Retribution (2 page)

Charlie would only shrug. "I need three to do it right," she would insist politely.

And the gallery owner would look avidly at Mary, saying, "I would like to do a show for her, if the other paintings are as good. This is talent, a bit raw, but talent that most of us would give our left arm for."

And Mary, strangely unsurprised at his response, would agree to show him the other paintings and to a public viewing.

And from that moment, Mary and Charlie would never look back. She would gasp when the gallery owner priced the paintings first at ten, then twenty, then fifty thousand dollars. Charlie would begin to show a polish in the public eye as she attended shows and interviews and talked with prospective buyers of her art from around the world. Quentin loved them all fiercely, and put Charlie's money aside for her, and there would never be a doubt in anybody's mind that this was a family, knit together by love, and holding strong.

Then Charlie would begin work on what she called the second painting, after a month of troubled dreams and fitful nightmares, and the finished canvas would be almost as much a subject of controversy as her young genius had been in the first place. The second painting would be as dark and horrifying as the first had been full of light and buoyancy.

But they would take it all in stride until the evening when Charlie would be interviewed on global news unveiling the painting, and she would go into seizure and collapse in front of God and everyone, and Mary would wonder if her own heart would stop forever.

"Clarkson!"

"In here, Dr. Phelmans."

The locker room door pushed open. A beacon of yellow light from the main hospital corridor came streaking across the old, brown glazed linoleum as the immense doctor entered.

"Not good, Clarkson, not good at all." Phelmans waved a clipboard full of performance evaluation sheets in his beefy hand.

Wade stared at him, fatigue seeping through every pore of his body, and wondered if Phelmans could ever have worked the kind of shift he just had. If he had once, he couldn't do it now… the sheer bulk of the doctor's body would drop him in his tracks, just as it wearied Wade even to look at him.

Phelmans peered at him as though hoping for a response. Wade knew better. A response opened argument. He did not want to argue. He just wanted to be allowed to get in his car, drive back to his crummy apartment and lumpy bed, and crawl into oblivion. He looked down at his chief and inhaled deeply, as though fresh air alone could revive him. He did not take drugs to keep going, as some of his fellow residents did, nor did he rely heavily on caffeine. It was sheer willpower, and the love of what he did, and the adrenaline from doing it right that kept him going through shifts as long as seventy-two hours without more than a few hours sleep caught on the fly.

"Your reports, Clarkson, are late."

"I handed in my reports through the computer, Dr. Phelmans."

The doctor's heavy face flushed pinkly, and his piglike eyes glittered in hard triumph. "If there is one thing I have tried to pound into your minds again and again, it is not to depend on the computer system. The computer is down, Clarkson, and your reports are late."

A surge of irritation carrying a spark of energy not unlike a rush buoyed Wade up for a moment. Phelmans hated the computer system. He could not use it well himself, and Wade knew that the hatred covered the doctor's fear and inadequacies.

"What the frigging use is it if it never functions! I did my work."

"That is beside the point. You use an unreliable system for your reports, and expect the hospital to suffer the consequences? I hope you do not intend to leave until those reports are ready to hand in." A dark vindictiveness glittered at the back of Phelmans' eyes.

Wade took a deep breath. He would not win this fight… he had never won any of them yet and did not expect to until the day he logged his last minute of work.

He reached for his locker and yanked it open, grabbed a sheaf of papers in a folder, searched through it, pulled out ten wrinkled forms, and replaced the folder. "Here's the originals… handwritten. It's the best I can do." He shoved the forms at the doctor.

Phelmans sputtered a moment as he took the papers, shuffled through them, the crimson in his face settling toward purple. He muttered to himself as he sorted the papers, then attached them to his clipboard. "Bear in mind, Clarkson, that paperwork does not make a good surgeon. I shall be evaluating your reports carefully. Already I see an unnecessary CBC you ordered." He cleared his throat. "Not everyone has what it takes to be a doctor."

