Chapter 10d05
Chapter 10 (Draft 05)
Ethan was happy with Sally's level of amusement.
"You brought Sally a children's book?" Kari asked him, looking at the old edition of Peter Rabbit. She looked at Sally who was still laughing. "I don't get it."
Sally was already hugging Ethan for the thought and understanding. "Thank you, Ethan. You are truly a wonderful friend."
"My dear lady, it pleases me to see you pleased." He took her by the hand. "There is a lady sweet and kind, was never a face so pleased my mind," Ethan continued, and Sally blushed.
Kari looked at her uncle and rolled her eyes. "They have this poetry thing going on. It's kind of weird."
Doctor Howard only smiled, "Her gesture, motion, and her smiles, her wit, her voice my heart beguiles, beguiles my heart, I know not why," he mumbled softly, looking to finish Ethan's poem.
Kari was surprised. "Oh God… not you too," she whispered.
Her uncle winked at her, and then he jerked his head toward Sally and Ethan together and then leaned over to whisper, "And yet… I'll love her till I die."
Kari smiled and then her face fell. She looked again at Sally and Ethan, and for the first time she saw something she never recognized before. And then, quite unexpectedly, she realized that what she saw had been there all along. The closeness, the tenderness she saw in their eyes; how could she have been so blind? Seeing the affection shared between them suddenly made her heart swell.
Kari finally stepped forward. "All right, you two, we have important things to discuss."
Detective Coleman was back at the West Precinct reading the evening paper, his feet propped casually on his desk.
"I thought you were going home?" said the uniformed sergeant, collecting the day's reports from the out-baskets.
"Catching up on the scores."
"Thought you'd want to get right back to that young thing you keep bragging about. What's his name again, Larry something?"
Robert smirked. "Kari… Kari Dietz. And you should be so lucky, you old-mutt. Nah… she's still looking after her friend at the hospital."
The sergeant handed a file to the detective. "Radio car took a call early this morning for a burglary on Seventh Street. Didn't you say your friend was living there?"
Robert took the file skeptically, but the address did look familiar to him. "42 Seventh Street, apartment 2A?" He immediately removed his notebook from his inside pocket and flipped it open to be sure. There it was; the address was the same. "This is Sally Carmichael's place."
"Oh sorry… not the boy friend, then?"
"Bite me, Lou. No — it's Kari's friend." He stood. "I'm gonna head over there."
"The place is secure and the patrol car is going to roll by there again tonight. It can wait 'til morning. I just wanted you to know about it."
Robert was already heading out the door.
"Okay… my best to Larry, then!"
"Give it a rest, Lou."
"Absolutely not!" Sally blistered.
"Sal, please… it makes a lot of sense," Kari replied. "We have to figure out what's happening, and Uncle Glad is willing to move us to the University to oversee your case personally. I think his team is much more qualified to treat your condition than anybody else in the world."
"Condition? Is that what we're calling this now? A condition? You make it sound like a case of dandruff. They don't have a clue what's really going on," she pointed at Kari's uncle, "do you?"
Howard took a reluctant breath. "Mrs. Carmichael, what you say is true, but I believe I can treat you more effectively where my entire staff and I can monitor you more closely."
"Ethan… take me home."
Ethan Dodge looked at Kari and Howard. Clearly he was unsure what to do.
"Ethan… please."
Her friend straightened. "All right, Sally. If that's what you want; I'll tell the doctors you wish to be released."
"Ethan…" Kari moaned.
"Kari — Sally's right. You don't know anything more than what you did three days ago," Ethan argued back, "and Sally hasn't slept a wink since she's arrived here. If we get her home and comfortable maybe she'll finally get some rest, and then we can get on the phone together in the morning and discuss whatever steps are open to her."
Howard came forward. "Ethan, I know we haven't been able to pinpoint…"
"Talk to Sally — not me. She's the patient. I'm just here to support her." Ethan turned to Sally again. "I'll tell the doctors you're leaving and bring the car around."
"Thank you, Ethan." Sally scowled back at Kari and Howard. "Finally — somebody is listening to me."
Two hours later Ethan was heading for the parking garage. He spent the whole time privately arguing with Doctors Hoffman and Howard about Sally's decision to leave Mercy, but in the end they finally had to agree to sign her release. Ethan smirked. He had better hurry, because Sally wasn't in the mood for waiting around much longer. In fact he was fairly certain unless he was faster at getting the car around front, he might have to pick her up several blocks away.
Ethan stepped through the hospital doors and into the glass tube connecting the second floor to the parking garage. Although it was dark outside, the florescent lights running down the ramp reflected the rain battering on the archway overhead.
