“It’s not kidnapping,” she said to no one in particular. “I’m taking her to the ER.” She pointed to the K-cuff. “You have something to cut that?”
He raised his arm, the woman’s lifting along with it. “You need special snips. A knife won’t do.”
“You have a knife?”
Kae shook his head, barely, gazed at Mendenhall. She stared back.
“You have a scalpel.”
He did not respond.
“Throw it out the window.” She nodded toward the bundle of cuffs protruding from his hoodie pocket. “Those, too.”
She glared at Covey. “And start the car.”
Mendenhall reached for the woman’s wrist and took her pulse.
She listed the three freeways Covey needed to return to Mercy General.
Mendenhall understood Covey’s trance. Three of the five bodies were on gurneys now. They were covered. The two others had been rolled and straightened into supine positions. The EMTs appeared lost above them, ears to cell phones. Mendenhall scanned the crowd for possible struck survivors, but it was an impossible task.
Too many seemed dazed, arms stiff and undirected, steps going sideways, then back, then forward, expressions of understanding—a state of mind that had to be symptomatic, perhaps delusional. The only ones who looked sane, who looked knowledgeable, were the two bodies on the ground looking grimly toward the sky.
“Between here and the ocean,” said Covey, “more have fallen.”
56.
Exhaustion loomed. Mendenhall had slept three hours over the last thirty. Her life felt wasted, she wanted to nap in the car, she was confident she could get back into Mercy, and she knew none of these feelings made sense. She told Covey she didn’t have to drive so fast. She checked the woman—her patient. The Trapanal was working. She was watching the sunset over the thinnest part of the city, where they could almost see the ocean. She was holding hands with Kae.
Kae stared at Mendenhall, let the motion of the car lull his body. The lock of hair had returned, covering one eye, the tip grazing his cheekbone. He calculated something, something about her, how many of her features were worthwhile, how many moles he could find, how anything about her came together, eyes to skin, hair to lips.
Mendenhall nodded to the cuff holding Kae to the patient.
“Where did you get those?”
“Not on your floor.” He appeared at ease, shoulders folded to the corner of the seat and window, his cuffed arm turned up and relaxed as his hand received the patient’s grasp. Mendenhall imagined him gliding through the cafeteria, the kitchen, looking for anything to gain advantage. He would have moved behind the big security guys, no more than shadow and sliver. He had even thought to snitch a visitor sticker. The handwritten name read, “Karlo Singh.”
“And drugs?” she asked.
He fished around in his hoodie pockets, showed her a handful of very slim syringes, all capped and loaded. She fingered them, then lifted them from his palm. “Tell me you didn’t inject those… guys.”
He gave a sideways look.
She held up a blue one. “This would’ve been better if you’d injected yourself. Stronger, more energy, better decision-making, better fight.”
“I saw that,” he replied. “After the second guy.”
“Where is he?”
“Down a storm drain on one of those quiet streets you ran. I liked that neighborhood.”
“He’s cuffed? Under the lid of a storm drain? With high-dose adrenaline?”
Kae remained still.
Covey adjusted the rearview, angled it more toward him, glanced at Mendenhall. Mendenhall double-checked the freeway and direction. She trusted no one in this car, longed for the open betrayal of the bay.
She held up an orange syringe. “This?”
“That was the last one. He went horizontal. Fast. Back on that bar floor.” Kae made a sliding motion with his free hand.
Mendenhall recalled the height of the guy, estimated his weight from the breadth of his shoulders. “A full dose?”
“Half,” said Kae. “I put the rest in his wingman.”
“Why?”
“Because no way I could take them like that. The crowd would push us together. I need lots of space to take them, move around, like. I’m a boxer, not a fighter.”
“No. I mean why are you following me?”
“Because I plan to stay alive. If I go where you go, I have a chance.”
“But you see that’s not true.” Covey spoke quickly, releasing. She glanced in the rearview. “Those people back there? Five?”
“It’s more than that,” he said. “Bigger than that. I saw more men heading to another part of the city.”
Mendenhall closed her eyes, yearned for the ER.
Covey angled another peek into the mirror.
“I hate laying around. She,” he nodded toward Mendenhall, “hates waiting around. Waiting around to die. Where she goes, I go. At least we’re doing something. Stay close to death, and you live.”
“Yeah? And how does that work?” Mendenhall stared at the syringes in her hand.
“It’s something I do with my older brother. The one who doesn’t do anything wrong follows the one who does, knocks stuff around.”
“Stuff.”
“People and stuff.” Kae smiled at the hand holding his, strapped to his. “My escape trail messes up yours.”
“How many did you leave out there? In your—our—trail?”
With tiny eye shifts, he counted. But didn’t answer.
Mendenhall recounted. One during escape. One in Covey’s lab basement—“the second guy.” Two in the bar.
“Four,” she said.
He counted with his eyes again, barely breathing. Then: “Six. Yeah. No. Seven.”
“They had cells.”
“I took those.”
“They need ambulances.”
“Maybe the one.”
She held up an orange syringe. “What other colors? What other colors did you stick in them?”
“Some purple ones.”
“They need ambulances.”
57.
Covey leaned into the drive, kneaded the wheel. Mercy General was visible from the freeway, windows aglow against approaching dusk. “It looks like a night factory,” she said. “How do we get in?”
“We?” Mendenhall checked Kae, Patient X, Covey.
“I still have things to show you.” Covey shifted as Mendenhall remained silent. “I didn’t tell them where you were going. I didn’t…. Maybe they followed.”
“You showed, they showed.” Mendenhall looked back to Kae. “How would you add that up?”
“One plus one equals blue.” He was looking at the hospital.
“How high are you?”
Kae flattened his free hand, measured it to his chin, up to his nose.
“The stuff I gave you?”
He nodded, then tilted his head side to side.
Covey was watching in the rearview. “What does that mean?”
“Plus two, give or take,” said Mendenhall. She sighed, trying to breathe away exhaustion and frustration. She was in a car with two high patients and one free radical. She was taking them into a world that would be twice as mad as when she left it.
“My line,” she said to Covey. “My crush line. Is your crush line.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Don’t give me that. I’m a physician. I say that all the time.”
“Okay. Yes.”
“What happens now? What is happening?”
“Nothing that hasn’t happened before. This city—the world—has changed toward it, grown. You know?”
Mendenhall made a fist.
Covey shrugged over the wheel, changed lanes to approach the exit. “I’m not being evasive. I’m not sparing you my expertise.