Alma Katsu - The Taker

Luke and the nurse attend to the woman strapped to the gurney. He hefts a pair of scissors. “I’m going to have to cut your shirt away,” he warns her.

“You might as well. It’s ruined,” she says in a soft voice with an accent Luke can’t place. The shirt is obviously expensive. It’s the kind of clothing you see in fashion magazines and that you would never find someone wearing in St. Andrew.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Luke says, small talk to loosen her up.

She studies his face, evaluating whether to trust him-or so Luke assumes. “I was born here, actually. That was a long time ago.”

Luke snorts. “A long time ago for you, maybe. If you were born here, I’d know you. I’ve lived in this area almost my entire life. What’s your name?”

She doesn’t fall for his little trick. “You don’t know me,” she says flatly.

For a few minutes there’s only the sound of wet fabric being cut and it is hard going, the scissors’ tiny beak moving sluggishly through the sodden material. After it’s done, Luke stands back to let Judy swab the girl with gauze soaked in warm water. The bloody red streaks dissolve, revealing a pale, thin chest without a scratch on it. The nurse drops the forceps holding the gauze into a metal pan noisily and hustles out of the examination room as though she knew all along that they’d find nothing, and yet again, Luke has proven his incompetence.

He averts his eyes as he drapes a paper sheet over the girl’s naked torso.

“I’d have told you I wasn’t hurt if you’d asked,” she says to Luke in a low whisper.

“You didn’t tell the sheriff, though,” Luke says, reaching for a stool.

“No. But I’d have told you .” She nods at the doctor. “Do you have a cigarette? I’m dying for a smoke.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t have any. I don’t smoke,” Luke replies.

The girl looks at him, those ice blue eyes scanning his face. “You gave them up a while ago, but you started again. Not that I blame you, given everything you’ve been through lately. But you have a couple of cigarettes in your lab coat, if I’m not mistaken.”

His hand goes to the pocket, out of instinct, and he feels the papery touch of the cigarettes right where he had left them. Was that a lucky guess, or did she see them in his pocket?

And what did she mean by given everything you’ve been through lately ? She’s just pretending to read his mind, trying to get inside his head like any clever girl who finds herself in a fix would do. He has been wearing his troubles on his face lately. He just hasn’t seen a way to fix his life yet; his problems are interconnected, all stacked up. He’d have to know how to fix all of them to take care of even one.

“There’s no smoking in the building, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’re strapped to a gurney.” Luke clicks the top of his pen and reaches for a clipboard. “We’re a little shorthanded tonight, so I’m going to need to get some information from you for the hospital records. Name?”

She regards the clipboard warily. “I’d rather not say.”

“Why? Are you a runaway? Is that why you don’t want to give me your name?” He studies her: she’s tense, guarded, but under control. He’s been around patients involved in accidental deaths and they’re usually hysterical-crying, shaking, screaming. This young woman is trembling slightly under the paper sheet and she jiggles her legs nervously, but by her face Luke can tell she’s in shock.

He feels, too, that she is warming toward him; he senses a chemistry between them, as though she is willing him to ask her about the terrible thing that happened in the forest. “Do you want to tell me what went on tonight?” he asks, rolling closer to the gurney. “Were you hitchhiking? Maybe you got picked up by someone, the guy in the woods… He attacks you, you defend yourself?”

She sighs and presses back into the pillow, staring at the ceiling. “It was nothing like that. We knew each other. We came to town together. He”-she stops, choking on the words-“he asked me to help him die.”

“Euthanasia? Was he already dying? Cancer?” Luke is skeptical. The ones looking to kill themselves usually pick something quiet and surefire: poison, pills, an idling car engine and a length of garden hose. They don’t ask to be stabbed to death. If this friend really wanted to die, he could have just sat under the stars all night until he froze.

He glances at the woman, trembling under the paper sheet. “Let me get a hospital gown and a blanket for you. You must be cold.”

“Thank you,” she says, dropping her gaze.

He comes back with a much-laundered flannel gown edged in pink and a pilling acrylic blanket, baby blue. Maternity colors. He looks down at her hands, bound to the gurney with nylon strap restraints. “Here, we’ll do this one hand at a time,” Luke says, undoing the restraint on the hand closest to the side table where the examination tools are laid out: forceps, bloodied scissors, scalpel.

Quick as a rabbit, she lunges for the scalpel, her slender hand closing around it. She points it at him, wild eyed, her nostrils pink and flaring.

“Take it easy,” Luke says, stepping backward off the stool, out of her arm’s reach. “There’s a deputy just down the hall. If I call for him, it’s over, you know? You can’t get both of us with that little knife. So why don’t you put down the scalpel-”

“Don’t call him,” she says, but her arm is still outstretched. “I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.” The gurney is between Luke and the door. She can cut her other hand free in the time it takes him to make it across the room.

“I need your help. I can’t let him arrest me. You have to help me escape.”

“Escape?” Suddenly, Luke isn’t worried that the young woman with the scalpel will hurt him. He’s feeling embarrassed for having let his guard down, allowing her to get the drop on him. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not going to help you escape.”

“Listen to me-”

“You killed someone tonight. You said so yourself.”

“It wasn’t murder. He wanted to die, I told you that.”

“And he came here to die because he grew up here, too?”

“Yes,” she says, a little relieved.

“Then tell me who he is. Maybe I know him…”

She shakes her head. “I told you-you don’t know us. Nobody here knows us.”

“You don’t know that for sure. Maybe some of your relatives…” Luke’s obstinacy comes out when he gets angry.

“My family hasn’t lived in St. Andrews for a long, long time.” She sounds tired. Then she snaps, “You think you know, do you? Okay-my name is McIlvrae. Do you know that name? And the man in the woods? His name is St. Andrew.”

“St. Andrew, like the town?” Luke asks.

“Exactly, like the town,” she replies almost smugly.

Luke feels funny bubbles percolating behind his eyes. Not recognition, exactly… where has he seen that name, McIlvrae? He knows he has seen it or heard it somewhere, but that knowledge is just out of reach.

“There hasn’t been a St. Andrew in this town for, oh, at least a hundred years,” Luke says, matter-of-fact, stung at being upbraided by a girl pretending to have been born here, lying about a meaningless fact that won’t do her a bit of good. “Since the Civil War. Or so I’ve been told.”

She jabs the scalpel at him to get his attention. “Look-it’s not like I’m dangerous. If you help me get away, I’m not going to hurt anyone else.” She speaks to him as though he’s the one being unreasonable. “Let me show you something.”

Then, with no warning, she points the scalpel at herself and cuts into her chest. A long, broad line that catches her left breast and runs all the way to the rib area under her right breast. Luke is frozen in place for a moment as the line blooms red across her white skin. Blood oozes from the cut, pulpy red tissue starting to peep from the opening.