Stockholm Syndrome Read online

  Stan. Dead Stan.

  Don’t think that way. He might still make it. Come on.

  At close range, I finally recognized that insistent stink emanating from Bastard’s pores as marijuana. Lovely.

  I forced myself to speak in a low, well-enunciated voice. “She’s not there. Let me call the operator. I’ll find you Casey.”

  He pushed the gun a little harder against my occiput. “Open. That. Door.”

  I stared at the edging etched into the white wood of the first case room door. If he shot me, could the bullet drive right through the wood and hit Manouchka or June too?

  My hand dipped toward the metal door handle, but a sound caught my ear.

  Not just any sound. A whistle.

  On our right, echoing off the empty hospital corridor walls.

  Someone whistling in the midst of blood and terror. It was as startling as if a bluebird had launched itself above our heads in this hospital hall of horror, singing a tale of joyful spring in mid-November.

  I knew that whistle. My nails cut into my palms to stop myself from yelling. My breath rasped in my throat, and I know this sounds strange, but my nipples hardened.

  I even recognized the song, “What a Day for a Daydream.”

  It was the stupidest, most inappropriate song for this scenario, and that would have told me the whistler’s identity even if I’d been blindfolded and gagged.

  It was one man I didn’t want trapped with me.

  I wanted to scream, Run, Tucker.

  CHAPTER 4

  Instead, I kept very still and prayed Bastard wouldn’t notice the song.

  Fat chance. I might as well wish on a star for him to shoot himself.

  I heard the rustle of Bastard’s clothes as he shifted behind me, just before he jabbed the gun again into the base of my skull, but it slipped an inch and caught me on the neck instead.

  I bit back a cry as my neck arched involuntarily, jerking my chin toward the ceiling before Bastard swore and re-took his first position. Namely, his body stuck close enough behind me to scrape the skin off my back and the gun transferred to my right temple, with the extra-special addition of his left arm hooked around my throat, embedding my stethoscope into my breast bone.

  The whistling grew louder.

  Was Bastard smart enough to understand that Tucker was offering the aural equivalent of a white flag?

  Probably not. He probably didn’t know what aural meant. Took me a while to figure it out, too.

  “Let’s go,” I managed to whisper through the arm lock. My hair felt like it was standing straight out from my scalp, under the pull of the world’s best Van der Graaf Generator. I didn’t know where to go. I just had to get us away from here.

  Forget rocks and hard places. I was smushed between a closed door and a killer.

  “Shut. Up,” said Bastard.

  Since the gun in my temple was already delivering me a Mach 1 headache, and Tucker was in imminent danger, I decided to obey. Maybe if I were very, very quiet, Bastard could control his trigger finger. Tucker would just keep whistling his way on by.

  That whistling paused, probably as Tucker encountered Stan’s body, but then it picked up again, growing more intense in my right ear.

  I could feel Bastard’s breathing speeding up as he exhaled beer fumes on me. He didn’t know what to do. He probably didn’t have a Plan A, let alone B or C. I was practically pressed against the wood grain, with Tucker oncoming, yet no sign of the cavalry. Where was the fucking cavalry? I know we’re in Montreal, but come on.

  “That’s my friend,” I said, so that Bastard wouldn’t freak out and start spraying bullets.

  “I don’t give a fuck who that is. It’s not Casey,” he said.

  Fair point. I had to try again. Bastard might execute me, Tucker, or both, but I couldn’t just stand here. “Yes. If you let me get at the phone—”

  “Shut. Up,” said Bastard, grinding the muzzle close enough to my right eyeball that I closed my eyelid, as if a thin patch of skin could protect me from potential blindness.

  Tucker’s whistle, as well as his steps on the beige tile floor, faded into silence. I couldn’t see his body out of my peripheral vision, which was blocked by a firearm and a lunatic’s arm, but from the sound, I would guess he stood about five feet to our right.

  Way too close.

  “I’m here to help,” he said, in that baritone I’d recognize in my sleep.

  Hearing Tucker’s voice confirmed that one of the major loves of my life was stupid enough to run toward this maniac.

