John Mackie - Hazardous Goods

A few moments later, Ted found himself alone in the semi-private room, watching over Clay’s sleeping form. The old fellow didn’t look too bad, all things considering. Seemed to have decent color in his face, and based on the volume of his snoring he appeared to have achieved a decent state of rest.

Flopping into one of the two visitors’ chairs, he leafed through the stack of magazines resting on the side table. Country Living, Chatelaine, People, Oprah. He couldn’t figure out if the last one was the actual name of the magazine. Seemed a little pretentious. You didn’t see Bill Gates calling Windows “Bill”.

He dropped the stack back on the side table, then pulled the drawer open. Kleenex, a few pill bottles, glasses case. Vital signs monitor? Pulse rate 83. Blood pressure 142/86, if he was reading it right. He stood and peered at the screen. Systolic 142, now 139. Diastolic. 86. Resp. 17. Respiration? 17 seemed low to him. He glanced at Clay, but the old guy seemed to be sleeping just fine. Temperature, one of those goofy EKG lines, bunch of ports, Start/Stop, Print, Auto/Standby. Who the hell was he kidding. It was all gobbledygook to him.

He stepped around the chair and peeked past the curtain into the other half of the room. Clay’s roommate was younger. Maybe mid-forties. Wasn’t looking so hot. Had on one of those Darth Vader breathers, with one leg raised above the bed in a cast and bandages around his forehead. Car accident, probably.

Ted opted to take a quick leak before stooping to read Clay’s charts. If Mom didn’t get back soon, he was going to go crazy.

He was just finishing when he heard heels clack across the linoleum into the hospital room. He stepped on the flush lever, and winced as the toilet roared. Christ, it was like one of those airplane toilets. Quick rinse under the tap, and out.

Ted was drying his hands with a paper towel as he stepped into the room.

What the-? Two people in the room that he had never seen before. One a huge greasy guy, and the second a weasely looking guy in a suit.

“You are not Donnie Elder. His brother, perhaps?”

Ted frowned. Why did people always think he and Donnie looked alike? He was by far the better looking of the two.

“Maybe. Who’s asking?”

“I am Maxim Legenko. And this is my colleague, Nikolay.”

He stared at Ted as though waiting for a reply.

“Man, I have no idea who-.” Wait a sec. Russian business guy and a massive greaseball. Legenko. And the guy who mugged Donnie?

“No matter. You and your colleagues will not interfere with our business again.” He glanced at the greaseball, then turned to Clay’s sleeping figure on the bed.

In two quick steps the big man was on Ted, one callused hand squeezing his windpipe. Ted was knocked off balance and stumbled back into the wall, but his opponent went with the movement, not loosening his grip an iota. He pulled at Niki’s wrist with one hand and pressed his head away with the other, desperately trying to break the man’s grasp.

A glimpse of movement and Ted could see that Legenko was now leaning over Clay, reading from a book he had pulled from his pocket. A small white cloud was forming in the air before him, as though a tiny cumulonimbus had formed out of thin air.

“Huhhhnnnnn!” Niki staggered back, hands to his face. Ted had thumbed him in the eye, opting to forgo any rules of civility. Niki moved in again, hands up to protect his face, in particular the one eye which he still could not open. Still gasping, Ted stepped into him, wrapped his lower leg around the back of the man’s knee, and pushed. The two of them went down hard, with Niki’s head smacking off the bed frame like a pumpkin on concrete. Ted rolled off the man, whose eyes were fluttering, unfocussed.

Getting back to his feet, Ted grabbed the bed rail and stepped towards Legenko.

“Get away from him, asshole.”

Legenko spun towards Ted, hands raised in front of him like a doctor entering surgery, but with the palms facing out. Slim wrists and wicked long fingers gathered the small white cloud that had been over the bed.

Ted instinctively drew back from the man, but Legenko reached out and grasped his face with both hands, the cloud now enveloping Ted’s face.

Cold. G-goddamned cold. He tried to pull away, but Legenko backed him up against the wall. His eyes stared vacantly past Ted, a rapturous smile stretching blood red lips.

After the first shock of the cold of his hands, Ted began to relax.

“No offense, but I go for girls.”

Legenko staggered back as though he had slapped him, the smile disappearing from his face in a comical evolution from ecstasy to shock to horror and then to raging fury.

“What is this? You have no power. I can see you have no power!”

“Speak for yourself, asshole.”

The monitors began beeping furiously. Ted looked past his attacker and saw that three of the numbers were now flashing red. On the bed, Clay was gasping for air.

“Hey, what the hell did you do to him?” Ted pushed Legenko aside and went to Clay’s aid. His eyes were open now, but unseeing, darting back and forth. Flushed cheeks, rasping breath. Ted turned and ran into the hall.

“Doctor — we need a doctor!”

There was a flurry of action as first a nurse, then a second nurse and a doctor raced into the room. It was like a NASCAR pit crew, though there was more at stake than a car race. Ted tried once or twice to ask what was going on, but the medical staff were focused on the patient. So he stood by the door, trying to stay out of the way.

He noted Niki and Legenko had disappeared. Just as well — Ted wasn’t feeling too well himself. He tried to clear his throat, wondering whether that weird cloud had done something to his lungs.

“Oh my! What is going on!”

The doctor turned from his ministrations in response to Harper’s outburst.

“His blood pressure spiked suddenly, but we seem to have it under control thanks to this fellow’s assistance.”

“But why would it happen now?”

“Well, it could be a number of things. Was he conscious, do you know?”

“No.”

“Well…” The doctor and Harper moved down the hall for some privacy. Ted could see he was trying to reassure her. In the room behind them, the nurses were rearranging Clay’s sheets, apparently satisfied that all was well again.

“What happened?”

Ted coughed and rubbed at his throat. He could see now why strangulation was so effective. Ted nodded for his mother to move down the hall out of earshot of the doctor and his staff, then told her of the visit by Legenko and his thug friend.

“What on earth were they doing?”

“Just a sec.” Ted’s throat was killing him now. Felt like the strep throat he had experienced in high school. Scratchy and dry. He stepped down the hall and took a sip from the fountain, but the scratchiness would not go away. And worse, now he was getting the spins.

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah, just a bit too much excitement, I guess.”

She took Ted’s arm and started to lead him to a bench at the doorway to Clay’s room, but Ted didn’t make it. With one whistling breath he dropped face first to the floor.

I arrived half an hour later, having just left Sun. My mother’s voice had made it pretty clear that something serious was going on, so I had left the van off King and ran to the Hospital.

At the Emergency Ward I went straight to the triage nurse at the desk.

“Ted Elder?”

She looked to the board behind her, then referred me to Room 114. As I marched past the waiting area, I could see that things were a lot busier than they had been the night Clay and I were mugged. Two police officers sat on either side of a fellow who appeared to have been in a nasty fight — his left eye was swollen shut and he had a gap in his mouth where two or three teeth had been knocked out.