Ch. 26 – No Peace

Derrick’s eyes were exhausted. He had gotten to bed hours ago, after forcing Tony to sleep in his own room, instead of on the floor in the shop. But he drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes unsure if his eyes were open or closed. Snippets of nightmares played in his mind, one after the other, some from his past, and others from frightening alternate realities.

His singed skin, as he ran through the streets on the night when his parents were shot to death.

The winds whipping through Chinatown, and the rush of another big storm surge, its tide bringing the ocean pouring into buildings, drowning people in their homes, and sending cars afloat like driftwood.

Bullets ripping through his chest and throat, as he and Tony get gunned down by White Leopards as they break into Hack Alley.

Thump. Crash.

Derrick opened his eyes, and threw off his bed sheets. He crouched on the floor, breathing shallow, listening to the gentle whir of the fan in his room, and the creak of the shop windows, which braced against the storm. The shop was silent again. Was that sound just the tail end of a nightmare? His fears bleeding into real life, and tormenting his ears?

Tap. Tap. Tap.

No, someone was actually in the shop! The footsteps wandered around, sometimes getting quieter, and then louder. Derrick reached onto his nightstand, groping around for his hand prosthesis, and was blinded by the light of the motion-sensing lamp.

Shit! He waved his arm frantically, turning the lamp off, and then twisted his hand on. He crept to the door, and put his ear to it. The invader had stopped walking, but then there was a thump, and the sound of scrap parts clattering to the floor.

Is he distracted? Should I yell for help to wake Tony up? Tony’s got a gun, but the only thing I could use as a weapon in my room is the tablet computer. We’re in no shape to fight someone off, especially if they’re packing heat . . . . But maybe the guy will just go away? He could just be a thief.

The sounds coming from the shop seemed to support that theory; the intruder was wandering around the shop, digging through boxes and cabinets, and probably making a big mess of everything that Derrick had cleaned up just a few hours ago.

Then, there was a loud crack: probably the invader slamming a cabinet door shut. “Fuck!” It was a man, fully grown. The voice was hoarse, and strangely familiar. His footsteps moved toward the back of the shop: toward Derrick’s and Tony’s bedrooms.

“Who da fugg is dat?” Tony’s muffled, half-conscious voice penetrated through the wall separating their rooms.

The footsteps stopped. Shit, he heard Tony! Knowing Tony, he definitely hadn’t locked his room door, since he had gotten so wasted before bed, so anyone could just walk in.

Derrick grabbed his tablet—a hefty unit from the early 2010’s, and held his hand over the door lock, muscles tensing in preparation to unlock the door, fling it open, and shatter the tablet on the intruder’s head.

“TONY!” he yelled. “THAT’S NOT ME. SOMEONE’S IN THE SHOP. QUICK, GET THE GUN.” Please, just get scared and go away. Derrick and Tony had already escaped death once after a grueling set of surgeries. If there was another conflict, they might not have any more luck to draw on.

The intruder ran toward Derrick’s door and rattled the doorknob. Derrick scrambled away, raising the tablet to strike, but the footsteps moved towards Tony’s door, and opened it.

“Whaa? Shit!” Tony yelled, before crying out in pain.

the intruder yelled.

Tony let out a roar that sounded like a bear gargling liquor. There was the unmistakable clatter of a gun falling to the floor, and then the low whumps of flesh hitting flesh.

Derrick unlocked his door and rushed out, pushing off the exposed piping on the wall to spring himself toward Tony’s open door.

The two shapes were jostling about in the center of the room, but it was too dark to tell which was which. Derrick ran toward the struggle and reached into it, grabbing ahold of someone’s clothes, trying to pull them off and drag them off-balance. He tugged, and they budged—which meant they were much lighter than Tony. The shadow spun around, and something struck Derrick in the abdomen, sending the world whirling as he fell to the floor.

The ground was hard and unyielding. Tony had an area rug in his room, but you could feel the flooring through the thin rug. Derrick opened his mouth to breath, but the air wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t push himself up; it was like he was glued to the carpet.

The floor shook as Tony stampeded, staggering from one side of the room to the other. Someone was taking hits, but it was too dark to see who, and Derrick could only catch glimpses of them as he lay on the ground, trying to force air into his lungs. Tony fell into the wall right next to where Derrick was lying, breaking the drywall with a crunch, and sending a chunk of it flying onto Derrick’s cheek, followed by a sprinkling of dust.

Air finally flowed into Derrick’s lungs, but the drywall dust did too, and he broke into a coughing fit, prolonging the feeling of suffocation.

Flesh slapped against flesh as the intruder beat Tony—who was no longer moving—against the wall. Derrick got on his hands and knees, and crawled behind the intruder, who threw punch after punch, seemingly unaware that he had been crept up on.

Where was the gun? Even after Derrick’s eyes had adjusted, there was no gun to be found on the floor, but the tablet computer was face-down within arm’s reach. Derrick inhaled as much air as he could, grabbed the tablet with his fleshy left hand and steeled his grip, and then, with a wide swing starting from behind his shoulder, bashed it on top of the intruders head. The tablet flew out of Derrick’s hand on impact, and the man went down, falling face first into the wall himself.

