Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

An older man in a coat and tie and an attractive woman, maybe thirty, wearing a tailored white outfit. A nurse’s uniform?

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Out,” the man said. “You’re going out.” He stepped aside, and as I leaned to close the door, the woman kicked it open and shot me in the chest.

I staggered back and looked at my chest. There was a dart there with bright red feathers.

“Damn it,” the man said. “I said not the chest!”

I took one very shallow breath and collapsed.

It was not unpleasant as long as I didn’t wake up. People moved me here and there, I knew, and I seemed to always wind up in the same places. A quiet hospital bed in a dark room. A huge warehouse where invisible people walked around me. Sometimes a railroad car that I think came from some movie. It rocked along uneven rails and I knew that there were Indians riding alongside, but I would be okay as long as I didn’t open the curtains. For the longest time I was up in some future, lying forever in a bed, I think waiting for immortality.

I could almost remember an ambulance ride, but that kept turning into a familiar helicopter, some bastard medic pounding my chest, Stay with me Stay with me when all I wanted was to leave. Leave behind the mutilated hand, the blood in my eyes, the punched-out chest. And now a dart, too.

Then it became a nurse whose huge face shrank back to normal size. My hand came up and touched a plastic thing over my mouth.

“Let’s try breathing without this,” she said, and there were some clicks as she unhooked something behind my head. The plastic went away, and with it the cold breeze that had been whispering into my nose. “They gave you a shot to wake you up. Do you know your name?”

“Jack Daley not John,” I said automatically. “Specialist First Class, US3482179813. You are not allowed to ask me for more than this.”

“Doctor Lu?” she said. “He’s responding now.”

A slender Asian guy, probably Vietnamese, wearing surgical greens and a stethoscope. He checked my pulse and listened to my heart. “You are so in the wrong war,” I said diplomatically. “My grandfather would kill your ass.”

“I was born in Cleveland,” he said. “I’m just as American as your grandfather, maybe more.” He unbuttoned my hospital shirt and looked at the skin there. He touched it gently with his fingertip. “Does that hurt?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Funny. How do you feel?”

“Okay. Woozy, I guess.”

A deep voice behind him said, “He’s talking?”

“Yes, lieutenant. But I think he should—”

“I’m a lieutenant colonel , doctor. It’s like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Wow, I rated a bird colonel. What kind of shit was I in now? They went out into the hall and conferred, and then walked away talking softly, I think arguing.

I had the room to myself. Three other beds, empty. What did that mean?

I napped and woke up what seemed like seconds later, refreshed. “Nurse?” I said quietly.

She looked up from her charts, smiling. “You’re awake, sir? Let me go get the—”

“No! No, wait. Before I talk to any officers… could you tell me where I am and what I’m doing here?”

She put a cool hand on my forehead. “You’ve been in this bed several days. Your chart says you’re under observation pursuant to a drug reaction. What drug did you take?”

“Didn’t take . It was a dart.”

She touched the gauze in the center of my chest. “It was your heart?”

“No, not ‘heart.’ A dart. Look. Where am I?”

“It’s a military hospital, Keesler Air Force Base. You got a dart in your heart?” She smiled. “Like Cupid?”

“No, not Cupid !” Better not say a beautiful mystery woman shot me with a mysterious dart gun for mysterious reasons. “I guess it was kind of an accident?”

“That was clumsy,” she said, her pleasant expression unreadable. “You shot yourself in the chest with a riot control gun?”

“Is that what it was?”

“Well, they don’t say you did it yourself.” She reached down and rattled the handcuff that attached my ankle to the bed frame. “They seem to think you were resisting arrest.”

“Holy shit. That’s not it, not at all.” I sat up in bed, shaking off dizziness, and looked at the handcuff, ankle restraint, whatever. It looked pretty serious. “Nobody arrested me.”

She looked out down the hall. “Yeah, the guys who dumped you here weren’t MPs, despite their uniforms. I work with MPs all the time. What did you really do?”

“Truth is, I’m not really sure. But I didn’t break any law.”

“For what it’s worth, I believe you. Those guys are creeps. They don’t work here.”

“So let me out of here.”

“Oh, yeah, and get them on my ass.” She shook her head. “Even if I could”—she rattled the handcuffs—“I don’t have the key. Oh yeah, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in federal prison.”

“They’re not real officers. And I’m not a criminal. I think my life’s in danger.”

She canted her head and smiled again. “Spy stuff, eh?”

“Kind of. More like criminal stuff. On their part.”

She stepped to the door and looked out again. “Them? I think they’re too dumb to be criminals.”

“Why’s that?”

“Don’t know shit. They didn’t treat me like a nurse, just another dumb black bitch—and those scrubs they’re wearing, they don’t think I know whose monograms they are? Like I’ve worked here so long they oughta name a disease after me.” She turned to rummage through a drawer. “Not even clean. They stole them scrubs from a laundry basket.”

“You’ve got to help me.”

“No, I don’t got to. I don’t have to do nothing not in my orders.”

She looked out the door again, and shook her head, then picked up a big towel. “Don’t you go noplace.” She hustled out and was back in about two minutes.

“Got my boyfriend’s pickup.” She unwrapped the towel, exposing a big greasy pair of bolt cutters.

Rather than cut the chain, she snipped through the cuff itself, and then cut it off at my ankle, too. “You take that and get rid of it somewhere. Outside.”

She pulled open a drawer and lifted out my clothes and shoes, wrapped in tissue paper. “Move fast. I’m not here.” She put the bolt cutters into a low cabinet, stepped into the hall, looked up and down, and walked away unhurriedly.

There was a heat-sealed plastic sack with my bag in it. No cash in the wallet, though; just a receipt for $4,109. A brown envelope had the stuff from my pockets, about thirty bucks in small bills and change, and keys to the car that was parked back at Mom’s Home Away from Home, and the room key. Not too useful. Credit cards that I might be able to use in off-the-grid places. A dime store cell phone.

I dressed quickly and stuffed the blue hospital pajamas into a HAZARDOUS BIOWASTE trash can and stepped out briskly, trying to look as if I knew what I was doing.

No way I was going to get that $4,109 out of the hospital safe. But I wasn’t going anywhere without money.

The fifty grand inside the book, that was just gone. If the guy with the white moustache showed up, I’d just have to tell him that the other bad guys, Boris and Natasha, had beat him to it. Take it up with your god-damned supervisor.

I had to assume that they searched through the motel room after they darted me. But if they didn’t know about the money… I’d closed the hollowed-out book and left it on the floor by the bed. Maybe some maid got a tip big enough to retire on.