Mortal Injuries

Jai Alai sat numbly next to her son's hospital bed. She stared unblinkingly at his bandages and bruises. Every minute or so, her chest would heave and then subside, as if she kept forgetting and then remembering to breathe. Dr. Khalid Mohammad returned to the room to see how Jai Alai was doing, and she looked up at him, expressionless. He spoke to her for a few minutes, then told her he was going home and which doctor would be doing rounds later. A few minutes later, he walked out of George Washington University Hospital and headed down into the Metro tunnel. He knew the boy would be alright if the woman's boyfriend stayed in jail, but it was too late for the girl. He glanced up at the message board to see his wait time, then walked to the end of the platform to sit down on the far bench. He buried his head in his hands. As long as he lived, he would never forget the sight of those kids coming in from the ambulance--how could two small children generate that much blood? And he wondered about the resident who had worked on the girl--Mohammad was sure he had overheard the nurses saying that they had paged him out of a nearby bar. By the time Mohamad had finished stitching up and stabilizing the boy, the girl had already been pronounced dead on the other side of the E.R. curtain. Did she ever have a chance?

Several miles north, Vice President Cheney was lying in bed, watching football on TV. He hadn't even bothered getting dressed today. Lynn had been clucking around him for days, checking his pulse and heartbeat as if he were some old, old, old man. But when they had taken him in to fix the irregular heartbeat, it wasn't Lynn that had flashed before his eyes, and it wasn't his life--it was that woman gang-raped in Saudi Arabia who was to be flogged and imprisoned for having been out alone with a male. He knew what he would do if somebody gang-raped his daughter, then told her it was her own fault. That judge would be DEAD. He clenched the remote control. What the hell was wrong with those people? He used to like those Saudis. He used to like Vladmir Putin. He used to like Saddam Hussein. He used to like Manuel Noriega. I hate everybody. Lynn came in again and handed him a bowl of green Jello. "You have to eat," she said, though it was not a very necessary statement. He tried to remember what they used to talk about. When was the last time we talked about anything besides politics and his heart? Lynn reminded him that their daughter was coming over later. I guess I'll get out of my pajamas.

A few miles west, Judge Sowell Lame opened the door of his newly acquired townhome in upper Georgetown. He was still in his pajamas, though he had what appeared to be tall rain galoshes on his feet. "Come on in. Let's start in the basement." Sebastian L'Arche entered the house, a very tense rat terrier leashed at his feet. The duo followed Lame down the narrow staircase into the dank cellar. This was Gipper's first moonlighting gig as a rat exterminator, and L'Arche was perplexed and nervous about the dog's uncharacteristic jitters. There couldn't be THAT many rats here, could there? L'Arche unleashed Gipper, and Gipper ran over to a pile of boxes and started barking at them. "Couldn't he stalk them better if he stayed quiet?" L'Arche agreed, called the dog back, and pulled it up by it forelegs, and whispered "rat" three times in Gipper's ear. L'Arche let the dog back down, the dog turned and looked back at the boxes wistfully, then took off into the back of the cellar to start killing rats. "What was that all about?" asked Lame, but L'Arche just shook his head. L'Arche had a bad feeling about this place. A half-hour later, Gipper had deposited six mortally injured rats at their feet, and eaten six doggie treats. "Excellent!" declared Lame. "Can you clean that up? I'll meet you upstairs in the kitchen." L'Arche bagged the rats to bring home for his neighbor's pet python, releashed Congressman Dorkley's rat terrier, and started up the stairs. Gipper looked back one more time at the ghosts watching them from behind the boxes, and wondered why the humans were more concerned about the rats. Gipper then bagged three rats in the pantry and one in the upstairs guest bedroom. L'Arche explained that there were probably more behind the walls, but Lame would have to cut out a hole large enough for Gipper to enter, which Lame did not want to do. "Let's just see how things are this week--I'd rather call you back than cut up my walls." A few minutes later, L'Arche happily got out of the gloomy house with a fat check in his back pocket, wondering if he should discuss Gipper's lucrative talent with the Congressman or just keep the paycheck for himself. The dyamic duo got into the ratmobile and drove away, their secret rat-fighting identities safe for the timebeing.