Stockholm Syndrome Read online

  Not that I wasn’t grateful Tucker had hurled himself into the fray for me. I loved that guy. I could admit it now, with my own mortality shrieking in my face. But I didn’t want him or Ryan to die for me. Ever.

  I’d rather die first.

  If that meant I was alone with a madman, so be it.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the door swing closed. Its latch caught, sealing off the light and air from the outside world.

  CHAPTER 7

  Bastard’s muscles stiffened, still gripping me, one hand holding the gun and the other doing the neck scarf, drawing me close against his body, and I realized that he wasn’t the one who’d closed the door. Not unless he’d managed to grow a third arm or leg to catch the door.

  Someone else had closed it.

  Someone else had cut us off from the police.

  June, crawling out the door? Would she kick the door closed on her way out, as a way of shielding herself from the bullets?

  Possibly, but that would also cut her patient off from the police. Not so likely.

  Did Bastard have a minion on the inside?

  Also unlikely, because the minion should have let him in. Not June.

  Manouchka? I suppose a Superwoman in labour could have snuck out behind June, while Bastard was distracted, and make her way to safety. That was the best-case scenario. Bastard would have to be completely blind and stupid to have missed a pregnant woman working her way past him, though.

  Tucker?

  The word blazed through my brain. Was he still here? Had he not escaped with June? Or had he somehow managed to haul her out and sneak back in?

  My neck was starting to cramp up. My eyes watered involuntarily, and I told my body, No, save your tears. You don’t have any access to water. You could die here.

  That didn’t help.

  Was my man still here?

  Bastard said, “Nobody move.”

  I tried not to. I still had to breathe, though. I could feel the muscles working in my neck. The scalenes, the sternocleidomastoid muscles. In pediatrics, we check those muscles by looking at them and by touching them, to gauge their level of respiratory distress.

  Bastard kept the gun pressed against my temple, deepening the bruise, but loosened his arm around my neck while he surveyed the room. His body tightened again, and he said, “What are you doing here.”

  “I want to deliver your baby,” said Tucker, his voice resonating in the small room.

  I closed my eyes, flooded with dread and relief and horror. He didn’t leave me.

  Part of me still felt like, This can’t be happening. The other part of me replied, I always knew the end of the world would come and that I’d be a part of it.

  I’ve heard that the Tibetan Book of the Dead tells you every day of your life is just preparing yourself for your death. So the three other murder cases were just prep for my Death Day, as Harry Potter would put it.

  At least Tucker stayed with me on my Death Day.

  “I told you to fuck off,” said Bastard.

  I heard Tucker shift. Maybe he nodded, but he didn’t reply.

  Outside, behind us, I could hear heavy footsteps and male and female voices in the hallway.

  Police. Men and women with guns. Thank God, thank God, thank God.

  Bastard must have heard them, too. He hollered, “If you come in here, I’ll kill these fucks. I’ll blow the whole place up. Don’t take one step closer.”

  The noise stilled outside, but I imagined them silently stealing June away while the rest of them broke the door down.

  Instead, a female voice said through the door, “There’s no need to do that.” She sounded calm.

  Bastard shouted, “Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do! I’m here for my woman and my baby, so just back the fuck off!”

  The woman didn’t answer right away.

  I could feel Bastard’s heart banging against my back, but after a few seconds of silence, he said, “No one needs to get hurt here. I’m just going to get Casey and my boy, and that’s it.”

  “That sounds good, sir. We don’t want anyone hurt,” said the woman.

  Couldn’t she see June bleeding at her feet? Or had Tucker not pulled the nurse out before he slammed the door closed?

  “Get away from the door,” said Bastard. “If I can still see your feet, I’m going to execute every motherfucking one of you. Starting with this bitch doctor. I’m all set. I just have to pull the trigger.”

  I didn’t want to move, but my throat convulsed. I swallowed, even though I had no saliva left.

  I was still staring at the ceiling. Was this my last view? Acoustic tile?

