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It’s suspicious.
It’s suspicious enough that, immediately, Aaron wants to call Andrew. Andrew understands suspicious. Andrew tears through suspicious until it’s revealed to be uninteresting, to be not dangerous.
Aaron has fought, hard, for the life he has now. Aaron Minyard has a criminal record which includes justifiable homicide. He was not meant to be a doctor. He was not meant, especially, to be a pediatric doctor.
Aaron has fought, hard, and now he is here. He is an excellent doctor, with an impeccable record. He has earned the begrudging respect of his attendings. He has earned the begrudging trust of the tiny humans he treats.
This now is suspicious.
Someone has hacked the hospital rotation schedule. Someone knows exactly when everyone is working, every day. Someone knows, and, as a result, within the first five minutes of Aaron’s shift, every Monday for the past three months, a child has appeared — out of nowhere — to meet him. The child always has wide eyes, matted hair, and shoulders curved so far forward they almost touch.
The children greet him by name. They tell him, in steady, rehearsed voices, their own names, their addresses, and whatever injuries they have. Sometimes they are not even injured, and have no good reason to be in the hospital, except to find him. Except to tell him that their parents are not very good people, and that, would you please help me, Dr. Minyard? These children come into his care, and later, the police reveal to him in hushed voices that their parents are, in fact, mafia, and these kids fell through the cracks, and how on earth do you keep finding them?
It’s suspicious.
Aaron would almost look guilty, except he practically lives at the hospital, and there are cameras, and his alibi is therefore airtight. Aaron would almost look guilty, except he decidedly is not.
The person who brings the children, whoever they are, is very good at invisibility. There are never any witnesses, or any trace of them on the cameras. The police can’t track them down, no matter how hard they try, and neither can – as the mafia kids increase, and the size of the case grows proportionately – the Feds. The children, when they are asked, say, again and again, “I don’t know. I never saw their face.”
It’s suspicious, and Aaron does not know quite what to do, and Andrew, who Aaron expected to be intrigued, to be invested, to start digging, to actually fucking help him, receives Aaron’s updates nonchalantly, hanging up as soon as Aaron has finished speaking.
It’s suspicious, all of it, and even more suspicious when one child, after being asked Aaron’s routinely fruitless “who brought you in?” tugs his sleeve and says very urgently, “they hurt him, Dr. Minyard. He needs you.”
It’s suspicious, and the kid hands him a note with an address. It’s suspicious, and Aaron thinks, this could be a trap , and Aaron thinks about dozens of children, from all over the country, arriving into his care and subsequently into federal protection, and goes anyways.
He does not know what he expects. When he has let himself wonder at the invisible hand behind the rescues, he has pictured someone older, someone tough, someone unshakeable. A David Wymack.
This man is not David Wymack. This man is barely a man at all. He is young enough to pass for a teen, though Aaron thinks early 20s is more likely. His auburn hair is unruly, disordered and slightly too long for its style, as if he hasn’t had it cut for years. The dry flaking of his skin and scalp indicate poor hygiene, or perhaps just poor soap. His fingernails are overrun with mineral deficiency. Aaron sees all the signs of a hard life, and blinks them away to deal with the more urgent fact that this man, for all his rough edges, is very clearly bleeding out.
Somebody put a knife into this man, many many times. There are gaping wounds down his arm, on his shoulder, on the side of his face. His left calf looks wrong, and the whole leg is out of alignment. There is a superficial cut down the side of his neck, over the carotid. If someone had cut with more force, this man would already be dead.
As it is, the man is bleeding too much, too fast. His wounds are survivable, but Aaron wishes he had started treating them ten minutes ago. Aaron wishes his specialty were trauma and not pediatrics. Aaron wishes he brought more than his emergency kit.
Aaron moves towards him, and the man cracks open one startlingly blue eye. Aaron pauses. The man sees Aaron, blinks several times, and then forces himself into sitting upright. The action causes multiple gushes of blood down his body, and Aaron winces. The man does not seem to notice. The man thrusts his hand outward, offering a crumpled, blood-smudged note.
“For the cops,” he rasps.
Aaron is still frozen, for a moment, before he finally takes the note and opens it.
It is a list of addresses.
