The Zombie Officer – Part Four

It was about 9:00 PM.  What the hell had happened?  I was slouched on my couch, the remnants of a previously full bottle of scotch lay on it’s side on the end table.  In typical northern state fashion the sky was still light out my window.  My head throbbed and my brain was completely disjointed.

I had left the police department about 5 hours ago.  There was a blur in my memory from that time until now.  I wish the black out also covered the 5 hours preceding that.  Everything seemed like it was stuck in replay.  It must be a trauma reaction.  I was going as crazy as one of my patients.

I had walked into the bank and started writing out a check for cash.  I heard a scream from behind me and turned to see three men burst into the bank.  They opened fire on the tellers.  I had taken all that fine.  I was calm, ducked below the counter I was at and pushed my back against the wall.  I knew to keep a low profile and not play hero.  Heroes die.

But that’s where things went all out of whack.  Had there been drugs in my lunch?  Had I really stolen the morphine and gotten high?  Morphine shouldn’t make you see what I saw.

As the first teller was shot and started to fall to the ground my vision blurred.  Not like being drunk, more like a TV where your madly adjusting the antenna to try and get reception.  I heard a soft voice that seemed to come from inside me call for Jason then felt a warm trickle down my forehead and a searing pain in the back of my skull.

The world came back to normal for a split second.  I felt a panic inside of me.  What was that I read in that book, fear is the mind killer.  Mine had to be dying.  No sooner than that thought drifted through my head and the second teller was shot and crumpled.  I heard the thump of her body on the floor then the world swirled again.

I found myself in a rapidly repeated scene in a kitchen.  Sometimes it was night, sometimes day.  Mostly night.  A man was there, he wore a suite, no pants and a tank top, no he was in pair of boxers, now back to the suite.  The smell of alcohol permeated my nostrils.  I saw his first raise and strike my face, over and over.  Then a child stumbled crying down the stairs and screamed.  The man turned and hurled a chair at the small boy.  It struck him.  I felt a rage rising inside me.  The vision slowed, the child fell.  He didn’t move and blood trickled from his nose.  His small chest rose and fell with unconscious breath.  A voice resigned to fate, but defiant and laced with hate whispered “This should have been you Jeff, this should’ve been you.”

I felt my lungs filled with warm fluid, my brain stung and my muscles ached then I burst back into the real world again.  I was raging, mad.  For the first time in my life I wanted to kill someone or something.  Who was Jeff?  I wanted to find that man and beat him until my fists were raw and his body lifeless.

The door to the bank burst open.  A middle aged officer stormed in with his revolver raised.  Gunfire burst from behind the counter.  The shots rang out and struck the officer.  I felt my body pull away from me.  I saw the robbers, their guns pointed at me.  The barrels flashed like a rock concert light show.  The bang, bang formed an odd rhythm that matched the anger still burning in me for Jeff.  Who was Jeff?

As that thought flitted through my mind I felt the floor hit my face.  It was warm, wet and sticky.  I never felt a floor that felt like that before.  I could still taste a doughnut,  a cherry Bismark, in the back of my mouth.  The tip, was it right, was it enough?  The waitress was cute and I wanted her to appreciate me stopping by for my daily coffee and doughnut.  But I had a job to do.  Jeff, where was he.  He needed to die.

I pushed up from the floor.  I couldn’t hold my head up straight but that didn’t matter.  Rage and duty pushed me toward the counter.  The gunmen turned toward me.  I couldn’t help the passing “heroes die” thought.  The guns where flashing again.  I felt like my skin was peeling.  A sensation like needles from a thousand nurses found their way into my legs and left arm.  I felt my left shoulder lurch forward like I had dropped a weight and was thrown off balance.  A burning sensation throbbed just below the shoulder.  I felt warm and moist, like the thickest sweat imaginable wept from my pores.

My legs gave way.  I felt a snap and a sharp sting in both.  I was on my knees.  Then I saw the middle robber.  That suit, I knew it.  I knew it.  Jeff, it had to be him.  Rage reasserted control.  Muscle memory extended my right arm in front of me.  The guns weren’t flashing anymore.  I saw their trigger fingers pulling madly and motionless shock on their faces.  My right index finger squeezed twice at Jeff, then twice at the masked man to his right, then twice at the last one standing robber to the left.  I collapsed to the floor.  Helen would be proud I though.  Who is Helen?  The world went blurry.  I fell two stinging  sensations tare into my face, pressure build in my head then release in the back of my skull, then the floor.  It happened again.  Jeff, yes it was Jeff.  Then the two stinging blows were felt for the third and final time.  The thud of the floor then the world went black.

The scotch is empty, empty.  Nothing left but the pounding in my head.  No, what I’m hearing is a pounding on the door.

The Zombie Officer – Part Three

On my way into town I realized I was about a week over due for a haircut.  I suppose losing some hair length might take some weight off my mind.  I’ve always hated bad puns like that, I dislike them even more when they’re mine.

I walked into Dick’s Barber Shop.  Dick was a damn good barber.  Sometimes I think he’s a better therapist than me.  He had a way of getting you to talk and any shrink, salesman or detective would envy.  I was greeted with his warm smile and open gesture to the chair.  I got the brief chastisement for being a week late but then with a couple of quick remarks he had me opening up about this morning’s events.

“As soon as I got into my office Pat was knocking on my door.”

