Michael Palmer - Fatal

"Grimes called Dr. Solari a babe?"

"Urn, I can't remember exactly."

"She's a doctor, Tarvis. That's like twelve years of education after high school. I think she's earned something a little more respectful from you than 'babe.' Grimes coming over?"

"He said he'll be by soon to talk with her."

"Do exactly what he says."

"That's what he said."

"What?"

"He said to wait and do exactly what he says."

Matt sighed. "Listen, post yourself out here. Make sure you or one of the nurses knows anyone who comes in to see her. I have to leave the hospital for a few hours. I'll be on my beeper. Just call the hospital operator if you have any questions and she'll find me."

"I'm all over it, Ledge," Lyons said. "You still playin' hoops?"

"I still play at it. Not much left of the shot, though, or the legs, for that matter."

"You always were a great shot, Ledge."

"Thank you for remembering, Tarvis. Keep a close eye on Dr. Solari."

Matt stood by the doorway and let his eyes adjust to the dimly lit room. Nikki was asleep, breathing sonorously through her oxygen mask. Concerned by what Crook had said, he was anxious to get out to the Slocumbs' farm. He hurried to the nurses' station and wrote an order for a neuro check every thirty minutes for two hours, then every hour after that for five hours. A final glance at Tarvis Lyons, who was pulling a chair out from a deserted room, and he raced off to his motorcycle.

The ride out to the farm seemed interminable. Once again, all the guilt Matt felt about putting Lewis Slocumb in harm's way welled to the surface. Crook was a jerk, but he was right. He had stepped over the line. Maybe it would be better just to let the whole thing drop — forget about the toxic dump and admit that he was no more of a match for Belinda Coal and Coke and their self-serving policies than his father had been. Then he pictured the horribly deformed faces of Darryl Teague and Teddy Rideout. How many others like them would there be? How many were there already? No, he decided as he pulled up in front of the farmhouse, he wasn't going to back off no matter what. He would just be careful not to place anyone else in danger on the altar of his crusade.

Just as Lewis had been waiting for him on the porch for their trip to the mine, Frank was there now. He was leaning against a railing, a potent-looking shotgun cradled loosely in his arms. Matt wondered in passing if they somehow knew he was coming.

"How's he doing?" Matt asked.

"He's had a doggone mizrable time of it, mosly from the pain in 'is shoulder. But he's still alive an' cussin'."

"That's a good sign. Frank, I'm really sorry it took me so long to get back here. The hospital got incredibly busy. I couldn't get away before now."

"We knowed you'd be back soon's ya could."

Not a hint of irritation or entitlement. These men, tough as nails, were used to taking life as it came and to giving their friends every benefit of the doubt. Lewis, wearing tattered jeans and nothing from the waist up, was in the upstairs room, propped by two pillows in a straight-backed oak armchair. His color was surprisingly good. The bandage around his upper chest was blood-soaked, but that was to be expected. The drainage system was intact, and the gauze he had wrapped loosely about the end of the condom was soaked with dried and drying blood. Clearly, the apparatus was functioning quite well.

Frank Slocumb and his brothers had proven to be quite capable nurses. The room was surprisingly clean, and the linens looked as if they might have been washed since he was last there. The three men stood proudly and respectfully to one side of the room as he worked.

"Your brothers have done well by you, Lewis," Matt said, listening with his stethoscope and noting that breath sounds extended to all fields of both lungs.

"They knowed what'd happ'n to 'em if'n they din't. Am Ah gonna live?"

"Frank said you were too ornery to die, and he was right."

Matt put an IV rig together and asked for a heavy wire to be hung from the rough-hewn ceiling as a hook. In less than two minutes Lyle had nailed in precisely what was needed. Matt hung up the small plastic sack filled with powerful antibiotic and started the medication running into Lewis's arm.

"This'll help make sure there's no infection," he said.

"What 'bout this here contraption?" Lewis asked, motioning to the siphon tube.

"Well," Matt replied, "incredible as it may seem, it appears that this here contraption has saved your life." No doubt about it, he was thinking, a letter to the author of Field Emergencies was definitely in order. "Now, the way I see it, we've got three choices. Leave it in, pull it out, or change it."

"You want us ta vote?" Frank asked.

The four brothers whooped at his humor, which had sailed over Matt's head.

"Fit's all the same ta ya, Doc," Lewis said, "Ah'd jes a soon ya din't go stickin' no more stuff in ma chest. Ah din't have the heart ta tell ya, but them pliers ya jammed in thar last time hurt lak hell."

Out of respect for Matt, the three standing brothers kept their guffaws to a minimum.

"Okay, Lewis," Matt said. "I'm going to leave things as they are.

The problem is, if I take the tube out too soon, the lung might collapse again, and if I leave it in too long, infection might set in. But listen, guys, if he starts to get sick with infection — fever, cough, pain, pus, redness spreading through the skin around the hole, anything like that, cut the stitch and just pull the tube out immediately. Got that?"

"Got it," Frank said. "Ya done a fine job, Doc."

Matt took the bandages down, cleaned the wound, and then redressed it.

"Listen," he said. "I've got to talk to you all about something else. I think the people at the mine know it was me who was in that waste dump of theirs. I'm not sure they know that it was Lewis that was with me, but I wanted to warn you. This jerk at the hospital, Crook, is on the board. He made it sound like someone was going to be hurt or killed because of what I did, and that their blood was going to be on my hands."

Lyle and Kyle exchanged sly looks.

"What?" Matt asked. "What's with you two?"

This time it was Lewis who spoke.

"They knowed it 'uz me, Doc. We're sure a thet. Contrary ta what lots a folks round here thank, we got us some frands about — good uns, too. We hear thangs."

"Well, what are you guys going to do to protect yourselves?"

Again the brothers exchanged knowing looks.

"We kin tak care a ourselves," Lyle said. "B'lieve me we can."

Matt gathered his things and then motioned the three brothers out of the room.

"Lewis, you want me to help you back to bed?" he asked.

"Ah kin manage fahn maself. But if'n it's okay with the doctor, Ah'll stay in this here chair a bit longer."

"I'm glad you're doing so well. I still feel really bad about what happened. I don't know what Frank and the boys keep smiling and smirking about, but I'm really worried that those bastards from the mine are going to come after you."

"Ma brothers wuzn't zakly smirkin', Doc. It's jes that — "

A loud, repetitive warning buzzer cut him off. Immediately, there were heavy-booted footsteps across the wood floors downstairs and up the staircase as well.

" 'Scuse me, Doc," Lewis said, standing, unhooking his IV from its makeshift hanger, and dragging his chair out to the hall. "We got us some compny."

Matt hurried along behind him, shutting off the flow valve to prevent blood from backing up into the IV tubing. The footsteps he had heard were the three brothers, moving through their house as if they had drilled for this moment many times. Someone had already shut the alarm off. Kyle raced up the stairs and slid a six-foot by three-foot sheet of metal between where Lewis had positioned himself and the railing. Then he opened the upstairs hall closet and again began unloading their weapons onto the hallway floor. This time Matt noted half a dozen shotguns, a number of handguns, several sophisticated rifles with high-powered sights, and two semiautomatic weapons. Kyle left two shotguns, a heavy pistol, and a rifle with Lewis, then set a black metal box with a keypad and several switches onto Lewis's lap. Next he began lowering weapons through the balustrade to Lyle.