  I heard the police’s footsteps moving away from the door. My stomach plummeted, even though I told myself, It’s okay, Hope. It’s good. He was going to execute you if they busted their way in.

  (He could still execute you.)

  No, no, the cavalry is here.

  (The cavalry is leaving.)

  They’re just coming up with a better plan.

  (Yeah. That’s it.)

  I counted the seconds. One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi. All the way up to twenty-nine. Finally, Bastard said, “All right. Now I’m stuck with both of you.”

  My throat spasmed again.

  “What the fuck. Two docs are better than one, right?”

  “Right,” said Tucker. His voice didn’t even tremble. He was good at talking to psychos. Maybe he should have gone into psych after all.

  He still could, if we survived.

  Don’t think like that.

  How can I not think like that? I have a gun to my head!

  “Fine.” Bastard started to lower his chokehold, a fraction at a time. Just that separation of his arm from my neck, my chin, my body made me feel almost light-headed with relief, although he did add, “You try anything, and this bitch gets it.”

  “I’m just here to deliver a baby,” said Tucker, still calm, even as I was thinking, Hey. Why should I have to get it? So unfair.

  Which didn’t exactly make sense. I was still willing to throw my body in the path of a speeding bullet for him and/or Ryan. It just sucked that Bastard had made me his number one punching bag.

  “Now. Where is she?” said Bastard.

  “Good question,” said Tucker. I realized that he was responding to all of Bastard’s salvos, turning them into reasonable questions. I was inclined to stay silent and try to ignore his insanity, but maybe conducting a dialogue instead of a monologue would help scoop up what was left of Bastard’s twisted neurons and coax him toward letting us go. Definitely, acting like a punching bag wasn’t helping me at all.

  Bastard encircled my left arm with his hand, bruising it to let me know he meant business.

  My breath pushed out between my teeth.

  I flexed my bicep, popping his grip a little, and he clamped down hard enough to make the veins bulge out in my hand and my face flush with pain.

  “Don’t even,” said Bastard, switching the gun around to bruise my left temple and clipping my glasses while he was at it.

  I tried to look at it optimistically. The right side of my head throbbed so bad, I imagined it must feel like a migraine after a bender. So now, at least, the left side of my head got an equal opportunity.

  “You can take me instead,” said Tucker. “I don’t mind.”

  “Shut up and deliver my baby,” said Bastard.

  “Okay,” said Tucker. “No problem.” For the first time, his voice cracked, and I realized that it horrified him to see me like this, so literally in danger. Even though I’d fought for my life before, he’d never witnessed me like this, bent to a killer’s will. It shocked him so much that he was willing to abandon a patient and shut himself up with me and a lunatic.

  I couldn’t think like that, or I’d get emotional. I forced myself to breathe and try to problem-solve the gun drilling a hole in my left temple.

  How many bullets did Bastard have? Was there any chance he might run out?

  If o
nly I’d spent less time on the Krebs cycle and more on firearms. All I knew was that they can kill you. Stay away.

  I’d read a few mystery books where you counted six bullets. But Bastard could probably reload any time, if he’d had the sense to tuck some ammo under his burqa.

  Still. If he had six bullets, he’d used up three. Two on Stan, one on June.

  And this was a handgun. That much, I knew. At least, it wasn’t a rifle he had to carry across his body, spraying shot everywhere, and it wasn’t a semi-automatic. At least, it didn’t look like a paintball gun that just keeps firing and firing.

  But in the meantime, he still had at least three bullets.

  And where was Manouchka?

  I didn’t think she’d left the room. Not only was she unlikely to sneak her bulk past us, but even though it sounds weird, I felt like there was someone else in the room, observing us. I just didn’t know where. And my ability to case the room was still severely limited.

  However, without Bastard’s suffocating chokehold, I felt free to let my eyeballs roam free and bend my neck ever-so-slightly. If Manouchka hadn’t had the chance to run, she probably picked the second option: hide. And a birthing room only has so many hiding places. Almost none, in fact.

