‘Excuse me,’ Kelly said in his gentlest voice. ‘Is there somebody upstairs who knows how to fix a broken hand?’ Kelly had wrapped his fingers around the surgeon’s smaller, more delicate hand, and was pressing the fingers inward, just a little.
A security guard came through the door just then, drawn by the noise of the argument. The doctor’s eyes went that way at once.
‘He won’t get here fast enough to help you, doctor. How many bones in the human hand, sir?’ Kelly asked.
‘Twenty-eight,’ the doctor replied automatically.
‘Want to go for fifty-six?’ Kelly tightened his pressure.
The doctor’s eyes closed on Kelly’s, and the smaller man saw a face whose expression was neither angry nor pleased, merely there, looking at him as though he were an object, whose polite voice was a mocking expression of superiority. Most of all, he knew that the man would do it.
‘Apologize to the lady,’ Kelly said next.
‘I do not abase myself before women!’ the doctor hissed. A little more pressure on the hand caused his face to change. Only a little additional force, he knew, and things would begin to separate.
‘You have very bad manners, sir. You only have a little time to learn better ones.’ Kelly smiled. ‘Now,’ he commanded. ‘Please.’
‘I’m sorry, Nurse O’Toole,’ the man said, without really meaning it, but the humiliation was still a bleeding gash on his character. Kelly released the hand. Then he lifted the doctor’s name tag, and read it before staring again into his eyes.
‘Doesn’t that feel better, Doctor Khofan? Now, you won’t ever yell at her again, at least not when she’s right and you’re wrong, will you? And you won’t ever threaten her with bodily harm, will you?’ Kelly didn’t have to explain why that was a bad idea. The doctor was flexing his fingers to work off the pain. ‘We don’t like that here, okay?’
‘Yes, okay,’ the man said, wanting to run away.
Kelly took his hand again, shaking it with a smile, just enough pressure for a reminder. ‘I’m glad you understand, sir. I think you can go now.’
And Dr Khofan left, walking past the security guard without so much as a look. The guard did give one to Kelly, but let it go at that.
‘Did you have to do that?’ Sandy asked.
‘What do you mean?’ Kelly replied, turning his head around.
‘I was handling it,’ she said, now moving to the door.
‘Yes, you were. What’s the story, anyway?’ Kelly asked in a reasonable voice.
‘He prescribed the wrong medication, elderly man with a neck problem, he’s allergic to the med, and it’s on the chart,’ she said, the words spilling out rapidly as Sandy’s stress started bleeding off. ‘It could have really hurt Mr Johnston. Not the first time with him, either. Doctor Rosen might get rid of him this time, and he wants to stay here. He likes pushing nurses around, too. We don’t like that. But I was handling it!’
‘Next time I’ll let him break your nose, then.’ Kelly waved to the door. There wouldn’t be a next time; he’d seen that in the little bastard’s eyes.
‘And then what?’ Sandy asked.
‘Then he’ll stop being a surgeon for a while. Sandy, I don’t like seeing people do things like that, okay? I don’t like bullies, and I really don’t like seeing them push women around.’
‘You really hurt people like that?’
Kelly opened the door for her. ‘No, not very often. Mainly they listen to my warnings. Look at it this way, if he hits you, you get hurt and he gets hurt. This way nobody gets hurt except for a few bent feelings, maybe, and nobody ever died from that.’
Sandy didn’t press the issue. Partly she was annoyed, feeling that she’d stood up well to the doctor, who wasn’t all that good a surgeon and was far too careless on his post-op technique. He only did charity patients, and only those with simple problems, but that, she knew, was beside the point. Charity patients were people, and people merited the best care the profession could provide. He had frightened her. Sandy had been glad of the protection, but somehow felt cheated that she hadn’t faced Khofan down herself. Her incident report would probably sink him once and for all, and the nurses on the unit would trade chuckles about it. Nurses in hospitals, like NCOs in any military unit, really ran things, after all, and it was a foolish doctor who crossed them.
But she’d learned something about Kelly this day. The look she’d seen and been unable to forget had not been an illusion. Holding Khofan’s right hand, the look on John’s face had been – well, no expression at all, not even amusement at his humiliation of the little worm, and that was vaguely frightening to her.
‘So what’s wrong with your car?’ Kelly asked, pulling onto Broadway and heading north.
‘If I knew that, it wouldn’t be broke.’
‘Yeah, I guess that makes sense,’ Kelly allowed with a smile.
He’s a changeling, Sandy told herself. He turns things on and off. With Khofan he was like a gangster or something. First he tried to calm things down with a reasonable word, but then he acted like he was going to inflict a permanent injury. Just like that. No emotion at all. Like squashing a bug. But if that’s true, what is he? Was it temper? No, she told herself, probably not. He’s too in control for that. A psychopath? That was a scary thought – but no, that wasn’t possible either. Sam and Sarah wouldn’t have a friend like that, and they’re two very smart people.
What, then?
‘Well, I brought my toolbox. I’m pretty good on diesels. Aside from our little friend, how was work?’
‘A good day,’ Sandy said, glad again for the distraction. ‘We discharged one we were really worried about. Little black girl, three, fell out of her crib. Doctor Rosen did a wonderful job on her. In a month or two you’ll never know she was hurt at all’
‘Sam’s a good troop,’ Kelly observed. ‘Not just a good doc – he’s got class, too.’
‘So’s Sarah.’ Good troop, that’s what Tim would have said.
‘Great lady.’ Kelly nodded, turning left onto North Avenue. ‘She did a lot for Pam,’ he said, this time reporting facts without the time for reflection. Then Sandy saw his face change again, freezing in place as though he’d heard the words from another’s voice.
The pain won’t ever go away, will it? Kelly asked himself. Again he saw her in his mind, and for a brief, cruel second, he told himself – lied, knowing it even as it happened – that she was beside him, sitting there on the right seat. But it wasn’t Pam, never would be again. His hands tightened on the plastic of the steering wheel, the knuckles suddenly white as he commanded himself to set it aside. Such thoughts were like minefields. You wandered into them, innocent, expecting nothing, then found out too late that there was danger. It would be better not to remember, Kelly thought. I’d really be better off that way. But if without memories, good and bad, what was life, and if you forgot those who mattered to you, then what did you become? And if you didn’t act on those memories, what value did life have?
Sandy saw it all on his face. A changeling, perhaps, but not always guarded. You’re not a psychopath. You feel pain and they don’t – at least not from the death of a friend. What are you, then?
CHAPTER 18
Interference
‘Do it again,’ he told her.
Thunk.
‘Okay, I know what it is,’ Kelly said. He leaned over her Plymouth Satellite, jacket and tie off, sleeves rolled up. His hands were already dirty from half an hour’s probing.
‘Just like that?’ Sandy got out of her car, taking the keys with her, which seemed odd, on reflection, since the damned car wouldn’t start. Why not leave them in and let some car thief go mast she wondered.
‘I got it down to one thing. It’s the solenoid switch.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked, standing next to Kelly and looking at the oily-blue mystery that was an automobile engine.
‘The little switch you put the key in isn’t big enough for all the juice you need to turn the starter, so that switch controls a bigger one here.’ Kelly pointed with a wrench. ‘It activates an electromagnet that closes a bigger switch, and that one lets the electricity go to the starter motor. Follow me so far?’
‘I think so.’ Which was almost true. ‘They told me I needed a new battery.’
‘I suppose somebody told you that mechanics love to -‘
‘Jerk women around ‘cuz we’re so dumb with cars?’ Sandy noted with a grimace.
‘Something like that. You’re going to have to pay me something, though,’ Kelly told her, rummaging in his toolbox.