Listening gave me something to do during this apathetic shift. At least my detectives were having a better time of it than I was.

"--Phenacemide was banned due to high levels of toxicity that caused horrible side effects, including suicidal depression, loss of potassium and bone marrow, abdominal pain, and chronic headaches." Sandburg's voice.

"Doesn't sound like something I'd take for fun."

"It was only used as a last resort, remember? That means maybe ten percent, if that."

"So when it was banned, the users had to change medications to something that didn't work as well."

"Right, unless they wanted to buy it overseas or in Mexico."

"It's sold there?" A pause.

"Why would someone smuggle an anticonvulsant into the country? Especially one with no street value whatsoever?"

"Maybe it was never intended to be sold on the streets... maybe he's got a built-in market."

"A black market for epileptics?" Sandburg sounded disbelieving, and I had to admit that the notion sounded a bit far-fetched.

"You've believed stranger things, haven't you, Chief?" A pause. There was a story there, I was sure of it. "Maybe that explains the pharmacy theft. The thief sold the drug, but also made the relief from the illegal drug's effects available to the same buyers."

"Like a criminal two-for-one."

"Exactly; but that doesn't explain how the negligence fits."

"Plus, we don't know that everything is connected. True, Wheatley's name came up most frequently, but until we've something conclusive, it doesn't necessarily mean anything."

Well, at least someone was making progress. The time was now almost 9:30 p.m., and someone ordered enough pizza for dinner for everyone on the graveyard shift, including us. There was a lull in the ER, so I suppose they figured to take advantage of the free time. Thank you, God, for watching over fools and hungry directors of photography. They even had pieces of the supreme pizza left, thick with Italian sausage and mushrooms and pepperoni and onions and all that other good stuff. At any rate, it's got to be better than the cafeteria food which, to paraphrase Riggs and Murtaugh, could qualify as a lethal weapon. In most hospitals, the cafeteria food is better than the food served to patients, which makes no sense since it's all made in the same place by the same people. That's not the case at Cascade General... but at least they're consistent.

Now, if there's a god, the pizza'll taste as good as it looks. I snagged a wedge of the supreme that I can hear calling my name in husky wheedling tones. Hmmm, I'm so right, it's way greasy, lots of cheese, and loaded with things that are so bad for me my arteries are screaming in pain, but I'm happy as a pig in mud. This is comfort food from my college days -- cheap but good. I took advantage of this well-timed lull to hunt down and kill a cup of coffee.

Luckily, emergency rooms everywhere have a back room somewhere, off to the side in back of the main desk usually, that has couches and a coffee pot. Cascade General is no exception, so I filled a cup and hurried back to my charge. Now I just had to figure out whether to inhale my drink to fill my desperate need for caffeine or to savor the brew slowly for maximum effect and enjoyment. Walking by, I spotted Rick and his resident and Vasquez, the bastard, looked like he'd had several cups by now.

Medical people drifted in and out, snagging pizza and gulping it down before hurrying back out to their duties. I have to wonder what we're going to do now. Apparently my confusion showed on my face, because Stuart grinned at me mischievously. "My patients are stable and should be sleeping by now. If anything untoward should happen -- and I've left notes as to what sort of things to check for -- the nurses will page me. The others are being looked after by others for the remainder of their treatment."

That was true. The jumper wasn't just in police custody, but by now he was either in the recovery room or on the orthopedics floor. I thought it best to take this time to ask him more questions. "So, when there's a calm like this, how do you stay sane while you wait?" That didn't come out exactly how I expected, but my questions would get edited out for the final cut.

"If we don't have other patients to check on, there's always paperwork to be done. Patients' charts need updating, among other things. Sometimes we even get messages from insurance agents asking questions about this or that patient's treatment. Some cases require research, so we can spend our scarce free time doing that." We began walking back toward the main desk, where a few other doctors and a couple nurses stood talking amongst themselves. Doctor Cunningham, whom I trailed yesterday, was one of them. She must have worked a double shift.