As he reached the doors on the other side, he found a closed elevator waiting him; he punched the up button and turned to gaze through the window and into the rain soaked night. He had never seen Sally so upset, not since the time she broke off their friendship over East of the Sun and West of the Moon. This time, however, Sally's seemed much more formable. He thought about Sally's rampage to leave Mercy. To say she was upset wouldn't accurately describe her behavior at all; she was downright adamant, unwilling to listen to anybody regardless of the questions still outstanding.
Ethan felt strange, unknown to himself when it came to Sally over the last few days. He saw her anger and frustration bloom into something almost beautiful in his eyes; her recaptured youth pushing her will forward like a bulldozer through wet straw. It made him smile, but he didn't really understand why. His friend had become fearless, almost fearsome, a big-leaguer swinging for the fences with her every word. The elevator doors finally opened and Ethan stepped inside. After traveling one floor, the elevator stopped to open once more, but nobody was waiting. They closed again and continued.
Sally said she was left to feel like prisoner in the hospital, and her feelings of being trapped were made worse since Kari's uncle had arrived. Sally was convinced Howard was doing everything he could to keep her locked within Mercy, running test after test and conferring the results with somebody on the phone. And try as he did, Ethan couldn't understand anything they were saying. There was talk about her hormones, markers and alleles, and something Howard called her clotho levels. Ethan tried looking the word up on his laptop, but couldn't find anything he thought made any sense.
The elevators stopped and opened again. Ethan frowned and stuck his head out; looking left and right, the flickering bulb in the stairwell only intermittently brightened the shadows.
"Hello? Anybody need the elevator?" He leaned back and hit the sixth floor button again.
Clotho, it turned out, was the youngest of the Moirae of Greek mythology, otherwise known as the Fates due to their roles in governing over the lives of humans. They controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. It was Clotho who spun these threads of life with her distaff, a spear like device for spinning flax.
Once again, the elevator stopped to open, but nobody was there.
"If this keeps up, Sally will be halfway home before I can get to the car." He stabbed the button again.
Ethan didn't like Kari's Uncle Howard. He seemed overly excited about Sally's test results, but never offered any kind of explanation for his high spirits. And although he was very good at siding his ambitions according to Sally's temperament in the beginning, he was now completely self-absorbed in doing more tests.
The elevators opened and closed again.
He thought about the men in black. Ethan had seen them in and out all day before two more men arrived to join them a couple of hours ago, seemingly intent on taking over the night shift. Ethan wanted to believe he was mistaken when he heard them saying Sally's name earlier that morning. This was easy to assume since they never seemed all that interested in any of the patients or the medical staff at the hospital, but they did appear to add that sense of imprisonment to the Mercy décor that maddened Sally so much.
He saw Sally's anger blooming blissfully into his mind again. Her beauty and manner seemed way out of place for a jail. Ethan remembered a poem written by a man who spent thirty years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. In the poem he said, The air lends itself not to the singer. The seasons creep by unseen. And spark no fresh fires. No birds are winging. The air is empty of laughter. And love? Why, love has flown. Ethan smiled again at seeing Sally's enraged face. No, love hadn't flown entirely. The elevator finally opened to the sixth floor.
Ethan entered the stairwell and as he turned to open the garage door, he was immediately stuck in the back of the head. A bright light exploded inside his brain as his face slammed into the corner of the half-opened door. The metal of the door gave nothing back in response, as his forehead bounced and snapped back. His body crashed to the cement floor, hitting the same spot on the back of his head again. Semi-unconscious, Ethan was awake enough to feel the kicks to his groin and chest. Somebody was stomping his feet and arms; one of his hands was crushed. Finally the assault stopped and Ethan could feel a set of hands groping through his jacket pockets. He was grabbed by his collar and dragged back to the elevator, his shirt choking off what little air he could manage. There, he was rudely thrown to the floor again.
Ethan's eyes were fixed open, staring blankly at the mirrored shoes stepping around his head within the elevator. One of the shoes lifted to fall back and then came forward to kick him square in the face. His eyes were finally closed as his body rolled over to slam into wall, and the last thing Ethan Dodge heard before falling into blackness was the elevator door closing behind him.
Robert was knocking at the apartment door below to Sally's place.
"Yeah, yeah — all right. I'm coming," replied a voice from the other side. Robert removed his badge from his pocket as the door opened.
"Hello, Mr. Hirch?"
"Yeah?" The old man narrowed the gap in the door upon seeing Robert standing there. "Something I can do for you, sonny boy?"
"Detective Robert Coleman of the Seattle police department." He showed Hirch his badge.
"Oh… sorry about that, didn't know it was one of our men in blue? What can I do for you? Would you like to come in?"
"Thank you. I wanted to speak to you about the call you made this morning… about the apartment upstairs? You said you thought there was a burglar?"
