Authors: Jeff Gunhus
“I won’t be very long,” Lauren assured the emergency room nurse who volunteered to watch after the girls. “Page me if you need me or if you get busy.”
“Take your time Dr. Tremont. We haven’t seen a patient here all day,” Nurse Haddie said.
Lauren kissed each of the girls on the cheek. They were already tearing through the box of medical supplies the nurse had given them. Lauren knew how the game went and soon band-aids and gauze would be everywhere as the girls took turns being the patient and the doctor. It always made a mess but she preferred it to when they played house. She wanted her daughters to know from an early age that they could do anything they wanted. She didn’t believe in pressuring them and she respected women who stayed home to raise their kids, but it secretly delighted her whenever the girls said they wanted to be doctors like their mom.
“Just remember that you ladies are going to clean up whatever mess you make.” The girls paused for a second and then went back to their game with a new set of giggles. “Be good.” She turned to the nurse, “They had Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a treat on the way here. Good luck.”
The sounds of the girls playing faded as Lauren walked down the hallway toward the elevator. With the waning sound, Lauren felt her mind shift from being a mother to being a doctor. And one persona was no less protective than the other. She had promised Jack that she would drive straight down to Baltimore but she couldn’t resist making this quick stop at the hospital. A patient of hers had died and she wasn’t satisfied with the answers she was getting.
She flipped through Felicia Rodriguez’s file as she waited for the elevator to arrive. She saw the notation where the blood was drawn to be sent to the CDC. Below that were notations by various nurses regarding IV changes, temperature, blood pressure readings. All seemed normal. Then the entry that made her stomach turn. “Massive coronary. Attempts to resuscitate unsuccessful. TOD 17:14 hr” TOD stood for time of death. Lauren recognized the handwriting. Dr. Stanley Mansfield.
She shook her head. Something felt wrong. Felicia was her patient and no one called her when it happened. Stanley had even been the attending physician when the girl died, and still he hadn’t called. She rationalized that Stanley had just been looking out for her, trying to give her time to be with her family. But still, something felt out of place. As she worked through the problem it did occur to her that with so little sleep and the stress from last night, the only thing out of place might be her.
The elevator door opened. Lauren walked in, thankful to have the elevator to herself. She didn’t think she could bring herself to engage in small talk today. She pressed ‘B’ and the elevator dropped down toward the basement, down to Midland Hospital’s morgue.
The basement was one area untouched by the renovations to the building over the years. The walls were still bare brick just as they’d been for over a hundred years. A maze of pipes ran in crisscross patterns overhead, attached to the ceiling with thick metal brackets drilled into the masonry. The floor was painted a no-skid industrial yellow in a poor attempt to brighten up the gloomy surroundings. The morgue was at the far end of the hallway that extended from the elevator. To get there, corpses were treated to a gurney ride past laundry rooms, supply cabinets and storage areas.
The end of the road for the bodies was a large stainless steel door, similar to an oversized subzero refrigerator, large enough to fit a gurney through. The door appeared surprisingly modern in the turn of the century basement, more a high-tech bank vault than a door. On the other side of the sub-zero doors, bodies found refrigerated temperatures and a choice of ten separate ‘beds’ for their temporary resting places. Morbid as it was, Lauren knew that the nurses and orderlies who had access to a key sometimes came down here on their breaks during the hot summer days. A strange place to eat a sandwich, but at least it was cool. The morgue was small but Midland had only run out of room once.
Stanley Mansfield had told her the story on her first day. There was a freak storm in early December back in 1986. A freezing rain coated everything with a full inch of ice, turning the Interstate into a demolition derby. A semi truck lost control and did the most damage, wiping out a whole row of cars pulled over to the side of the road to wait out the storm. After rescue workers sorted through the mess all ten beds in the morgue were spoken for. Somehow two terminal patients, a Mrs. Gunther and a Mrs. Brookside, both ready to get on with dying, found out about the predicament. The women were southern belles of the old breed and they proclaimed they would not die until a space was available for them. True to their words, they held on for a few more days. They died the same day they were told the morgue was ready for them. Stanley swore that he believed they would still be alive today if he had just kept telling them there was no room for them in the morgue.
Like many of Stanley’s stories, it was charming, but always with a disturbing undercurrent. Lauren brushed it aside. Most of the doctors she worked with developed gallows humor over time. It was just a way of coping with some of the horrible sights that came with the job. She had just never become comfortable with the jokes. She never laughed about death.