“More kids?” Aaron guesses, and looks back at the man when he starts to choke. Aaron thinks he was trying to nod.
The man coughs out a gob of red spit. Aaron leans forward, and then man waves him off.
“Sorry. It’s not my lungs,” he assures, voice creaky. “Just my face. My throat.”
Your everything, Aaron thinks.
The man pushes the note on him, urgently.
“Go,” he says, voice surprisingly strong beneath its rasps.
Aaron takes the note, and feels his face scrunching in confusion.
“I’m a doctor,” He says, and looks at this man’s very obvious injuries, which are continuing to bleed. “Didn’t you bring me here to be a doctor?”
“No.” The man puts his hands over the cuts on his arms, as if that will hide them. As if that will convince Aaron that he does not require medical attention. “Take the note. Take it to the cops. That’s why I brought you here.”
“Why didn’t you take it to the cops?” Aaron asks. He means, before this. He means, why skulk around. He means, why all the secrecy.
“Like bureaucracy was going to get the kids out the fastest,” he scoffs, and Aaron thinks unexpectedly of his brother. They have the same impertinence, he thinks.
Aaron looks at the pale man before him, shaking with adrenaline, blood dripping steadily from under his own concealing hands. From his colour, Aaron would guess he’s maybe ten minutes out from passing out. Maybe five. The blood loss does not indicate a high possibility that this man will wake up again after he’s lost consciousness.
“Why won’t you let me treat you?” Aaron asks, and the man closes his eyes. The man seems to cycle through several possible answers, before he finally chooses one.
“No health insurance,” he offers, ruined voice almost playful.
No health insurance . Aaron imagines this is true, but not the whole reason. Probably not the reason at all.
“Did you think I wouldn’t treat you anyways?”
“Don’t!” The man says, forcing his eyes open again. “Don’t, don’t risk your license.”
The mans’ voice is starting to garble again. He is, probably, close to coughing again. Aaron wonders if coughing will expedite his loss of consciousness.
“The kids ,” the man says again, as if that is explanation enough. Aaron thinks of his brother, and understands that it is.
“You’ve been a survivor,” Aaron tries, and the man smiles, strangely sharp against the pallor of his mottled skin. “You’ve been a survivor, but you can’t survive this. Not like this.”
The man shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter, and starts to bring himself slowly, achingly, to his feet. Aaron watches him, wondering where he will drag himself off to die. Wondering if he can live with himself if he lets the man go, untreated.
And then, unfortunately, Aaron has an idea.
The idea itself is almost not worth having. It is deeply unethical. It is the opposite of ‘do no harm,’ and it is not even guaranteed to work. Aaron actually thinks that this idea might be worse for his license than performing illegal care on a probable criminal in a back alley in the dark. No, Aaron thinks, it is undeniably worse.
“You’re a survivor,” Aaron repeats. “You should already be dead, but you’re not. You should pass out sometime in the next few minutes, but I’m guessing you won’t.” Aaron squares his shoulders, makes himself say the words. “If I give you an address, can you get there?
The man’s eyes are slightly out of focus. He is swaying, just slightly, as he tries to stand still.
“Six blocks,” Aaron says. “You get there, you’ll be treated. Not by a doctor. But you will probably live. There will be no risk to me.”
The man does not flinch as Aaron takes his wrist, as he draws out a pen, as he scrawls the address onto the inside of his bruised wrist. This is the pen Aaron uses to write prescriptions. He wonders, fleetingly, if he is prescribing this man a death sentence.
“Six blocks, and five stairs up to the front door. You will be expected.”
The man nods once. Aaron watches him focus his eyes onto the words written on his wrist, watches him plot a route through a mind that is clearly uncooperative. And then he lumbers away unsteadily and Aaron thinks, what the fuck am I doing .
Aaron makes himself put the pen back in his pocket. He makes himself fold up the small note and put it in his emergency kit. He makes himself turn back towards the hospital.
One block away, Aaron stops, steps to the side, and takes out his phone. You’re an idiot , he thinks, and then he dials.
**
Neil startles into consciousness.