With years behind him and spare months stretching before him, Wade kept his mouth shut. His jaw ached with the tension, he could feel it arcing into his neck. He made no attempt to keep the contempt he felt from creeping across his face.

Phelmans looked at him, and he knew the other saw it, and read it clearly. "And, Clarkson…. I want you back here in twelve hours to start the next shift."

"Twelve! I'm up for twenty-four hours off." During which time he had planned to sleep like the dead.

"I know what your schedule is, and I have changed it. When you become a real doctor, Clarkson, you will discover that sickness and pain do not keep a schedule. Your patients will need you when they need you, not when you need them. Is that understood?"

"If it wasn't, you have made it so." He slammed the locker door shut with a resounding clang. "I'll be here."

The fat doctor's mouth worked a moment, uttered nothing, tightened. With a speed Wade would not have guessed possible, the doctor turned on his heel and left. Wade swallowed in an effort to ease his throat and followed him, the brightness of the outer corridors, the newly painted walls, the outer face of the hospital stunning with promise, cheer, and competence. The contrast was stark to the inner rooms he had just left.

Phelmans disappeared ahead of him into another corridor, leading to the staff doctors' offices. Wade rolled his shoulders, exhaled, and headed to the parking lot.

After the illumination of the hospital, he found himself dazed for a moment as he stepped into total darkness, clouds shunting across the sky, glowering, black, and the pavement rain-darkened. Even as he stepped out, the rain began again, pelting heavily, and he broke into a trot to his car. Puddles sprayed as he hit them, and the cuffs of his trousers immediately became sodden. The lock on the car door stubbornly refused to accept the key smoothly, and water slicked his hair down and chilled the back of his neck before he finally got the door open and slid into his battered sedan.

The cars he drove past all resembled his: worn, old, dinged, with rust-eaten edges. As he got ready to pull out of the main lot, he cast a look back in his rearview mirror to the doctors' lot… gleaming, new, expensive cars in a sheltered garage lot, their metallic forms barely visibly in the driving rain and glare of his vehicle's headlights. There were days when that view cheered him. Tonight was not one of them.

Despite the storm, he put the driver's side window down halfway, letting the rush of cold air hit his face, keeping him awake, if chilled and damp. His eyelids burned as he watched the road, winding into the countryside, the trees bent and curving, their leaves lashing blackly in the night. This was not a night he wanted to be out in. He prayed that the worn tires of the car would hold the asphalt, that he could ride the thinning beams of the headlights all the way home, to sleep, to rest.

And he fought the rough burning of discouragement inside him. They wanted him to quit, just like all the others, would ride him unmercifully and he had to get through, he had to… but if someone were to give him two cents right now, he would turn around, find Phelmans, and tell him to shove the residency up his fat ass. What kind of hospital worried about a blood panel when they'd just spent over half a mil overhauling the doctors' dining room? Was that the kind of medicine he wanted to be bogged down in the rest of his life? The brutal workload facing him if he decided to specialize further would bury him if he let it. Pigs like Phelmans cared nothing about talent or compassion. They were in medicine to support their appetites for old ex-wives, new trophy wives, fancy cars, and big country clubs. Wade had seen enough of them to fill his craw for a lifetime. He could transfer his surgery residency to another hospital; he'd had interest, he could do it. Or he could quit altogether. He had options.

He took a deep breath, letting the icy raindrops the speed of the car carried in brace him against the curtain of sleep, the overwhelming need to rest, that kept threatening to descend on him. He must have drifted, for the wheel suddenly jerked under his hands, and the car swayed as another car passed him, horn angrily bleating. Wade shook himself and held steady as the vehicle whooshed on ahead, wavering back and forth across the lanes.

The car faded to a pair of red taillights, and his eyes narrowed to watch them, the driver uncaring or unable to hold a smooth passage over the road. The son of a bitch had to be drunk. He was lucky he hadn't been run into a ditch. The car skidded sideways over an especially damp patch, then accelerated so rapidly Wade lost all sight of it on the curving road.