"We can also spend time doing research of our own, say, if we're planning to write a paper to submit to a journal," he continued. "Most of the time, though, sleep wins out. You have to take it when you can get it." I understood that sentiment; sleep when you can because when it rains it pours. He grinned sideways at me, not missing a step. "Other times, we play."

"Play what?" I've seen doctors and nurses entertain themselves during their free time in all sorts of ways. Water fights with various pieces of medical equipment, board games of all descriptions, card games of all types, and there've even been some rather clear affairs of a personal nature going on in the residents' sleeping area. I remember quite vividly the game of Operation that a respected surgeon kept spectacularly losing again and again. He blamed his losses on stage fright, since I had him in my viewfinder some of the time. Of course, that excuse didn't explain the other seventy-percent of his losses when I wasn't recording him or anything else in particular.

Stuart grinned at me. "Do you feel lucky?"

I have to admit, this was different. I've never before seen poker played for candy -- gumdrops, hard candies, jawbreakers, starbursts, and chocolate bars -- or anything qualifying as dessert material. Someone raised the ante an orange and half a walnut brownie, causing the formation of a quorum to decide whether an orange can be properly considered 'dessert' and how many points it garners in betting. They seem to have a points system at work, itemizing each portion by amount and by dessert standing.

This has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever witnessed.

Play continues after a brief argument breaks out over the orange and its status. Stuart, aided by a nurse in cranberry scrubs, tried to explain the rules of the points system but I couldn't seem to keep it straight. Practice probably does the trick. I find myself wondering what the highest- ever-ranked item is, but before I can ask, an unfamiliar code and location comes over the loudspeaker.

Code Red.

The code for fire.

Our orientation never discussed this, and I caught a quick glimpse of the shock on Doctor Stuart's face before I see the confusion on Rick's. He's probably just as shell-shocked as I am, since this has never happened to us. Julie looks a little scared, and I sincerely hope the same look isn't on my face. All things considered, I'd rather look confused than scared. Time's already beginning to slow down. Abandoning the poker game, we all wheeled around at once to race somewhere to do something, whatever their posts are during a Code Red, when suddenly there was a man standing in front of us... pointing a gun in our direction.

I do not need this kind of stress, not ever. I especially do not need this kind of stress at nearly midnight. For a few minutes -- I think, since it seems like much longer -- the gun in his hand held my attention, and my brain managed to spit out that it was a vaguely familiar handgun, maybe a 9mm, but with a smaller barrel. My brain then helpfully informed me that the camera was still recording all this, since I had miraculously not dropped it when this started.

The gunman didn't say a word, but a wave of his pistol motioned us toward the main desk. Smart, he wanted us all in one little group where we could be watched. He looked naggingly familiar to me before I recalled that I'd seen him the previous day, in this very emergency room to be treated for a scabies infection. Surely the cream couldn't have made him this cranky.

Ha-ha. Just a bit of hostage humor, there.

The bunch of us sat down and looked around at each other, each of us wondering the same things. What's going to happen now? Will someone get us out of this? Has anyone called the police? I was thinking all the same questions, plus I wanted to know what would happen if a trauma came in. Hopefully, someone had alerted the cops and one of the other hospitals in town, so they could pick up our slack because it looked like we were going to be out of business for a while.

And what about the fire, what were we supposed to do? Didn't he hear that alarm going off? Well, at any rate, I had a camera, so I might as well take advantage. I focused my viewfinder on the gunman, and made sure I had a clear picture. If he's going to shoot me, I want it on tape but please don't shoot me. God, I deserve a raise for this. "Excuse me, but... can I ask why you're doing this? Do you plan to let us all go before we burn to death?"

He seemed to be trying real hard not to have any expression. "There is no fire."

"What?" Now I was really confused. It was a false alarm?

"I set a small fire as a distraction, to get all the hospital security away from here so that I won't have to worry about them. I have what I want."

He sounded very determined, so I wasn't certain I wanted to ask. Still, we all have our duties to perform. "What do you want?"