  Not that I should point fingers. My own “May I help you?” retardedness had likely killed Stan and would now probably take out me and Tucker.

  For the first time in my life, I wanted to faint. Just black out and let someone else take care of this mess.

  Instead, I ordered, “Get out of here, T—”

  The gunman slid his left hand over my mouth, silencing me, but also squashing my nose so that I could hardly breathe anything except his dirty flesh.

  I choked. My body bucked.

  Can’t breathe. Stupid way to die.

  Can’t breathe.

  I was a microsecond away from biting his hand. Just chomping down on his flesh. HIV and hepatitis be damned. I needed air.

  Bastard eased up slightly, and I drew in a desperate, shallow breath, already feeling light-headed, but still hearing him say, “I’m going in. Casey’s in here, having my baby. They better open it, or I’m gonna shoot this bitch.”

  Love you, too.

  “You don’t want to do that,” said Tucker. “Hope’s a famous doctor. She delivers babies.”

  Well, that was sort of true. I was infamous. I was a resident doctor. And I have delivered babies. But I was on board for promising Bastard the solar system if he’d just let me breathe.

  Bastard’s breath puffed while he mulled that over. His left hand drifted an inch away from my mouth, letting me gasp for oxygen while his right one stayed locked and loaded on my skull. “I gotta get to Casey.”

  So he wasn’t a big thinker. More like the Hulk. Smash. Get Casey. Unh. I didn’t know if his idiocy was a good or bad thing, when he could blow our brains out in a quick one-two.

  “You don’t need Hope at all,” said Tucker. “I’m a doctor, too. I can deliver Casey’s—”

  Bastard tensed. I could feel it.

  Tucker must have seen something, too, because he smoothly switched it to “—your baby. Why don’t you let Hope go, and I’ll get you in here.”

  Oh, God. It was the most romantic thing Tucker had ever said, and also the stupidest.

  I inhaled sharply to tell them, No. Casey’s not here.

  Bastard clapped his hand on my mouth again. Not smashing my nose this time, so I could breathe, but definitely inhibiting my mouth’s ability to tell him he was barging into the wrong room.

  Tucker said, “It’s okay. Let Hope go. I’ve delivered lots of babies. I’ll take excellent care of yours and Casey’s.”

  “Casey,” said Bastard. Every time anyone said her name, he welded his brain to it and didn’t seem to register anything else. “Casey Assim. She’s having my boy. Get me in there, or I’ll kill both of you.”

  “Then you’ll have no one to deliver your baby,” Tucker pointed out. “All you have to do is let go of Hope, and I’ll come with you. I’m an expert at delivering big, healthy baby boys.”

  Tucker probably hadn’t delivered any more babies than I had, but he always put on the best show.

  Bastard relaxed his chokehold slightly. “I don’t know who the fuck you are.”

  “My name is Dr. John Tucker.” His voice grew louder as he approached us. I squeezed my eyes shut. I still had trouble breathing with Bastard face-palming me, but I didn’t want to watch Tucker laying down his life for mine.

  I forced my eyes open. I’d have to witness everything I could, if we had any chance of surviving this. ’Course, all I could see was this darn door.

  Tucker was still talking.
His forte. He once considered a career in psychiatry instead of family medicine, but right now he was weaving a web of words around Bastard. “I have considerable training in obstetrics and gynecology. I would be honoured to deliver your son. Just let me take Hope’s place.”

  “No one’s going nowhere until I get in to see Casey!”

  “If you would allow me...” I spotted the blur of Tucker’s hand at five o’clock as he took a step forward to try the door handle. He said, “Hmm. They’ve locked it.”

  “Stand back,” said Bastard. He let go of my face, which was a serious relief. My eyesight was starting to pinwheel.

  I sucked in some more sweet air, trying to think through my haze. Maybe he was going to bust down the door like in the movies. And occasionally, in real life. Once I got an epileptic patient who’d had a seizure in the bathroom. The door was locked with the patient’s body wedged against the door. A police officer ended up breaking down the door.

