Stockholm Syndrome Read online

  Tucker’s voice cut in. “Looking for your son.”

  Bastard paused, and the pressure on my arm halved for a crucial split-second. My arm was numb, but my hand buzzed as blood surged back to it.

  “My son,” Bastard repeated.

  “Right. Your baby, about to be born,” said Tucker.

  For some reason, that made me think of Jesus. It was only November fourteenth, but this Catholic hospital had broken out all the trimmings already. A pair of baby Christmas stockings hung above the little incubator in the room.

  I felt dizzy. What would happen to Manouchka’s baby, once Bastard realized it wasn’t his? I’d heard of soldiers bayoneting infants, or grabbing babies by the ankle and bashing their tiny heads against the wall.

  “My boy,” said Bastard.

  “Your boy,” said Tucker. “Hope and I are going to make sure he comes out safely.”

  I noticed, even with my slightly dull brain, he wasn’t saying Casey’s name anymore. Maybe Tucker had received my message. Maybe he hadn’t. But at least he was distracting Bastard and reminding him that we were both useful human beings with names.

  “That nurse was keeping me away from Casey. I had to get rid of her,” said Bastard.

  “She’s gone now,” said Tucker. I couldn’t tell from his voice if it was a double entendre and June was gone-gone, as in dead, or just kiss-your-lucky-stars-absent-from-the-case-room-of-death gone.

  “It was her fault for getting in the way,” said Bastard.

  Right. Blame the victim, motherfucker.

  Tucker repeated, “She’s gone.”

  Bastard took a breath. I thought I felt the gun waver against my temple, drawing a circle on the loose skin and probably making me look cock-eyed. I know I shouldn’t care about vanity at a time like this, but that’s the curse of getting locked up with one of your soul mates: you devote precious brain cells to that sort of non-survival thing.

  “Casey,” said Bastard, and his voice grew softer, almost like a caress, which made me grit my teeth and try not to implode. “Why did you run away from me?”

  Isn’t it obvious?

  Bastard said, “I just want my boy and my girl.”

  For a second, I was worried that he wanted to kidnap another female. It took me a second to compute that “my girl” must mean Casey.

  Tucker paused, too, before he said, “Hope and I will help you.”

  We will?

  One of the things I find most frustrating about Christianity is turning the other cheek and assuming hellfire will catch up to the wrongdoers. Buddhism does this, too, but for some reason I don’t find it as annoying as the commandment to keep offering my other cheek, or eyeball, or whatever a murderer has taken a fancy to.

  It dawned on me that Tucker’s voice had grown a little louder. He was approaching us, and I realized that he must have stepped within arm’s reach. Not only calculating from the sound of his voice and footsteps, but I could even sense the warmth of his body and the intensity of his gaze. He said, “We’re doctors. We help people.”

  I didn’t want to help Bastard. But Manouchka, Casey, and their babies? Sure. Of course.

  Bastard liked the sound of helping people, because he actually pulled the gun away from my head. Not far—I could see it out of the corner of my eye, and if I turned my head a few degrees to the left, I’d run into the muzzle again—but even a millimetre away from direct contact was a vast improvement. I could breathe again.

  Keep talking, Tucker.

  “Go deliver my kid, then,” said Bastard, but without rancor.

  “Sure,” said Tucker. “I’ll just take Hope over for the delivery.”

  Oh, he was good. “The delivery” instead of naming any specific baby. But even if we hid out in the bathroom, and then presented Bastard with a black baby, I assumed he would notice.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Bastard.

  So much for that. But points to Tucker for trying. And because he was so brave, it gave me courage. I wasn’t fighting this maniac alone. Tucker was on my team.

  That made me smile a little. My lower lip cracked, and I automatically slid my tongue forward to taste the blood. I could barely taste it, but it was there.

  “Casey!” Bastard shouted. “Casey, come on out!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Of course, Casey did not appear.

  “Casey!” Bastard hollered again, like she was a dog who’d race to him if he just whistled the right way.

  A few drops of his spit hit my cheek. I didn’t move. Didn’t glance at the bathroom. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that “Casey” couldn’t hide anywhere else.

