The Law of Nines

She looked exhausted but he realized that in her drugged condition, in a strange place, in a strange world, she had to be terrified to be left alone, especially as weak as she was. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her tight, protect her, and keep her safe. But they weren’t safe, not yet, anyway.

He realized that she was probably right, they should stay together. If anything happened, he didn’t know if she had enough strength left to defend herself. Although she never failed to amaze him.

“If you need to stop to get your breath just say so. All right?”

Jax nodded as she rose up into a crouch. They stayed low enough as they approached the nurses’ station to be under the bottom of the window. He could hear flames crackling on the other side of the door.

When he carefully rose up to get a glimpse, he didn’t see anyone at the counter inside. He tried different keys until he found the one that fit the lock. He turned the lock slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Once he had the door unlocked, he again snuck a quick glimpse in the window. He still didn’t see anyone, so he opened the door and slipped inside. The smoke stung his eyes. He had to resist the urge to cough. They stayed low as they went in.

Alex peeked over the top of the counter and saw that way in the back the doctor was frantically throwing liquid on the fire already raging in the aisles between the files. An orderly pulled files off the shelves and threw them on the burning pile as the doctor doused them with yet more liquid.

Alex went back to the wall beside the door, out of sight of the two working to torch the place, and pulled the lever of the fire alarm. Nothing happened. He looked up at the sprinklers. They remained off. He snatched up the phone to dial 911. The line was dead.

Jax slipped in the door. Alex squatted down beside her.

“What’s going on?” she whispered. “What’s burning?”

“They’ve started a fire to destroy the files.” He kept his voice low even though the noise of the fire covered it. “The fire alarm doesn’t work and the phone is dead. They were obviously prepared to destroy the whole place to cover their tracks if anything ever went wrong. The doctor panicked and is implementing those procedures.”

They both rose up just enough to take a look over the counter. Alex could see that the fire was already burning strongly and spreading fast. It would be hard to put out.

He looked around and spotted a fire extinguisher on the wall, but he doubted it would be big enough. He was sure that the hospital had to have fire hoses. He didn’t know where they were, but assumed that they were in the back of the nurses’ station.

Alex knew that he had to put out the fire or the whole building would go up in flames. He tried to think of where there would be more extinguishers. There weren’t any out in the wards, because they couldn’t trust the patients. The extinguishers were heavy and could be used as weapons.

The doctor threw more of the flammable liquid on the burning mound of files on the floor until the bottle was empty. It appeared to be a bottle from the pharmacy, probably alcohol. The doctor pulled another from his pocket and threw it against the shelves. The bottle shattered against the steel shelving, spilling the liquid all down the files. Fire erupted up the side of the shelves, the flames roaring and crackling, lapping at the ceiling.

As he started to turn, Alex saw Jax on the floor. His first thought was that she had passed out from exhaustion. She tried to push herself up on her arms. It looked to be a struggle.

Realizing that something was wrong, Alex started to bend down to help her. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a nurse behind him.

Almost at the same time as he saw the nurse, Alex felt a sharp stab in his left hip. With an icy flood of dread and alarm he instantly knew what she had done.

Almost at the same time, before he could react, a heavy office chair arced through the air, crashing into the nurse, sending her sprawling.

As Alex yanked the syringe from his backside he was shocked to see that it was his mother who had thrown the chair. She had thrown it just in the nick of time. The nurse had only started to push the plunger in before the chair had clobbered her. Alex had gotten some of the drug, but not nearly all of it.

His mother had just saved his life.

“The nurse hit her,” his mother said, pointing at Jax on the floor.

“Mom—”

An orderly loomed up out of the darkness behind her and threw an arm around her neck. As she screamed, Alex dove for the man. Even as he was still in midair he saw that it was too late.

His mother collapsed dead to the floor as he sailed over her, crashing into the orderly who had just broken her neck.

The man made the mistake of trying to catch Alex. He expected a fight. He wasn’t expecting a knife.

His eyes widened with surprise as the blade plunged deep into his lower abdomen. Alex gave it a mighty pull, slicing up until the blade hit ribs.