Lauren fished in her pocket and found her keys. The morgue was always kept locked since security into the basement was minimal. The days of bodysnatching were long gone, but the morgue was kept under lock and key because of an over eager reporter eleven years earlier. The reporter, a kid from the local paper, snuck in through the basement and photographed the bodies. He had thought it would make a great story about lack of hospital security. Instead the prank landed him in jail for a few weeks. Still, once the story got out there was a public outcry for better security which led to the space age doors in front of her. Lauren smiled. Another Stanley story with a twist.
There was a soft
whoosh
of air as she opened the stainless steel door. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She checked the log book to find which drawer contained Felicia Rodriguez’s body. With a grunt, she pulled open drawer three and slid it from the wall. Empty.
Lauren slid the drawer back in a rechecked the log book. She had read it correctly. Felicia was supposed to be in number three. Lauren sighed. Someone must have entered the wrong drawer. It happened sometimes, but it was sloppy.
She heaved on the handle for drawer number one. Empty. Drawer number two. Empty. Again and again, she tugged open the heavy drawers only to find them empty. By the time she got to number nine there was sweat pouring down her face and she was out of breath. She pulled hard at the handle and groaned on seeing that the drawer was empty. She laughed in spite of herself, wishing she’d started with drawer ten instead. “Murphy’s law,” she said to herself, pulling open the last drawer.
Empty.
Lauren went back to the log book. It clearly indicated the date and time when the body was brought down to the morgue. There was no indication that the body had been removed for any reason. There were strong protocols in place when bodies were moved, especially when the body posed a possible public safety threat. She and Stanley had discussed that on the phone. The body would need to be kept at Midland until results of the blood work were back from the CDC.
She threw the log book back in place and went to the door. She pulled on the handle. The door didn’t move. She tried again.
Nothing.
She was locked in.
She grabbed the handle and leaned her weight on top of it. She grunted with the effort. No matter how hard she pushed, the handle wouldn’t budge. Someone must have locked the door from the outside.
She stepped back from the door, tears welling up in her eyes. She was trapped. She felt her heart thumping in her chest. Her hands shook.
Then she noticed the sign on the side of the door. She rubbed her eyes to clear away the tears and started to laugh. God, she was tired. She needed to be careful that she didn’t make any mistakes that could hurt someone. She promised herself that she wouldn’t treat any patients today. Definitely not today. Not until she got some sleep. Not until got a hold of herself.
She reached over and pushed the large button marked, “Open Door.” The morgue door clicked and swung open.
Lauren sucked in a deep breath to calm her frayed nerves. There was too much going on. Jack’s hallucinations, Sarah’s bizarre writing, strangers stalking her house and now her patient’s body going AWOL. She was stretched too thin. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe she should have gone straight down to her friend’s house in Baltimore. She needed to get some perspective and a little time and distance would give her a chance to sort things out, come up with an explanation for what was happening to her family. But she felt a responsibility to Felicia too. She needed to understand what had happened to her.
As strange as the last few days had been at home, she expected to deal with emotional issues there. It was part of marriage and part of raising a family. She and Jack had brought their marriage back from the edge of the cliff they had found themselves on in California. All the resentment and alienation brought on by their jobs and fast lifestyle seemed now like a lifetime ago. Seeing Jack deal with the death of Melissa Gonzales and helping him cope with it had reminded her of how much she loved him. The result of that horrible experience was that they were a team again. The decision to move to Prescott City and work on rebuilding their lives proved it. She started to believe that they could handle anything life threw at them, just as long as they stayed together.
But the hospital was supposed to be different. Her work was her constant. The calm methodology of science was her refuge. Now, when she could really use the reassurance of normalcy, she faced another mystery. As tired as she was, she wasn’t about to give up. If anything, her lack of sleep had made her more emotional. Now she was beyond being curious. She was angry.
Lauren headed down the hall back to the elevator, the heavy clacking of her low heeled shoes hitting the concrete floor telegraphing her mood. She had every intention of finding out what happened to Felicia Rodriguez’s body and she knew where to start asking questions.
Steam rose up through the small hole in the coffee lid as Joe Lonetree raised his cup to his lips. He slurped at the hot liquid, savoring the bitterness of the dark roast. There was a time when he wouldn’t have allowed himself this caffeine fix, but that was also a time when he wouldn’t have needed the pick-me-up either. He’d only slept eight hours in the last forty. That much sleep would have once seemed a luxury, but he felt the fatigue wearing on him. Now, sitting in the Ford Bronco across from Dr. Scott Moran’s office, he fought against the urge to nod off. When this was all over, he planned to sleep for a week. Some place warm with white beaches and fruity drinks.
