Chapter Six – Part 2
Chuck saw the cop's hat and thought, Fuck and double fuck.
Whoever the Eagle dude was, the bastard had to be the fed the cop was talking about. And if Chuck didn't want to meet up with the guy, he had to get off this stretcher before the cop came back.
Chuck, quietly tried all the restraints. For a few seconds it seemed hopeless. Then he realized that the cuff holding his right hand was looser than the one on his left, to accommodate the bandages and his injury.
Listening to the cop's voice, just down the corridor, made Chuck desperate. He folded his right thumb over the palm to make his hand as small as possible. The effort reminded Chuck that it was his hand that put him in the hospital. His thumb barely moved before he felt the cut in his palm. As he kept closing it across his palm, his hand burned. It felt he was splitting his hand in half along the seams of his wound.
Somehow he managed to touch his thumb to the base of his pinkie with only a grunt. He held his hand like that for a few moments, letting the pain recede to a dull ache. To his surprise, the white bandages didn't erupt into a blossom of arterial blood.
The cop was still talking to the doctor.
Now comes the hard part.
This was where he had a chance to undo everything the doctors had done. He took a deep breath, and pulled his arm back, pulling his hand through the cuff. It felt as if he was trying to tear his hand off. First the bandages caught on the edge of the cuff, then they began to rip and peel off his hand. The tape holding the gauze felt as if it was made of tiny metal hooks embedded in his skin. He clenched his teeth and stopped breathing to keep from crying out. His eyes watered, and tears streamed down his cheeks.
He didn't stop pulling. The worst thing that could happen was to get his injured hand caught inside the cuff.
The half minute he pulled his hand felt like half an hour. Pain shot up his arm so bad that it caused his bicep to vibrate. Sweat broke out on his arm and forehead, and blood began seeping through the folds in his palm. Between the blood and the sweat, his hand finally slipped free of the cuff, the bandages were left on the other side like shed skin.
For a few long seconds, all Chuck could do was lay back and breathe. The cop was still talking, but any second he could turn the corner. There was no way he could afford to stop now.
What he saw of his hand was an ugly mass of black bruising and stitches. He didn't look too closely. He lay back, breathing heavily, as he fumbled with the strap on his chest. Every movement hurt his hand, but nothing like what he'd just gone through. The main problem was the fact that he had to work with only his last two fingers and his thumb. He couldn't move his index or middle finger at all.
The strap fell away and Chuck sat up. When he did, he had to make a panicked grab for the chart, which had escaped to slide to ground. Chuck grabbed it, leaning so far over that he thought the stretcher would tip over. He clasped the chart between his thumb and little finger. The pressure he exerted felt as if it was dislocating his pinkie. It wasn't enough. The chart slowly slipped though his fingers, sliding on the blood and sweat covering his hand.
The chart slid out of his grasp and fell the remaining foot to the ground. Chuck's heart stopped as the chart fell, the sound seemed to echo in the corridor forever. He waited for the cop to come running around the corridor.
He waited.
Around the corridor he heard the cop say, "So, you going to catch the playoffs?"
"Eh?"
Chuck could breathe again. They hadn't heard, or hadn't noticed. Once he was relaxed a bit he felt the tension of the tube pulled taut in his arm. He leaned back into a sitting position and realized that the place where the needle fed his arm hurt like hell now. Nothing like his hand, but pretty nasty.
He pulled the needle out of his arm, gripped between his thumb and pinkie. After slipping three times, on the forth it came out with a sickening sliding pressure.
Once he got his other wrist free, the remaining straps were loosed in short order. He had just taken his first unsteady step off of the stretcher when he heard a gasp and a crash from behind him. He turned to see a nurse. She had dropped a tray full of test tubes on the floor, and blood samples went everywhere.
She took a step back, more from the blood than from him. He heard her say, "shit" just before the cop came around the corner.