"All of you."

For what? That's what I was afraid of, and now for the question of the hour. "Why did you do this?"

"My little girl, Janet... she's dead because of them. Five years ago, tonight. They said it was asthma and allergies, but they should have known...." His voice sounded so shaky, breaking now and then. Understandably, he was upset, but a lawsuit would have worked a whole lot better from where I was sitting. "They should have known, she'd been coming to this hospital all her life, she was born in this hospital, but they still made a mistake and killed my baby!" Now he was getting angry, and that concerned me. The hand holding the gun shook, and that was really upsetting.

I was surprised that we were all acting so rationally, no panicking, no pleading, no crying, just a lot of quiet terror. What was really surprising was how calm I found myself; I'm not a big tough hero-type, but here I was, a hostage calmly interviewing her captor like I was talking to a schoolteacher. Behind me, I could hear Rick and Jules interviewing the other doctors and nurses present about this whole event and some of the facts brought up. I'd known Doctors Stuart and Cunningham had been caught with the three of us, but I didn't know the others by name. An unreasonable urge to look outside gripped me but I knew it was pitch dark out there in spite of the lights in front of the building. I hoped someone knew what was going on in here. "That big cheese, Wheatley, he murdered my Janet, it was his fault, and the hospital cleared him, said no one was at fault." That didn't really surprise me, that the hospital cleared one of their high- position people of any fault. The last thing any of the board members want is a lawsuit. "That, that scum of a man shouldn't even be practicing medicine, let alone working on people. Janet walked into this hospital on her own two feet, but when I came to check on her, she was dead!"

He was starting to get angry again, but I didn't want to interrupt him and risk annoying him further. The tape kept rolling and I kept my viewfinder steady, watching him record this confession of sorts. Hopefully, he wouldn't do anything to require the tape's use in court. This whole situation was so surreal already that I didn't see how it could get any stranger. He seemed like a nice old man even if he was a few licks short of a Tootsie Pop.

"I was left with three grandchildren to raise, three grandchildren who've lost both their parents," he continued, angrily. "What am I supposed to tell them, now that they're older? What am I supposed to say when the baby asks what happened to Mommy?"

His voice dropped in volume, and I had to lean a little closer to catch it, pushing up the sound control a notch. I had a good view of his face and the gun, and it almost looked like he was crying. "My wife died three months after our daughter. We'd already buried our two boys. Vietnam killed them both. All our children dead, it was too much for my wife... she died with her heart broken."

All things considered, I felt bad for him in spite of what he was doing now. Losing a child is hard, nothing harder, but to lose all three children and your wife.... That's an awful lot of pain. I wanted to ask whether he had spoken with a counselor, but some people react very strongly to the idea of needing one, instantly equating 'counselor' with 'psychologist' with 'crazy' when that's not the case at all. Still, people tend to remember negative labels much easier than positive ones, and that's a fact.

So I would ask something else, and try to change the subject. "Can I ask a question?"

"Certainly."

"Not to bring your attention to it or anything, but what kind of gun is that?" I couldn't help myself, the vague deja vu of it was driving me wild. Rick is probably going ballistic right now, and I could just hear his voice, 'what are you thinking?'

"It's a Tokarev TT-33, the Soviet answer to the American Colt-Browning pistols." He showed the gun off proudly, keeping one of us always in range. "I picked it up off of a North Korean during the war in '51."

That was why the gun seemed vaguely familiar; now I remembered. Two of my uncles had served in Korea, and one of them had brought home a bayonet-fixed carbine, and a handgun that was remarkably similar to this one. "I thought I'd seen it before. One of my uncles brought one back from the front." He looked a bit surprised but didn't say anything to that, which was good. Personally, I knew very little about the Korean War, except for what I learned from Hawkeye Pierce and BJ Hunnicutt. The history books I'd used in school didn't talk much about recent history at all, giving over maybe two pages for Korea and absolutely nothing at all about Vietnam. These were relatively new books, too, in college, and they didn't discuss Vietnam at all.

