh, and… and pineapple. EXTRA pineapple."
"Okay," Carlos laughed again, "now you're pushing it."
Five o'clock was quitting time for just about everybody in this place, and the human snarl of foot traffic was somehow worse than the morning; everyone trying to leave at the same time, dodging around the same journalists, descending the same steps. As if melting out from the crowd of people, a man appeared, just another dark pleated suit in a sea of expensive seams and silken ties, glinting watches and servile, bladelike smiles. As he approached, Carlos moved ahead of Jill by half a step to block the man's path towards her. A hobbled defensive line ready to smash one of his heavy shoulders against anyone who made the mistake of getting too close, despite his injuries, despite his weariness. The foot traffic parted around them like water parting around a rock in a stream.
"Excuse us," Carlos said. Jill had known quite a few large, strong men in her life. Carlos was unique among them for one reason: he didn't threaten, didn't yell, didn't curse. If he had been any of the others, she would have already been chasing him, pulling him back by his arm. He actually seemed averse to random violence, more so than she sometimes, but sometimes—like now—he spoke in a tone when he sensed danger that cleaved down the border between nicety and challenge, separated them into two pieces that one chose to receive as the warning it was, or politeness that didn't seek to cause problems where problems weren't already brewing. If their guest sensed that simmering, he took no heed.
"Of course," the man said, and stopped directly in Carlos' rook-straight path, unafraid. "I do however need to speak with you, for just a moment. I won't take much of your time."
Carlos stopped. He gestured to Jill with a backwards jab of his thumb. "Look, buddy, my lady here — she's had a long day. Alright? You can ask whatever you're gonna ask her tomorrow. Just move."
"Actually," the man reached into his expensive leather file folder, and presented Carlos with a sheet of paper that rattled with self-importance as it was proffered. "While I'm sure that's true, I need to speak with you, Mister Oliveira. You've been formally issued a cease and desist letter on behalf of my client, Umbrella Incorporated."
Jill could almost hear the needle scratch across the spinning record of Carlos' brain. Carlos took the paper in a slow, stunned way, and looked down at it. Jill stopped beside him, peered around the bulk of his shoulder to look at the letter.
"A cease and desist for what?" She asked.
"As a standard measure of information security, Mister Oliveira signed a nondisclosure agreement upon employment with Umbrella Incorporated. His presence at this trial presents a clear violation of that agreement, as he appears to be in close contact with a member of the prosecution's case. This represents a conflict of interest."
Jill stared at the man while Carlos quietly read the letter, heavy lashes moving in flickers and darts as he scanned the words on the page. "You can't control who he talks to in his personal life. That's bullshit."
"No," the man said, "but I can enforce a prior employee not putting themselves in a position to reveal proprietary trade secrets that were agreed upon as confidential. Or rather, the law can."
Jill thought about this. She turned to Carlos, extended an open hand, fingers gently poised to receive the paper. "Can I see that?"
There are a few small victories in life. The first day of your favorite season after a bleak winter or a punishing summer. A chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. The look on the attorney's face was one of these small victories, stunned and sagged and blinking while Jill tore the sheet into strips, then jagged square pieces. She tossed the handful of paper back in his direction, a confetti-shower of tastefully weighted off-white garbage. "That's what I think of your fucking NDA, and the company that made it."
The man stood straight and still, his face impassive. "That was a legally binding document."
"Whoops," Jill said, and pulled Carlos along by his free hand. "Come on."
"Put it on my tab." Carlos said, with an unmistakable puff of shrugging amusement. They pushed past the man, moving to melt into the flowing routes of foot traffic, when he spoke again after them.
"You can't just ignore the law. What you do has consequences. You signed an agreement, Mr. Oliveira."
Jill stopped. It took Carlos, who had long ago tuned out the man's insults, losing contact with her hand to turn around — by that time, Jill had already eaten the space between she and the attorney with taps of her heeled shoes.
"You know what? You're right." She said. "What you do does have consequences. That's why we're here. These are your consequences. I suggest you find a new job, because yours is about to be toast. I hear Taco Bell is hiring."
