Authors: Brent Coffey
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Gabe didn’t know whether he should worry about not hearing from his uncles. It was now early afternoon, and he was certain they’d heard about Victor. Hell, how couldn’t they have heard? If Sandefur had heard the news on the radio this morning, then the whole damn city must be talking about it, spinning out an endless cycle of conspiratorial
whodunit
theories. He laughed at the seriousness of it all. Most people would’ve considered pulling the trigger on Victor to be gutsy as anything, but he didn’t think of himself as gutsy. He thought of himself as pissed and filled with impotent rage, because, no matter what he did to Victor, he could never take back the childhood and the mother that were stolen from him. He pushed aside his personal vendettas, because he needed to focus on the present. If his uncles weren’t calling him, then either the security guy had reported that he was the last guy to see Victor alive (which made him suspect #1 in his uncles’ minds), or the remaining Adelaides were too busy running scared from the Filippos to put a call through.
Gabe’s thoughts about his uncles were cut short, when Sandefur returned with a complete surgeon’s uniform and a pair of dark shades she’d bought from a nurse. Inside a square package, with a printed warning label reading “Sanitize And Wash Hands Thoroughly Before Opening” and “Do Not Reuse: Discard After Single Surgery,” was a blue shirt, blue pants, blue gloves, a blue surgical mask, a blue hairnet, and blue shoe coverings.
“This will cover you head to toe. It’s still possible someone could recognize you, but it’s the best disguise we have,” she said.
“We’ll make it work,” he replied, taking the folded clothes and the shades.
“How are we going to convince the Filippo’s plant that you’ve left?”
“Spread the word that I left. Act like I scared you shitless and you’re relieved that I left. Tell people you overheard me taking a call from my uncles and that I left to meet them.”
“Will the plant buy it?”
“Largely depends on how good your acting skills are. Make him buy it.”
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Bruce, Martha, August, and Father Bush held hands as they prayed in the basement of St. Francis’ Assembly, as the Hudsons’ priest voiced the supplication the others quietly supported. They prayed that God would protect Bruce. Father Bush didn’t say
who
or
what
God was supposed to be protecting him from, because the adults had agreed not to worry August with details.
Bruce had called in to work this morning. He’d spent the day talking to Martha about the need to have surgery pronto, this very afternoon. This was the only day Dr. Sandefur could ensure that Staties would be there to protect him, he’d told her, and that was better coverage than the BPD could offer.
Martha’d been shocked to learn that the money had come through for the procedure. She was beginning to question her husband’s assessment of Gabe. If Gabe had intended to harm August, he would’ve hurt him by now, and he certainly wouldn’t have dropped him off at their doorstep. And August liked Gabe. He trusted Gabe. When she and Bruce had insisted that Gabe was a very bad man, August hadn’t denied the truth of their claim. Instead, he countered:
“I know he’s been very bad,” August had said in calm voice, as he rotated Zoggy’s ears in opposite directions. “And he’s killed people, like daddy killed mommy-in-heaven. But he said he was sorry. And he wanted me to forgive him. And I said yes I forgave him. And then he cried.”
Remembering August’s earlier recollection of Gabe, Martha squeezed August’s hand tighter, praying fervently. Father Bush kept the prayer going:
“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…”
As he listened to their priest’s prayer, Bruce also recalled August’s strange thoughts about Gabe. He also wondered why Gabe had turned over August, and why, after standing him up at Boston Common, he’d still paid for the surgery. And how did any of this square with Victor’s death? Bruce couldn’t fit the pieces together: they weren’t making sense. He and Martha finally had August, and Sara was working overtime to make sure they didn’t lose him.
Never dreamed in a million years she’d be on our side again.
