Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

He sprawled beside her, face in the blood, and he did not move.

I knelt beside Deborah and took her hand. Her pulse was strong, and her eyes flickered open. “Dex” she whispered.

“Hang on, sis” I said, and she closed her eyes again. I pulled her radio from its holster on her belt and called for help.

A small crowd had gathered in the few minutes it took for the ambulance to get there, but they parted willingly as the emergency medical techs jumped out and hurried to Deborah.

“Whoof” the first one said. “Let's stop the bleeding fast.” He was a stocky young guy with a Marine Corps haircut, and he knelt beside Debs and went to work. His partner, an even stockier woman of about forty, quickly got an IV bag into Deborah's arm, sliding the needle in just as I felt a hand pulling my arm from behind.

I turned. A uniformed cop was there, a middle-aged black guy with a shaved head, and he nodded at me. “You her partner?” he asked.

I pulled out my ID. “Her brother” I said. “Forensics.”

“Huh” he said, taking my credentials and looking them over.

“You guys don't usually get to the scene this fast.” He handed back my ID. “What can you tell me about that guy?” He nodded to the man who had stabbed Deborah, who was sitting up now and holding his head as another cop squatted beside him.

“He opened the door and saw her” I said. “And then he stuck a knife in her.”

“Uh-huh” the cop said. He turned away to his partner. “Cuff him, Frankie.”

I did not watch and gloat as the two cops pulled the knife wielder's arms behind him and slapped on cuffs, because they were loading Deborah into the ambulance. I stepped over to speak to the EMS guy with the short hair. “Will she be all right?” I asked.

He gave me a mechanical and unconvincing smile. “We'll see what the doctors say, okay?” he said, which did not sound as encouraging as he might have intended.

“Are you taking her to Jackson?” I asked.

He nodded. “She'll be in the ICU Trauma when you get there,” he said.

“Can I ride with you?” I asked.

“No” he said. He slammed the door shut, ran to the front seat of the ambulance, and got in. I watched as they nosed out into traffic, turned on the siren, and drove away.

I suddenly felt very lonely. It seemed far too melodramatic to bear. The last words we had spoken were not pleasant, and now they might very well prove to be our Last Words. It was a sequence of events that belonged on television, preferably on an afternoon soap opera. It did not belong in the prime time drama of Dexter's Dim Days. But there it was. Deborah was on her way to intensive care and I did not know if she would come out of it. I did not even know if she would get there alive.

I looked back at the sidewalk. It seemed like an awful lot of blood. Deborah's blood.

Happily for me, I did not have to brood too long. Detective Coulter had arrived, and he looked unhappy even for him. I watched him stand on the sidewalk for a minute and look around, before he trudged over to where I stood. He looked even more unhappy as he looked me over from head to toe with the same expression he had used on the crime scene.

“Dexter” he said, shaking his head. “The fuck you do?” For a very brief moment I actually started to deny that I'd stabbed my sister. Then I realized he couldn't possibly be accusing me, and indeed, he was merely breaking the ice before taking my statement.

“She shoulda waited for me” he said. “I'm her partner.”

“You were getting coffee” I said. “She thought it shouldn't wait.” Coulter looked down at the blood on the pavement and shook his head. “Coulda waited twenty minutes” he said. “For her partner.” He looked up at me. “It's a sacred bond.” I have no experience with the sacred, since I spend most of my time playing for the other team, so I simply said, I guess you're right” and that seemed to satisfy him enough that he settled down and just took my statement with no more than a few sour glances at the blood stain left by his sacred partner. It took a very long ten minutes before I could finally excuse myself to drive to the hospital.

the walls are painted, and on the whole they are not truly happy places. Of course, I was quite pleased that there was one close by, but I was not filled with a sense of pleasant expectation when I walked into the trauma unit. There was an air of animal resignation about the people waiting, and a sense of perpetual, bone-numbing crisis on the faces of all the doctors and nurses as they bustled back and forth, and this was only countered by the unhurried, bureaucratic, clipboard-wielding officiality of the woman who stopped me when I tried to push through and find Deborah.

“Sergeant Morgan, knife wound” I said. “They just brought her in.”

“Who are you?” she said.

Stupidly thinking it might get me past her quickly, I said, “Next of kin” and the woman actually smiled. “Good” she said. “Just the man I need to talk to.”

“Can I see her?” I said.

“No” she said. She grabbed me by the elbow and began to steer me firmly toward an office cubicle.

“Can you tell me how she's doing?” I asked.

“Have a seat right here, please” she said, propelling me toward a molded plastic chair that faced a small desk.

“But how is she?” I said, refusing to be bullied.

“We'll find out in just a minute” she said. “Just as soon as we get some of this paperwork done. Sit down, please, Mr —is it Mr Morton?”

“Morgan” I said.

She frowned. I have Morton here.”

“It's Morgan” I said. “M-o-r-g-a-n.”

“Are you sure?” she asked me, and the surreal nature of the whole hospital experience swept over me and shoved me down into the chair, as if I had been smacked by a huge wet pillow.

“Quite sure” I said faintly, slumping back as much as the wobbly little chair allowed.

“Now I'll have to change it in the computer” she said, frowning.

“Doggone it.”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, like a stranded fish, as the woman pecked at her keyboard. It was just too much; even her laconic “Doggone it” was an offense to reason. It was Deborah's life on the line —shouldn't there be great fiery gouts of urgent profanity spewing from every single person physically able to stand and speak? Perhaps I could arrange for Hernando Meza to come in and teach a workshop on the correct linguistic approach to impending doom.

It took far longer than seemed either possible or human, but eventually I did manage to get all the proper forms filled out and persuade the woman that, as next of kin and a police employee I had every right in the world to see my sister. But of course, things being what they are in this vale of tears, I did not really get to see her.

I simply stood in a hallway and peeked through a porthole-shaped window and watched as what seemed like a very large crowd of people in lime green scrubs gathered around the table and did terrible, unimaginable things —to Deborah.

For several centuries I simply stood and stared and occasionally flinched as a bloody hand or instrument appeared in the air above my sister. The smell of chemicals, blood, sweat and fear was almost overwhelming. But finally, when I could feel the earth turning dead and airless and the sun growing old and cold, they all stepped back from the table and several of them began to push her toward the door. I stepped back and watched them roll her through the doors and down the hall, and then I grabbed at the arm of one of the senior-looking men who filed out after. It might have been a mistake: my hand touched something cold, wet and sticky, and I pulled it away to see it splotched with blood. For a moment I felt light-headed and unclean and even a little panicky, but as the surgeon turned to look at me I recovered just enough.