The rain had stopped, but the lane stayed glistening black, tires spraying through the layer of water left behind. Wade settled his hands about the wheel more firmly. He found himself thinking of Southern California with its vast freeways, sunshine, and newer hospitals. He inhaled to clear his mind.

Afterward, he was not able to say if he heard it first or saw it. Seeing would have been impossible, of course, because the trees and bends hid it. So he heard it… the screeching of brakes, the high piercing sound of desperation, and the tumultuous crash of metal and chrome and plastic and impact. Beams pierced the night hanging over the treetops, like lightning, sweeping in first one direction, then another. He did not understand what he saw although he feared what he would discover after the next bend.

Even his fear did not prepare him for the carnage. On the rain-slicked road bodies lay strewn as though tossed there like dice. One vehicle, crumpled and torn nearly in two, had come to a rest canted upward in a ditch, its headlights beginning to yellow. Body damage was so gross, it was no wonder its occupants had been thrown out. Bits of clothing and shoes knocked off by the impact lay in sodden puddles. The other car, the one he recognized, lay on its roof, the driver crawling out a nearly nonexistent door. Dear God, it was not enough to kill himself, but he had to take others with him….

He pulled over, tires crunching on debris, his heart in his throat, no doubt in him that he should stop, a thought niggling in the back of his mind that this was disaster, what could he do, and he could get sued if he could not help the helpless. Phelmans would not stop. He would slow, shout that he was going for help, and would drive on down the road to the country club two miles ahead, where phones existed.

Wade did not think that anyone lying on the asphalt would live till EMTs could arrive.

He turned the key and the car shut down. It seemed forever till he could open the door and swing his feet out, and hear the broken breathing of the victims, the moans, and someone sobbing. The air stank of burning oil and rubber and spilled fuel. It reeked of blood as he approached the victims. Glass scattered like gleaming diamonds and crunched with his every step.

He knelt by the first one, even though he knew there was no hope, and put his hands to the neck to check for a pulse. The flesh so warm… the heart so still. A teenage boy, with malt-brown hair, his throat almost gone, eyes staring upward at Wade in stark astonishment. It was his blood he had smelled so strongly, spilled in a huge pool under him, spilling out no longer. Clarkson put the eyelids down, then straightened and started toward the next.

"Shit," someone said. Wade turned slightly and looked.

The man had gotten to his knees, his hands up toward his face, almost completely untouched… except for the arrowlike piece of window framing that pierced his throat. Blood trickled out between his fingers. He stared at Wade.

"You gotta help me."

"Don't touch it," Wade told him. "I'll be right there." Disgust rose in his own throat with a burning sensation.

The drunk sank down on his haunches, back braced against the tire wheel of the car, and began a litany of cursing and sobbing. Wade crossed the road swiftly to the other car. A body hung upside down in the shell of the wrecked car, and one look was all it took to determine that the driver had not lived as well. He turned back to three more bodies on the road. The girl had ceased crying and now sat up, her face dead white in the eerie illumination from the cars. She looked at him, blinked, and tried to make a sound. Blood smeared her face, and her left arm hung at an unnatural angle.

Shock, a minor scalp wound, and a broken arm, perhaps even a broken collarbone. She would be all right, though, unless there were internals he could not possibly diagnose now. A group of teens in a car… going to see a movie? Coming back from the pizza parlor and pool hall? Just out cruising? They would never, ever, climb in a car again with those friends, expecting the same good, exciting things to happen. Never again.

The boy sprawled at her feet made a spasmodic movement and tried to take a breath. Wade almost froze at the sound… sucking chest wound. Then he knelt by the boy and saw the damage. Even with a surgical team, and an operating room and equipment, and time he did not know if he could save him. On the midnight-dark, rain-slicked pavement, with only his hands and the few things thrown in the back seat of his car… Wade found himself shaking his head.