F Wilson - Sims

“You can’t just walk in here!” Carter said. “This is a private club!”

Ignoring him, they pulled stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs from the cart and fanned out into the room. The woman came over to where Patrick, Romy, and Stokes stood. She looked to be about fifty, her long brown hair streaked with gray and tied back. She nodded to Romy, then without a word she knelt beside Anj and the other sim and began taking blood pressures.

“They’re shocky,” Stokes offered.

The woman looked up. Her face was expressionless, all business, but her eyes looked infinitely sad. “You a doc?”

“Yes, I’m an—”

“We’ve got saline in the cart. If you want to help, you can start drips on these two.”

Stokes nodded and headed for the cart. The stranger moved on.

Patrick turned to Romy. “Who are these people?”

“Doctors.”

“From SimGen?”

She shook her head and bit her upper lip. Romy’s usually steely composure had slipped. She looked rattled, something Patrick never would have thought possible. Maybe it was the helplessness. Patrick felt it too—a need to do something but not knowing what.

“Your people then,” he said. “Your organization. How’d they get here so fast?”

“They’ve been on standby.”

“You mean you expected this?”

“Expected someone might try to hurt them.” Her eyes were black cauldrons. “Excuse me. I need a little air.”

He watched her breeze past Holmes Carter, still standing by the door, sputtering like an over-choked engine. Tome squatted against a far wall, his face buried in his arms. And all around Patrick, the strange, silent doctors, gliding from one sick sim to another.

Feeling useless, he decided he could use a breath of night air himself, but first he had something to say…

He stopped before Carter. “This your doing, Holmesy?”

Carter’s round face reddened, his third chin wobbled. “You son of a bitch! If I was going to poison anyone it would be you, not these dumb animals. They’re just pawns in your game.”

The genuine outrage in Carter’s eyes made Patrick regret his words. He backed off a bit. “Well…somebody poisoned them.”

“If you’re looking to place blame, Sullivan, find a mirror. This never would have happened if you hadn’t started poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Stung, Patrick turned away. The truth of Carter’s words hurt and clung to him as he stepped out into the night.

Some sort of oversized commuter van was parked on the grass outside. The doctors had driven it straight across the club’s rear lawn to the barrack door; Patrick could trace the deep furrows under the pitiless glow of the moon peering down from the crystal sky. Up on the rise he spotted a number of Beacon Ridge members standing outside the clubhouse, gawking at the scene. And Romy…where was Romy?

He walked around the barrack and spotted her down the slope by the border privet hedge. But she wasn’t alone. A tall dark figure stood beside her. After a moment, Romy turned and began walking back up the slope; the tall man faded into the shadows of the hedge.

“Who was that?” he asked as she approached.

“No one.”

“But—”

Her face had settled into grim lines. “You didn’t see a thing. Now let’s go back inside and make ourselves useful.”

Patrick was about to comment on what seemed to be a lot of hush-hush, undercover nonsense but bit it back. It wasn’t nonsense at all. Not when poison was part of someone’s game plan.

Romy stopped dead in the doorway and he ran into her back, knocking her forward. He saw immediately why she’d stopped.

Chaos in the barrack. The formerly silent, seemingly imperturbable doctors were in frenzied motion, pumping ventilation bags and thumping sim chests.

“I’ve got another one crashing here!” one called out. He was on his knees next to an unconscious sim. He looked up and saw Romy and Patrick. “You two want to help?”

Patrick tried to speak but could only nod.

“Name it,” Romy said.

“Each of you get an Ambu bag from that cart and bring them over here.”

Romy was already moving. “What’s an Am—?”

“Looks like a small football with a face mask attached,” the doctor said.

Romy opened a deep drawer, removed two of the devices, handed one to Patrick. On their way back, to his right, he noticed Holmes Carter kneeling, using one of the bags to pump air into a sim’s lungs.

Carter…?

To their left, the woman doc waved and called out. “Romy! Over here! Quick!”

Romy peeled off and Patrick kept on course toward the first doc. He stuttered to a stop when he saw the patient.

Anj.

She lay supine on the floor, limp as a rag doll with half its stuffing gone; the front of her bib overalls had been pulled down and her T-shirt slit open, exposing her budding, pink-nippled, lightly furred breasts.

“Don’t just stand there!” the doctor said. He was sweaty, flushed, and looked too young to be a doctor. He had his hands between Anj’s breasts and was pumping on her chest. “Bag her!”

Patrick’s frozen brain tried to make sense of the words as they filtered through air thick as cotton.

“Bag…?” Was she dead?

“Give me that!” The doctor reached across Anj and snatched the Ambu bag from Patrick’s numb fingers. He fitted the mask over Anj’s mouth and nose and squeezed the bag. “There! Do that once for every five times I pump.”

Patrick dropped to his knees and managed to get his hands to work, squeezing the bag every time the doctor shouted, “Now!” and wishing someone would cover her. Every so often the doctor would stop pumping and press his stethoscope to Anj’s chest.

“Shit!” he said after the third time. “Nothing! Keep bagging.” He pawed through what looked like an orange plastic tool box, muttering, “No monitor, no defibrillator, how am I supposed to…here!”

He pulled out a small syringe capped with a three- or four-inch needle. He popped the top, expelled air and a little fluid, then swabbed Anj’s chest with alcohol.

Patrick blinked. “You’re not going to stick that into—”

That was exactly what he did: right between a pair of ribs to the left of her breast bone; he drew back on the plunger until a gush of dark red swirled into the barrel, then emptied the syringe.

The doctor resumed pumping, crying, “One-two-three-four-five-bag!”

They kept up the routine for another minute or so, then the doctor listened to Anj’s chest again.

“Nothing.” He pulled a penlight from the plastic box and flashed it into her eyes. “Fixed and dilated.” He leaned back and wiped his dripping face on his sleeve. “She’s gone.”

“No,” Patrick said.

But Anj’s glazed, staring eyes said it all. Still he resumed squeezing the bag, frantically, spasmodically.

“No use,” the doctor said.

“Try, damn it!” Patrick shouted. “She’s too young! She’s too…” Heran out of words.

“Her brain’s been deprived of oxygen too long. She’s not coming back.”

Patrick dropped the bag and leaned over her. An aching pressure built in his chest. He felt his eyes fill, the tears slip over the lids and drop on Anj’s chest.

A hand closed gently on his shoulder and he heard the young doctor say, “I know how you feel.”

Patrick shrugged off his hand. “No, you don’t.”

“I do, believe me. We couldn’t save her, but we’ve got other sick sims here and maybe we can save some ofthem . Let’s get to work.”

“All right,” Patrick said, unable to buck the doctor’s logic. “Just give me a second.”

As the doctor moved off, Patrick pulled the edges of Anj’s torn T-shirt together. They didn’t quite meet so he pulled up the bib front of her overalls. Then he pushed her eyelids closed and stared at her.