There were six people in the room. Standing over the people Joe presumed to be his patients was a tall, caucasian woman wearing a Kevlar vest. She appeared to be one of the gang’s enforcers, and she was seething in silent rage. Shouting in her face was a male. He was slightly shorter than the woman, but broad and hairy. He reminded Joe of an irate gorilla as he grunted and snarled. Finally, there was a man he’d worked with before who went by Rudy.
Joe catalogued the three with efficiency. None were visibly armed, though the clothing on the three people indicated potential hidden weaponry. Joe’s focus then switched to the two people on the ground. The reason ARMS had link’d him, and also the reason this counted as a special enough case that they’d give up on an early release Veil Drive.
The two were down; one male and one female. Both were laid out on the floor. Joe recognized the male as a member of ARMS. There was an obvious bloody gash visible through one of his legs that had somehow, miraculously missed an artery entirely.
Then there was the woman, a civilian if Joe wasn’t mistaken. She, too, was on the floor, eyes scrunched closed, breathing deeply and trembling as she held tight to the leg of the agitated standing woman. The civilian was squeezing it with a white-knuckled grip that was in stark contrast to her light brown features.
Finally, the hidden sixth person in the room was the child. While the man was obviously injured, this woman, visibly bruised, obviously in substantial pain, yet entirely silent, was experiencing contractions. Her teeth were gritted, her eyes squeezed closed, and she was shaking in agony caused by labour pain. Labour, and the pain of the mangled fleshy stump where her arm once was.
Joe did not like this, not at all. Why wasn't this woman in a hospital? The gang could afford it. Hell, Joe knew they had connections in more than one hospital for drugs, undercover treatments, and even conducting business. Yet here this woman was, with a very recent, non-consensual amputation, giving birth on the hard, epoxy-concrete floor of an empty warehouse office full of gang members, paraphernalia, and an egregious lack of trained medical professionals.
Sure, Joe was good, but he wasn’t a midwife. This… This was way above his pay grade, as in hundreds of thousands of Canadian standards above it. As in, he was sure he was witnessing some things that he could be potentially implicated in. This was a serious breach of contract, an incredible violation of the unwritten – and written – agreements Joe had with the gang.
Sure, Joe felt for the woman, but touching anything now could irreversibly tie him to the scene and whatever unscrupulous activities had taken place here. Joe made to turn around and leave, but that was when the woman made a sound. Joe had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he’d failed to see her open her eyes. Her gaze arrested him, her face overlapping with the pained wince of his own mother in his mind’s eye. Joe ruthlessly squashed that thought. This was not his mother. He owed her nothing. But thoughts of his mother had reminded him of the reason he was here in the first place. No wonder ARMS felt comfortable calling him in for this—no wonder the payment seemed reasonable. The Veil Drive was just two wounded people away. Joe didn’t know if it was worth it.
Joe was overwhelmed. Joe didn’t like being overwhelmed.
Grit your teeth and make a choice, Joe. The woman needs help, he thought to himself.
Then the daft goon who’d led him to this room opened his mouth like some sort of 1970’s cartoon mobster and shouted into the chaos.
“Ey, Boss.”
Immediately, all attention was drawn towards the doorway and the teenager filling it, his medical equipment over his shoulder and a firm scowl on his face.
Joe was already unimpressed with the absolute mess he was walking in on, but his opinion of the nameless goons, the organisation, and this entire night was somehow still deteriorating. Too slow Joe, wait too long, and the choice gets made for you. It was a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.
“Doc,” Joe’s alias was called. Joe turned towards Rudy (at least that was the name he’d given Joe). He was one of the higher-level account managers for ARMS. What accounts, Joe didn’t know, what type of management, Joe never asked. However, the look the man was giving him made Joe fear that he was about to find out. Joe didn’t want to find out; Joe barely wanted to be here. If they hadn’t promised him the Veil Drive, then he would never have taken such a suspicious job. He’d be back in his apartment, plugged into the net, and working on completing his self-imposed lesson plan with the limited time he had left on the open-ed platform.
“Never again,” Joe said, his eyes on Rudy. He’d never be called in for something like this ever again. Rudy looked around the room, grimaced, and nodded.
“Take care of this, and you’ll get what you asked for.” Rudy pointed to the man holding his leg while beckoning Joe forward.
“Who?” Joe asked, his eyes flicking to the whimpering woman who was clearly in labour.
The two people, who until that point had been shouting primarily at each other, turned with unnerving synchronicity, and pointed to different individuals.
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“Her”- “Him,” they said in unison, both pointing at different people.
Joe looked at Rudy, who, to his credit, did look mildly chagrined. Joe shook his head.
The pregnant woman’s arm was oozing as she hyperventilated through contractions that were getting noticeably closer together. The downed man’s face had gone visibly pale and sweaty as his screams turned to whimpers.
Joe was neither cruel nor a fool. He knew ARMS’s priority was the man, but…
“I’ll triage,” he stated, striding towards the woman on the floor.
An arm blocked his path. It was the gorilla man.