Carlos' hand closed in a gentle loop around the widest part of Jill's upper arm. When she turned towards it, he was leaned close, all width and warmth and low, understanding tones. His face was so close the coarse loops of his curls brushed and tickled against her temple. "Not that I wouldn't pay to hear you rip this guy's ass all day long… but…" he lifted his eyes in an indicative glance to a half-moon of interested television cameras that had moved closer to catch the altercation. Beaming lights and boom microphones bent closer on their mechanical arms, hovering like the metal legs of a massive insect.
"No…" Jill said, distantly. She shook her head, and looked Carlos in his eyes — normally the brown of rich soil but now cast golden in the direct light that moved in front of them. "No. I've got this."
Carlos' face settled into an expression of recognition, and he frowned, released her without comment and stood back. Jill turned back to the attorney.
"Maybe you'd like to tell them about what you just served a Raccoon City survivor," Jill said in a clear, loud voice, pointing at the cameras. "So they can hear you."
"Happily. Mister Oliveira was a contractor with Umbrella incorporated. He as such signed a non-disclosure agreement based on his previous employment," the attorney said, "his presence at this trial is a clear violation of that agreement. We're simply asking that he abide by the agreement he signed."
"Exactly," Jill said, "agreements and contracts and nooses made of paperwork and they all end in silence. Why? If your company is innocent, what are you hiding that you don't want him to tell?"
"I'm not the one who signed an NDA, Miss Valentine," the attorney retorted, "he is. If he has questions about—"
"Does that mean Umbrella anticipated the trial?!" One of the reporters asked, crowding closer.
"I have no comment," the attorney said, "I was only here to serve paperwork, not speak on behalf of Umbrella to the press."
"Why not?" Jill asked again. "Now that people are listening, you suddenly have nothing to say?"
Jill saw Carlos flinch; discomfort. She gestured to him to stay where he was.
"And yes, he was an employee of Umbrella," Jill said, "and Mister Oliveira is also the only reason I survived the incident in Raccoon City. He is a good person. A selfless person. And Umbrella sent him into a warzone with no information on what he'd find there — sent there to die with the rest of his squad as a part of a cover up attempt. You don't get to destroy, and hurt, and conceal, and lie, and then demand silence. Not from Mr. Oliveira, not from me, not from any of us."
A chorus of overlapping questions. Jill shook her head.
"I've got nothing else to say." She indicated the paper on the floor to the attorney as she passed. "You dropped something."
Jill stalked away, vaguely aware she was being followed. She blew out a tight chest full of air; her hands started to shake once the adrenaline left her, draining back out of her body like receding flood water. Her heart fluttered in her chest. Carlos waited until they were outside and pulled her away from the doors, pressed a kiss against the side of her head. He spoke, muffled, into her hair.
"I ever tell you how hot it is when you get all pitbull on a motherfucker?" He said.
Jill laughed, sudden and loud, and tried to pull away from him; like a finger trap, he just squeezed tighter.
"No no, don't move. Everyone's gonna see my boner."
"You're welcome. Come on, our cab is waiting."
Jill took Carlos' crutch and slid against his side. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and leaned his weight on her, hopping down the steps in time.
"How the table turns," Jill said. "You know, I think I'm better at the knight in shining armor thing than you are."
Carlos looked offended. "Pff! C'mon. I am the king of smooth. You got shit on my game."
"The 'tall drink of water' game? Really?"
"Hey. Worked, didn't it?"
"I'm not tall. For one. And two, I don't even remember half the shit you said."
"Look, all I'm saying is even if you don't remember, I do."
"Really."
"Sure. You were all like ooooohhh Carlos, how'd you get so manly and tough? Come here and let me rub my boobs on your muscles! I remember."
"I'm going to trip you down these steps."
"So you can fall for me a second time?"
"Oh my fucking God."
Jill pantomimed checking him with her hip and Carlos juked away, just in time to accidentally catch the downward motion of a passerby, who slammed into him with his shoulder. Carlos stumbled, and out of habit planted his bad foot. White plaster clattered a loud warning against the stone of the step. Carlos waited for the shockwave of pain, for the encompassing bark of agony that would indicate he'd landed all of his two-hundred and thirty pounds on a broken limb, propped only by paper and ceramic and metal that bolted his shattered bones back together.