Sara had said that Gabe had confessed to trashing her place. Sara also said Gabe had altruistic motives, that he seemed to genuinely care about the boy. No, none of it made any damn sense at all, but Bruce was going with it. He needed to drop the colitis and get on with his life. The disease worsened as he aged. Most days he packed a spare set of boxers and pants, in case incontinence hit him. His last major flare, which he’d suffered a year and a half ago, had left him hospitalized for two weeks, and he’d needed three blood transfusions to keep him afloat, as he’d filled toilet bowl after bowl with bloody diarrhea. He couldn’t fight this forever. He owed it to August to go through with this, he owed to himself, and, he choked up, he owed it to Martha… who’d stuck by him, flare after flare, hospitalization after hospitalization, failed drug after failed drug. Never whining about having to care for him when the colitis crippled him. Never complaining about reading the newspaper to him when the disease blurred his vision. Never fussing about mopping up his shit when he didn’t make it to the toilet in time. He owed her better days. And if he could live his remaining years in good health and finally raise a child with her, then she’d get the better days she had coming.
“And we ask these things on behalf of your Son and his Holy Mother,” Father Bush concluded, adding his own take to the prayer’s end, “Amen.”
The group released hands and met each the others’ eyes with probing wonder.
Do you feel better? Did praying help?
“Well,” Bruce started, eager to put this behind him, “I should be going. Surgery’s at 3, and it’s already 2 now.”
Martha looked away from him. She didn’t want to cry in front of their priest, and she needed to be strong for August’s sake. August was too young to know exactly why Bruce needed surgery, but he knew Bruce was seriously sick and that surgery should make him better. Bruce had convinced Martha to stay at home with August. Even though state troopers would be on duty to keep him safe, he didn’t like the thought of the two of them being in a situation that might turn ugly.
For his part, August stoically accepted the fact that he was going to spend the rest of his youth with the Hudsons, and he’d become okay with that fact. Yeah, they were older than Gabe and too old to expend a lot of energy playing with him, but they cared for him. He knew they cared for him because, as they’d explained, Bruce was having this surgery so he could be well enough to adopt him, and even a kid could tell that surgery was no small price to pay. And August had gotten over his desire to live with Gabe. He still loved Gabe and he knew Gabe loved him, but he’d discovered there was a lot about Gabe he didn’t know, and he decided that not knowing much about Gabe was for the best. Since Gabe’s confession, he hadn’t thought of Gabe as the strong, confident man he’d previously viewed him as, and it wasn’t because Gabe had cried or asked for his forgiveness. It was because Gabe had killed. August intuitively knew there was something extremely wrong with an adult who did that. No, he no longer wanted to live with Gabe. But he still missed him.
“I’ll call home and update you as soon as I’m able to,” Bruce assured them.
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Bruce arrived at St. Knox’s at 2:30. He didn’t like having thirty minutes to kill; it gave him too much time to think, to worry. But there was nothing else to do. He figured he’d go inside and chat up the Staties. When he walked through the hospital’s revolving glass door, a professionally dressed woman approached him with a knowing smile.
“You look like Bruce Hudson.”
“You got it.”
“I’m Becka Harper, Dr. Sandefur’s assistant. I was given a copy of your picture from the
Boston
Times
, and that’s how I knew you. I’ve been instructed to take you to the surgical unit. You needn’t spend time in the waiting room,” she said with a smile.
“Sounds good,” he said, following her.
The Staties must be hanging out in the surgical unit.
They walked past sick, injured, and elderly people suffering from an ungodly magnitude of problems and being pushed down hallways in wheelchairs, hospital beds, and rollators. Many looked much worse off than Bruce and groaned their laments.
You always think your own problems are insufferable until you’re surrounded with the suffering
, he thought. Passing the GI unit, where his regular appointments were held, several nurses eyed him with what he almost identified as alarming interest. It was as if they knew something about him, as if they’d been expecting him. Their eyes made ominous statements, but he wasn’t sure what they were saying. He pushed their unseemly stares out of mind and told himself that they were just rattled at the presence of Staties. When they reached the surgical unit, Sandefur’s assistant smiled at the receptionist sitting at the registration booth and shot her an authoritative nod, granting Bruce an unspoken permission to skip paper work altogether. The level of clearance needed to do that was impressive
.
