Tender Mercies: Book 2 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jason had an air cast over his wrist - the damage had been a little more substantial then he had first thought - and a bandage over the fifteen stitches on his arm. He walked down the hall at the hospital pondering the latest events. Two of the three invaders to his penthouse had been slain by Yamara and himself, although he had to admit that Yamara had actually scored the kills. The police had found nobody. Neither on the street below nor in his apartment. Blood yes, lots of blood, and not all of it Yamara's or his. That alone seemed to be what had saved them, though the detective in charge was still not cutting Jason any slack.

More appropriately, Yamara was being cut no slack. She had no proof of citizenship. No drivers license. Not even a birth certificate. Fortunately, she had been injured seriously enough to be unable to answer any questions yet. Jason had informed the hospital that any bills her care racked up should be charged to his account, and he had stopped in at least twice daily to check on her. Her strange accent would not help matters when the time came for the police to talk to her. Jason hoped to get to her first, for in the back of his mind he had began to have a sneaking suspicion.

He entered her room after showing his identification to the policeman stationed outside of her room. He sat down next to her bed and looked at her. Her eyes were open, a sign he took to be a good one since she had seemed to steadily worsen since being admitted to the hospital. Open yes, but focused no. They held a glazed look and beads of sweat broke out open her forehead as her body struggled to fight. Jason knew the doctors were mystified by this, though they were hesitant to admit it to him. Her wound was serious yes, but it was clean and her symptoms seemed to be those of someone suffering from a major infection.

"Yamara, what's wrong with you, why aren't you getting any better?" Jason asked softly, staring into her eyes. She twitched a little at his voice and blinked a few times in an attempt to focus on him.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she was able to make any sound. Then finally she gasped out in a ragged whisper, "poison!"

Jason leaned back, shocked at the word. She tried to say more, causing him to lean back in quickly. "Must… leave."

The three words had exhausted her. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed. Jason ground his teeth in frustration and looked at the machinery around her bed. Everything looked right, from the intravenous drip to the monitoring equipment. He had seen far worse set ups in his time in the military, yet he had never seen anything like this. Then again, he had to remind himself, he had only been certified as a paramedic, not a doctor, and even that was years ago.

After a few more minutes of pondering, Jason decided on a course of action. Resolved, he got up and walked out of the room. He nodded to the cop outside the room and kept going, reaching for his cellular phone the moment he got out of the hospital.

"Cowboy," He said into it after a few minutes of pleasantries with his friend from his time in the Air Force, "I need a favor."

At 19:00:00 hours that very night, or 7:00 PM to the average person, Jason did his best to look nondescript in the stolen nurses uniform. He pushed a seemingly peaceful and borderline unconscious man in a wheelchair down the hallway. The man wore a hospital gown and looked the part of a critically ill patient with tubes going into his arm and waxy pallor of his skin.

Moments before reaching the police officer - a different one then the one that had been posted earlier today Jason noted - the man in the wheelchair broke into action. With a manic cry of glee, he burst out of the chair and tore the tubes out of his arm. Turning to Jason, who appeared stunned by the sudden movement, he leapt at him. He landed, fist leading the way into Jason's face. Jason fell back and stumbled to the floor, blood already flowing down over his face.

The man, stopped and looked around then, crouched low with his eyes wide an his breath coming quickly. The cop was slow to react and only now was he reaching for his pistol. The former false patient growled at him and took off running back the way Jason had brought him. In a true defender of the public fashion, the officer took off after him. A few other nurses and orderlies trailed along, intending to aid in whatever way they could.

Jason slowly picked himself up, shaking his head and fighting the urge to sneeze the blood out of his nose. A nurse came over to help him but he just waved her away. "I'll be alright. Get that crazy son of a bitch!"

She nodded and took off after the rest of the crowd, leaving only a few stunned onlookers only now coming to their senses from the sudden events. Jason pinched his nose shut to try and stop the bleeding and grabbed onto the wheel chair with his other hand to steady himself. He moved over to the closest door and moved through it, pulling the wheelchair behind. It just happened to be Yamara's room.

He moved quickly then, stopping only long enough to step into the bathroom and glance in the mirror to see how much of a mess his blood nose had made on him. Sure enough, his shirt had several dark splotches on it. At least his nose had already stopped bleeding so he did not risk much more in the way of a mess.

Jason returned to the bed and quickly checked on Yamara. Her leg was bandaged and not a concern to him, but her belly wound did bother him. He pulled the sheets away from her and saw how securely bandaged it was. The bandage appeared fairly fresh, so he left it on without checking it. He grabbed a couple of cotton swabs out of a drawer and carefully removed the intravenous port. Then he turned off all of the monitors, hoping nobody at the nurses station noticed right away, given the recent excitement that surely had them talking. Besides that, the nurses station was down the hall a ways at a junction, hopefully they would not notice. Jason pulled the sensors off of Yamara next and removed the catheter from her, wincing as he did so. He had a few unpleasant memories of catheters and did not envy her in the least.