"Oh, shit," Jill cursed, panicked, "are you okay?"
Carlos lifted his bad leg twice and stomped it against the ground.
"What are you doing?!" Jill winced. "You're going to hurt yourself."
"It… it doesn't hurt," he said, then stood on it. "What the fuck…?" He asked nobody in particular.
Jill tilted her head. "No pain at all sounds bad… we should to get you to a hospital, just so they can check."
"Ah, come on. I don't think…"
"No. Don't start." Jill said. "We're going."
George Washington University Hospital
Washington, D.C.
8:15pm
Waits at emergency rooms were never quick things. In New York City, a trip for anything other than a brain aneurysm or a heart attack meant Don't Make Any Fucking Plans: once as a bored kid, Carlos and one of his similarly bored cousins had the bright idea to jump across a concrete ravine. He landed smack on his elbow and got himself into a cast for the better part of four months. That trip had taken almost 12 hours from check-in to check-out.
D.C. was similar: Carlos and Jill sat for an hour and a half in the waiting room after he was checked in, surrounded by moaning, hurt people, some who were throwing up into long, tubular blue plastic bags. They half-watched silent reruns of Friends on a single TV fixed in the corner between a wall and the ceiling — "ASK HOSPITAL STAFF TO CHANGE STATION, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH TELEVISION" read a small, laminated sign hung over its control panel just below the glass screen. Below that, a small sign with a clip art picture of a cell phone with a Ghostbusters No! around it decreed "PLEASE TURN OFF ALL CELLULAR DEVICES". Shit. Carlos retrieved his, turned it off, then shoved it back in his pocket.
"Honestly don't think it's this serious…" Carlos said. "It feels fine."
"Mm-mm," Jill denied him, shaking her head, her eyes closed. "Circulation is serious when you have a cast. Do you want to lose your leg?"
"That mean I get one of those cool robot legs? Then absolutely."
Jill opened her eyes just to glare at him, unsuccessfully fought a grudging smile. She settled against Carlos' collarbone at an angle, over the hard armrest between their chairs. "We're staying until you get seen."
"Yes ma'am," he said, sarcastic, and put an arm around her shoulder. Beside him, the man with the barf bag threw up again.
Some time after Ross and Rachel had their fifth argument of the night and Carlos wondered for the tenth time exactly what people thought was so fucking funny about this show, they called his name and he was moved to a semi-private room to wait. He was separated from two other patients by lavender-and-blue curtains on either side of the bed, hung from oval runners on the ceiling. Carlos sat on a bed dressed with white linens so stiff and thin they crinkled and scraped when he moved. There were no sounds from either side except for a person's ringtone — some shitty version of a piano tune that rang once about every two minutes.
A young girl wearing scrubs with pictures of Snoopy in different poses of jubilation and dance printed all over them appeared minutes later with a mobile machine that looked like a carpet cleaner with a mechanical arm sticking out of its top. She pushed it to his bedside.
"I'm here to take some pictures of your leg," she said, "put it up here on the bed and stay still as possible, okay?" Carlos did. She took a few photos of his cast, and was gone as soon as she came.
She was the last person Carlos saw other than Jill for what seemed like hours. From where Carlos was sitting, he couldn't see the wall clock. Out of habit he reached for his phone, and then remembered the rule from the placard outside.
"Great," he mumbled, and settled in. He could feel his foot, could feel his leg; as time wore on he doubted very much this was any kind of circulation issue, a false flag thrown by the handfuls of ibuprofen he'd been dry-swallowing as an automatic reaction to every minor headache or muscle strain since his time in the military. He considered pleading his case to Jill again, but she was a nut that was impossible to crack once she'd gotten an idea into her head. Unless you had a damn good reason to tell her she was wrong, she wasn't wrong, and what she said was going to happen, happened. It was better not to pick that fight unless you were absolutely sure you could win it. The shitty electric piano-song rang again, and Carlos put his face in his hands.
"Think I'm gonna hear that song in my fuckin' nightmares," he grumbled.
"That's sad. It's a good song." Jill said, and then laughed, quietly. "I used to play it all the time at recitals. Talk about a blast from the past."
"Piano recitals?"
Jill nodded. "Would you believe it?"
