Pete Manison: No Blood on My Hands

“What happened?” she heard Richland ask, his mouth close to the pilot’s ear against the rush of the wind.

“Nanotechnics, General,” the pilot screamed back, his voice awful. “Self-replicating flesh-eaters. We found the control frequency and deactivated them, but not before....”

Janet looked at the nearest one. In a dozen places, it looked like tiny insects had eaten away the man’s skin and muscle down to the bone. The wounds were dirty and infected.

She felt like fainting.

“Here we are,” Richland said. They’d landed; he had his hands on her shoulders, and she realized she had fainted.

And she realized something else. They had arrived at the field hospital, and she had work to do.

Reminder: I’m all for saving the world, but this is killing me. I have to get some rest. There has to be a way out.

The phone rang, waking her up before two that afternoon. It was Paul.

“Janet, I thought you should know, but I hate to bother you, but you said that if—”

“Paul,” she said gently, “what is it?”

“It’s Mrs. Caldwell. She went into cardiac arrest last night. Twice. The second time they didn’t think they were going to bring her back in time.”

Janet nodded. “I’ll be right there. Have her prepped for surgery.”

“But Janet, you’re sick and all and Dr. Forester said he’d—”

“No. Mrs. Caldwell is my patient. Don’t worry, Paul. It’ll be all right. Now do what I said.”

She hung up and got dressed.

Then she went to the hospital.

Mrs. Caldwell had failed to respond to the third drug Janet had tried for preventing her heart from stopping. They’d used up all their chances and it was time to implant a defibrillator to shock the heart back to life whenever it began its downward spiral. Routine operation, success rate 98 percent.

Today it was touch and go. The nurses and technicians seemed to be watching her, noting the circles under her eyes and how red the eyes themselves were. At one point she became convinced, irrationally, that they knew, that they were all somehow not real people but invading aliens taking human form to watch and study her. They could read her mind but she couldn’t read theirs.

Crazy. Paranoid. Another sign of growing fatigue.

Got to rest.

Then, to top it all off, Dr. Fred Forester cornered her in the corridor to the parking garage after she’d scrubbed up and was trying to sneak back out to her car.

“Hey, Janet, it’s great to see you. Feeling better, I hope?”

She eyed him silently. Her head hurt. She thought suddenly there was blood on her hands, yes that there was blood on her hands, though she’d just gotten scrubbed up.

Rest....

“Look,” Dr. Forester said, lowering his voice, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, because I like you as a person and I think you’re a damn good doctor. But Janet, people are starting to wonder. About you. Your behavior these past couple of weeks has been—”

“My behavior, Dr. Forester, is my own concern. As is yours.”

“Think you’re hot stuff, don’t you?”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. I just thought you’d realize that with the senior surgeon supporting you, your career would be a lot safer. There are people here who—”

“Fred, this is sexual harassment. Now, look. I am tired. I am going home. Thank you for your concern. Good night.”

She turned sharply and started walking. A hand dropped onto her shoulder and she spun, slapping him hard before she could check the reflex.

He barely flinched. “I’m not playing around here, Janet. There’s a meeting tomorrow among the top hospital staff. A meeting about you. I’m going to be at that meeting. In fact, I am going to be the principal witness. And I am going to make sure you never work in this hospital again.”

“You—”

Janet bit her tongue. She wanted to kill him. Slowly, with her bare hands. She was so tired! She wanted him out of the way, vanished without a…

It clicked.

She cleared her throat, sighed. “Fred, I had no idea this meant so much to you.”

His eyes widened slightly, then, slowly, he smiled. “Oh, but it does.”

Eyes downcast. “Look, I’m sorry for being such a bitch these past few days, but I’m very tired. You understand?”

He nodded. “Tired people should be put to bed by competent health care professionals.”

She smiled.

It was easy from there.

Reminder: not ever again.

Fred Forester snored. Which figured. Janet waited until the fat bed hog was soundly asleep before she slipped out of the covers and tiptoed across the room. His clumsy attempt at lovemaking had been a joke, and far from satisfying her, he’d actually annoyed her. But it had been worth it.

Now, she put on a kettle of water and made a cup of hot tea. She looked at the clock. A few minutes later she looked in through the bedroom door. When the bright white flash came, she smiled.

Then she piled everything she could find on top of the empty bed.

“Fred Forester,” she said, “meet General Richland. He’s a brilliant surgeon, General. In fact, he’s the best there is. And he’s all yours.”

Reminder: Rearrange furniture. Put chest of drawers where bed used to be. Stack boxes on top. Don’t ever take them down.

Paul beamed when she walked into her office the next morning.

“You’re looking very nice today,” he said, blushing. What a cute kid.

“Thank you, Paul. I feel much better today. Any messages?” She crossed the room to her desk and picked up her patient charts. She was so nervous that she bumped her knee against the desk, bringing a sharp pain and making everything on the desk rattle.

“Are you kidding?” said Paul. “You have forty-two thousand messages, or thereabouts. Don’t worry. They’ve all been responded to, and your charts have been updated as of 4:00 A.M.”

Janet smiled, trying to let the tension flow out of her. “You’re so efficient, Paul, I almost think you could run this place without me.”

He grinned. Perhaps he wasn’t really so awfully young at that.

“By the way,” Paul said, frowning slightly, “you haven’t heard from Dr. Forester in the past twelve hours, have you?”

Her heart skipped a beat, but she shook her head casually. “Thank God, no,” she said, making sure to avoid eye contact. “Why do you ask?”

But Paul was already flipping through charts and records on the computer. “I’m sure it’s nothing. His receptionist called me. Seems he missed all his morning appointments and doesn’t answer his phone. No one’s seen him since yesterday afternoon.”

Janet smiled to herself. “Maybe he’s off somewhere moonlighting,” she said.

Paul looked at her oddly for an instant, but then he moved on to something else, and Janet sighed. She started to relax when she suddenly felt something wet and sticky on her hands. She looked down.

One of the charts she was holding had a dark, still wet coffee stain in one corner. Glancing at the desk, she saw that she had sloshed coffee all over her papers when she’d accidentally kicked the desk. She laughed, rubbing her fingers together. Paul looked up.

“Something wrong?”

For a long moment, Janet stared into space, her mind far away, but then, finally, she blinked and smiled.

“Here,” said Paul, “let me clean that up.”

She waved him to stay where he was. “I’ve got to do something around here. Besides, I’m perfectly capable of cleaning up my own messes.”

He grinned at her as she blotted up the coffee. “And to answer your question,” she said, “no, there’s nothing wrong at all.”