Fortunately for Yamara, she was oblivious to the world. He picked her up from the bed and put her in the wheelchair, using padded Velcro straps to secure her in it. He made certain that her hospital gown covered her from any indecency and slipped back in the bathroom long enough to wash his blood from his face and neck. That accomplished, he returned to Yamara and pushed her out of her room and headed down the hall towards the elevator.

He heard a commotion from another wing and new that Cowboy was still leading his pursuers on a merry chase. Or not so merry, Jason thought to himself, remembering his very sore nose. He made it to an elevator without incident and punched the button for the bottom floor, hoping the rest of his hastily planned rescue attempt went as well.

Yamara moaned softly in the elevator. Jason cursed, hoping she would not gain consciousness. His hopes were answer after a few tense seconds as her breathing returned to a deep, regular pattern. It seemed almost healthy to him, healthier then it had been in her hospital room.

When the elevator doors opened Jason half expected to see a squad of cops waiting for him. He breathed a sigh of relief to see that there was none. He pushed Yamara out of the elevator and headed towards the emergency section of the hospital. He could not help but smirk to himself at the irony of what he was doing. He pushed her through the busy emergency ward and headed towards the ambulances. Nobody stopped him. After all, where else would you find a paramedic with blood splattered clothing if not the emergency section?

Trouble reared it's head when Jason was transferring Yamara from her wheelchair to the stretcher in the ambulance. He had just began to secure her to it with the straps when somebody came up behind the vehicle and looked in.

"What the hell are you doing? This is my bus, buddy!" the man said.

Jason turned and looked at him. He hopped out of the vehicle and looked at the markings on the back of it while sneaking a quick glance around to see who else had a line of sight to them. "Shit!" Jason exclaimed. "I don't believe this! I'm supposed to do a transfer and I grabbed the wrong ambulance. Sorry about that."

The man laughed good naturedly and clapped Jason on the shoulder. "No problem, my man. Here, lemme help you just swap stretchers with the one you're supposed to be in."

Jason thanked the EMT and they managed to quickly switch Yamara to another ambulance. Jason was amazed at how smoothly he still did things, considering it had been years since he had been in the trauma business. Then again, this was a painfully calm situation here, nobody was shooting at him and nothing was exploding nearby. In a few more moments, Jason was away, driving his stolen ambulance down the streets. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small circuit board with a button on it. He pushed the button and grinned as somewhere back in the hospital a detonator set off a tiny flame that ignited a couple of particularly foul smelling and smoky chemicals. He turned on the scanner in his commandeered vehicle and was satisfied to hear that all emergency traffic was being redirected to other hospitals due to the fire alarm going off.

That was also Cowboy's signal to get out of dodge. He gave up on the cat and mouse game he was playing in the hospital, which was good because he was running out of places to run. He abandoned all pretense at being a madman and increased his speed, heading directly for a stairwell. In a flash he was through the door and heading up the stairs. He ran until he reached the roof and burst out onto it, noticing the fading light as the sun had begun to set. Grinning at the adventure, he stripped off his hospital gown and slipped on the jeans and black Harley - Davidson t-shirt arranged beside the door. A few more seconds and he had a decent pair of socks and his combat boots on, then he was off at a run again, covering the distance to the edge of the roof where he could drop down onto another of the multi-tiered roofs of the hospital. A few more such trips and he managed to land on the blacktop parking lot, all signs of pursuit lost. He ambled over to where his hog was parked and, with a contemptuous roar of exhaust, road out into the night.

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"You son of a bitch, you damn near broke my nose!" Jason said, scowling at a hurt looking Cowboy. For his part, the look was genuine, since Jason had just leveled a punch into his jaw that sent him stumbling back a few steps.

"You wanted it to look real," Cowboy said, massaging the side of his face where the blow had landed. "I think you knocked a tooth loose."

"Serves you right." Jason said, smiling in spite of himself. Cowboy chuckled and glanced over at the brown van parked nearby. Jason had abandoned the ambulance a few blocks away from the hospital and switched to the van in the hopes of making any pursuit, real or imagined, that much more difficult.

"This ain't like you Jay, going all out for a chick like this," Cowboy muttered, heading towards it as his curiosity got the better of him.

"Naw, I owed her. Sorta. I think," Jason said, wondering whether he really did or not. "I'm not to sure about much with her, to be honest, but I do know that I nearly got her killed and I owed her for that."

Cowboy chuckled. "You're always letting broads get you in trouble man, when you gonna learn?"

"You should talk Bill," Jason responded, clapping him on the back and walking towards the van with him. "Remember that waitress in Thailand?" That brought a gale of laughter from both of them. The joke had been on Cowboy, who had been bound and determined to land her in bed that night. Only to find out later that she had been more then just a little waitress… she had been a lot of man too, in all the wrong places!

