Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

There was none of the pain of being a human, none of the burden of identity. Just sweet dreamless oblivion. It would have been nice to stay in that nirvana forever, but it wasn’t to be: my eye opened and I stared up at the plump pretty blonde nurse hovering over me.

She was adjusting some piece of equipment out of my field of vision. Wires and tubes were stuck all over me, their coordinated beeps chorusing throughout the room. Half my head was cocooned in bandages, and there was an agony where my left eye had been.

The nurse sensed me looking, and our gazes locked. She had beautiful hazel eyes that widened as she gasped; but she got her game face back on fast, gifting me with a smile.

“The children,” I groaned.

She shook her head, not understanding my gargling attempt at speech. I growled in frustration and heaved up off the bed. The nurse pressed my call button over and over and doctors, interns and RNs ran in like they had nothing better to do.

“Relax, Markus,” the oldest doctor said, pressing my shoulders back down. “You need to rest.”

I was too weak to fight the pin. And besides, the look he gave me wasn’t hostile. He was probably a pretty nice guy, a gray haired old veteran of the medical wars.

“The children,” I whispered, all energy fading fast.

He finally understood: “The children are all just fine, Markus. Not one has a scratch on them.”

“Okay then,” I muttered, and sank into blackness again.

“It’s a miracle, really,” Doctor told me, shaking his distinguished gray head; residents and nurses flanked him as if adding moral support to his expertise by their numbers. “A few millimeters to the right and you’d be dead, or a vegetable.

“The bullet passed completely through the orbital bones of the left socket and out. The brain was physically untouched except for hydrostatic shock, but I’m afraid the eye is completely gone.”

I reached up to touch the bandages swathing the left side of my head and face. Even through the excellent dope they had me pumped up with, I could still feel throbbing pain in the hole where my eye had been.

“How’s about bringing me a mirror?” I said.

Dorcas, the same blonde nurse I’d first woken to, went and fetched one. I held it up to take a gander at myself. They’d done a good job; the bandages were wrapped pretty neatly.

The right side of my face looked completely normal. I plucked at the clean white gauze concealing the left half, lifting the bandages away.

Doctor raised a hand as if to stop me. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Markus.”

I looked at him, and his hand dropped. Even though I was a convalescent Cyclops, I was still twice as wide as him and fully conscious this time.

“Let’s just call it a self-diagnostic, Doc,” I said as I finished pulling the bandages off. “I’ll be my own second opinion.”

I raised the mirror and studied my reflection: the angry red pit where my left eye had been; the stitches radiating outward from the weeping hole like the cracks you’d see fanning out around a bullet hole in a windshield after someone got shot helpless and terrified in their car.

Slash had popped me at point-blank range so the muzzle gases had left a grayish stain surrounding the wound; the packing and un-ignited cordite had peppered into my skin. I’d be wearing that facial tattoo for the rest of my life as a sweet little additional embellishment.

The empty eye socket and the gunpowder stain looked fake somehow, like something out of a horror movie. It wasn’t me, couldn’t be.

But it was. My jaw clenched so tight the muscles thrummed a drum roll in my temples that wouldn’t stop; my teeth squeaked and ground together.

Someone fumbled at me, holding me down as a needle slid into my arm and everything started feeling right again. As I slipped back home into darkness I opened my eye and spoke to the faces surrounding me.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all good. I wasn’t much to look at before, so no harm done, eh?” I rolled my head on my pillow, closing my eye to shut them all out. After a short while I got to go to sleep again.

When I came to the next time I was surrounded by cops; they filled my hospital room to overflowing. I cringed inside, flashing back to the day they took me from my family. I recognized a few of the veterans, seven years older now. But most of the cops in the room looked like rookies, their faces unfamiliar. There’d been a lot of turnover in the SBPD while I was away.

A lot of these Badges were smiling at me, which wasn’t reassuring at all. The only times I could remember members of law enforcement being happy around me had been when they were about to put me in a major hurt locker.

“Hello, Markus,” the cop with the most insignia said from a folding chair next to my bed.

He appeared extremely young to be chief; he also looked somehow familiar. He had a bear-like girth; he could probably use a little cardio work. He was wearing makeup, which was none of my business of course.

“I am Chief Jansen,” he said, palms together and fingers steepled. “How are we feeling today?”

His eyes roved my maimed face boldly, paying close attention to the bandages concealing my wounds. I looked away toward the corner of the hospital room where a lanky horse-faced woman perched on the edge of another folding chair, typing on a court recorder machine.

One cop aimed the mike of a tape recorder at me; another officer discretely clicked away with a digital camera, alternating his shots between me and the Chief. A third pointed a camcorder my way, making sure to include Chief Jansen in the frame as much as possible. I flashed then that Jansen was wearing the make-up so he wouldn’t appear as corpse-like as I was going to on the deposition video.

“We will have your statement,” the Chief said. “We have many questions. We are very interested in hearing what you have to say.”

“I want a lawyer,” I said.

Jansen pursed his meaty lips, and then smiled. “We can supply representation if that makes you feel more comfortable. But why do you even think you need a lawyer, Markus?”

My one remaining eye commenced with a nervous tic. Did he think I’d gotten a sudden case of amnesia? Did he think I’d forgotten that the last time I talked to the cops I’d done seven years for a crime I didn’t commit?

But keeping my mouth shut would’ve been chicken-shit and useless. I was in the fish bowl just like inside, I couldn’t make this a safe place just by playing possum.

“I’m ain’t copping to nothing, but obviously I was at the scene,” I said, as if grudgingly.

“Yes, you were. Forensics has put most of it together. That was an incredible fight you fought, a true work of art. We just need you to fill in a few of the blanks for us.”

“I’m not trying to play coy here, but let’s call a spade a spade: It was multiple homicide – not a ‘fight,’ as you put it. That’s a capital crime in most states, last time I looked.” I said.

Jansen’s mouth quirked. He looked around at the surrounding officers, gestured regally at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

“Your need to protect yourself is understandable,” he said. “For the record, we say the case will be closed as justifiable homicide.”

“I’d like to hear that from a higher authority than you,” I said.

Now the Chief appeared steamed. It was interesting to study the vein throbbing in the middle of his forehead, me keeping my face as stupid as I could while enjoying his discomfiture. He opened his mouth to say something I figured was going to be on the unfriendly side of things, to put me in my place as it were.