The last year was a blur to him, a series of bizarre revelations that let him to this sleepy mountain town from half way around the world. He’d come a long way in a little time. And the change in geography was nothing compared to the other changes he had endured. In the last twelve months his belief system had been stripped bare and then rebuilt with the old stories he thought he’d abandoned long ago. The old beliefs, for years sealed away in a remote corner of his mind, had escaped their banishment and lived once again. His father would have been proud to know his wayward son had finally returned to him, finally believed in his life’s work after so many years of doubt.
Too bad the old man wasn’t around anymore.
A quick look through the parking lot confirmed that Jack Tremont was still in the shrink’s office. Lonetree leaned his head back and allowed his eyes to close. They burned at first, but the darkness soothed his tired eyes and the burning faded into a comfortable inkiness.
He allowed his mind to wander through the flashes of childhood memory that had been dredged up since returning to America. Small flashes of his father’s face, snatches of conversation, images from a past he had worked hard to forget. There was the living room back in Arizona. Not in the nice house they lived in before his mother died, but the other place. The place his father took them to hide. A couch that slumped in the middle from broken springs. Fake wood panels that peeled off the trailer walls. Bright orange carpet that didn’t reach all the way across the floor. A few landscape watercolors that hung on the wall, each one hanging at a crooked angle, the frames covered with thick dust. And brown bottles everywhere. Old Milwaukee. Empty, but with enough left in them to fill the air with the reek of stale beer. His mother would never have allowed the house to look like that. When she was alive they had dignity as a family. After her death, they were poor. Worse, they were reservation poor. Two boys, six and ten, with a father who seemed intent on living out every Native American stereotype he could.
There, in that living room, his father sat him down and explained his mother’s death to him. His father was a big man, wide enough to have to turn sideways to fit through the trailer’s small doorways. Tall so that he had to bow his head to walk in his own house. That day he bowed his head even though he was sitting on the couch, his face dark and brooding, his breath stinking from alcohol and cigarettes. Lonetree still remembered every second of the encounter. It was the first time he had been scared of his father. And ashamed of him.
After explaining how cancer had taken his mother away, his father made him kneel to the floor and pray with him. He asked forgiveness for being away from home so much during her illness. He prayed that she understood the importance of his work. Then, slurring his words and swaying unsteadily, he made his case to his son why he ought to be forgiven. He explained his life’s work in a disjointed, rambling lecture. The story that came out that day was a bizarre tale, so strange and bewildering that young Joe Lonetree could do nothing but stare open mouthed through it all. Even with his ten year old imagination, he could not bring himself to believe what his father told him. It wasn’t like his other stories, of chiefs and tribes and mountain gods which his father used to tell with a grin. His father told
this
story with a shaking voice and darting eye paranoia. This wasn’t just mythology or legend to him. He thought it was real.
At the end of the story the big man grabbed his son and held him close, promising not to let the bad things hurt him or his brother. The little boy in the dirty trailer hung limp in his father’s embrace, crying into his shoulder. Not from fear, but from understanding that he had not only lost his mother, but now his father as well. One to a disease he did not understand; the other to booze and a story he refused to believe.
Before she died, his father was a college professor, an author, a stable figure in his life. All that remained of that man was a delusional drunk, a paranoid fool who had lost his mind. Little Joe Lonetree wept in the trailer with his father. It was the last time they shared an embrace.
Lonetree opened his eyes with a grunt. He looked around to orient himself, blinking back against the dull winter sun. He glanced at the dashboard clock. Ten minutes had flashed by. He checked the parking lot. Tremont’s car was still there.
With a sigh, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. He felt sick to his stomach from his daydream. At least he woke up before what had happened next. Before he called his father a drunk and a liar. Before he blamed him for his mother’s death. An accusation he never recanted to the old man while he was alive. It amazed him how far from that living room he had to travel before he understood his own father. The world he’d inhabited since his eighteenth birthday was different than anything he’d ever imagined, and in some ways as terrible as the fantasy world described to him that day.
The atrocities he’d seen in service to his country were as bad as any dream, especially now surrounded by the picture perfect Americana of Prescott City. He glanced around him. Store fronts with neatly painted wooden signs. Wrought iron lamp posts that, at night, lit clean sidewalks filled with clean people. Nicely trimmed grass in the open areas. Nothing out of place. Everything just so.