Immediately, he registers the smell of this place – clean domesticity, eucalyptus soap, bananas about to turn – as unfamiliar. The slight coolness he feels behind and to the left of him suggests a window; the gentle movement of air from the far right in front of him suggests a front door. He registers, a moment after waking, that he is in a stranger’s home, and it is in his best interest to feign unconsciousness.
This realization, of course, comes too late. Before he can register the smell of eucalyptus, he feels the restriction of ties on his wrists (zip ties?), the stiffness of bandages across his body, and the irrefutable tug of an I.V. in his arm. The part of him that is animal flinches, and the part of him that is human acknowledges that this flinch will now invite much worse to happen to him.
“Careful,” a voice says, dry and amused.
Neil makes himself open his eyes. Sitting in a chair, maybe five feet away, is a familiar man.
“So you didn’t die,” the man says, and he looks like Dr. Minyard, except Dr. Minyard doesn’t speak this way, doesn’t sit this way, doesn’t tilt his head and consider him with calm condescension this way.
Neil looks at this unfamiliar man, and thinks that he is missing something very obvious. His head is heavy, his body aches, and the zip ties say this man intends to hurt him. The bandages say, whatever’s he’s planned, he wants Neil to last a long time.
Neil feels fear like pins pushed slowly upwards through the soft skin of his belly. He feels it, and dismisses it as not helpful.
The man rises to his feet, slowly, casually. Somehow, he has a thin knife. Neil runs his eyes over him for its source– pockets? No, armbands. Clever, Neil thinks.
The man approaches, still so slowly. Neil thinks, he will be close in five seconds. Maybe six. If I dislocate my shoulder, I can hit him hard with my elbow, tangle his neck in the cannula, and strangle him.
The man stops, just out of reach, as if he can read the murderous intent on Neil’s face. Because he shouldn’t be able to, this bothers Neil. Neil has had years of practice at making himself passive, making himself neutral. He considers himself quite good at it.
“So you are interesting,” the man says, as if Neil’s murderous scheming is a welcome surprise.
Neil has been carefully controlling his breathing, pushing his diaphragm low, flexing his abs. Startling into spontaneous movement will pull on his injuries and will hurt, badly. Neil is breathing deeply so that he doesn’t pass out when the pain hits. The man stays out of reach, and Neil can’t make the pain hit yet, and his breathing starts to border on hyperventilation.
“Do you know who I am?” The man asks.
“Not Dr. Minyard,” Neil spits, before he means to speak.
A slight pause, a lip curling up.
“Right.”
Neil’s mind still feels disordered. The I.V., out of the corner of his eye, is deep red, which means… Blood. Blood transfusion. Neil hasn’t a blood transfusion in years, but he knows it’s a multi-hour process. He knows it should be performed by medical professionals.
“You are not a doctor.”
“Two for two.”
Neil considers the I.V., the bandages, the way his skin lies flat under neat sutures. He forces his breathing back down.
“Who did this then.”
The man’s mouth purses, as if he is disappointed.
“Come on, stay interesting.”
Neil is surprised to find he wants to. This man’s focus is sharp, is bright, is deep pressure on his bruised skin. Neil… likes it.
“You are not a doctor, but you look like one. You work like one.”
The man’s head tilts. Go on .
Neil feels crushingly stupid. When he was picking his contact, he made a longlist, and then a shortlist, and then did thorough background checks on the most promising of the lot. He wanted a doctor. He wanted someone who might be able to meet the horrors these children had faced and not flinch. He wanted someone with limited personal relations, in case everything went to shit.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Neil says, understanding coming in pieces.
“Am I?” The man sounds almost proud.
“The federal files say that Andrew Minyard died ten years ago. Car accident with his mother.”
“Ah,” the man says, and Neil thinks he might be smiling.
“Is she still alive too?”
The smile falls. “No.”
Dr. Minyard came under his attention when after some very deep, very costly, very illegal research, Neil found a tie between Dr. Minyard and the nameless F.B.I. agent assigned to tracking down the missing children of mafia families. With more digging, Neil learned that this agent had started as part of the team of the more generalized mafia project, and then branched off to create their own sub department to focus on children. From what Neil could find, moving murkily through sealed federal files, this person was working mostly on their own, separate from the larger team. Two years ago, this person had consulted with Dr. Aaron Minyard, and had tried to bury the connection.