“Listen, kid. You heard Rudy, and he said you take care of our man here,” the guy gritted out. His breath smelled like mint and cigarettes. A combination that struck Joe immediately as offensive. He did not show his displeasure on his face as his eyes scanned the scene. Joe looked to Rudy, who indicated the man on the ground as well, though he didn’t look happy about it.
Foolish, Joe thought, becoming angry. The injured man would be fine for hours still, but the woman was bleeding through the pathetic tourniquet someone had applied, and she would be losing even more blood soon.
Joe was not interested in being an accessory to murder. Not even for the elusive tech.
Joe turned on his heel and began to walk away to the indignant spluttering of Gorilla-guy, as Joe dubbed the irate man.
“Wait, wait! Doc, was it?” The voice was a new one. The angry woman, though she sounded more desperate than mad at the moment. Joe turned to face her, and caught the subtle shift of Rudy’s hand away from the place Joe knew he kept his firearm. Joe did not indicate he’d seen anything as he faced the woman who was rapidly approaching him.
She’d reached out to touch him, but he reflexively batted her arm away so swiftly that for a moment. She was stunned, before rage and then forced calm overcame her features.
“What do you want? I’ll pay anything. Just, please help her,” she begged. Joe’s eyes flicked over to Gorilla-guy.
“We’ll pay anything,” he gritted out.
Joe looked from the three standing to the two on the ground, then back towards the exit and the nameless goon now blocking it. Well, if he was going to be forced to do or die, he might as well squeeze all he could. Anger made him braver as he addressed the room.
“And ARMS?” Joe asked. Rudy was an accounts manager. Surely, he had some jurisdiction over this matter? It was obvious the situation was desperate. Desperate enough for precious equipment to be offered as payment. Desperate enough for weapons to be drawn. Whoever the injured man was, he was someone important enough to make concessions for. Surely, instead of the stick, ARMS would rather use the carrot. Good doctors were hard to find after all.
“We just need the guy patched,” Rudy gritted out. “He’s been like that for too long.”
“And what about her? Huh? Whose fault is that?” The angry woman sneered, her gaze on Gorilla-guy. He responded, starting a heated back and forth that became progressively louder, adding to the soundtrack of agonised wailing from the man on the floor and the keening moans coming from the woman. Joe gritted his teeth, his eyes on Rudy, who stared him down.
Joe did the math, looked around the room and his mind spun up with the potential fallout of what he was about to do, then deemed it a calculated risk with high potential payoff.
“Both or neither, ARMS pays,” Joe said into the chaos.
Gorilla-man looked constipated with rage, his pasty face going red as he looked to Rudy, who hadn’t broken eye contact with an increasingly uncomfortable Joe. Rudy gave one curt nod before he gritted out a clipped “fine.”
Joe didn’t move for a moment. Confrontation, conversation in general really, wasn’t his forte. Joe also knew that the details he’d been given in the link, while sparse, had clearly only indicated a single patient. Joe knew that, Rudy knew that, Gorilla-guy… just looked ready to inflict violence. Gorilla-guy patted his side where Joe could now tell he had a concealed carry. Joe didn’t engage as he headed to the pregnant woman.
“Get it done fast, or I’ll see your body down that river before daybreak with the baby. Dead or alive.” Gorilla-guy’s eyes were serious. Joe would get it done. This wasn’t his first FUBAR with the gang, and it wouldn’t be his last. At least prior experience had taught him how to get his own out of it, much to the continued displeasure of the gang elites and their bottom line. Joe would still have saved her, even if ARMS had said no, he’d just prefer that it not have been literally the last thing he did.
Joe slipped into his scrubs, stepped into his coveralls, pulled his bag forward, and got to work.
It was nearly daybreak when Joe finally finished. Successful or not, the night had dragged. He’d done a full fix on the woman’s arm. Bionic prosthetic installations were nasty buggers that he’d neither had the equipment for on hand, nor was he technically licensed to handle (and by technically, he meant legally). This forced him to wait as the gang procured the equipment, which he did while speed-watching a medical lecture he’d saved.
The whole process took nearly six hours. In that time, he’d stopped the stump from bleeding, stitched and dressed the man’s leg, and delivered a healthy baby. Despite being heavily sedated at that point, the woman had unfortunately gone into shock somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, while her prosthetic installation was still ongoing. She’d live, but the wounds, both physical and not, would take a while to heal. The baby was a few weeks premature, but apart from being a little small, she’d had a set of lungs to rival Gorilla-guy.
Apart from the patient losing consciousness, Joe was pleased with the limb installation and was just as excited about the experience he got performing the procedures as he was about what was going to be a major payout. Would he want to do this ever again? No, but he wasn’t entirely regretful about the whole situation.
Joe smiled. It was a slight thing that faded just as quickly as it had appeared. Joe couldn’t help but feel excited as he biked his way back home. That was until he received a notification about a delivery. A delivery to his apartment where his mother was supposed to be asleep. A delivery that might have woken her up.
Fear sent a shiver up Joe's spine, and his grip tightened on the handlebars. Joe hadn’t felt in this much danger the entire night he’d spent with armed and injured gang members. He seriously considered turning around and taking Gorilla-guy up on his offer of swift travel via riverway. It would probably be safer.