Phantoms

doctor, that I was on my way to see a very sick patient, and that I didn’t intend to be detained. I kept my voice low. The other three men were still on their bikes, and from where they were, they couldn’t see the gun or hear exactly what I was saying. This Jeeter looked like the type who’d rather die than let anyone see him take any orders from a woman, so I didn’t want to embarrass him and maybe make him do something foolish.”
    The lieutenant shook his head. “You sure had him pegged right.”
    “I also reminded him that he might need a doctor some day. What if he took a spill off that bike of his and was lying on the road, critically injured, and I was the doctor who showed up—after he’d hurt me and given me good reason to hurt him in return? I told him there are things a doctor can do to complicate injuries, to make sure the patient has a long and painful recovery. I asked him to think about that.”
    Whitman gaped at her.
    She said, “I don’t know if that unsettled him or whether it was simply the gun, but he hesitated, then made a big scene for the benefit of his three buddies. He told them I was a friend of a friend. He said he’d met me once, years ago, but hadn’t recognized me at first. I was to be given every courtesy the Demon Chrome could extend. No one would ever bother me, he said. Then he climbed back on his Harley and rode away, and the other three followed him.”
    “And you just went on to Mount Larson?”
    “What else? I still had a patient to see.”
    “Incredible.”
    “I will admit, though, I had the sweats and the shakes all the way to Mount Larson.”
    “And no biker has ever bothered you since?”
    “In fact, when they pass me on the roads around here, they all smile and wave.”
    Whitman laughed.
    Jenny said, “So there’s the answer to your question: Yes, I know how to use a gun, but I hope I never have to shoot anyone.”
    She looked at the .357 Magnum in her hand, scowled, opened a box of ammunition, and began to load the revolver.
    The lieutenant took a couple of shells from another carton and loaded a shotgun.
    They were silent for a moment, and then he said, “Would you have done what you told Gene Terr?”
    “What? Shoot him?”
    “No. I mean, if he’d hurt you, maybe raped you, and then if you’d later had a chance to treat him as a patient… would you have… ?”
    Jenny finished loading the Magnum, clicked the cylinder into place, and put the gun down. “Well, I’d be tempted. But on the other hand, I have enormous respect for the Hippocratic Oath. So… well… I suppose this means I’m just a wimp at heart—but I’d give Jeeter the best medical care I could.”
    “I knew you’d say that.”
    “I talk tough, but I’m just a marshmallow inside.”
    “Like hell,” he said. “Me way you stood up to him took about as much toughness as anybody has. But if he’d hurt you, and if you’d later abused your trust as a doctor just to get even with him… well, that would be different.”
    Jenny looked up from the .38 that she’d just taken from the array of weapons on the table, and she met the black man’s eyes. They were clear, probing eyes.
    “Dr. Paige, you have what we call ‘the right stuff.’ If you want, you can call me Tal Most people do. It’s short for Talbert.”
    “All right, Tal. And you can call me Jenny.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that.”
    “Oh? Why not?”
    “You’re a doctor and all. My Aunt Becky—she’s the one who raised me—always had great respect for doctors. It just seems funny to be calling a doctor by his… by her first name.”
    “Doctors are people too, you know. And considering that we’re all in sort of a pressure cooker here—”
    “Just the same,” he said, shaking his head.
    “If it bothers you, then call me what most of my patients call me.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Just plain Doc.”
    “Doc?” He thought about it, and a slow smile spread over his face. “Doc. It makes you think of one of those grizzled, cantankerous old coots that Barry Fitzgerald used to play in the movies, way back in the thirties and forties.”
    “Sorry I’m not grizzled.”
    “That’s okay. You’re not an old coot, either.”
    She laughed softly.
    “I like the irony of it,” Whitman said. “Doc. Yeah, and when I think of you jamming that revolver in Gene Terr’s belly, it fits.”
    They loaded two more guns.
    “Tal, why all these weapons for a little substation in a town like