“I should’ve guessed that whoever was heading the department was in wit-sec.” Neil feels the beginning of a headache. “I probably should’ve guessed they would have killed you off. Dying is an excellent way to disappear.”
“Has this been your strategy?”
Neil chances a look away from this man, whom he doesn’t think will hurt him, not yet, to look down at his extensive injuries.
“I was working on it.”
The silence between them shifts, becoming slightly darker.
“I suppose I’ve obstructed you, then,” the man says.
“No,” Neil says, dismissing the implications. “I don’t want to die, really. It’s just inevitable, isn't it?” He straightens his spine. “But it’s better if I have more time. More helpful. So, thank you.”
Neil pulls lightly against his wrists. “Zip ties?”
“I improvised.”
Neil’s lips tug into something that might be a smile.
“Right.”
The man comes close to him again, and the fear pushes forward again. Neil can feel his own eyes, bright with challenge.
“Will you let me go then?” Their eyes meet. “Agent Minyard?”
There is a twist in Minyard’s cheek, almost as if he is biting down on a smile. His right hand, the one with the knife , flashes forward, and before Neil can flinch back, the zipties fall from his wrists.
Neil is bewildered. Minyard slides his knife neatly back into his wrist sheath.
“You have another hour of blood transfusion,” Minyard says, easing carefully out of arm’s reach again. His expression is almost warm. “I won’t restrain you, now that you’re conscious. If you want to run, that’s up to you.”
Neil tenses. In truth, he has been subtly assessing his fastest way out since he realized he was somewhere unfamiliar, with someone unfamiliar. At the top of his list is the window, though the sharp ache in his calf suggests that a jump may lead to a fracture, or break. Neil has run on broken bone before; he knows he can last almost an hour with blacking out, and he is not so far, really, from the train station.
Minyard watches him intently, as if he can read the quick planning Neil is doing from off of his forehead.
“Where did you get the blood?” Neil asks, words tossed out artlessly in distraction.
“Borrowed my brother’s signature.”
Neil stops planning. He can feel his eyes widening, almost comically.
“That’s a federal crime.”
Minyard shrugs, loose and easy. “Says the federal crime himself.”
Neil’s eyebrows are still lifting.
“But you’re a federal agent.”
“I’m corrupt.”
Minyard does not seem particularly repentant, and Neil finds him… kind of wonderful.
“How did you even know… how to…” He gestures to his own body, the now evidence of hours of precise medical work.
“Eidetic memory,” Minyard says, tapping his temple.
At first, Neil does not understand. He’s been unfortunately distracted by the softness of Minyard’s long eyelashes. He reroutes his focus, forcibly.
“Eidetic memory,” Neil repeats, tasting the words. “As in… you remember everything you see. Everything you read. Everything…” and he understands, “everything your brother would have studied, while you helped him study.”
Andrew Minyward smirks, and draws a small note pad from the coffee table. Neil watches him scrawl on it.
When he brings it close, it’s a medical pad, and Minyard has written him several prescriptions, signing them as Dr. Aaron Minyard.
Neil thinks of Minyard watching his brother write out his medical notes, in careful writing, for years. Watching him sign his first doctor’s pad.
“Eidetic memory,” Neil says again, in the same voice he said “That’s a federal crime.”
Minyard’s smirk broadens.
“This probably won’t kill you,” He says, handing him the prescriptions. His tone says, but who am I to say? I’m not a doctor.
Neil takes the note, and his mind is fixed on eidetic memory, and for a moment he doesn’t understand why. And then… ah .
“Do you remember everything you hear, too?”
A small furrow between brows.
“Why?”
Neil looks at him, suddenly intent.
“Do you?”
The question reaches out between them. The furrow between Minyard’s brows deepens.
“Yes."
The sigh of relief leaves Neil without his permission. The light in the back of Minyard’s eyes betrays his intrigue.
“Is your apartment bugged?” Neil asks, already knowing it is not. There are no signs of bugging, and anyways, Minyard has recently confessed to several felonies, too comfortably.
“No,” Minyard says, and his expression says but you knew that .
Neil feels the same smile, tugging on his lips.