  Bastard’s grip on my left arm loosened another millimetre, but he didn’t let go, and I knew the omnipresent gun was still pointed at me, even though he’d started to whip his body around, searching for her. “It’s me!” Bastard yelled. “Come on, baby!”

  Silence greeted his words, except I might have detected some footsteps in the hall. I strained my ears, wishing I were facing the door instead of the incubator and bed. Were people escaping? Or was the SWAT team ready to pounce?

  “Shit!” said Bastard.

  “She might feel scared,” said Tucker.

  The understatement of the year.

  “Baby, you don’t have to be scared of me. I’d never hurt you. I love you. I’m going to be the best daddy in the world!”

  “Maybe she’s feeling sick,” I said. I thought that might be a better tack than explaining to Bastard that shooting people wasn’t the best way to woo a woman, unless maybe she was Karla Homolka.

  Also, it might be true. I certainly felt like barfing at the notion of Bastard slipping into a World’s Greatest Dad T-shirt and raising his son just like him.

  “Sick?” Bastard repeated.

  “Or just in a lot of pain. She’s in labour, right?” Even now, I wasn’t lying. If the real Casey was in labour, it ain’t no foot massage. I risked glancing at Bastard. He was still wearing the burqa with the letter slot grille, so his eyes were in shadow, but he met my gaze, and I thought his looked uncertain.

  Abruptly, he released my arm and shoved me to the right. “Go help her.”

  I stumbled a few steps before I caught myself. For a second, I felt almost confused by the freedom of movement, the fact that he’d temporarily pulled the gun away from my head. Should I run?

  I had a vision of me breaking away, dodging bullets Matrix-style, and the newspaper headlines trumpeting, BRAVE STUDENT DOCTOR ESCAPES KIDNAPPER.

  This was immediately supplanted by a mental headline declaring, HOSPITAL KIDNAPPER KILLS THREE.

  Better check where the gun was first. When I refocused, I realized he was now aiming it between Tucker’s shoulder blades, since Tucker had crossed to the other side of him. “You say you’re doctors? Prove it.” Bastard’s eyes flicked toward me.

  Time to walk the walk. And we could, indeed, help deliver a baby. Just not his own.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Let me try to find Casey. I’m going to check around the room.” I added the last bit so that he wouldn’t think I was fleeing and jam a bullet in my kidney.

  I closed the last step toward Tucker. I needed to be next to him, needed to feel him.

  Tucker took my hand in his, gripping it hard enough that I knew his nerves were bothering him too, even if he wasn’t showing it to Bastard.

  We hadn’t held hands since we took the subway to Île Ste-Hélène, which felt like forever ago, but was just in August. I grasped his hand like I’d never held hands with anyone. The strong length of his fingers. The smoothness of his skin, although I could feel more firmness at his fingertips. Calluses, probably from playing the guitar, something he’d mentioned once or twice but I’d never heard him do.

  That suddenly made me want to cry. I might never hear him play the guitar. Might never look into his eyes while he fumbled for the notes, or opened his mouth and tried to sing.

  “What. You gotta hold hands to deliver a baby? What the fuck
is wrong with you?” shouted Bastard.

  Instead of letting go, I gripped Tucker’s hand, thinking of the word lifeline. I used to picture a rope dangling from a helicopter that might airlift you out of Afghanistan, but it could be much simpler. Like this, getting to hold the hand of a man I loved.

  Tucker squeezed back. Once, quickly, which I somehow knew meant that he was bracing himself to let go.

  I was holding him with my right and dominant hand, leaving me even more defenseless.

  I should let go.

  I really should.

  But I clung to him and said, “We’d better find our patient.”

  “Patients!” yelled Bastard. “You gotta get my son out. Don’t forget about him. Now go in the bathroom and get ’em outta there.” But he aimed the muzzle away from Tucker, toward the space between us.

  It felt like a blessing.

  Tucker and I walked toward the bathroom, taking deliberate, unhurried steps.

  Me, because I didn’t want to get there and show him that we’d imprisoned the wrong woman.