Bracing his shoulder, Derrick rammed into the man’s back, and stumbled on top of him as the drywall gave way again. He grit his teeth, punching with his prosthetic hand, and his natural hand, which was bleeding from a series of small cuts from the shattered tablet screen. The intruder squirmed around, covering his head and avoiding Derrick’s haphazard punches, until one connected, and Derrick felt something soft give way beneath his hand.

The intruder fell to the ground, and Derrick kicked at his head: once, twice, before the intruder sprung up and rushed toward the door, slamming into the dresser, and then the doorframe, and then finally turning the corner into the shop.

Derrick fell to his knees, too winded to chase after the intruder, whose footsteps led toward the shop’s entrance, and then disappeared into the rain.

‘Receivers,’ the intruder had said. The only person who’d asked about receivers recently was Alan, from the White Leopards. Maybe the intruder was from the White Leopards too. Why couldn’t the gang just leave them alone? Derrick and Tony had done what they’d asked.

“Tony,” Derrick said, gasping for breath. “Are. You. Okay?”

Tony grunted, and then coughed. His breathing was shallow, and he gurgled with each breath.

“Where. Are you. Hurt?” Derrick dragged himself over the rug to get closer to Tony, until his left hand landed on a patch of rug that was completely soaked. The smell of blood hit him all of a sudden.

Oh, shit. Derrick yelled as he forced himself to his feet, his nose and mouth tingling as the blood rushed out of his head. His vision was dotted with darkness, like static on a TV, and he blinked quickly, trying to clear it as he stumbled to the light switch. The fluorescent lights in Tony’s room flickered a few times, each blink showing a flash of red on Tony’s shirt, before the light stabilized and the knife sticking out of Tony’s gut glinted in the light.

Patches of red bloomed all along the right side of Tony’s torso, soaking through his shirt, and glistening in the light. There were at least three stab wounds, penetrating from different angles, and possibly hitting different organs.

“FUCK!” Derrick screamed. It was bad. Really bad. The wounds were to the torso, so a tourniquet wouldn’t help. He needed to apply direct pressure and somehow move Tony over to the operating room, but Derrick had only two hands, and he was only one man. “Shit. SHIT!”

He rushed out of the room, bouncing off the exposing piping again, and ripped into the operating room. Hemostatic gauze and pressure bandages—or whatever was similar enough to those. Derrick would have to cover as many wounds as he could, and then make sure Tony wasn’t choking on his own blood, and then find some way to lift him up without help, and then intubate, and then and then and then.

It was too much. How was one person supposed to do this all by himself? Tony had always been the firm hand of Hack Alley, dragging patients out of the jaws of death, but now he was the one bleeding out on the floor.

If only Derrick could call an ambulance, and have the hope that someone, somewhere, was coming to help. But the ambulances didn’t come to Chinatown anymore; it was too dangerous. That was a fact of life in this gang-infested town.

If only Hack Alley had a motorized stretcher like the big hospitals did, that could help lift patients and move them to the operating room. But they could barely pay the bills after scraping together enough for the White Leopards’ protection money. They would never be able to save up to replace their old equipment, let alone buy new ones.

If only there were cops patrolling the streets of Chinatown. Maybe they would’ve stopped the intruder as he was walking around at this early hour, before he slunk into the alley and busted down the door to their shop. But the dispatchers hung up on the calls from Chinatown, because they knew that officers would never go. And they could get away with it too, because the White Leopards knew where the Chinatown community organizers lived, and always ‘dissuaded’ from contacting the Complaints Board or the Commissioner.

This town was sick. And Tony wasn’t enough to save it.

Derrick rushed back into Tony’s room. “Hold on, Tony! I’m gonna patch you up, stay with me!” The blood started seeping through the pressure bandages as Derrick put them on, but there was no helping that. “We need to get you to the operating room, Tony,” Derrick said, tearing a bandage into strips so he could thread them around the knife, making sure not to disturb it. “But fuck me how am I going to move you?” Tony had too many wounds for Derrick to try rolling or dragging him by the arms or ankles; he’d risk opening them up more, or disturbing Tony’s organs and accidentally moving them into the knife’s blade.

Derrick racked his brain while he went over the ABCs with Tony. The safest option might be a clothes drag, which would be better than dragging Tony by his extremities, because he could theoretically keep Tony’s spine aligned, and not disturb the flesh around his ribcage by moving his arms.

“Okay, patient’s airway is patent, and he’s breathing fine,” Derrick said to himself out loud. He hoped that speaking as if he was working in tandem with Tony would calm him down, like a sort of self-hypnosis. When you were actually working with another doctor, it was a crucial part of communication, as well as a way to focus your thoughts.

Tony groaned, and put his hand over one of the many stab wounds along his side. Good. If he was reacting to pain, he wasn’t too far gone yet.

“Moving patient to the operating room with a clothes drag.” Derrick got behind Tony’s head, and grabbed a handful of his shirt. Derrick planted his feet on the ground, straightened his back, and then dug deep and tugged, pointing his ass at the entrance, and feeling his legs and butt burn for every inch of progress.

Something ripped, and Derrick fell backwards onto his butt. Derrick looked down at his sweaty hands, which were still locked around the torn pieces of Tony’s t-shirt. The man was too fucking heavy.

Goddamit, Tony, why do you have to be such a fat-ass! Derrick exhaled through his teeth. He would have to improvise.