Chapter 6: No Rest for the Wicked

Move! Now!

Instinct driven by years of harsh conditioning jerked me awake in the dark of my room. I rarely sleep under covers so there was nothing to tangle me as I rolled to my left, off the bed, and down onto the cold tile floor. My heart was racing but I quickly drew upon my peripheral senses trying to determine what had alerted me to the danger.

There was a commotion outside my room and I felt more than heard the impact/report of a silenced handgun. It felt like a sharp tap against a screen door window, but I knew it for what it was, and—as I let my conscious mind give way to Being—I knew the trooper stationed outside my room had just been shot.

I was on my feet and moving towards the wall inside the path of the door when I saw the shadow of two feet appear below it from outside. A heartbeat later I stood quietly against the wall as the door opened towards me. I waited, poised. All my feelings and emotions were silenced by my mind/body as I prepared myself for action. There was no sense of fear, anger, loss or vengeance. Just the knowledge that I needed to act swiftly and with extreme violence while I subconsciously reviewed and discarded several scenarios that could play out within the next few seconds.

My attacker could only act within the boundaries of limited space and environment. They were either right or left-handed, each scenario requiring a similar but modified response. They would be visually impaired by the sudden darkness in the room, meaning they would...

The killer entered the room pointing the gun with his right hand as he reached for the light switch with his left. I stepped around the door grabbing the right wrist with both hands, raising it, and rotating my body into him as I swept his hand up and over my head, turning it outwards in a painful pronation. He was doomed the second I got hold of him but didn’t realize the fact until he was suddenly crying in pain and flying through the air in an unanticipated somersault. He landed on the hard floor at my feet, his wrist was still firmly locked in my grip but rotated outwardly beyond tolerances.

The gun toppled to the floor with a clatter as he screamed in agony. The Radial and Ulnar bones in his forearm snapped under my pressure and his head slammed into the floor. I followed through by raising my right leg and rotating my hip, shifting my center of gravity. When my foot came down on his neck it was driven with all my weight focused thru my pelvis. His spinal cord was severed between the C4 and C5 vertebrae, killing him 3 seconds after he entered my room.

I released the wrist and let my senses expand outward. There were cries and shouts of alarm from outside my room. I turned on my light and stepped into the hall noticing the fallen trooper immediately. There was a puddle of blood on the floor beneath him and he was gasping for air with a distant panicked look in his eye. I knelt before him and saw the entry wound just beneath his left armpit, blood and foam were bubbling out of it. I sensed the approach of several others as I began ripping his body armor off his chest.

“He’s been shot in the chest!” I shouted and found myself facing a very pale but focused Jordan.

“Get the crash cart and call a Code Black to ICU West!” he stammered as he promptly shoved his gloved finger into the bullet hole.

“Step back Mr. Davis, we got this!” I was pushed aside by another nurse in red so he could continue cutting away the officers’ garments with a pair of trauma shears.

I stepped back and watched with blank amazement as the crew began treating him.

The man who moved me was the charge nurse and he clearly knew his shit, because he began barking orders like a drill sergeant and everyone else sprang into action around him.

“Get me a foley!” he ordered. Wasn’t that the thing they had up my dick?

“Chris, open room 2 and get the rapid infuser set up as fast as you can. Use crystalloids until we can get blood. Molly, call the ER and activate the Trauma team, tell them we have a GSW to the chest. Brad over-ride the Pyxis with my badge and get all the albumin you can find! Get a gurney over here so we can move him. Where’s that foley?”

“ATTENTION IN THE HOSPITAL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL: CODE BLACK ICU WEST, CODE BLACK ICU WEST, CODE BLACK ICU WEST! INITIATE LOCKDOWN PROTOCOLS AND SHELTER IN PLACE!”

“Here!” A sterile tray was tossed to him and he ripped it open without any finesse or concern for sterility. He took a prefilled syringe, connected it to the rubber tube, and then nodded to my nurse. “Okay Jordan, get ready when your finger comes out, this goes in ... now!” A gush of blood poured out of the trooper’s chest as the older nurse pushed the rubber catheter into the wound as far as he could before squeezing the syringe to fill the balloon at the end. The bleeding stopped immediately.

“Let’s get him onto the gurney and move,” he called over to the Nurses’ Station, “Molly, get a chest tube kit and bring the crash cart so we can get him intubated. Jordan, start two IVs quickly. Let’s go people!” he clapped his bloody hands and then turned to me as the officer was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the nearby room.

“Are you okay Mr. Davis?”

I blinked and snapped back into reality. Nodding I just opened and closed my mouth. “I’m unharmed,” I stammered. “The assassin is dead,” I pointed at my open door, “in there.”

“Fuck!” he exclaimed after looking inside, “where the fuck is Security?”

“You will want to close this area off until the police get here,” I suggested, “I will stand here until your people show up.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and nodded, before running into the trauma room. I stood there numb as the activity swirled around me. Doors were closed and lights were dimmed in open areas. The nurse’s station was abandoned and I was standing in the hallway alone, in my skivvies, listening to the elevators whir and ding.