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“He’s doing great,” I said.
“Tank will have called ahead. The hospital should have someone waiting for us at the ER entrance. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. Slight headache. Probably a drug hangover. Or it might be my life. He stunned me and injected me with something that had me out for a couple hours. Becker said that while I was out Pooka took blood from me and infected me with plague.”
I took a moment to breathe and pull myself together. It was hard to stay calm about the plague.
“What about the blood caked on you?”
“I was chasing an FTA and Pooka came out of nowhere and bounced me off the front of his van. He got to me while I was still dazed, and he used my cuffs and stun gun to immobilize me. When I came around I was in the back of the van.” I looked at my arm. “I think it’s all surface scrapes and bruises. At least it’s stopped bleeding.”
Ranger swung into the drive to the ER entrance and stopped in front of the doors. Two uniformed Rangeman guys were waiting for us, plus a nurse with a gurney, and a bunch of men in badly fitting suits.
“Who are the suits?” I asked Ranger.
“CDC, FBI, EPA, Homeland Security, Trenton PD.”
“I’m surprised Morelli isn’t representing the Trenton PD. He’s the principal on the murders.”
“Word is he’s getting a colonoscopy.”
So maybe I didn’t have such a bad day after all. At least I didn’t get something stuck up my butt.
We off-loaded Becker onto the gurney, and I walked beside him, holding his hand into the building.
“You’re going to be okay,” I told him. “Even if you are infected with the plague, it’s treatable now.”
“My parents…”
“You need to call them. I know they’ll want to see you and make sure you’re okay.”
“I haven’t got a phone. Pooka threw my phone away. He was worried about being traced through it.”
Ranger was standing behind me. “I’ll have Hal get a phone to him.”
“And Gobbles,” Becker said. “I need to talk to Gobbles. I should have
listened to him. He said to stay away from Pooka.”
Becker was wheeled off into an examining area and two of the suits walked with him.
Susan Gower was the charge nurse on duty in the ER. I went to high school with Susan and smoked my first and last joint with her.
She came over to me and grimaced. “You look like you got hit by a truck.”
“It was a van,” I said.
“Do you want to have someone look at whatever it is that’s wrong with you?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Ranger said.
“Boy,” she said, looking Ranger up and down, “if I wasn’t happily married—”
“I’ve just got a few scrapes,” I told her.
“Yeah, I can see that,” she said. “Come on back. I’ll put you in a room and get someone to clean you up. If you need stitches you want to get them sooner rather than later. Later doesn’t work.”
