Warren Murphy: Murder Ward

"Not unless you have a doctor on your staff named Marcus Welby. Or a spare singer named Barbra Streisand." To her blank look, he said, "No? Then I guess I don't need anything."

"I had something more concrete in mind."

"Such as."

"Such as a tour of the hospital. I understand you've been looking it over yourself."

"Yes, a little."

"I heard of your attempt to save Dr. Demmet today. It was very brave."

"Not really," Remo said. "Anybody would have done the same thing."

She leaned forward over his couch, her breasts jutting out almost over him. "You're a very strange man," she said. "I don't mind telling you that when I heard you were coming I thought you'd be a crotchety old man. I never expected you."

"An improvement?" asked Remo, eyeing her breasts because she seemed to want him to and he didn't want to disappoint her. Besides, they were very nice breasts.

"A decided improvement. So would you really like to see our research facilities? We're into some exciting work."

Remo smiled and rose from the couch, brushing against her as he got up. He slipped on his gumsoled shoes and Kathy Hahl looked down at his feet. "Are those your only shoes?"

He nodded. "Why?"

"They cause static electricity. And there are too many flammables up there. The staff would go ape if they saw you there with those on. Tell you what. Wait here and I'll get some safe shoes for you."

Remo fell back onto the couch. "I'll wait."

"It'll be worth the wait," she said, leaving the room.

He watched her trim buttocks swish away. At times like that, he really understood how shameful it was that Chiun had robbed him of the pleasure of sex. Sex was just another discipline, another skill to be learned. Remo had learned it, and now he had trouble staying awake. He probably could fall asleep during the act if it weren't for the noises of passion generally made by his partners. Looking at Kathy Hahl, he decided it was a double shame now because in a different time, place and setting, he would have liked to meet Ms. Hahl.

Remo was remembering long-ago pleasures when two men walked into his room pushing a wheelchair. It was the black-haired Freddy, and the blond-haired Al, whom he had met in the lab that morning. If they recognized him without his doctor's gown and black sunglasses, they gave no indication.

"Mr. Williams?" the dark-haired one asked.

Behind him, Remo saw the blond man lock the door to the room.

"Yeah."

"We couldn't find any shoes in your size, so Ms. Hahl said to bring you up in the wheelchair."

Remo got to his feet and strolled toward the chair, trying not to laugh aloud at the clumsy trap. How stupid did they thick he was?

"How come you couldn't find any shoes in my size when you didn't know what my size was?"

"Errrr. Actually, we didn't have no shoes at all anymore. So hop in here and we'll take you up."

"Sure thing," said Remo, cheerily, wondering what they were up to.

He plopped into the wheelchair. "Hey, I never rode in one of these things before. Can I turn the wheels?"

"As much as you want," said the dark-haired man, moving around behind him. "He sure can, can't he, Al?"

The blond man at the door chuckled. "Sure. Anything he wants."

Remo sat back in the chair, put his arms on the arm rests, and closed his eyes. "Home, James," he said.

"You're home," the man behind him said. "Wise guy."

Remo had been careless. He hadn't paid attention and now he felt a needle jam into the muscles of his shoulder. Dammit, he thought. It might be poison. What a stupid thing to do. Suddenly his head began to hurt.

"Biggest dose yet," said the blond man at the door.

Remo's head was splitting. He tried to rise, but felt something brush against his face, something made of cloth. Then he felt his hands being raised. His arms were jammed into sleeves. He felt his arms being drawn around his body and they seemed to be locked into place. It was a… a something… what was it? A straitjacket. They had put him into a straitjacket.

The two men hoisted him to his feet. If only his head would stop hurting. "What is that stuff?" he said thickly.

"You're not old enough to know about that," one of the men said. "Yet," he added with a chuckle.

Remo felt himself thrown roughly onto the sofa and then heard the rubber-tired wheelchair squeak as it was moved from the room. He heard the door lock shut behind the two men. His head felt as if it had ballooned to twice its normal size. The pain behind his eyes was racking. His mouth was dry and he felt a chill shudder his body.

He had to get out. The locked door would stop anyone from looking in on him. He was lying on his stomach, his arms crisscrossed in front of his body, pinned down by his own weight.

He strained to roll over onto his back. Each movement brought a new hammer of pain to his head. The hurt was spreading now from behind his eyes into the center of his skull, into the brain.

What had they dosed him with? The aging drug. But what could he do about it?

Exhausted, he was on his back. He lay there momentarily, hoping to regain his strength, but he could feel his strength draining away as if it were water flowing out an open faucet.

He could not wait. He tried to ignore the pain, to reach deep into his essence for new strength, but the pain was overpowering. Remo sighed and made one last effort to draw on whatever reserves he might still have. He managed to turn his right hand over, so that the fingers were facing upward, away from his body, toward the ceiling. Against his curled fingertips he felt the rough coarse threads of the straitjacket. No room to move. No way to do it. No. Keep trying. He pulled his right hand back, pressing it hard againt his left hip, buying a half-inch of room inside the sleeve of the jacket. With all the force he could rouse, he drove his fingertips upward against the material of the jacket.

He did it again. And again. Each time his fingertips hit against cloth, it felt as if his skull were being hammered. The fingertips stabbed, his head screamed out. His head was being ripped open. He could hear it being torn.

No. It was the fabric. It was giving under the insistent hammering of his fingertips. Then he felt it collapse and the three middle fingers of his right hand were through the cloth. He curled his fingertips around the cloth, trying to grab as much as he could, as tightly as he could. He slowly contracted the bicep of his right arm. His arm began to raise, bending at the elbow. The fabric ripped. He exerted more pressure and finally his arm came free, tearing upward through the heavy twill fabric.

Exhausted, in agony, Remo rested. The headache was worse now. His entire head felt pumped full of air. No time to waste resting. He jammed his free right hand into the fabric near his right hip, twisted his fingertips and wrenched. The jacket ripped loose with a loud squawk. His left arm could move now. He could move. Now he would get up, unlock the door and call for help. He started to rise to a sitting position, propped up by his hands placed behind him.

The movement made the pain too great to bear. Remo dropped back, then he felt a powerful sleep wrapping itself around him… he hoped the sleep would be deep enough to make him forget the pain in his head and convinced himself that a little rest was all he needed to make himself a new man, as his head dropped limply to one side and he plummeted into unconsciousness.

"It's done," the dark-haired man said to Kathy Hahl. "Where is he?"

"We locked him in his room," Al, the blond man, said. "He's not going anywhere. Not with that dose. That's ten times whatever's been used before."

Kathy Hahl smiled. "It'll be interesting. Go back in about twenty minutes and see what's happening to him. But be careful. I'm going back to my office."