The receptionist said nothing and smiled at both of them
. The staff looks well informed. They were obviously expecting me.
When Bruce entered the surgical unit, he was led to a curtained room with a bed and a hospital gown lying on it.
“We’ll give you a few moments to change into the gown,” Sandefur’s assistant said. “Just open the curtain when you’re ready.”
She stepped out of the room, pulling the curtain closed for his privacy. He undressed and slid the hospital gown over him, tying it in the back. He put his regular clothes in a bag labeled “Patient Belongings.” He breathed an anxious sigh and opened the curtain.
Standing in front of him, and apparently waiting on him to finish, was Dr. Sandefur.
“It’s good to see you, Bruce,” she greeted him. “If you’ll get in the hospital bed, we’ll get an IV going. Once you’re sedated, we’ll wheel the bed back to the operating room and begin.”
“I haven’t seen any state troopers around.”
“They’re here. They’re just hard to spot,” she said with a reassuring wink.
He appreciated her professional sense of humor.
These guys are good
, he thought.
He got in the hospital bed and handed his bag of belongings to a nurse. A different nurse stuck his arm with a needle and attached an IV pole to the back of the hospital bed. He closed his eyes and waited for the medicine to take effect. He heard a couple of clicking noises and peeked one eye open just enough to see a man in blue releasing the hospital bed’s brakes and pulling it forward.
I wonder how far we are from the operating room… and how long before the medicine…
He wouldn’t have another thought until his colon was removed.
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Shortly before she began operating on Bruce, Cathy Sandefur had paid a brief visit to Medical Records. She situated herself in front of a confidential electronic database and entered a 6 digit password, allowing her to pull up a menu of records. She scanned through the A’s, until she reached “Adelaide.” She then searched for first names beginning with G and was relieved to find only one: “Gabriel.” She double clicked the name and entered another string of letters and numbers, when a new password box demanded further authorization. She saw the name of the doctor who’d delivered him: Martin Platter. She pulled up operating records for the day Gabe had been born, and she discovered a deleted file for a former patient named Deborah Renee Fallon. There was a social security number, date of birth, an (old) address and phone number, and a complete health record of Fallon’s stay at St. Knox’s. She highlighted the relevant information and copied it into her browser’s display of Massachusetts Person Finder’s webpage. She found Debby Fallon’s current contact information and picked up the phone.
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“One day this shit will be the death of me,” Don Filippo laughed, filling the backseat of his Rolls with pungent cigar smoke. Faux concern aside, he liked the thought of dying of lung cancer. Dying that way meant his enemies didn’t do him in. It meant he’d go out on his own terms. The chauffer pulled Don’s limo behind St. Knox’s. Don addressed his most trusted goon:
“Make sure he’s dead, and make sure you scare the shit out of her so she doesn’t squeal. Tell her to make it look like an accident, like he bled to death during the operation and there was nothing she could do about it.”
“You want me to fuck her up after she sends the D.A. to hell?”
“Nah, that’d look suspicious. If we keep her alive, it really will look like a medical accident. But snap a few photos of her doing the deed. That’ll be insurance against her turning on us, and we can use the photos to impress whoever needs impressing.”
“Gotcha.”
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Gabe had never felt like hurling so strongly. He’d seen blood before and lots of it, a good deal of which had been spilled by his own hands. But he’d never seen all these organs gyrating, squirming, seeming to know there was an invader in the body. Sandefur was halfway through the removal of Bruce’s colon. Disgusted as he was, he couldn’t take his eyes off the medical horror unfolding in front of him. Everyone present was entirely decked out in blue surgeon’s garb. Forcing himself to swallow down his vomit, he reminded himself about the importance of sticking around to make sure that no outside interference turned things foul… and that was when he heard a key being inserted into the operating room’s door. Normally, operating rooms were kept unlocked, in case extra docs needed to make a mad dash inside to help a struggling patient. But this time the door was locked at Sandefur’s order (and much to the confusion of her clueless nurses, all of whom were clean staffers). He knew the sound of the door being unlocked signaled trouble.