Carlos cocked his head. "You know… yeah. I would. You got the dainty fingers."
"Do I?"
"Oh yeah. You play seriously?"
"Just concerts and things like that as a teenager. Gave it up when my Dad realized he couldn't make me go to lessons anymore."
Carlos considered this. "You should play for me sometime."
"I'll just embarrass myself. I think I've forgotten everything about it unless you want me to play Chopsticks or Greensleeves."
"Well, I don't know anything about it, so I don't know any better." Carlos was undeterred in his cheerful way, found a way around her complaint that still sounded optimistic and complimentary. Jill had no idea how he did it so easily. "Fact you think I know what those are is cute, by the way."
"What about you?"
"Just… y'know, meathead stuff. Boxing, weightlifting. Running, sometimes. Not as fast as I used to be. When I was a kid, man, I could motor. These days I'm too heavy, I think."
"Oh, come on."
Carlos made a noise of dismissal. "Come on yourself, you see this?" He put his hands against his abdomen, and shook the nothing he found there for comedic effect. "Look, a year ago if I'd just randomly packed on twenty pounds, I'd hear no end of shit from basically everyone. I can hear what T would fucking say."
It was intended as a joke but it hit differently, landed just short of its mark, exposed something deeper than intended.
"You miss them." Jill said, gently.
After a moment of thoughtful silence, Carlos nodded. "Yeah. Guess I do. There's a lot of…" he sighed, scrubbed a hand through the wild, dark riot of his hair. "Things are so different now. Guess it's still hard to believe. You know?"
"We could talk about them," Jill said, "that's a way of keeping them alive. If just for a little while."
"We don't gotta. I'm good."
"I know we don't have to—but I want to."
"You wanna hear about 'em?"
Jill climbed to her feet, pushed herself out of the chair by the armrests. She sat beside him on the bed. Her upper arm grazed his. "Yeah. I do."
Carlos was quiet. Tried to think of where to start. "I knew Tyrell the best," The name felt like a lie, unnatural and stiff from disuse. "We were in the Corps together, back in the day. He's how I got into the UBCS. We both got out at the same time but lost touch for about a year, but he found me at—at my next job. Total coincidence."
"What was your next job?" Jill tilted her head.
"Nah, not important."
"Now I'm really curious, because you don't want to tell me."
Carlos looked aside at her, imploring her to drop it. He relented, eventually, with a sound of disdain. Carlos rocked forward and then back as if wrestling with a heavy thought that weighed his head forward. Pressed his lips together and then looked aside to her. "Bouncing," he said.
"Like at a night club?"
"…'nother kind of club, but yeah."
Jill laughed, incredulous. "You were a bouncer at a strip club?"
Carlos shrugged. "I needed money, and they needed a meathead to dump rich trust fund kids on their asses outside. It was a good arrangement. Anyway—that's where T found me. He came in with his boys one night to wind down from a spin around the globe somewhere, and I guess I made a good impression." He paused. "You didn't get to really talk to T, did you?"
"A little. After you left." Jill swung her legs. His feet touched the floor but hers didn't, shy by a good few inches. "He was a good guy."
"Pretended he an asshole… but you kinda had to in our job or you'd get eaten alive. But he was a good guy." Carlos blinked quickly, dark heavy lashes fluttering, and looked down. "Had three kids, you know? And a wife, back in Atlanta."
Something twisted deep in Jill's chest. "Oh, God."
Carlos nodded, slowly; not agreement but resignation. "I think about him a lot. 'Specially these days." A smile fought through his expression. "You know — he was so funny. He fucking loved outer space. Like stars and planets and shit, right? He actually named one of his daughters after a moon or… or a constellation or something. Miranda." Carlos paused, then spoke faster, as if the thoughts were sparking other memories that had been forgotten. "Don't know how many times he dragged me out of our damn tent to go look at something in the sky while we were overseas. I'm all sandblasted and tired and he's kickin' my ribs like" Carlos changed his voice, pitched it huskier in imitation, a bit higher than his own, "Just come on, numbnuts, this happens once every ten years and there's no lights, come out here. And it would always be this… tiny little… bwoop! in the sky. Like nothing. But he was so excited about it."