"I don't think it was a burglar, I know it was — but I already called the police"
"Yes, sir, I know. It fact I have their report with me. I'm a member of the West Precinct Burglary Unit and we specialize in this kind of crime, so I thought I'd stop by and ask a few more questions. There were a few things I found interesting in the report that I wanted to follow up on." Robert opened a file to read.
"It says here you thought you heard a man walking around in the apartment upstairs? Is that what alerted you to call the police?"
"Actually there were two men in the apartment, and I knew Mrs. Carmichael was in the hospital at Mercy Center. She's been having some trouble with her health lately and I've been looking after her."
"Yes, sir. You said two men? But you didn't actually see them, and the report doesn't say why you thought there were two men."
"Oh I could hear them clear enough, stomping around up there and mumbling some foreign language I couldn't understand. I don't think they realized how thin these walls are, which told me all I needed to know about them. They weren't supposed to be up there."
"You told the police you thought they were speaking Russian? Do you know that for a fact?"
"Well, no… not for a fact, but I spent enough time drinking with the Ruskis outside of Berlin in forty-five to recognize the language well enough. That was before the Cold War, of course; I wouldn't have anything to do with those commie bastards now, of course."
Robert smiled. "Yes, sir. So the report says you went upstairs and knocked on the door?"
"That's right. Headed upstairs straight away. At first I thought the hospital forgot to call me to pick up Sally again. Ignorant fools did the same thing a few weeks ago when she was released, so I wasn't really sure if she was home again or not. But as soon as I knocked on the door, I knew something wasn't right."
"Why's that?"
"Because I could hear them shushing each other on the other side of the door, that's why. I called out to Mrs. Carmichael and told her it was me. If she were in there, she would have opened the door right away. We're very good friends, you see."
"Is it true you told the police you thought one of the men inside had a gun?"
"That's right. Like I said, the walls and doors are paper thin here and whoever was inside was trying their best to be quiet, but I know the sound of a nine-mil being chambered when I hear it."
Robert looked skeptical. "It's interesting that you would recognize such a sound. Do you… uh… own a gun, Mr. Hirch?"
The old man's eyes narrowed. "Sonny boy, the Second Amendment of the Constitution clearly states: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall NOT be infringed."
Robert smiled knowingly. "Yes sir, of course. And I believe, as you probably do, that the right to form a militia and to bear arms are not co-dependant of each other."
Hirch smiled back at him. "Good for you, boy, good for you. All these liberal-minded idiots running around saying I shouldn't be allowed to own a gun unless I join a militia is a bunch of crap. Good to see Seattle's finest have a firm grasp of the situation."
"So you said you heard these men on the other side of the door with a weapon. What did you do then?"
"I told them straight out: Told them I knew Sally Carmichael and I was going to call the cops — that they were trespassing on private property. And that's when I heard one of them threaten me through the door. Told me to get lost or they'd kick my ass back to the Statue of Liberty.
"Well that was it. I wasn't gonna have a bunch commie-bustards telling me what to do in my own building. So I pounded at the door and told them to get the hell out of there. Lousy, two-bit commie sons-a-bitches weren't going to invade my friend's place, not if I'm around to stop it. They wouldn't come out, the low-brow cowards, but when I heard a second round chambered I decided to call you guys."
"And you never saw the men leave the apartment?"
"Nope. I have no idea how they got out. I was watching the street when I spoke to the police dispatcher, so I know they didn't leave on that side of the building. They must have gone out the back."
Robert was writing quickly in his notebook. "It says in the report you got the superintendent to open Mrs. Carmichael's apartment for the police. They seemed to believe everything was in its place, nothing stolen. In your opinion, was that the correct conclusion to make?"
Hirch stopped to think. "Yeah, I guess so. But then again they only had my word on it, so who really knows? We'll have to wait until Sally gets home to know for sure, I suppose. I wouldn't agree nothing was out of place though — don't know where they might have gotten that stuff. Sally keeps a tidy place, but there were boxes removed from the closet and sitting on her bed. It looks like they were rooting through her private stuff, sons-of-bitches. Now we have to worry about red-pervs on top of everything else? What's the world coming to?"
Robert's cell phone was ringing.
"Excuse me, I need to take this. Hello…?"
"Robert?"
"Kari? What's wrong?"
"Robert, somebody attacked Ethan."
"What? Who did?"
"They don't know. They found him in one of the elevators in the garage. Robert — somebody beat him up pretty bad. Sally is beside herself."
"Jesus. Did they catch whoever it was?"
"No, they said they're going to check the video cameras to see if it'll tell them anything."
"Is Ethan all right?"
"No, Robert, he isn't. We know he has a concussion, but we think he might also have some internal injuries, maybe some broken ribs. They're taking the x-rays now."
"All right, I'm on my way."
"Thank you, Robert. Sally is a mess. They were getting ready to release her from the hospital and Ethan was on his way to get the car. Can you believe it? Sally says she isn't going anywhere now, not with Ethan in the hospital."