  And Tucker...I’m not sure, but he squared his shoulders and handed me a grin that was half fear, half stubbornness. I thought that he was trying to show Bastard that he couldn’t just push us around.

  Plus, maybe Tucker had gotten my signal that it wasn’t Casey inside.

  The lights were off in the bathroom. I would have noticed a sliver of light, just like the light slipping in to our room from the brighter hallway. Manouchka had wrapped herself in darkness, in this tiny room.

  For a second, I wondered if she’d tried to arm herself and might even attack us. She’d kept amazingly quiet, for a woman in labour, but she couldn’t sustain the silence forever.

  I called out, “It’s Dr. Sze and Dr. Tucker!”

  I sounded like a bad game show host. Tucker tensed, and I realized that he would have preferred I put his name first. Oh, well. I could massage his ego later, if we survived.

  Two steps from the door, Tucker joined in. “We’re here to deliver your baby.”

  “My baby!” said Bastard. He was following us. With the gun. Hemming us toward the bathroom like he was a sheepdog and we were his wayward flock.

  Baa.

  Bastard said, “Casey? You doing okay, honey?”

  Manouchka still didn’t reply. Her name wasn’t Casey. Plus, I slowly realized, what if she didn’t speak English much? Did she really know what was going on here?

  She knew enough to hide, even while she was in pain. But beyond that?

  Bastard said, “Why won’t you talk to me?” Anger had begun to thread through his voice. “Why are you hiding? Come on out, baby. I want to see you.”

  He was distracted now. The exit door stood less than ten feet away. I suppose Tucker and I could have run for it, abandoning Manouchka to the man with a gun.

  I couldn’t desert her. But I whispered, “Run.”

  Tucker shook his head and pointed his chin at me, then jerked his head at the door.

  He wanted me to run instead. I shook my head. I could deliver the baby. I could distract Bastard while Tucker fled.

  I couldn’t think beyond that. It was quite possible that Bastard would soon discover that “Casey” was a black stranger and exact revenge on all of us.

  Bastard ignored us, supercharged on the idea of his ex. “Honey. Don’t be scared. You know I’d never hurt you.”

  Riiiiiiight.

  I half-turned toward Tucker, but enough so that Bastard could see my lips while I said, “We need to go find Casey.”

  Bastard was crooning now, which was horrible Too intimate, like eavesdropping on a shy couple having sex, or hauling a newborn baby off its mother’s breast, or barging in on a family gathered around their loved one’s deathbed. “Don’t worry, baby, I love you. I was just trying to find you. You know I’ve never fired a gun around you, because you’re scared of them. I kept ’em locked up, just like you asked me to. We were safe, right? Weren’t we, Casey?”

  His brain had only one gear, so in the meantime, I made sure Tucker knew. I whispered so softly that I hoped he could read my lips. “It’s not Casey.”

  Tucker frowned at me. I guess he hadn’t figured out my clever sign language earlier.

  Then he understood, and his face and his body grew so still, it was terrible to witness and feel the rigidity in his grasp. He turned toward Bastard and said over his right shoulder, “There’s been a mistake.”

  Tucker tried to let go of my hand, but I wouldn’t let him. I clung harder than ever.

  We get seminars in how to break bad news, since doctors are like angels of death and dying: You have cancer. We couldn’t save him. I’m sorry, we did everything we could.

  You’re supposed to sit down, make eye contact, and be direct.

  I couldn’t sit, and Bastard wouldn’t make eye contact. Still, I had to get his attention away from Manouchka, make sure he didn’t fillet her.

  If I could just call his name. That might snap him out of his Casey fever.

  But I didn’t know his name, rank, or serial number. He was just a stranger dressed up in a burqa, just some crazed man sneaking guns into St. Joseph’s Hospital and shooting us.

  I craned my neck so I could look over my right shoulder, too, even though a sharp pain zinged into my shoulder. I said, “I have bad news for you.”

  “I gave you everything I had.” Bastard’s voice thickened. This was the closest he’d ever come to forgetting about us. This was the time to run, if we could have lived with ourselves afterward. “I worked twelve-hour shifts for you. I gave you our baby. Why’d you run away from me?”