  Bastard dragged me backward by fastening his left arm tight around my throat and yanking me into the hallway.

  I gagged, but I stumbled back with him like a dog dragged by its collar.

  Dimly, I heard Tucker still offering to take my place.

  Bastard shouted, “I’m warning you. Open this door, or I’m going to shoot it off. And then I’ll shoot one of these doctors, I don’t care which one.”

  I held my breath. Even Tucker stopped jabbering, and that’s saying something.

  Inside the room, quiet footsteps approached the door.

  CHAPTER 5

  While we waited at door number one, Bastard kept his left arm wrapped around my neck in just under a chokehold, like a scarf itching to strangle me.

  He also rammed his gun muzzle into my temple again. I supposed I should be grateful it was no longer attacking my eyeball, but the metal really hurt. Before this attack, I’d never thought about how just the brute force of a circle of steel, pressed into my skin, can bruise, even before the bullet performs a craniotomy at 1700 miles per hour.

  So I didn’t tell him Casey wasn’t home.

  I kept mum.

  The approaching footsteps had stopped, but I thought someone hovered inside the front door. If I could’ve moved my head, I would have glanced downward to look for foot shadows shifting, but I couldn’t budge. I could only listen to the abnormally-loud sound of my own breathing and wonder if this was it. My last few seconds on earth, cradled by a murderer.

  The door handle clicked. My heart jerked in terror, in anticipation, I didn’t even know what anymore.

  The door cracked open a centimetre. The inside was darker than the hallway, so I couldn’t see anything except a dark shape, but June’s clipped voice drifted out toward us. “Don’t shoot anyone.”

  I wanted to say, Please. I wanted to say, Don’t hurt her. She’s just trying to protect her patient.

  Her patient. Her patients, really, since the baby was almost making its way into the world.

  What a way to be born.

  Bastard’s body tensed. He didn’t want her giving orders. But instead of yelling at her, he launched forward, using me as a battering ram to slam open the door.

  Instinctively, I threw up my hands to protect my face. I guess Bastard was having trouble juggling me, the gun, and propelling both our bodies forward, because even as he yelled, “No!” to me, he dropped me.

  I ended up plowing against the door with both hands, and very nearly my teeth.

  I bashed into it with my forehead instead. Like a hammerhead shark without the right equipment.

  A dull pain encircled the rest of my skull in a throbbing, burning headband, but I fought through it, trying to figure out what was going on.

  The door was giving way.

  June had braced her body against the door, but when my body weight thumped against it, she only withstood it for a second, especially when Bastard hurled his body too, using his arm to shove inward.

  I remembered that June was actually a tiny woman, shorter than I was. She had no chance against our double onslaught.

  She screamed.

  Bastard had banged the door away from me, so I stumbled and smacked into the cool tile floor on my palms. The impact jarred me up to the shoulders, even before my knees banged down for extra impact. Greens don’t provide much padding.

  “Get up, bitch,” said Bastard, grabbing my shoulder.

  “No!” shouted June, trying to smash the door closed on both of us, and Bastard fired.

  CHAPTER 6

  It happened so fast, I didn’t know what was going on. I was still on my knees in the doorway.

  My ears rang. I smelled something, too, a burning smell that reminded me of fireworks.

  All I knew was that Bastard had fired another bullet, and I didn’t hurt anywhere. Yet.

  But someone howled—June, I thought, from the high pitch.

  Then June’s small, shadowy body dropped to the ground, just beside the door she’d tried to guard, and I focused on her. My eyes were still adjusting to the dim light, but her face contorted in pain.

  I shouted, “Tucker, get her out of here!”

  Bastard snatched me by my hair. My newly-grown, long, straight black hair, which I don’t usually wear in a ponytail because it’s too uncomfortable after a few hours on call. He yanked it hard enough to pierce a thousand nerve endings, but that still didn’t block out the sound of him hollering, “Nobody move!”

  Disobeying his own words, he starting dragging me deeper inside the room. By the hair.

  Pain seared through my scalp.

