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"Come back immediately if you experience dizziness or lightheadedness."
John signed the discharge sheet and handed it to the patient, then turned to the nurse.
"The next one?"
"You can take a break, Dr. Watson, you has been working continuously for six hours, Dr. Kendall can replace you."
Now that he thought about it, John realized he was dead tired: he hurt everywhere, neck, back and shoulders; he put his hands over his waist and straightened with a grimace: he didn’t feel just tired, but also old. He could ask the A&E head physician to reduce his shifts, but the alternative was to stay at home staring into space, so he’d rather be at work and pretend to still be in Afghanistan to mend wounded soldiers, instead of in a suburban hospital to cure bronchitis and sprained ankles.
John reached the vending machines in the waiting room and looked around: there was a woman about seventy years old coughing continuously, a man with an ice pack on his knee and, down the hall, a boy in a sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, who was restless: he shifted his legs, bit his nails and couldn’t sit still. Even from afar, John noticed that his face was covered in sweat, he was pale in unhealthy manner, had deep eye bags and the hint of a beard: a junkie in search of methadone, probably. They were many of them around there: they kept coming back night after night, until one day they didn’t, and they were found dead in an alley or under a bridge.
One of the first things that John had learned at the medical school was not to get involved with the private life of the patients, and it was an advice he usually followed, but that night he took a coffee for him and a sweet tea for the guy from the vending machine. He handed him the plastic cup without a word, and without a word the junkie accepted it, studying him for a moment with his grey eyes.
John went back to work, visited the lady with the cough (a bad bronchitis) and the man with pain in the knee (a problem with the meniscus), but the addicted man didn’t show up.
John asked his colleagues if someone had dealt with him, but a nurse told him that he was gone before they visited him.
The next night the guy was there again, sweaty and crumpled on the orange plastic chair in the waiting room. He wore threadbare and dirty clothes, he looked around with feverish eyes, having obvious withdrawal symptoms, and John couldn’t understand why he had drawn so much his attention.
The doctor was about to approach him and ask how he was feeling, when they got two drunks who had been fighting and still hadn’t finished, apparently. John had to intervene to calm them down, and when one of the men took the trash bin to smash it on John, the former soldier pinned him to the ground with a move he had learned in the army while yelling at a nurse to bring him a sedative. With the corner of the eye he saw the young addict leaping up, watching him intently, and then leaving the A&E.
The third night the junkie reappeared in the A&E, but unfortunately for John, also did the two drunks from the night before: it seemed the two had an old rusty and didn’t want to stop fighting, beating themselves to a pulp, or threatening anyone who tried to divide them. This time John resorted to his Captain of Fusiliers voice (as well as a further move to knockdown them) and managed to restore the calm in the waiting room, but when he turned to look down the hall, his man was gone again.
The fourth night John was determined to talk to him, so when he saw him enter the waiting room, he broke the protocol, approached, beckoned him to follow him and locked them in one of the exam rooms at the end of a long aisle.
"Name?" John asked, but got no answer: the other man just studied it with his piercing eyes, sitting on a stretcher.
"Okay, whatever” the doctor sighed, “I guess you already know the procedure, but I tell you what I’ll do: I draw your blood, do the tests and, on the base on the results, I’ll give you the methadone, but it'd be helpful if I you say what do you usually take: heroin, cocaine, crack?"
Again the other man said nothing and John grew annoyed. "Hey, you should try to be more cooperative, I'm just trying to help. God knows why," he added in a low voice, talking to himself. He grabbed the man's wrist and uncovered his arm to search the vein, and was surprised not to find any signs of puncture.
"Injections ruin my skin, I can’t afford it with my work," the man said, making his voice heard for the first time, and it was deep and rich.
For the surprise, John dropped to the ground the empty vial and had to take another.
"So you're not mute, good. And what's your job?"
"I sell my body for money," he said without any shame.
"Oh..." John stopped and for the first time looked at him carefully: that night he was clean-shaven and had combed his unruly hair, and John had to admit that he has a very charming face, with those blue-grey eyes and the high cheekbones. When John’s eyes slipped on his lips, his mind immediately associated them to the job the man had just confessed to do; the doctor tried to drive away those inopportune images from his head with a vigorous shake of the head. "You shouldn’t” he chided “You risk of contracting STDs and meeting dangerous people."
"But it makes me gain a lot of money, because I’m very good at it," he said, in a voice that was meant to be seductive. And, damn, it worked.
"It’s wro... what the hell are you doing?" John hissed, seeing that the man was unbuttoning his shirt while sliding off the stretcher: it was not only his face to be beautiful, he had the body of a model, smooth and without imperfections.
"Looks like you don’t believe me when I say I am good at my job: do you want a demonstration?"
The man approached him swaying, his lips parted in a smile, and John stepped back and hit the wall. God, he hadn’t been with someone for months, and certainly he had never been with someone who seemed to have been created to seduce and allure.
"I... I…” John took a deep breath and put his hands on the chest of the other man to keep him at a distance. “No, no, you need help, not this, I will not take advantage of you," he finally said, albeit with a certain effort of will.
Christ he was beautiful.
Anyway, the reaction of the other man was totally unexpected: he huffed an annoyed sigh and threw his arms in the air.
"It’s not you!"
"Wh-what?"
"Four nights wasted, stupid, stupid, stupid!"
"Calm down, what are you talking about?"
