Tommy followed as it turned left onto Division and crossed over the North Branch of the Chicago River. His phone was quiet for a minute. He heard the supervisor’s voice, talking to someone else. “You got it? Okay. Fine. Better this way. Absolutely.” Tommy hit his horn at drivers impatient to pull back into traffic, ignoring their rearview mirrors and his flashing yellow lights.
Tommy’s phone flashed CALL ENDED.
The ambulance’s brakes flickered uncertainly, and turned south on LaSalle. It seemed to Tommy they went slower, even though this was a four-lane street. The ambulance was far more cautious when it came to crossing streets. Tommy found it was easy to catch up. When they passed Chicago Ave, Tommy was confused. The ambulance continued going south on LaSalle, leaving Northwestern farther and farther behind.
He relaxed when he realized they were taking Don to Cook County General. Maybe they’d radioed ahead. Maybe they’d been told that Cook County General had better equipment for Don, with a team of specialists, ready and waiting for Don. Hell, maybe Cook County General dealt with this kind of thing everyday.
Maybe it was all going to be okay.
Sam pulled over to the curb and waved a homeless guy over.
The guy, a man in his thirties with wild hair, waved off imaginary insects. “Wasn’t doing nothin’, officer.”
“What makes you think I’m an officer? Might be I’m just a tourist, trying to find my hotel.”
“Whatever you says, officer.”
Sam unwrapped more gum. “You seen Qween around?”
“Queen?” The man cocked his head, listening to phantom radio transmissions. “Of England?”
“Don’t fuck with us, pal,” Ed said, surprising Sam. Ed was usually happy playing the good cop. “I don’t have much patience tonight. Got half a mind to come out and beat the living shit out of you for resisting arrest.”
“Tell you what,” Sam said, thinking it might be his turn to play good cop. “I got ten bucks if your memory improves.”
The homeless man cocked his head the other direction, as if receiving conflicting transmissions. “Well, now. Maybe I know, maybe I don’t. Let’s see the money.”
Sam pulled out his wallet, found a ten-dollar bill. “You know who I’m talking about, right?”
The man looked offended. “Shit. Ever’body knows Qween.” He took the ten. “Ain’t seen her in two days.”
“Know where she stays?”
The man shook his head. “Used to have a spot on Lower Wacker. Up and took everything somewheres else. Don’t know where.”
“You know why?”
“Have to ask her.”
“You’re not exactly earning your money here,” Sam said.
The man shrugged. “Whatchu want? I don’t know.”
Ed leaned over, fixed the man with his dead eyes. “What’s the story with the rats?”
The man didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate. “The rats? They sick, man. Ever’body knows that. You stay away from ’em. Ever’body knows that.”
CHAPTER 31
8:56 PM
August 12
Tommy lost sight of the ambulance when it zoomed into the emergency driveway on Wacker Drive, where only medical or rescue vehicles were allowed. He pulled around the block and parked in the underground garage. He couldn’t find the stairs and had to take the elevator instead.
While waiting for the doors to open, doubts started creeping into his head. Cook County General wasn’t exactly known for its cutting-edge medical research. Cook County General wasn’t exactly known for its quality medical care if you wanted to get down to it. He wasn’t sure why Cook County General would have a team of specialists in whatever disease was keeping Don asleep.
The doors slid open and he stepped inside. He tried to stand still under pale fluorescents that hurt his eyes as the elevator lurched up the four stories to the lobby, but all those stories about Cook County General being a sick joke in the city knocked down the walls of his optimism.
The place was chronically underfunded, for one thing. Nobody knew who was really in charge, only that the city ran the place, so if you had no money left, no money at all, this was where you ended up. Sometimes, on a slow day for tragedy, the news would get all worked up over people literally crawling into the emergency room because they had no insurance and the ambulance companies wouldn’t pick them up. The streets were full of horror stories about the emergency room, of waiting all day for a shot that turned out to be prepared with a dirty needle, of being forgotten, of people dying on the benches and being there all night before somebody called their name, gut-churning tales of malpractice, of doctors stealing drugs to feed their own habits, of AIDS-INFECTED blood, of MRSA contaminating every doorknob, every water fountain, every surface imaginable, of rusty scalpels and dirty floors.
The emergency room wasn’t as crowded as Tommy expected. He stood fifth or sixth in the line at the front desk, and overheard the nurse telling people with obvious injuries to go seek treatment at either Northwestern or Rush instead. Of course, most people, especially those bleeding on the tile floors, didn’t take the news well. “Are you fucking kidding? What the hell is this? You call yourself a hospital?”
“We’re undergoing a change of management,” was all the nurse would say.
When it was Tommy’s turn, he said, “I’m here to see Don Wycza. They just brought him in an ambulance.”
The nurse, a black woman with a face that exhaustion had cut to the skull, checked the charts. “No, I’m sorry. There’s nobody here by that name.”
“Maybe he hasn’t been added yet. I followed the ambulance here.”
The nurse rechecked the clipboards on her desk, then stood and searched a few more places around her station. No luck. “What’s his name again?” the nurse asked. “It’s possible they didn’t bring in the paperwork yet. I’ll see if I can’t find him. In the meantime, you have a seat. I’ll call you if I hear about your friend.”
“Okay, thanks.” Tommy gave a little wave of gratitude, then sank into a chair in the middle of a long line of plastic seats bolted to a long steel bar. He checked his phone. No calls. No texts. He snapped the phone shut and tucked it into his coveralls.
The patients in the emergency room could be divided into three categories. The first, and most popular, group was five people who held bloody towels around some limb, usually either a hand or foot. Summertime, and a lot of drunk people decide to fucking cut loose with a power tool while tackling some exterior home improvement project.
Tommy noticed that patients had their own groups of friends. The guys in the first group, and it seemed to be all guys, all had wives or girlfriends and sometimes young children. Sometimes, if the guys were old enough, the adult children would bring a parent in who’d had too much barbecue and beer and decided to prune the hedge with a chainsaw.
The second group was a little harder to define on its own, but the look of the friends helped. These were people who’d ingested too much alcohol or crack or meth or coke or something else. They had been brought in by one or two peers who desperately looked around for the best opportunity to slip away.
Everybody in the first and second group was being shuttled off to different hospitals.
The third group was only two people; one man and one woman. It was difficult to pinpoint the cause of their distress. Both were nearly catatonic. The man had been brought in by a cab driver who couldn’t wake him up, and had driven halfway across the city to leave him at the only hospital that would take him because he didn’t have an insurance card in his wallet.