  I bit my tongue instead of answering.

  “I want you to come out now,” he said, still with that weird coaxing tone that you might use on a scared stray cat. “I want to show you how good I’m going to be to you. I won’t make you do anything, sweetheart. I just want to help you and our baby.”

  OMG. I didn’t want to consider what else he might have made her do. But I had to play the messenger here. You know, the one they shoot. “Sir. We’re in another patient’s room.”

  “Can you hear me?” asked Bastard. “I’m right here. Come on out, Casey.”

  “She can’t,” I said, in my most compassionate voice. I tried to pour love into every word, the way that Buddhist monks and nuns somehow do, even when they’re being electrocuted and forced to suck on each other’s genitals through the electric shocks—don’t ask me how I know this. It’s not from experience.

  Bastard’s shoulders shifted. He’d heard me that time, but it was like I was an annoying fly, buzzing around his ears. He didn’t want to hear me, so he wouldn’t.

  Tucker raised his voice. “There’s been a terrible mistake.” I liked how he used the passive voice, which is a big writing no-no, but very important here. He wasn’t blaming Bastard. He was just saying that somehow, something had gone wrong.

  Bastard said, “Shut the hell up. Both of you.” But he didn’t sound as angry as he had a second ago. Maybe he’d sensed that this wasn’t Casey, but he was trying to convince himself.

  “Her name is Manouchka,” I said, quieter, but still loud enough for Bastard to hear.

  He levelled the gun and bellowed, “Casey. I’ve got some crazy people here, and they’re pissing me off. Open the door, or I’ll shoot it open.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Manouchka didn’t answer.

  I heard, or imagined I heard, her panting behind the wood.

  It wasn’t much of a shield, but it was something.

  Wait a minute. Was it possible that Tucker and I could break for the bathroom and slam the door closed before Bastard managed to shoot us?

  I grasped Tucker’s hand and pointed my free index finger at the bathroom door, wondering if he’d get it.

  Tucker squeezed back with a slow pressure. I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.

  Or if Manouchka would let us in there with her.

  I wasn’t even sure if Manouchka spoke English.
<
br />   This was a problem.

  I took a deep breath and told Bastard, over my shoulder, “She speaks French.”

  “What?” He swung the gun toward my right ear. He was only about a foot away. My fantasy of running into the bathroom flickered and died.

  I wanted to close my eyes and brace myself against the bullet’s impact, but I forced myself to lock eyes with him, over my and Tucker’s entwined hands, and say, “The woman in the bathroom is a francophone.”

  Bastard goggled at me. “Casey’s not a francophone!”

  “Hope.” Tucker was gripping my hand harder now. He didn’t want me to talk. He wanted me to hush up and let him handle it. And maybe that would have been better, since he was the tactful one, but only I had information about the woman trapped in front of us.

  I pointed at the bathroom and repeated, “Her name is Manouchka.” I was breaking patient confidentiality, but I thought it was more important to humanize all of us, so we weren’t just random people he was snuffing out. “She’s pregnant. She’s having a baby too.” I paused. I couldn’t offer much more than that, since I’d just met her myself. Oh, wait, I could. “This is her first baby.” G1P0, meaning that she’d never delivered a baby before. What a terrible way to introduce her to motherhood.

  “What the FUCK?” Bastard pointed his weapon at the door, and I sucked the breath in between my teeth so hard that it sounded almost like a scream.

  “Don’t shoot her. She’s having a baby,” I said, which wasn’t totally relevant—non-pregnant people deserve to live too—but you go for whatever you can. If I could wrench an angstrom of compassion out of Bastard, I’d take it.

  “Casey,” said Bastard, and his voice rose into danger-level territory. Mach 2. My turn to crush Tucker’s fingers down to the bone. If we got assassinated right now, the only comfort was that I’d go out holding Tucker’s hand. “Get out here. Now.”

  “Her name is Manouchka,” I sounded like an iTunes song on repeat, but by giving her name, by pointing out that she was like Casey, I might tip him into hold his fire.

  I couldn’t hear her breathing now. She was making herself as invisible as possible, but her time had run out.