"You know… I can totally see Tyrell being just that kind of nerd. With a telescope…"
Carlos nodded, a warm, nostalgic smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. "Man. Haven't thought about that in forever."
Just then, a female voice, calm and formal over a loudspeaker. "Attention hospital staff, Code External Triage, front lobby. Code External triage, front lobby." They both titled curious faces to the source of the voice, mounted somewhere near the ceiling.
"There's something I always wondered," Jill said. "You did eight years as a Marine—why not become a cop?" Over his laughter, she insisted, "No, I'm serious. Why Umbrella? I've seen you fight. There's so many other things you could have done."
Carlos' gaze lingered against the floor for a quiet moment, and then he turned to her. "When I got out. You know what I did for work?"
"You just told me. You were a bouncer."
"That was later—truth is, I didn't do anything. There were no jobs. I mean, sure, you could find a gig as a line cook in some shitty spot before the NYHD grabbed 'em, or bounce at a bar, but after you tipped the girls out and buy food for the week or put some cash away for rent, sometimes I'd have to ask my mom for money just to get my MetroCard for the next month. When I went into the Corps I had a good job, a place to stay, food. And then I got out and there was nothing. They even turned me down for unemployment and food stamps. I made too much. Can you believe that shit? I had Citizenship and all, but as soon as Uncle Sam was in my rear view I was just another brown dude out of millions in a city that didn't give a shit about me. Thanks for your service, food pantry's around the corner. After that, when you get hungry enough and the eviction papers are on the door, Umbrella starts to look like a way out."
"Why didn't you move somewhere else?"
"Costs money. After a while you learn to stop thinking about where the boat's sailing and focus on trying to bail the water out." He paused. "Why don't you tell me about your guys?"
"My guys?" Jill said, confused.
"STARS. Lot got made of how you were… you know. Last member of STARS, that kind of thing. Means there were a few more we never got to meet." He nudged her with his shoulder, gently. "Tell me about 'em."
"Well… you met Chris. And Barry. And there's Rebecca. The girl with the short hair, that was with me in the front row."
"The skinny one? Her? Naw."
"Oh yeah. She got one hit of field work and left, though."
Carlos laughed. "Can't say I blame her if that was her first assignment. That's rough."
"But… oh man. There were these two guys, Brad and Kenneth. Kevin can vouch for this—they would fuck with Barry constantly. Barry would…" Jill's face broke into a beaming smile, and she laughed in a way that made her words come out as half-formed things, hard to hear. "Barry would come in from a weekend off and his whole desk would be just wrapped in tin foil. He'd yell for Brad because he already knew who did it and he would sit there just stewing with this—this look on his face while he unwrapped these boxes full of bullets. They were always goofing off."
"Man. That's dedication." For an inexplicable moment, Carlos remembered the color yellow—bright canary yellow like a dandelion that hadn't yet lost its vitality to wisps of dead white seeds to be blown away on the wind. Realization sunk against the deepest part of Carlos' brain like a cold, heavy stone, and he remembered yellow, alright—yellow slicked with rain and blood and gouts of pus, jacketing peeling gray skin like a coat of bright paint over the rotten wooden siding of a condemned house. A structure so rotten it had to be destroyed. "You said his name was… Brad?"
Jill nodded. "Brad Vickers." The laughs stopped, gradually. "Only one who kept in contact with me after…" she gestured with a pale, slender hand, and somehow encompassed the helpless enormity of the situation. "Everything."
Carlos fought to keep his face straight, keep a strangle of guilt like an invasive vine away from his voice box. "Sounds like a good dude."
Jill nodded. Her expression crumbled, just a little, but she caught it quickly and was composed again. "They all were. I miss them."
A series of high-pitched squeaks sounded down the hall, like a basketball team pounding down the hardwood lanes of a court. Carlos squinted. After followed a doctor, an older man with graying hair and and the lean, bony build the health-conscious took after a certain age. A few moments later, those same nurses ran back the way they came, bent over a gurney, pushing it as the doctor barked orders for some kind of medicine, some kind of oxygen. The figure on the gurney was a blur of black and red and gray and white. The blackened smell of charred meat wafted in threads through the cold air, dissipated as it met the stiff, antiseptic smell of the room. A trail of blood pattered after the stretcher, along the hallway floor, a trail of dark splashes like the footsteps of something invisible and malicious.