"I picked it off a North Korean," he repeated. His face hardened slightly, similar to the look he must have worn at the front. "A dead North Korean."

That settled it for me. I closed my mouth and sat back down with the others, but kept the recorder running. There was plenty of tape left... and hopefully I'd get the chance to use it.

Forever seemed to be passing like Vermont maple syrup, but we spent our time -- enforced free time -- by eating the rest of the pizza and playing endless rounds of poker. Bits and pieces of this I recorded, but not everything. Three of my fellow hostages whom I hadn't met, Doctor Emily Liu, Harold Morton, R.N., and Tiffany Yates, R.N., are in the same shape the rest of us are. Shaky, nervous, a bit confused, more than a little scared, but generally the gunman was treating us all quite well. He didn't care what we did so long as we didn't cause any trouble for him. It struck me as strange that he didn't seem to really want us for anything in particular; he just sat and watched us, not even bothering to contact the police and make demands for our release. What exactly is he planning? My current tape ran out and I hurriedly inserted another one, wondering when someone on the outside would deem to start negotiations. Of course, I suppose they could have attempted it already and none of us had noticed.

Time to quietly check in with my favorite detectives. Maybe they're hatching some brilliant plan to get us out of this fine mess.

"This isn't going to work."

"You have a better idea? Let's hear it." A pause. "Look, man, we know where the hostages are and where the gunman is. We know that we have to get them out of there a.s.a.p." How did they know where the gunman was standing?

"We know that he's on edge and could start shooting at any time." Now there's a comforting thought. I don't think so. "And what you're planning might shock him into taking potshots at those hostages."

"I'm still waiting for your better idea."

"Dammit."

"I guess that's a 'no', huh?" Another brief pause. "Open this up." Lots of grunting and the faint sounds of metal scratching. "And try to be quiet, okay?"

"Shut... up." Pinging noises as something small broke free and hit the floor. Did they open something? I glanced upward, wondering what they could be doing, and hoped Woods wouldn't notice what I was doing. The brass air ducts caught my eye, but that didn't seem too likely. Detective Gorgeous might not be sized like his brawny partner, but even he probably wouldn't fit into those spaces. "Up you go, Chief."

"If you don't move your hands, I'll think you're interested in a whole new level to our partnership."

"Sandburg!"

"Not even a ring or anything. I'm not that sort of boy, you know."

"I was giving you a lift into the duct, you ungrateful--" Laughter cut him off. This was too funny. I wanted to laugh but, if I did, the jig would be up, as the saying went. All I had to do was hold in my giggles while simultaneously preventing my imminent explosion. At least I was in a hospital.

A few minutes of near-silence later, the conversation continued. "Move that over there, and wire it in." Grunting followed the statement. They've got a plan but what it is doesn't make sense. Apparently something heavy had to be moved, and it, for whatever reason, involved climbing inside something that wasn't designed for human transport.

"Where's the bag?" A rustling of paper sounded very loud to my ears. "Okay, Chief. It's all set up... as a last resort."

When the candy for poker ran out, they began playing hearts. That decision left me out, since hearts isn't my game, but I'd folded shortly after winning a lone hand and found myself with a mere pair of threes on the next round. Taking my winnings out of the potential pot had caused a great deal of cheerful insulting. Luckily, I got most of my win on tape but concluded it had been a total fluke and that I should stick to Go Fish.

Apparently, Nurse Yates had come to the same conclusion since she was sprawled on the floor across from me. It looked like she might be sleeping at first glance, but I knew there was no way she could be. Julie looked tired, slumped against the front panel of the main desk, but she was hard at work, scribbling some comments into her notepad. Her camera was busily recording the hearts game at times and the non-players at times, so I think she's trying to put what she remembers recording into some semblance of mental order. Rick was playing hearts, and his camera was getting every bit of it.

Most of the time, I kept my camera on the gunman, with a few wanderings to other points of interest. He'd been pretty quiet, watching us from inside a niche in the wall beside the double doors out of the ER and the hall leading outdoors.

