Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

"When he's cornered, The Rat will fight," he said, then sat back and watched the black-and-white security picture in fascination. His gaze was focused on the door, behind which he knew his mortal enemy, Malavida Chacone, was close to death.

The nurses on the evening shift moved onto the floor a little before midnight and quickly began to make their rounds. They glided silently on crepe-soled shoes, taking pulses, blood pressures, and temperatures, entering the data into the hospital's on-line CardEx system via the PC work stations outside the rooms. At 12:15, nurse Eleanor Fleetwood noticed that the whole-blood bag on Malavida's I. V. stand was low. She checked the orders at her work station and saw the doctor had okayed an order for another unit, as needed. Malavida's pressure was still low so he needed the extra blood volume. She switched to the appropriate screen and placed the order for a unit of blood to the hospital blood bank via the computer system. A unit of 0-positive blood was delivered to Malavida's room at 12:20 and was attached to his stand at 12:25.

Lockwood and Karen had tried to finish mapping out The Rat's logic as they raced the rental car toward Jackson Memorial Hospital. Lockwood was at the wheel and he had his foot to the floor. They could have called ahead but nobody would have believed them. Rather than argue about it, they just made a run for it. They were only ten minutes away. "If this guy gets into the computer," he said as he ran a red light on U. S. 1, "then he could change medication, create an overdose, anything…"

They screeched into the hospital parking lot at 12:30 and ran through the huge double doors. They were slowed for a few minutes, trying to obtain directions to Malavida's room. The hospital was fifteen stories high and included several annexes which were sprawled across four acres. They found themselves running down polished linoleum corridors, dodging gurneys and wheelchairs, looking for the sub-acute unit.

The nurse in Malavida's room opened the valve and let the 0-positive blood drip into Malavida's vein. He was unconscious, pale, and broken, lying in the bed in a single-patient room. The explosion had torn through his body, embedding chunks of plaster and wood in his abdominal cavity, one piece barely missing his fifth lumbar nerve. Had that nerve been severed, he would have lost the use of his right leg. His entire abdomen was badly perforated. The surgeons had sewn up what they could save and removed what they couldn't. The medial umbilical ligament was a mess, and they had almost lost him because his superior mesenteric artery was pierced and pumping blood into his abdominal cavity, causing a life-threatening drop in blood pressure. They had managed to clamp it off just in time and repair it. That had been eight hours ago. Now, the barely functioning remains of Malavida Chacone were strapped to a bed next to a metal I. V. stand, which, aside from whole blood, was feeding him saline fluids and strong antibiotics. Because his GI tract had been so badly ruptured, there was a fear that he might develop peritonitis. Only time would tell if he would survive his injuries.

The Rat watched his computer screen and saw Lockwood and Karen rush onto the hospital floor. Nervous sweat dripped from under his arms as they ran to the nurses' station. He watched in horror. "The wicked raised in the Second Resurrection will go up on the breadth of the earth with Satan at their head," he said in a monotone, rocking back and forth on his wooden chair. On the closed-circuit TV, Lockwood appeared to be shouting at the frightened nurse. Then he broke away and ran up the hall toward Malavida's room. The cop who had been sitting on the chair exploded up and grabbed Lockwood. The Rat cursed and leaned close to his screen as the two men wrestled in the narrow doorway-the way the shot was framed, The Rat could barely see them.

Then The Rat screamed in protest as Lockwood pinned the cop against the far wall…

In the hospital, Karen saw Lockwood struggling with the Dade County policeman. She ran to help him. Nurse Fleetwood came out from behind the station after her.

Lockwood could see Karen coming. He had the cop pinned against the wall. He timed it perfectly and threw his first punch as Karen got there. The cop went down, clawing for his holster. Lockwood stepped on his hand as Karen rushed into the room.

She could see Malavida taped up and unconscious in the bed. She ran to him and frantically started pulling I. V.'s out of his arm. Then she looked up at the blood bag.

"What the hell're you doing?" Nurse Fleetwood yelled as she ran through the door a few seconds later. Karen had now unhooked Malavida from all of his I. V. drips and was removing the whole-blood bag from the stand. She was reading the label as Nurse Fleetwood grabbed it away from her.

"What's his blood type?" Karen demanded.

In the hall outside, Lockwood stepped away from the cop, who pulled his gun and aimed it at him with the hammer back. "You done, greaseball?" The cop's voice was shaking with anger, and Lockwood put his hands in the air.

"I'm done," he said softly.

The cop grabbed him and spun him around, then he muscled Lockwood into the wall so hard that pieces of bad hospital art fell and shattered on the floor. The cop slammed handcuffs on him, ratcheting them tight.

Karen grabbed the clipboard from the foot of the bed and looked at it. She saw the blood delivery slip clipped on the top: "O-positive." Then she flipped back one page and looked at the earlier slip that had been clipped to the board in post-op. The first slip said "0-negative."

"Let go of that!" Nurse Fleetwood yelled, as she snatched the clipboard away from Karen. Now there were frantic footsteps in the corridor and the room filled with white coats. One was the surgical resident for the wing.

"Which is it?" Karen shouted at the nurse. "0-negative blood, like it says on the page from this morning, or 0-positive, which you're putting into him now?"

The young resident grabbed the clipboard and looked at it. "What the fuck is going on, Eleanor?" he said, anger beginning to swell. "You're giving this guy 0-positive? He's 0-negative. I typed him myself How much went in there?"

Nurse Fleetwood was now in full retreat. "I don't know, Doctor. We just hooked him up. The slip said 0-positive."

The resident turned to the cop. "Let's go! I need help getting this guy back up to ICU."

The two of them yanked the bed away from the wall, spun it, and pushed it out into the hall. Lockwood and Karen trailed behind. They shoved the bed into the express elevator and went to ICU, a floor above. The resident and two ICU interns grabbed the bed and pushed it quickly down the hall, leaving Lockwood and Karen standing with the startled policeman they had fought with seconds before. It was an awkward moment.

"Maybe you could unhook these cuffs?" Lockwood finally suggested. The cop reluctantly took out the keys and released him.

The Rat climbed up the steps in panic and stumbled out onto the deck of the barge. The swamp was pale in the three-quarter moon that lit the dense undergrowth of the Manatee wetlands. He filled his lungs with its heavy, moist air and let out a scream of fear and anger. His screech carried across the murky wasteland like the scream of a dying animal. Night birds broke for the sky in a flurry of beating wings. He was in agony. God had finally focused on him.

"When cornered, The Rat will fight," he cried at the moonlit night.

The moon lit the scattered clouds over Miami Harbor, looking to Lockwood like beautifully spun piles of silver-white cotton. They stood by the rental car in the hospital parking lot while a warm night wind flapped flags a few yards away. They had been told fifteen minutes ago that Malavida was out of danger. Karen put out her hand. "Good going," she said. "I think we finally got one step ahead."