"Jesus," Carlos said. As if to underline his horror, another gurney clattered by the door. Its wheels rattled and spun like a oversized shopping cart. On it laid a large man with a clear, shining oxygen mask affixed over his face, his expanse of skin mottled a sick shade of gray-purple. Yells in medical jargon, demands for things Carlos didn't understand — maybe drugs — rang up and down the hallway. Another team of nurses ran past the door. One slipped on the errant puddle of dark fluid, caught herself against his doorway, and was off again. Someone beyond the curtain to Carlos' left mumbled in tones of subdued concern, whether it was for the rush of activity outside or for whatever was happening past the rough textiles that boxed them into this small part of the room, he wasn't sure.
A woman entered the room, thin-limbed and slender, stress lines carved into her pale, inquisitive face. Her scrubs, an unassuming shade of teal-green, were splashed and sponged with rusty gashes and blooms of blood. She tossed a clipboard onto the table by the door, haphazard; it clattered and almost tipped onto the floor. She ducked, retrieved a thin, scratchy-looking mustard-yellow gown from a low drawer, tied it over her scrubs without wasting a single movement. The gown was to keep anybody from touching the blood, Carlos assumed.
"Sorry for the wait," she said, her cadence quick and businesslike. She crossed the room and took one of Carlos' thick wrists, tilted it to read the information on the white paper of his bracelet. She didn't look at him. He was a job to be done and pushed out between whatever was going on down the hall, whatever had splashed her with the internal cogs and gears of someone who probably didn't make it. "Name and date of birth?"
Carlos supplied them. Satisfied, she released his arm. "Is it okay if we discuss medical information in front of your guest, sir?"
"No mysteries here," Carlos said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than she was speaking again, moving again.
"Alright. I've got your x-rays. If you look…" she hooked four thin sheets of black plastic to the metal upper barrier of a small projector screen with practiced speed. They clicked into place and became ghostly images of a single disembodied limb, luminous and glowing like toxic waste against the glossy black. "Here's your bone. Here are the plates. This is muscle tissue right here. The bone looks like its thickened in all the right places, the plates still look like they're aligned. There's no compartment syndrome, no swelling, or any residual fractures, so the lack of pain you feel is probably just your leg healing up normally. So if you're ready, we can take it off and have you out of here."
Carlos stared at her. All that escaped him was a laugh: small, disbelieving. "What?"
"Are you sure that's him?" Jill asked, glancing back and forth between Carlos and the doctor, who stared at them with a breed of impatient confusion.
"We can take your cast off," the doctor repeated, already wielding a small tool looked like a studfinder you'd use to find places to mount something in a wall. She moved toward him. "He's got to put his leg on the bed, ma'am, so if you could just scoot over for me for a second."
"Look doc, I ain't trying to be difficult, but… I took three AR rounds through my bone just two weeks ago," Carlos repeated, "You sure you got the right room?"
The doctor looked at him then down to the clipboard she'd tossed onto the table as she entered. "Unless you've traded wristbands with someone else since you've been here, you're my guy. Leg up, please."
Jill hopped off of the bed but hung near in a way that looked either like worry or protective instinct, like a woman ready to dart out and catch him or maybe cock a fist and let it fly against the side of the doctor's head if something popped off, despite their size disparity. Her brain was always unaware of how small she actually was.
"Try to stay still." The doctor said. "This'll be quick." She pressed a button on the side and the blade whirred, spinning like a tiny fan. She touched it to the cast and chunks of white plaster spit into a cloud of dust, a mechanical convulsion as the plaster protested against the cuts, vertical down either side of Carlos' leg. The cast cracked open like a sarcophagus, and the doctor carefully lifted its top half. Carlos, too, expected to reveal something ugly, long dead and dessicated. His shin, pillow-lined from pressure and dusted with dark hair, wore three ragged, puffed scars — one straight bullet hole punched through the meat of his thick calf muscle from the front, and two at haphazard angles down the slender taper towards his ankle. It looked more like a wolverine had gotten to his leg rather than a gun, an outward bend in the bone so shallow it was only noticeable because of familiarity rather than severity. The lack of grotesque injury, the lack of blood, was somehow worse than what Carlos was expecting; bullet holes and gore would have confirmed what he knew about the world, about his own body, about the way things were supposed to work. Now everything seemed in question, his bearings lost to an insidious slip of the mind that brought him close to the brink of panic.
