John Gilstrap - At all costs

George agreed. What the hell, exactly. He checked his watch and sighed. “Okay, tell you what. You stay here and watch Sleeping Beauty, and I’ll go upstairs and tell your buddy.”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d sure appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

Travis heard his heart skip a beat on the monitor as the doctor mentioned his mother’s name. Something was terribly wrong. He could tell, just from the way the man spoke.

“She was really sad, kid. Worried as all get-out about you. She’s in jail, you know.”

No, he didn’t know! The heart monitor was beeping like crazy now, and Travis knew instinctively that this guy was trouble, with a capital T. He wished Jan were here with him. Or even another doctor. Any adult would do, just to keep him from being alone with this guy. The way he talked, the dead look in his eyes. In an instant, Travis knew that this was one of those guys whose cars he was never supposed to get into when he was a little kid.

His fingers touched the call button. If you need anything…

Wiggins caught the movement and quickly pulled the controller out of the boy’s reach. “Whoa, buddy! You’re not gonna go tattling on me, are you?” He laughed.

Travis’s eyes were wide, wild. They darted to the window for help, but all he saw was a wall of beige plastic.

“No, that’s right, Travis,” the doctor said, reading his thoughts. “It’s just you and me. Everybody else is too busy to help you.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Seems a little kid’s heart stopped down the hall a ways. Terrible, terrible thing. Somebody pumped a whole shitload of potassium chloride into her IV line and stopped her heart dead like a slab of hamburger.” To make his point, Wiggins pulled a capped syringe out of his lab coat pocket and dropped it in the trash can at the foot of the bed. “They tell me this shit stops a heart forever.”

Travis tried to yell, tried to struggle against the restraints, but nothing would work. This guy was crazy! This guy was a murderer!

“You just keep floppin’, boy. You look like a fish in a boat.” He chuckled one more time, then struck out with a hand to squeeze the sides of Travis’s face. The force of his grip sent darts of pain through the boy’s jaw as his teeth battled with the hard plastic of the ET tube. “You just settle down now,” Wiggins commanded. “Or I’ll give you more of the same.” A second syringe appeared.

Oh, shit! Oh, God! Travis froze, his eyes darting from the needle to his attacker’s face and back again. He pleaded silently for mercy but got only an icy glare in return. The blood in his mouth tasted hot against the chalky dryness of his tongue.

Wiggins watched the terror build in the boy’s face and smiled contentedly. “Yeah, that’s right, kid. You show some respect.” After holding his grip for a few seconds more, he turned his attention to Travis’s respirator. Dropping the full syringe back into the pocket of his lab coat, Wiggins traced the connections with his finger, petting the tubes lightly as he followed them from the spot where they left the bellows, all the way up to the connection at the boy’s mouth.

He paused, and his voice softened. “Before we go on, I just wanted you to know that none of this had to happen. I told your mother specifically what she had to do to keep me from hurting you, but she just wouldn’t listen.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue as he shook his head sadly. “Does it hurt when you breathe, boy?”

Travis felt the panic build like pressure in a volcano. The heart monitor chirped too fast to count, and no matter how hard he pulled, his lungs couldn’t draw enough air through the respirator. His terror had left him deaf. He knew that the doctor had asked him a question, but he had no idea what it might have been.

“Pain’s a terrible thing,” the doctor went on. “Especially for kids. You don’t like pain, do you, Travis?”

The reference to pain-and the way it was asked-brought Travis’s ears back on-line. He shook his head vehemently. Please don’t hurt me! Please, oh please, oh please!

Wiggins winced, as if he could feel the boy’s panic in his own gut. He pointed to the heart monitor. “You’re scared, aren’t you? Yeah, look at that. A hundred and eighty-four beats per minute.” He thought about his words. “That’s good,” he mused. “It’s good I’ve scared you, ’cause that’s what I promised your mother I was gonna do. Before I killed you.”

Oh, God! Jesus! In a desperate effort to get away, Travis lunged forward in his bed, pulling hard against the unyielding restraints. Wiggins recoiled a half-step, then punched him hard in the chest, rocketing him back against the sheets. The impact drove the wind out of his lungs and reignited the fires from the day before.

Please don’t!

“Don’t try to fight me, kid,” Wiggins growled. “That’s a mistake every time.” He wiggled a finger at the respirator. “Now, Travis, did you know that this machine here is what keeps you breathing on schedule?” He patted the top of the control panel as if it were an old chum. “Every bit of air you breathe has to come through this part right here.” He tugged on the end of Travis’s ET tube, where it attached to the hose from the machine.

Travis was beyond panic now, and he struggled in vain one more time to reach the controller. Wiggins seemed amused by the effort. For the first time, the smile seemed genuine.

“Want to feel something really scary?”

No! Please, God… No!

Wiggins snapped the respirator connection away from the end of the ET tube. Travis winced, expecting to suffocate, but in the midst of his terror actually felt relief when the air still flowed into his body.

Then Wiggins put his thumb over the hole.

The pediatric floor was a welcome departure from the emergency room. Hospitals were disagreeable places no matter what, but at least up here, the paintings of Sesame Street and comic book characters on the walls gave everything a lighter feel. Had to be tough, Sparks supposed, to work with kids who’d been deprived of their childhoods by illness. At least kids had the sense of natural optimism to make such a tough job feel worthwhile.

He stepped off the elevator and paused, trying to figure out where to go next. The pediatric floor spanned out before him, arranged as a giant rectangle that was dominated in the center by a sprawling nurses’ station. He looked in all directions, but he didn’t see a cop. Conscious of the racket his heels made against the spit-shined tile floor, he walked on tiptoes over to a lady in blue scrubs. Thoroughly absorbed in notes she was jotting on a clipboard, the lady didn’t acknowledge him. He cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he said lightly.

The nurse held up a finger while she finished writing a thought. “I’m sorry,” she said when she was done. “Can I help you?” She wore an orange stethoscope draped casually over the back of her neck, with tiny stuffed koala bears hugging each of the earpieces. A huge yellow button over her breast pocket read, “It’s a wonderful day!”

“Hi, I’m George Sparks, with the FBI.” Even the nurses are happier up here. He returned her smile and flashed his credentials. “You’ve got a patient up here named Travis Donovan, I believe? I need to speak with him.”

The nurse’s smile morphed into a frown, deep furrows tracking across her forehead. “Travis Donovan? On the pediatric floor? Hmm.. ” She rolled her chair over to a stack of files and riffled through them. “I don’t see a Travis Donovan here,” she said. “You’re sure he’s a peds case?”

George shrugged. “Well, I know he’s thirteen years old.”

“That’d make him a peds case,” the nurse confirmed. She rolled her chair toward a computer terminal and tapped a few keys. “We don’t have anybody by that name on the floor here,” she explained, pausing while the computer whirred. “I’m trying to check the admissions file. Maybe they put him someplace else. The name sure rings a bell… Wait a minute! He’s the kid with the parents, right?” Now she got it.