  For a second, I thought of slaves who tried to escape on moonless nights. The darkness helped cloak them a little. Our room wasn’t quite that opaque, but just one small hanging lamp glowed beside the bed.

  Of course, Bastard could hit the overhead switch any second now.

  And once he found Manouchka, he’d explode.

  CHAPTER 8

  I glanced around the room, searching for a place to hide. First, for Manouchka. And secondly, in case the cavalry busted into the room, spraying bullets.

  If I thought of the room like a clock, against the wall, directly in front of us, at 12 o’clock, was the incubator. Small, expensive, walls made out of transparent plastic. Useless cover.

  The bed covered 10 to 12 o’clock, running parallel to that wall, stuck in a half-sitting position, but with no patient in it and no one hiding underneath it. Behind us, at 8 o’clock, the fetal monitor balanced on a countertop was probably still transmitting information even though it was no longer attached to Manouchka. The black fetal monitor’s belt lay on the bed, bereft. A rolling tray table sat on the left side of the bed, near the wall, its fake wood grain surface empty as well, shining under the lamp.

  A ratty beige curtain pressed against the far wall, between the bed and the incubator. Curtains are now considered passé in fancier hospitals, where you get an entire suite to yourself, but St. Joe’s was old school. Last century, they must have wanted the option to draw a curtain around mama in the bed.

  Someone had shoved the padded visitor’s chair into the corner at approximately one o’clock. Since Manouchka had been alone, they’d had no use for it.

  At two o’clock, the delivery cart was still draped, but inside it lay a whole bunch of sterile stuff. Not just gloves, but the clamps for the umbilical cord, forceps to pack the vagina with gauze in case of bleeding, special forceps to pull out the baby’s head in an emergency (although more often nowadays they’ll use a vacuum), sutures, scissors, who knows? As far as I was concerned, a nurse would start magically pulling out items as needed. We might have to use any or all of these for Manouchka’s baby. With any luck, Tucker would know the cart layout better than I did.

  I did not want Bastard to get a hold of a scalpel.

  I didn’t dare glance beyond three o’clock, because Bastard was still gripping my left arm and pressing his gun to my left temple.

  Much more pleasant to consider Tucker, probably at five o’clock, just inside in the main door’s entryway, lurking in my other blind spot.

  That entryway. I’d stumbled over June in this room’s entrance, because it was so narrow. Why?

  To make room for something else. When we were looking at apartments for university, my engineering boyfriend, Ryan, had pointed out to me that hallways don’t just come out of nowhere. This wasn’t like a bachelor apartment where you open the door and it’s a perfect box of a room. This case room had a hallway, and therefore contained a room within a room.

  A bathroom.

  I’d assumed that they didn’t have a bathroom because the examining rooms in the family medicine centre have no running water. Also, I’d never had to search out and use a patient bathroom on OB. But even St. Joseph’s anemic budget must have stretched to adding facilities on the obstetric wing.

  The entry door was on the right side of the room. Tucker’s zone, at five o’clock. Which meant the bathroom must be at approximately seven o’clock. And I knew where Manouchka must be hiding now.

  I closed my eyes.

  If we moved forward, and Bastard was deafened by the shots, it was possible that she could sneak open her door and tiptoe out of the room.

  Far more likely, though, he’d hear her and open fire. Or even decide that he needed to take a leak and get a mighty surprise.

  Bastard shifted and called to Tucker, “Move it, you stupid fuck, or I’m taking you out, and your girlfriend, too.”

  It was the first time anyone had called me Tucker’s girlfriend. And even though this was the worst imaginable scenario, with my head throbbing and a bullet threatening my brain, my heart thrummed for a second.

  Girlfriend. Tucker’s girlfriend.

  My heart didn’t care that an insane gunman spoke those words. It sang, You Tucker. Me girlfriend.

  I clung to that. I still loved Ryan. Just thinking about him made me want to sink my nose into the perfect, brown skin between his neck and shoulder and inhale him, blocking out the faint ringing in my ears and the madness surrounding me.