"Mister Woods, this is Captain Banks speaking." The new voice out of a bullhorn startled me and everyone else out of our wits, and I instantly thanked God that I'd changed tapes. It looked like the cops were starting negotiations, and it's about damned time. "Release the hostages and come out with your hands up," he continued. "No one has to get hurt today."

"Forget it," shouted Woods, his gun hand beginning to shake again.

"Mister Woods, the area you're in has been surrounded by police officers. I can see that you haven't hurt anyone, and we're glad to see that."

"That can change!"

Thanks a lot, Banks, go ahead and undo all my hard work. I couldn't believe this was happening. Woods -- at least we all knew his name now and he was the scabies patient from yesterday -- was starting to lose his temper a little, and that probably didn't bode well for any of us sitting in the line of fire.

"Mister Woods, you've got to show me some faith here. There are eight hostages in there with you." There was a slight pause during which I could practically hear myself sweat. "Why don't you let four of them go?"

"So that I have even less to bargain with?" The gunman's condescending tone made me want to curl up and pretend that none of this was happening. "I don't think so. They stay here with me, right where I can keep an eye on them."

"Mister Woods, be reasonable."

"Are you calling me crazy?"

"No, no, of course not. I just want us to be able to end this situation without anyone -- on either side of the doors -- getting hurt." Another pause. "I would still like you to let some of those hostages go... is there anything I can give you in exchange for the release of four hostages?"

Woods remained silent for a few minutes, clearly thinking it over as to what demands he wanted to make. I was just glad I was getting all of this on tape; the bosses hopefully would love this, since our adventures exploring the depths of trauma weren't going at all well. "That bastard Wheatley killed my little girl! I want him to pay!"

No reply came from outside. Hopefully, the cops would go with the plan. I wasn't real comforted by the comments I'd overheard, but any plan was better than no plan. Either way, it didn't look too good for us. I know from television that cops don't usually like to give in to demands, falling back on it when they can't think of anything else to do. Still, a plan would be nice, surely they could think of something.

"Get down!"

A sharp popping sound came from somewhere in back of us, and everyone hit the deck. Even Woods hit the deck. I see him turning, his gun out and his mouth open in a cry of astonishment, of anguish. People are screaming, including someone nearby, I don't think it's me, and people are pushing, seeking cover from the gunfire. The floor tiles were shaking and cold, people were running, pounding footsteps were all around us; more yelling, but I can't understand any of it. I laid there on my stomach, face down and to the side, like I'm sleeping without dreaming or dreaming without sleeping, still blankly holding the camera in one hand, but I didn't know where it was pointing or if it was still recording. Both my hands, camera and all, are folded over in back of my head, and all I can think of is the sound of my dog woofing in his sleep as he dreams about chasing small creatures.

Suddenly, hands were touching me and someone was talking softly but I didn't understand any of that either, and then I yelled. The terrified water in my ears preventing me from hearing had drained away, and it was like words have meanings again as soon as I shouted. A female officer with kind eyes was looking at me, and I realize that my face was wet without any idea how it got that way. Not at any time do I remember crying, I did not cry. Looking up, my favorite detectives -- Buffed and Gorgeous -- had the gunman in handcuffs, and he was crying on their shoulders. That doesn't sound like such a bad idea. The room was practically full of cops, people in plainclothes who simply had to be cops -- probably other detectives -- and paramedics.

I managed to get to my feet, all of me covered in dust and grit, and I checked my camera... which was fine. No damage. I'm fine. No damage. We're all fine. No damage.

God.

I think I'm going to be sick.

I want to go home... but right now I really want to find a restroom. Rick said this would be easy, so I'm going to strangle him and enjoy it. There's nothing to worry about, I'm sure the jury will agree with me that it's justifiable homicide. Without taking any more time to think about it, I ran like the devil himself was after me past the cops, past everybody in my way, into the nearest ladies' restroom.