"You partially fitted the profile: adrenaline junkie, military past, dissatisfied with your present life."
"I don't-" John began, but was stopped by the man's look, challenging him to deny it. Yes, it was true, John was dissatisfied with his boring life and boring job, but how the man had figured it out? He hadn’t said a word to anyone.
"But your moral values aren’t distorted, you just proved it, so it isn’t you."
"Just who the hell are you?" John asked, grabbing his arms: suddenly this man no longer seemed a junkie anymore and didn’t show any withdrawal symptoms, as if all the time he had just played a part. But why?
The man opened his mouth to answer, but right then the door of the room opened and Dr. Kendall walked in.
"Sorry Watson, have you finished? I need the room... oh!"
Her eyes widened in surprise and John had no doubt that from the outside the scene would have looked very ambiguous, since he was virtually embraced to a half-naked man.
"No, Allison, it's not like you think," John began, but the fake junkie interrupted him, studying with interest his colleague.
"It's you, right?"
The woman showed him a weak and confused smile. "I’m sorry, I don’t understand."
The man circled her. "No, don’t play dumb with me, it’s useless. It’s you: you haven’t a military background, but you grew up in a military family, obviously, but what are your motivations?” the man returned in front of her and looked at the crucifix that hung around her neck. “Religious? Dull, this is a real disappointment."
Seeing that Dr. Kendall was increasingly uncomfortable, John decided to take action: perhaps the man was not drugged, but he was talking nonsense. He wanted to interpose between the two of them, when the doctor pulled a scalpel from the pocket of her white coat and drove it into the left side of man, who crumpled to the ground.
"Allison! Are you mad?"
"Watch out, she’s a serial killer!"
The woman tried to hit John too with the sharp tool, but he dodged the blow and took a tray for surgical instruments to shield himself; then Dr. Kendall dashed to the door and shut them inside.
"Run after her, quick!" the man shouted, but he was losing an alarming amount of blood.
"No, I have to stop your bleeding.” John approached the door and beat vigorously with his fist, “Help! Let us out, there is a man wounded here!"
"It's nothing serious," he protested, but he was panting and trembling.
"Bullshit, you're going into shock."
John lifted him off the ground and made him lie down on the stretcher again, examining the wound: it was bleeding but without gushing, a sign that the stab hadn’t severed any artery although the cut was quite deep; the man was breathing regular, so the stab hadn’t hit the lung, but had probably damaged the spleen.
John came back to the door and kicked it in an attempt to make himself heard. "Damn, let us out of here!"
The man handed him his cell phone. "Call the police, the woman shouldn’t run away."
John snatched it from his hand and, ignoring his protests, dialed instead the number of the A&E reception.
"Cindy, it’s John: I am with an injured patient in the exam room G: find someone who can break down the door and alert an operating room for a bleeding spleen!" Then, seeing that the man was restless and sought to recover the phone, he added: "Also call the police: they must arrest Dr. Kendall for assault. No, I'm not joking, do what I told you and do it now!"
"Thank you."
"Now stop fussing, or the injury will worsen." He took some sterile gauzes and made pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding, and the man lying on the stretcher pursed his lips to keep from screaming.
"I know it hurts, I'm sorry. Try to resist, we'll be out of here in a minute, I promise."
"It’s my fault, I should have dodged the blow."
"Care to explain to me what the hell is going on?"
"I was investigating a series of murders with no apparent connection between them, until I discovered that all the victims had been in the A&E of this hospital a few days before they died. They were all small criminals, pickpockets, drug dealers, drug addicts, so I deduced that someone believed to be a vigilante and was killing them, so I pretended to be a drug addict to be a bait."
"You have been very good pretending the symptoms."
"I know them” the man said vaguely “and for the sweat, I came running to the hospital."
"Are you a cop, then?"
"Consulting detective, the only one in the world."
"Wait,” John frowned “You said you was wrong about me: did you thought I was the culprit?"
"I have observed you and, as I said, you partially fitted the profile."
"And even if you suspected me, you followed me in here and also provoked me? You aren’t a consulting detective, you're a consulting idiot!" John snapped.
"I was testing a theory, or rather two."
"Which were?"
"Not guilty, and bisexual." The man smiled weakly and John didn’t deny anything.
"Do you always try to seduce the suspects?"
"Only the interesting ones” the man said, then closed his eyes “I'm dizzy."
"Hey, no, don’t fall asleep, hold on!” John pressed the knuckles of his right hand on his chest, but the man didn’t react “Don’t you dare to die while you’re my patient! Damn it, I don’t even know your name!"
Finally a security guard opened the door and John pushed the stretcher toward the elevators, barking orders to nurses and colleagues.
The damage to the spleen was minimal and the surgery went well; a police inspector came to see what happened to the patient and told John that Dr. Kendall had been arrested on charges of being the author of four murders.
And wasn’t it crazy?
John didn’t left the man side and stayed in his room all night long; he told himself that he was just being a good doctor caring for his patient, but the truth was that he was completely fascinated by the man and the life he led, and now he didn’t want to let him go.
He fell asleep at dawn, sitting on a chair beside his bed, and was awakened several hours later by his deep voice.
"Sherlock Holmes" he simply said.
"What?" John muttered, rubbing his face to shake away sleep.
"It's my name, you asked me last night."
"Oh, right... uh... John Watson," he said, extending his hand.
"Tell me John, how do you feel about the violin?"