CHAPTER 47

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

CHAPTER 47

Chief Resident Carla Gates walked swiftly along a corridor in Gavring Medical’s emergency center, staring at a patient’s charts.

She worked with a few doctors who could weave words like tumor and inoperable into a kind of poetry that, if it did not soothe, at least served to numb the terror. Gave the patients a sense of control in the face of their own mortality.

She’d never been a poet. She could try, had tried in the past; she would try again in a few minutes, when she spoke to a fifty-three-year-old man named Bernard Stein. But she didn’t think Mr. Stein would take any comfort from her. Spoken in layman’s terms, Bernard Stein’s right lung was little more than a huge cancerous mass, and the cancer had metastasized. He had weeks left, maybe even days. Only the facts, she could give him, like a journalistic report. No soothing...no real ease. She hated that facet of herself.

A dozen yards ahead of her, on her right, was the door to a certain janitorial supply closet, and for several days now she’d watched it suspiciously whenever she passed it. The image of the two white eyes staring out at her was a lasting one. Even though the shopkeeper, Rico Ruiz, swore the vigilante had saved his life, the Redeemer still made Gates’ skin crawl, hero or not.

She’d thought a few times about propping the door open permanently, maybe leaving the light on inside. Tonight, for some reason she couldn’t put a finger on, that seemed like an excellent decision, and she wondered why she hadn’t made it before.

Gates stopped directly opposite the door and started to glance around for a chair to prop it with when something slammed into it from the inside.

Carla Gates dropped her charts and gasped.

Another impact and the door burst open, tore halfway off its hinges. The Redeemer came out of the darkness with a young woman cradled in his arms. At a glance Gates could tell the woman had been beaten severely. The Redeemer’s head turned, and white eyes tracked across the ER. Activity ground to a halt with his arrival, and everyone from attendings to clerks stared at him openly.

The white eyes settled on Carla Gates. The Redeemer came toward her.

She thought he must have been at least seven feet tall.

“This woman needs help, right now,” he said, and Gates recognized panic in his voice. An empty gurney stood nearby, and he lowered her gently onto it. “Her name is Diedra Shikari, she’s twenty-two, she’s suffered blunt head trauma, and...”

His composure slipped further, and Gates realized he was crying.

“ ...And there might be...broken bones, maybe her collarbone...” He turned to Gates again and took a step toward her. “You can help her, right now, right? No waiting, no bullshit about insurance, right?”

Two security guards rounded the corner at the far end of the hall, and the white eyes lifted to them. Gates stammered a little before she got the right words out. “Yes, yes, immediately.” She glanced over her shoulder at the guards. They both had guns drawn. “But we can do that best if we don’t have any other conflicts here.”

The Redeemer nodded in understanding. Before he turned to go, in a voice thick with pain he said, “Make her better. Help her. Please.” Then he turned and bolted through an exit.

Gates barked orders, and two nurses moved to wheel the injured woman into a trauma room as the two guards rushed past.

Coming out the door, one of the guards caught a glimpse of something dark bound over a hedge to one side of the stairs to the parking lot. He tried to follow, but when he landed on the far side of the shrubbery he slipped and fell hard on a small patch of ice.

The Redeemer was gone.

AUTHOR'S NOTES FOLLOW IN THE COMMENT SECTION.