  But the fact that Tucker stood by me in the case room of death—that made me feel both elated and sick at the same time, like I imagine heroin must feel.

  “No worries,” said Tucker. “I’m here to help you and Casey.”

  Even without moving my head, I could tell he was circling around me. Instead of staying diagonally behind me, at five o’clock, he was sweeping around to seven o’clock.

  Maybe he was trying to shield the patient, even though he also laboured under the delusion that it was Casey.

  Or maybe Tucker was on the move because he wanted to get between me and Bastard’s gun.

  I sucked my breath in between my clenched teeth. I’m here, Tucker. I’m taking the fall for us. Don’t play the hero.

  But of course he’d cast himself as the white knight. Why else would he stick around?

  Our friend Tori once told me that everyone thinks he or she is the hero. No one thinks, Yo, look at me, I’m the sidekick!

  I think it goes double for doctors.

  But that could get dangerous here. Too many cooks might oversalt the broth; too many heroes would dig themselves twelve feet under.

  I envisioned Tucker walking toward us with his hands in the air, steering clear of June’s blood smeared into the floor. Unspeakably brave.

  There was no way for me to talk to Tucker, or text him. Even now, my phone buzzed angrily in my pocket, trying to feed me texts I couldn’t reach. And he was coming up on my left side, the gun side, so I couldn’t even face him.

  How could I talk to him when I couldn’t even open my mouth without Bastard trying to jam a gun into it?

  I stiffened, and Tucker’s footsteps stilled.

  He was watching me. He was reading my body language.

  That was it. One of Tucker’s many quirks was that he called himself a “cunning linguist,” learning everything from Farsi to Inuktitut. Why not non-verbal communication?

  My heart drummed so fast, I could hardly breathe, but I only had seconds to try and “talk” to Tucker.

  Bastard was still imprisoning my left arm, making a manacle out of his hand. That left my right arm free.

  I snaked my right palm up so it faced the incubator. Theoretically, I was showing Bastard that I didn’t have any weapons and was a helpless maiden.
r />   But in my mind, it was an unspoken Stop sign, and I was inching it above my shoulder, trying to flash both Bastard and Tucker at the same time.

  Tucker’s breath rasped behind me without getting any louder, which could only mean one thing. He’d stopped dead (uh, bad choice of words).

  Tucker understood me. My God. He really got the message.

  Now. If only I could tell him the important part: Casey wasn’t in the bathroom. It was Manouchka. But that was a lot more complicated message than “halt.”

  Something else pinged in my brain. When I was in high school, I picked up a tiny bit of sign language. Just the alphabet, good morning, that sort of thing. But the brilliant thing was, Casey is a name that you can do with minimal letters and hand movement.

  I waggled my hand a teeny bit from side to side. Just a miniature motion, smaller than the royal wave, but I was saying NO.

  And then I pressed my thumb between my index and middle finger, which is a K in sign language if you drop the last two fingers toward your palm.

  I released my thumb and curved the rest of my hand, making a big letter C.

  If Tucker could decode it, I was saying, No K-C.

  No Casey.

  Of course, he had to read it from behind me, which made it trickier.

  I don’t sweat much, but right at this moment, my armpits stung, and my Adam’s apple felt lodged in my throat.

  Come on, Tucker.

  I did it again, with slightly bigger movements, trying to angle my hand toward Tucker.

  Bastard yelled, “STOP!”

  CHAPTER 9

  I froze with my tongue pressed against my upper palate. My right hand trembled in the air.

  “WHAT do you THINK you’re DOING?” Bastard yelled.

  It was like a marine sergeant bellowing in my left ear, except with a gun to my head and his hand strangling my arm so hard that I figured my veins would explode just before he fired the gun.

  I smelled blood again. It seemed to rise up from the floor.

  I told myself that wasn’t logical. The blood should dry up and become less smelly.

  But the iron tang haunted my nostrils while I opened my mouth to answer.