  Pale fingers flashed at the corner of my vision. Tucker’s hands, trying to grab me.

  I tried to reach for him too, but Bastard kicked him and said, “I’ll kill you if you come any closer,” and I could tell he meant it.

  I stumbled over something in the narrow entryway. Something soft. Not a machine—we were still to the right of the countertop holding the fetal monitor display.

  My chin managed to dip in response, even though it ripped more hairs out of my scalp, and I spotted June’s purple scrubs, so wildly patterned in owls that in the dark, I couldn’t tell where she was bleeding.

  I opened my mouth automatically to apologize. I’m Canadian. I’ll say sorry in the middle of the Holocaust.

  Then I realized that I’d run into her because not only had we surged forward, into the room, but June had crawled from around the door, toward us.

  She was moving. She was alive. But for how much longer?

  “I said, get the fuck out of my way!” Bastard yelled, and the hind part of my brain replied, No, you said nobody move, but I didn’t dare correct him. He was not the kind of person to award me a little gold paper star for my excellent memory.

  We had to get June out.

  She could easily die here, with just our stethoscopes and obstetric equipment to save her. June didn’t need a pelvic exam and an umbilical cord clamp. She needed a trauma surgeon.

  Even if it went against every instinct to move her instead of helping her. That’s what we say to ambulances sometimes: stay and play vs. scoop and run. Right now, June needed to run.

  I thought I could smell her blood stronger than Stan’s. Bad sign. I wanted to put pressure on her wounds, but just shifting my torso made Bastard crush down on me like he could squeeze my kidneys out of my carcass as easily as I’d squish a tube of toothpaste.

  Still, I tried to lean into the room. The farther we got away from June, the more easily Tucker could move her out.

  Bastard let me take one tiny step, then another.

  Yes, my mind hissed, even though I was marching toward my own doom.

  I heard scuffling behind us. Footsteps. The police?

  Bastard sucked in his breath and whipped me around 180 degrees so that he could cover the entrance, but his hair hand wrenched my head to the left so that I couldn’t assess anything except the delivery cart and the pain in my scalp.

  But I could hear more quick, quiet steps. The shush of fabric rustling on t
he ground—June, still crawling?

  Someone grunted.

  I heard heavy footsteps. Someone was walking, someone bigger than June.

  I blinked. Tucker?

  Couldn’t be anyone else.

  So Tucker was leaving me. I’d ordered him to, wished him safe and far away, but my heart broke anyway. I squinched my eyes shut to try and block out the feeling. Feeling would kill me now.

  The next split second, I heard sirens. Not the fire alarm, but real sirens screeching through the air and penetrating the hospital walls.

  Police, ambulance, help, goddamn it, the cavalry making its way to St. Joseph’s at long last.

  I wanted to cry in relief, except Bastard was yelling, “Nobody fucking move!” He jerked my hair again, yanking my chin back so that I stared at the speckled acoustic tile ceiling and still couldn’t make out much of anything, but I could feel him advancing toward the door, tearing my hair follicles.

  “Police!” a male voice hollered from the triage side of the hallway, and I instinctively twisted toward that sound, my heart splitting with a surge of hope, even as pain blinded me.

  Bastard muttered, “I’ll fucking kill you first.” He let my hair go, wedged his left arm back around my throat and nested the gun back against my bruised right temple, just above the earpiece of my glasses.

  He danced me sideways, toward the door. He wanted to close the door, I realized. He wanted to imprison us in this tomb of a room.

  I wanted to scream, “Over here!” at the police. I wanted to make sure Tucker had dragged June out to safety. But all I could do was the world’s worst four-legged race, staggering while Bastard’s gun threatened my brain.

  Still. The police had come. Finally.

  I’ve heard a lot of smack about police. I was scared myself, before I came to Montreal, because unarmed black men had been killed by the Sûreté du Québec, as well as everywhere else. But since the police had personally saved my skin three times before today, I was quite fond of them and now, terrifyingly grateful that they’d come.

  Now I had hope. I don’t use that word lightly, because of my given name and all, but for the first time, I understood why my parents had named me that.