Robert stepped into the hallway. "Don't let Sally leave the hospital yet. She shouldn't be allowed to come home."
"Why not?"
"My precinct took a call today about a burglary in Sally's apartment. I'm here right now taking a statement from one of her neighbors, Mr. Hirch."
"What?"
"Sally shouldn't be allowed to go back to her apartment without an escort, not until we know more about what's going on here. Keep her there until I arrive, okay? I'll tell you more when I get there."
"Yeah, okay… I guess. I really don't think that's going to be a problem now though. Sally isn't going to leave Ethan this way."
"That's good. I'm on my way."
"Robert?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you think is going on?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean Sally's been getting all of this attention, and then one of her best friends gets beat up, and now somebody is breaking into her apartment? What's happening?"
Robert thought about it. "I really don't know, but don't jump to any conclusions yet. I'll see you shortly."
"Okay."
Robert closed his phone and stepped back into Hirch's apartment. "I have another emergency. Thank you for speaking with me, Mr. Hirch. If you think of anything else, please give me a call." He handed the man his card.
"I'll do that, sonny boy. And thanks for coming out. I know Sally would appreciate it."
Robert was in the car a few minutes later speaking to his dispatcher.
"We just got the call, detective. We have a unit on its way to the hospital."
"Okay. I'm heading over there myself. I know the man who was attacked. Put me offline and at the hospital until the morning."
"You got it."
Twenty minutes later, Robert was reaching for Kari in the emergency room.
"Oh, Robert. It's terrible."
"How is he?"
She led him into a room and the detective saw Sally standing to the side of Ethan's bed who was unconscious under the blankets. She was holding his hand.
"I told you about the concussion," Kari said, "but we've also confirmed he has three broken ribs, two on his left side and one on his right. The bruising suggests he was kicked or punched on both sides."
"So let me get this straight: he's on his way to the garage to get the car and he's hit in the back of the head and then kicked in the ribs twice?"
"And at least once in the groin. There are bruises on the inside of his thighs and testicles."
Robert stood by Ethan's bed. There were bandages and straps of tape across the man's nose. "What happened to his face?"
"They broke his nose and the left zygomatic arch." Kari reached over to point to Ethan's left cheek. His face was very swollen and already yellowing.
"Why would anybody do such a thing?" Sally moaned, caressing Ethan's hand against her face. She looked up at Robert and even through her tears he was taken aback with her face.
It had been only three days since he last saw the woman, but in that short period of time she still looked younger than he remembered. While her hair was still gray, it was a least an inch longer, its darker roots much thicker at the scalp. Then he noticed her hands. Still clutching Ethan tight, her hands looked soft and supple, younger than the hand she looked to comfort and sooth.
"I don't know, Mrs. Carmichael." Robert looked back to a security guard standing near the door. "Let me speak to security. They might know something by now. Maybe they can tell me if they found something on video."
Ethan moaned and Sally immediately came forward.
"Ethan — dear. It's me; it's Sally. Can you hear me? Can you see me?"
Ethan Dodge opened his eyes to look at her. "Sally?"
"Yes, dear. It's your old friend." She started to whimper. "What have they done to you, you dear-sweet man?"
"Where…? Where am I?" He coughed and then winced from the pain of it.
"You're in the hospital, dear. You've been injured, but the doctors are taking good care of you and all your friends are here — Kari and Detective Coleman."
Ethan squeezed her hand. "And you," he whispered, closing his eyes again.
"Yes — yes, Ethan. I'm right here with you as well. Please tell me you're going to be all right, son. Please tell me."
He opened his eyes again. "I wish you wouldn't call me that."
Sally frowned. "Call you? Call you what?"
"I wish you wouldn't call me… son."
She smiled. "Of course… of course. Foolish of me, so very foolish." She kissed his hand again as he mumbled something she couldn't understand. "What-Ethan? What did you say?"
He opened his eyes again. "I said… I love you… Sally, I… love… you."
Kari looked at Sally and even in her friend's current state of worry and doubt she could see she was embarrassed. But there was something else Kari saw in Sally's face, something that betrayed her intent to set Ethan's words aside as nothing more than a man beaten beyond his good sense. It was a look of uncertainty, but also… of hope.
"The poor man… he's clearly out of sorts," Sally said softly, her eyes filling with tears again.
Kari smiled as she reached out to hug her friend. "No, Sal. We all know he really means it. If you didn't know it by now… you would be the only one."
Sally was surprised again, but immediately softened. She leaned back over Ethan to smooth his hair. "You'll get better, Ethan dear. Please say you will. I'm so worried about you… so very, very worried. You're saying the craziest things, you silly boy." She seemed to catch herself. "I mean… you brilliant, wonderful man." She took his hand in hers again and pressed it to her cheek. "Such a wonderful man."
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