This was what the military told him he was protecting. But he doubted the happy residents of Prescott City would sleep well if they knew the things that he had seen and done on their behalf. The mangled embrace of corpses heaped together in the mass graves of Bosnia. The back walls of caves in Afghanistan covered with a red slime punctuated by the occasional white tooth, the residue of Taliban soldiers smashed against rock by thermobaric shock waves. An encampment of Abu Sayyef militants in the Philippines reduced to bubbling flesh by hemorrhagic fever. All images witnessed, and sometimes caused, by Lt. Joseph Lonetree, United States Navy SEAL Lonetree felt out of place in Prescott City, like a Hell’s Angel who wandered onto the Andy Griffith show. Then again, he knew all he had to do was sleep and the images from his past were just a nightmare away.
At least the war zones where he’d lived for the past fifteen years had looked the part. Bombed out rubble, deep cave bunkers, hot jungles. They all fit his idea of enemy territory. But in this place everything seemed normal. The enemy blended in perfectly and, in his mind, that made everyone a suspect. Lonetree started to feel the entire town was somehow unnatural. Too clean. Too perfect. Walking down the street felt like watching a living history demonstration, as if everyone were in on a collective agreement to create an image of normalcy.
He wondered what the shrink Jack Tremont was talking to would think of this particular paranoia. The thought brought a smile to his lips. He knew he would make an interesting case for a team of psychiatrists. The Navy had offered him counseling a dozen or more times, a product of a kinder, gentler military. But it was common knowledge in the ranks that the offer wasn’t serious. To accept was to be done with fieldwork, a sign you couldn’t hack it. Paranoia was an asset in the field. It had kept him and the men who followed him alive through impossible situations, even though his reputation pointed to something more than simple paranoia as the key to his mission effectiveness. The rumor was that Lonetree had ‘special gifts’ that kept his men alive.
The rumors followed him from assignment to assignment. Whispers trailed him whenever he walked through a mess tent. A spark of recognition attended any introduction to another special forces member. Men volunteered for missions when his name was attached to it. It was more than the deference given by soldiers to the true warriors in their midst. The rumors said that the lieutenant
knew
things in the field. And his knowing kept his men alive. A sixth sense. Indian magic.
Lonetree knew a sniper was waiting in the next building.
Lonetree sensed a cave was rigged to blow.
Lonetree knew his old man was dead of a heart attack back home…a day before the phone call came.
Nothing was ever said to his face, but he knew the stories were out there. He didn’t think it was anything more than being careful and following his instincts, but he did nothing to dispel the speculation about his strange powers. The stories gave his men more confidence in him. And it ensured people left him alone. Just the way he liked it.
A year ago, after news of his brother’s death reached him during a tour in Afghanistan, he ended his military life. His commanding officer, Colonel Goldman, was shocked when Lonetree didn’t re-up. But he didn’t put up a fight. After the things Lonetree had seen and done, the colonel understood if he wanted to go home. He’d shaken the man’s hand and wished him luck on his new life, told him to call if he was ever in trouble and needed some help. Secretly, he hoped Lonetree would never contact him. The colonel knew the stories, and feared the man as much as he respected him.
Now Lonetree was solo but he still was on-mission. And he intended to stay alive through his current engagement. At least until he settled some scores. He’d led a life of killing and death, somehow knowing that he was chasing away the demons that had surrounded him from childhood. The demons his father had told him about. The same demons that he now believed he was close to catching. The ones he had sworn to destroy.
After the horrors that filled his life, evil forced on him by his military masters from above, it seemed infinitely just that he could now use his killing skills for personal vengeance. He was a hunter-killer and he meant to finish the job that both his father and little brother had died attempting. He would avenge their deaths and send the demons back to Hell where they belonged.
Jack Tremont was somehow linked to his mission. Like so many things, Lonetree couldn’t articulate how he knew it, he just did. And instinct was what he trusted more than anything. Except his instinct didn’t tell him how Tremont fit into it all. Was he a potential ally or an enemy?
Lonetree knew the demons came in every disguise, but Tremont’s actions so far indicated he didn’t know what he was involved in. Lonetree had a feeling that, one way or another, Jack Tremont would prove useful, maybe even pivotal in bringing things to a conclusion. He knew impatience led to mistakes, but he felt he had waited long enough. It was time to take some chances. It was time to make a move.