“Alright then,” he nods, and without letting himself think too hard about it, he makes himself start talking.
Minyard, for his part, understands quickly. He does not shift, he does not reach for a pen, he does not turn on a recorder. He keeps watching Neil, keeps listening, slowly synching his mind to Neil’s. Neil starts at the beginning, and slowly, clearly, deposits a lifetime worth of secrets into Andrew Minyard’s perfect memory.
Neil has considered turning himself in. Of course he has. Neil knows that his testimony will topple his father's crime syndicate, will destabilize the entire Moriyama operation.
He also knows the feds will prolong the process, and that, no matter how discreet they will try to be, someone will find out what he is doing. Someone will find out, and Neil will be killed, and the children – the children who have no one else fighting for them – will die. Or worse.
There will be spies in the feds, as there have been spies everywhere he has ever been. Neil trusts very few, and only ever when he has no other choice. He trusted his mother, before she died. He trusts Dr. Aaron Minyard, and he trusts the nameless F.B.I. agent he answers to.
The nameless F.B.I. agent receives Neil intimately, perfectly, breathing evenly to keep Neil calm while he recounts a lifetime of horror.
It takes a long time. Neil doesn’t let himself stop, afraid he might not be able to start again if he does. He speaks and speaks, evenly, one word after the other, handing over ugly stories he richens with incriminating details. He speaks, the I.V. drips, and Neil does not take his eyes off of Agent Minyard. He speaks, the window creaks, and Agent Minyard does not take his eyes off of Neil.
When he has finished, when there is nothing left he can think to say, Neil closes his eyes. Minyard takes the needle from his arm, places a bandage gently over the place where there is still a small red dot. Neil keeps his eyes closed, and focuses on his breathing.
He’s never said it all aloud. He’s organized the words in his mind, many, many times. He thought, once, about writing it down, but he couldn’t risk it. He’s never been able to risk it.
Minyard comes back to him with a cool glass of water. Minyard presses it into his hands, which are not shaking so much any more. Neil drinks deeply, and Minyard passes him two small pills. Neil throws them back without looking to see what they are.
Minyard sits back on his chair, five feet away, as he was when Neil first came back to consciousness. Neil realizes Minyard stood through Neil’s entire testimony, and lifts his eyes to meet Minyard’s. He doesn’t realize he’s braced himself for pity, until he meets Minyard’s eyes and they are clear. Neil and Minyard look at each other, and the space between them is heavy with old stories.
“If I thought you would say yes,” Minyard says finally, a stone tossed in the stream of their silence. “I would offer to move you into a safe house.”
Neil makes a sound that is almost a laugh.
“Ah.” Neil feels himself soften, just a little. “I don’t trust you that much.”
This almost seems to please him. “Right.”
Neil considers the careful medical care Minyard has offered him. He considers the easy way he has accepted Neil’s most horrible truths.
“Thank you,” Neil says, earnestly, and Minyard swats his words away, like an aggravating house fly.
“Stay interesting,” Minyard says. Neil smiles.
In a different, softer silence, they look at each other and Neil feels a flush he doesn’t understand crawling up his cheek. The silence extends, and Minyard starts to smirk, and Minyard’s smirk hooks into Neil’s chest, and Neil is not quite sure what is about to happen, and then Minyard’s phone rings.
“Impeccable timing,” Minyard says. He tries for easy, unaffected, but his voice is slightly uneven, and Neil thinks, oh.
Minyard accepts the call, putting it on speaker.
“What happened? Is he dead?” Dr. Aaron Minyard says, voice tense and tinny over the line.
Minyard looks at Neil, eyes intent. “Not yet.”
For some reason, Neil’s flush deepens.
“Not yet? Is he still there?”
Minyard is watching him. The corner of his lip lifts, the ghost of a smile.
“For now,” Minyard says, and Neil hears under his words a promise, and a challenge.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Neil looks back at Minyard, guilessly, his blush hot on his cheeks,
“It means for now,” Minyard says, and he hangs up.
Neil looks at Minyard, and Minyard looks at Neil.
Neil says, bolder than he feels, “Still interesting?”
Minyard’s are dark and intent, just the hint of a smirk still hanging on his lips.
“For now.”