Read Online Gamma Blade by Tim Stevens - Free Book Online Page B

held up his hands. “Whoah. No need for that.”
    Beth looked gently exasperated. “You just got knocked unconscious yourself,” she chided. “You’re not leaving here until you get checked out.”
    Venn knew better than to argue.
    *
    The intern who examined him was impossibly young looking, nervous when she realized from Venn’s air of authority that he was a cop, and even more uneasy when she discovered Beth was an attending physician. But she did a thorough job, prodding and squeezing and testing his reflexes and sensation and power, and by the end Venn was impressed by her quiet competence.
    “So I’ll live,” he grunted.
    By now, the intern was a little more relaxed. “You’ll most likely wake up tomorrow with a neck as stiff as a two-by-four,” she said. “Take a bunch of ibuprofen through the day. I’ll put it on your ward prescription chart.”
    “Hold on,” said Venn. “What ward ?”
    She looked nervous again. “It’s standard procedure. A history of loss of consciousness requires admission at least overnight, with neuro obs.”
    Venn tried to give her his most winning smile, but a twinge in the back of his head turned it into a grimace which he guessed made him look more like a shark baring its teeth. “Doc, I appreciate what you’ve done, and your advice, but I’m had my lights punched out before. I know what it’s like. And I feel fine. Really. So there’s no admission needed.”
    The intern glanced at Beth, who shrugged ruefully and almost apologetically.
    “I’ll sign the release forms, to say I’m discharging myself against medical advice,” Venn said, remembering that doctors were big on that kind of stuff. The intern looked visibly relieved.
    Venn sat on the edge of the bed in the examination cubicle, Beth perched in a chair alongside, while they waited for the intern to return with the paperwork.
    He said, “You okay?”
    Beth swept a hand across her face. “Sure. No harm done.”
    “Hell of a way to start your conference weekend,” he said. “And our weekend away together.”
    She smiled. “But we can still salvage it. A good night’s sleep, and then tomorrow’s a new day. This is out of our hands now, Venn. My patient’s in safe hands, and the thug you were chasing, as well as the one who hit you, are the business of the Miami Police Department now.”
    “Yeah,” said Venn. “I guess.”
    But he knew, and he knew Beth knew, that he couldn’t just let it drop. He’d come close to death, and however much Beth herself hadn’t been directly threatened, she and the baby had been in danger.
    He was personally involved, and he could no more simply walk away than he could ignore the throbbing of an infected tooth in his mouth.
    The curtain twitched aside and Venn and Beth looked up.
    A woman stood there. It wasn’t the young intern, back with the release papers.
    The woman was Cuban-looking, in her late forties, with a narrow, dour face and gray-streaked straight hair pulled back in an indifferent ponytail. Her eyes were sharp and intense, and small, with the whites barely visible. She wore a pair of cargo pants and a polo shirt under a denim jacket. A leather bag was lung over one shoulder.
    In her right hand she held a detective’s shield.
    “Lauren Estrada,” she said, in a voice soaked brown with nicotine. “I’m a detective lieutenant with the Miami PD. Need to speak with you both.”
    *
    She led them to an office down a far-flung corridor of the hospital, away from the ER. It looked like the kind of place a bunch of administrators shared during office hours, with no personal touches on the walls or the desk such as family photos or certificates of qualification. Estrada dropped into the chair behind the desk as if she was used to it, and Venn wondered if this was a place the cops often used when they were conducting interviews in the hospital.
    Venn was surprised that Estrada was alone. Cops, whether detectives or uniformed officers, normally worked in pairs.