Broken Prey

fire department got to the hospital, and the paramedics, and three doctors in the hospital itself, quickly got to the other shooting victims.
     
    LUCAS WAS TAKEN to the hospital in Mankato. Sloan rode with him. Sloan kept saying, “This is not a problem. This is not a problem . . .”
    Lucas finally said, “Sloan, shut the fuck up. This is definitely a problem.”
     
    THE MORE SERIOUSLY INJURED were flown to Regions Hospital in St. Paul or to the Mayo in Rochester, except for two who needed immediate blood transfusions. They were taken to Mankato to be stabilized.
    Lucas was evaluated at Mankato. The bone in his upper arm had been broken by Biggie’s bullet. The bullet itself had not gone through but was stuck on the underside of the skin at the back of his arm. With his good hand, Lucas could actually feel the bullet under the skin.
    “So what?” he asked. “I’m gonna need a splint or something?”
    “More than that,” the doc said. “We’ll have to go in there to put your arm back together. This will be a little complicated.”
    After talking with Sloan, Lucas insisted on being reevaluated at Regions. He was flown out with one of the more severely wounded victims who had been taken to Mankato to be stabilized.
    At Regions, as at Mankato, he was told that the arm would need an operation to place screws to hold the bones together. He could expect to be in a cast for three to six months; and there would be physical rehabilitation after that.
    “Am I gonna lose anything? Any function?”
    “Shouldn’t,” the doctor said. “Maybe a little sensation on the back of your arm.”
     
    SLOAN, JENKINS , Shrake, Del, and Rose Marie crowded in to see him before the operation. Sloan had briefed Rose Marie on the shootings.
    “There are already people running around, trying to figure out whom to hang,” Rose Marie said, before Lucas was rolled into the OR. “It’s amazing. It’s like the second reaction. The first is to ask how many are dead, the second is to ask whom we can hang.”
     
    THE OPERATION TOOK two hours and was routine, the surgeon told Lucas in the recovery room. He was given additional sedation when he came out of the recovery room and slept through the night, waking at six o’clock.
    A nurse came to see him: “Hurt?”
    “Not much,” he said. “I’d like cup of coffee, is what I’d like. And a New York Times or a Wall Street Journal ?”
    “I don’t think so,” she said. “How about a nice glass of orange juice?”
    “How about if you hand me my cell phone? And I gotta take a leak . . .”
    Both his arm and his face hurt—his nose had been recracked in the fight—but he was able to walk to the bathroom without a problem, pulling a saline drip along behind him.
    The lying had already begun.
    He added to it.
     
    WEATHER CALLED AT SEVEN , an hour earlier than usual. She’d heard about the shooting after she’d finished her morning work in the operating theater, and called in a panic. Lucas had kept his cell phone on a bedside table.
    “I’m fine,” Lucas lied. “But I gotta get into the office. There’s gonna be a political shit storm starting about ten o’clock. Soon as the politicians finish their double-latte grandes.”
    “Were you involved in the shooting? Were you in there?” she asked, still scared.
    “Yeah, I was right there,” Lucas said. “It’s a goddamn mess, Weather. I don’t want you to think about it. I gotta talk to everybody on the face of the earth in the next two days, covering our asses and getting the story right. I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”
    “You sound . . . hoarse.”
    He was, from the anesthesia. He said, “I spent all yesterday screaming at people. I need a couple of cough drops.”
    She asked, “What about Sloan?”
    “He’s bummed. I gotta get to him, too,” Lucas said.
    “Take care of yourself—don’t worry about everybody else,” Weather said.
    “Hey, I’m fine,” he lied. When he hung up, he was satisfied that he’d pulled it off.
    Then Weather called Sloan’s wife, worried about Sloan’s state of mind, and Sloan’s wife said, “We stayed for the operation, but Lucas was pretty groggy when he came out of it. They said everything went okay . . .”
    “What operation?” Weather asked.
    Lucas was talking to the docs about getting out and was being told “No,” when Weather called back.
    “LUCAS . . . ,” she wailed.
    “Ah, shit . . .”
    Trapped like a rat.
     
    SLOAN