"Okay," he admitted after they stopped laughing. "But at least I never broke any laws for one!"

"Wrong, my friend," Jason pointed out. "1997 in Saudi, we damn near had to scrub the entire mission, remember?"

"I didn't know she was one of the Sheiks wives!" The laughed some more and came to a stop beside the van.

"Okay Cowboy, you may hear some shit over the next couple of days that are way weirder then anything any of us ever came up with. You're the only one of the old boys that I trust to keep your cool here, so just hang in tough and it'll all work out, okay?"

Bill Williams smirked. "Sure thing Jay, try your best. Keep in mind, I'm a biker and you see some pretty weird shit when you're a biker."

Jason nodded, he had ridden with Bill a few times over the years himself and he had to admit, Cowboy had a way for finding some pretty wild times, biker or no. He shrugged and opened up the door on the side of the van. The inside lit up with the sickly yellow light from the dome fixture. Yamara was sleeping peacefully on the cot inside, in spite of her ghastly appearance thanks to the poor yellow lighting.

"Kinda cute, but you've done better," Cowboy said, checking her out.

"She cleans up nice," Jason grunted, stepping inside and moving around to the other side. Cowboy slipped in and shut the door behind him.

Jason rummaged around in the dark and pulled out a penlight. Turning it on so he could see, he opened one of Yamara's eyelids and flashed the light in it. Almost before it had happened her hand gripped his wrist tightly, twisting it painfully and redirecting the light of the flashlight towards the ceiling.

"Shit!" Cowboy said, surprised at how quickly she had moved. "I thought this bitch was almost dead?"

"Yamara!" Jason hissed, ignoring his friend. "It's me, Jason. We rescued you from the hospital."

The grip loosened slowly, and then she let go. In the reflected light from the penlight, Jason saw Yamara looking at Bill and appraising him carefully. "That's Bill, Yamara. He helped me get you out of there."

"Call me Cowboy, ma'am," Bill said, offering his hand. When she did not take it he just shrugged and pulled it back. "Kind of a cold fish for owing us a lot of thanks."

Yamara glanced back at Jason then. He expected her to be frightened and was surprised at what he saw in that brief glance. Suffice to say, fear was not it.

She opened her mouth to speak but only coughed dryly. Jason rummaged around the side of the van for a moment then brought her a bottle of water. He unscrewed the top and raised it to her mouth. She sipped from it carefully, nourishing the water as though she were afraid to spill any. Jason and Bill both noted that she seemed to have a respect for it unknown to most people save for those native to dry and arid climates.

"Take me to the inn named Donnie's Place," she finally said in a thick and dry whisper.

"I got something that'll help that throat of yours," Bill said.

"Jesus Cowboy!" Jason snapped, immediately assuming he was acting true to form.

He held up a small packet of cough drops then and fixed him with a hurt expression. Jason had the good grace to blush a bit and smile. "Sorry about that. You might want to try one, Yamara, they are very soothing."

Yamara just shook her head and continued to drink the water slowly, pausing long enough to make sure it settled. Jason nodded towards the front and Cowboy threaded his way between the seats to hop in the drivers seat. "One first rate dive, coming up!" He said cheerily. Bill always did enjoy hotels that offered both nightly and hourly rates.

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Settled into the motel, Yamara's color had already begun to return to her. She moved a little stiffly, but was surprisingly limber. After some repeated urgings, Jason convinced her to let him check her wounds, which he was amazed to see well on their way to a healthy recovery. When he pressed for some sort of explanation for her remarkable healing, he was met with a stony silence. She was still weak from whatever had poisoned her, but even while weak she was a great deal stronger then she looked, and therefore not a person either of the ex-special forces men intended to underestimate.

After sitting about a bit uncomfortably for some time in silence, Bill broke out a deck of cards and offered a friendly game of poker. Yamara's eyes narrowed briefly before she shook her head and glanced away. Jason shook his head as well and stared after Yamara.

"Cowboy, go take a walk, would ya?" He finally said, wondering if Bill's absence would make Yamara a bit more talkative.

Bill scowled but hopped to his feet and snapped off a clumsy mocking salute Jason's way. He pulled a pack of Reds out of his leather jacket and sucked one into his mouth, lighting it with his lighter on his way out the door. With the door shut, Jason turned back to face Yamara, who was studying the windows along the back wall of the single room lodging.

"Tell me a story, Yamara," Jason said, "and make it a good one because it's been a lousy week so far."

She glanced back at him and seemed briefly troubled. Then her eyes adopted a cold emotionless stare that he had glimpsed in her a few times before. He was about to give up and follow Bill outside when she closed her eyes and nodded her head. "I think I'm only twenty-three years old," she said, her voice soft and quite, a betrayal to the hard nature Jason had glimpsed within her.

"Only twenty-three and I feel so old..."

Continued in Chapter 3

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