Joel Goldman - Stone Cold

“Satisfied?” Bradshaw asked.

“I will be when you release my client from custody. There’s nothing in that story that gives you the right to hold him.”

Rossi’s phone rang. He opened it and listened, then closed the phone. “Maybe not for murder, but one of the uniforms found enough crack in his jeans pocket to charge him with possession with the intent to sell.”

Bradshaw beamed. “Well, that’s a start. See you in court, Alex,” he said and left.

Alex’s emotions welled up again, unbidden and unwelcome, making her faint. She pressed her hand against the wall.

Rossi crossed the room to her, one hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She took a breath. “No, but I will be. Give me a minute.”

“Look, we both knew this could happen,” he said, “no matter how many times you drove down Henderson’s block.”

“So now it’s not my fault for getting him off?”

“I know I came down hard on your client after the trial, but that was because I was pissed. Guys like Dwayne Reed don’t belong on the streets. But the system doesn’t always work. Nothing you could have done about that or this. Both of us were just doing our jobs. I didn’t get it done but you did. Can’t unring that bell.”

She was starting to hate the just-doing-your-job mantra. It sounded more and more like an excuse for the inexcusable.

“Why this sudden outburst of compassion from a guy who hates defense lawyers?”

Rossi sighed. “You got me there.” He stepped back half a step, thinking. “Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to find the bodies. That’s a helluva thing, a lot more real than looking at pictures in the courtroom. Something like that can change a person forever.”

“And you don’t want me to change?”

“Hadn’t thought about it. All I know is that nobody stays the same after the first time they find dead bodies.”

She stared at him for a moment, nodded, turned around, and walked out the way she came.

“See, that’s what I mean about you,” Lena said, one hand on her hip.

“What?”

“Your vibe. The do’s and the don’ts. She gets you on cross, she’ll come at you hammer and tongs and do everything she can to make you look like the worst cop that ever wore the badge, and in spite of that, you just did a very nice thing. Keep that up and I may have to forget about the crazy.”

“And that,” he said, grinning, “would make you the crazy one.”

Truman Medical was a Level 1 Trauma Center, meaning that victims of every manner of mayhem, recklessness, and stupidity imaginable rolled into its emergency room so often that the doctors and nurses were immune to surprise. Patching up gunshot and knife wounds was as familiar as brushing teeth, setting broken bones as routine as changing lightbulbs, and a code blue scarcely enough to get their hearts beating faster.

Dr. Bonnie Long had treated the mangled, maimed, and fevered in the Truman ER since her residency a dozen years ago. After her first night she knew she’d found a home. The immediacy and fury of trauma cases was intoxicating, the more catastrophic the better, though none of those bloody shifts prepared her for what she found when she stepped into an exam room, picked up the patient’s chart, and saw his name-Dwayne Reed.

She stood at the foot of his bed, mouth agape, head swirling. Not because Dwayne was a drug dealer and accused murderer. Truman was located on the city’s violence-prone east side. Many of its patients were victims, perpetrators, or both. And not because his left wrist was handcuffed to the bed rail and two uniformed cops-Evans and Minor, according to their name tags-both black, one on each side of the bed, were standing guard. Criminals, murderers included, bled like everyone else.

But the shock of finding the man who had so frightened Alex lying on a bed in her ER, wounded and shackled, brought her to a standstill, a fantasy flashing through her mind. It would be easy enough to save Alex and the Henderson family, if they needed saving. Direct the cops out of the room. Inject Dwayne with something to stop his heart, something an overworked coroner might miss at autopsy, and never look back. She banished the fantasy as quickly as it had come, angry that she could even have such thoughts, reminding herself that she saved lives. She didn’t judge them.

Dwayne picked up on her reaction.

“What’s the matter wit’ you, bitch? Ain’t you never seen a half-naked black man?”

Officer Evans smacked him on the head. “Mind your manners, asshole.”

“Why you do a brother like that?” Dwayne asked him.

“Not about you being a brother,” Evans said. “It’s about you being an asshole. Sorry, Doc. We’ve been waiting a couple of hours and he’s a little anxious.”

She wasn’t offended. She’d been called worse. It went with the territory. In an odd way, Dwayne’s insult restored her equilibrium, bringing her back to business as usual, ready to give as good as she got.

“Actually, Dwayne, we get a lot of half-naked black men in the ER. Naked ones, too.”

Dwayne rose onto his elbows, dropping his eyelids halfway, giving her a serpentine smile. “You ain’t seen none as fine as me. I get outta these cuffs,” he said, rattling them, “I come back and show you. Give you somethin’ to remember me by. Bet you like it rough. Don’t matter to me if you do, ’cause I give it to you rough. Make you like it.”

Though banged up and bound, he oozed menace. An unnerving shiver raced through Bonnie, their banter too close to the bone, his promise too easy to believe. Evans smacked him again and grabbed him by the shoulders, shoving him into the mattress, his predatory grin unshaken.

“Zip it, asshole, before I zip it for you! Sorry, Doc.”

Bonnie turned away. Taking a steadying breath, she cut through the bandage and peeled back the dressing the paramedics had applied. The gash in his thigh was a jagged five inches long, deep enough to require stitches but not surgery, painful enough to be remembered but not to be incapacitating.

She took a closer look, the tissue pinkish red and bloody. Impulsively, she tugged at his torn skin with one hand, probing deeply and roughly into his wound with the other. She knew she was hurting him, but in that furious and fear-driven instant, she didn’t care. She only wanted to strike back and punish him.

“Shit!” Dwayne said through clenched teeth.

Bonnie looked at him, her face and tone flat, detached and unapologetic, seeking courage in professional distance as she baited him. “It’s just a laceration. I can give you something for the pain if you can’t take it.”

He glared at her. “Give me somethin’ for the pain? Like I can’t handle it? You callin’ me a pussy? Bitch, you is fucked! I gonna look you up, you can count on that shit happenin’ for real. Just sew me up so I can get the fuck outta here.”

His eyes, dark, dead, and certain, melted her bravado. She clenched her jaw to keep from shaking and pointed at the cops.

“I wouldn’t be in such a hurry if I were you.”

“They ain’t got nuthin’ on me. I be home ’fore you, that’s for damn sure. And when you get home, I be waitin’ and then we gonna find out who can take what.”

She looked at the cops, who shook their heads in unison, their reassurance no match for her anxiety and no antidote for the shame she felt for what she’d done. She hated thinking she was better than that only to find that she wasn’t.

She cleaned and stitched Dwayne’s laceration without looking at him. Finished, she nodded at the cops and walked out of the room, her heart racing, and banged into Alex, who was coming her way, head down and texting.