If the doctor noticed anything awry, she didn't say as much. Carlos flexed his foot.
"Can you stand?" She asked.
Jill extended her hands like a dance partner. Carlos took them and stood, unsure.
The doctor asked Carlos to walk. He hesitated to put weight on his injured leg, sure it would snap and grind and cut through the skin once he'd put his full weight upon it. No pain, no blood, no horror show bones stabbing through skin like a ragged javelin, but a shortening, like when you slept on your neck wrong; the muscle on the back of his leg refused to elongate as it had before, stubborn and thick like rubber. His walk was more of a limp, a subtle hobble to accommodate.
"Looks good to me," the doctor said, peering around his shoulder to look at the back of his leg, "but it does look like your tendons took some damage. You may need to work on stretching them out more, but you should be fine. Can you stand on it?"
Carlos did. Jumped once and caught himself on it, just to be sure. He could feel the force of Jill's sympathetic wince from his side.
"You sure this is okay?" He asked. "I swear I only got this cast a few weeks back — I mean — shouldn't it take longer than that? I don't wanna fuck my leg up if—"
"Well," the doctor said with a shrug in her voice, and handed him a bright pink shower shoe, "either you're a Superman or we're missing some weeks somewhere. Either way, your leg is perfectly fine. There's probably going to be some residual swelling. Just ice it down, ten minutes at a time."
The voice on the loudspeaker sounded again. "Rapid response team, room 234, Code Blue. Rapid response team, room 234, Code Blue. Paging Rapid response team, room 234, Code Blue."
"I have to go," the doctor said, weaving around where Jill stood, and was already halfway out the door when she called, "come back if you have any tingling, any pain in the bone, any swelling that ice doesn't resolve, okay?"
"Well — looks like I don't get that robot leg after all, huh?" Carlos asked, looking at the rogue limb. He turned it this way and that as if some sort of computer chip or zipper or seam would present itself and answer his questions.
Jill ignored him. "Is it possible maybe… it hit the muscle, not the bone? Maybe the doctors got it wrong. Something lost in translation?"
Jill could tell by Carlos' breathing he was gearing up to say something, the way it hitched in his chest, as if coalescing around words as they were formed and then denied and then formed again. "Not really sure what to think about it yet, myself. Other than pink isn't my color."
She laughed, despite herself. "Can you just be serious, please?"
"I am serious. Think I'm a green kind of guy. Or white. I look pretty good in white, too."
They left, clasped at the hands, winding around corners and dodging the shopping-cart bang of gurney wheels as the stretchers flew down the hallway under the hands of nurses, Carlos in one heavy black boot and one bubblegum pink flip-flop. Carlos' leg was stiffer than he was used to. The foot wouldn't roll like it did in a normal step, the tendons on the back of his leg stubbornly refusing to stretch all the way at first. As he used it, warmed it up, it became easier, though the hitch persisted. They neared the doorway. No medical staff was present, all having abandoned their posts. Outside at the cab stop, Jill turned to a woman who stood nearby, and asked: "Is something big going on?"
The woman shook her head in a sort of pitying sympathy as she watched the ambulances with their screaming sirens unload more people. The stretchers rumbled and clattered against the pavement, hustled through the lobby now in twos and threes. The woman's eyes reflected an unmistakable relief as they followed the track of a young woman on one of the beds, affixed with an oxygen mask, missing her arm below the elbow. The sheet under the patient's raw, ragged stump was stained a bright, vital red, creased and wet under the bright clinical lights of the lobby overhang.
"Big apartment fire." The woman at the stop said. "Downtown — arson, they're saying. Awful."
The moment Carlos' phone was switched on, it rang, blaring its tone into the night air. He and Jill shared a cautious glance, and then he answered.
"Hello?"
A pause. A breath of relief on the other line, and then Kennedy's serious voice. "Please tell me Jill is with you."