Page 9 of With Love

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For the third time in a matter of days, I find myself at the nurses’ station of a hospital trying to find Lana. Repeatedly, I’ve had to explain that she is a victim of the plane crash. Thanks to fucking HIPAA, I can’t get any fucking answers, let alone someone to tell me who is on the fucking list of surviving passengers.

As I am getting ready to reach over the counter and rip the clipboard out of the nurse’s hand, I see the face of an old friend of mine, Dr. Tim Hill. He just entered a hospital room to check on a patient.

“Never mind,” I say to the nurse as nicely as I can muster. “I see Dr. Hill over there. He’s an old friend of mine.”

The nurse nods at me, happy to get me away from her station, I’m sure. The room next to the one where Dr. Hill entered is vacant at the moment. Reese and I hide out in there, waiting for him to finish with his patient and pass by.

A few minutes later, he’s walking past our room looking down at a patient’s chart and Reese grabs him, putting him into a headlock and pulls him into the room. Closing the door behind them, Reese pushes the doc toward me, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Tim,” I start, “long time no see.” I stare at him a moment while he gawks in horror at the sight of me in front of him. I make him sweat for a few minutes before finally standing up. I offer my hand to him but he doesn’t take it. Not that I thought he would. The last time we were face-to-face, he made it abundantly clear that I was never to set foot in his facility again. Too bad for him, he’s standing toe-to-toe with his worst nightmare and I’m not going anywhere.

“Lochlan. Can I help you find the exit?”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary. I haven’t found what I came here for. I believe you know my wife. Where is she?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you’re referring to.”

Stepping in closer to him, our foreheads are millimeters away from touching.

“Think. Harder.” I barely manage to get the words out through my gritted teeth.

“I think it’s time for you to find your way out.”

Grabbing him by the back of his neck, I twist and throw him down onto the floor. Standing over him, I rain down punches that land on his face, his chest, his stomach. Bringing my foot back, I kick him in the ribs over and over again, shining my shoes on the fabric of his doctor’s coat each time my foot connects with him.

I feel Reese trying to grab ahold of me, trying to pull me off of Hill. I rip my arm from his grasp making a mental note to punish him for it later.

One final kick to the face and Dr. Hill is KO’d.

“Do you remember her now, you little bitch?!” I shout at him, spitting in his face.

Leaving the room, we walk toward the stairs at the end of the hallway and make our way down to the first floor where the security office is. I want to try and get into the control room and get my hands on the security footage since the plane crash.

Arriving at the main level, we walk out and head toward security. There is always some little shit with a hard on for authority that is there. It won’t take much to get him to give me the video files.

Promising this little fuck some money in exchange for footage was just as easy as I thought it would be. Too bad for him he’s never actually going to get anything. I knocked him out as soon as I had the thumb drive in my hand.

* * *

Reese and I have been sitting in front of my desk at the lab for hours, watching the footage from the thumb drive plugged into my computer. We’ve watched as every patient who was brought in by ambulance since the crash three days ago rolled through the ER. Do you know how many fucking people have been brought into this hospital in an ambulance in the past three days?

97 mother fucking people, so far. And not one of them was Lana. I stand up from my chair and move around a little bit leaving the search to Reese.

“Hey, boss. I think I got something,” Reese says, minutes later.

I turn around so fast that I give myself whiplash.

Looking at the image on the screen, I feel my blood begin to boil. There she is, being wheeled into the back of an ambulance rather than being taken out of one. I check the timestamp on the screen and it’s from three hours ago. Not even 30 minutes before running into the doctor at the hospital.

“God damn it!” I shout, pounding my fists onto my desk. “Rewind it.”

Watching the screen more closely this time, I notice something that I didn’t just a moment ago. Accompanying her into the ambulance is none other than Marshall. Fucking. Trent.

My blood boils in an instant and the urge to kill something roars to the forefront of my mind. I start vibrating with the need to crush something with my own two hands. I storm out of my office and head straight toward the lower level where we keep our test subjects. One of them is about to breathe their last breath. No one will miss them anyway.

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