Patricia Mullin was the front desk receptionist at Sunnyside Mental Hospital and Residence.  She nailed the semi-attractive receptionist stereotype.  I often mused that she couldn’t have fit the part better if she had been able to recreate herself to fill the role.   She sported the curves of a pleasant country drive and carried those few extra pounds that improved the bust more than it detracted from the waist.  Her face was pretty but that was five years ago, before she started as Sunnyside.  She was in the habit to ware enough makeup  that you really didn’t care.  She’d probably still look youthful if it wasn’t for the two packs of cigarettes she smoked a day.  The only benefit to her habit was it lent a seductive side to what was certainly a shrill voice earlier in her life.

“You’ve mentioned her before,” remarked Dick.

I felt the barber’s comb pull my hair up from my head for the shearing and continued my tale.

“She said she had this guy in the lobby since about 6:00 and he was making her nervous.  Apparently the guy was complaining about pain and wanted some medication.”

“Ahh, the whole world is searching for their own pill now aren’t they.”

“Apparently.  I took him back into my office.  I could tell he was an addict, probably didn’t even need any training to do that.  He had that nervous tick about him and kept fidgeting.  I could tell he was in pain.  He was probably going through withdrawal for something.”

“Do you want the normal length or should I shorten it a bit more?  It’s supposed to be extra hot the next couple of days.”

“Normal length is fine.  Anyway I tried some therapy on him.  He wouldn’t open up, just kept evading every question and asking when he could get something for his pain.”

“Looks like you have a couple extra grey hairs back here.  You might want to start using a rinse to keep your hair black.”

I nodded at his suggestion then he promptly held my head still so he could continue his work.

“It was getting close to 9:00 and I really wanted to get on with my normal duties so I told him I’d get him some medication.  I figured go get some Advil, crush it up and tell the poor sob that it was something stronger.  I really wished we hadn’t closed down our rehab program because I would’ve admitted him right then and there.  So I went to the locker, crushed up the pills and came back.  He was still there, all restless and fidgeting.  He kept clenching his arm like he was trying to get a vein up to shoot up.  Poor guy needed help.”

“Hold still while I trim up your side burns.”

I held still, but I needed to continue my story.  I had to get it off my chest and move on.

“I saw two patients that were getting discharged then I was called into Director Jenkins’ office.  Apparently every last drop of morphine was raided out of the med locker and I was the only person that had signed in this morning.”

“Almost done, put your chin down.” Dick said as he proceeded to trim the nape of my neck.

“They made me wait in the break room while they search my office and every place I had been seen for the morphine.  I didn’t take it and they didn’t find any.”

“Eh, that’s strange.”

I was shocked, “What’s strange, that they didn’t find it?”

“Oh, no.  My blade is dull and I thought I just sharpened it. So what happened?”

“We’ll I got my key to the med locker taken and assigned to the lock-down wing.  That and an unpleasant conversation with Elizabeth.”

“The lock-down wing?  Isn’t that where the Hansen killer is?”

“Yes, there’s four or five criminally insane in there.  That and a new amnesiac that freaks the staff out and a few other oddities.”

“Well we’re done here, that’ll be $2.50.”

I thanked Dick, handed him the money and walked out the door feeling a little better.  I only had around $3 more in my wallet, just enough to grab lunch then head to the bank.  I stopped by Jensen’s Cafe.  I hate a rather dry patty melt, but it went down fine with another cup of coffee and ample ketchup.  I got out with quarter to spare and headed to the bank.

It was becoming a sweltering day.  I broke into a sweat.   Shoppers on main street were moving slow.  There were a few kids were in the park.  Even their youthful energy was only employed in trying to ignite ants on the sidewalk with only a magnifying glass and imagination.

There was a homeless guy panhandling on the corner.  He was pushed back as far as he could go under the limited shade of a store awning.  His sign read – Need help.  Sgt Nick Clausen, USMC, Purple Heart, Battle of Hue 2/14/1968.  God Bless.  I noticed his left arm was significantly undersized and held in a makeshift sling.  I was having a bad day, but this guy was having a bad life.  It didn’t take a second thought to drop my last quarter in his nearly empty bucket.

The hand darted quickly toward mine, dull and sleeping eyes flashed with insane eagerness.  The mans face widened in a grin, showing off yellow and aged teeth gaping up from an unkempt beard.  His grungy, oiled touch repulsed me.  I pulled back and stumbled toward the street.

“You saved a life, I bless you son! Bless you!”

The beggar stood up.  The light jacket he had draped over his shoulders fell away revealing a pale torso punctuated by hungered ribs and a reddish scar that traced the line from his throat to his navel.  His still strong arm grabbed my shoulder and I stood slightly baffled.  He leaned close and whispered into my ear.

“You gave me a small gift, but I give you a greater one.  No one you know will every really be dead to you.  They’ll live on.”  The old man coughed slightly and with louder voice and a slight chuckle continued, “You’ll help them live even if they die.  I did that for my platoon, I did and I live on!”  He stumbled back against the wall and his voice shrank nearly to a mumble “and their voices never die, I can still hear them, still hear them.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my cards and handed to the old fellow.  Damn he was messed up, but he needed help.  I figured I’d call Tom, one of the local deputies when I got to the bank and see if we couldn’t get him committed.  I glanced at my watch.  It was about 12:55 and I wanted to get out to the golf course before 3:00 for a discounted round.  I walked into the bank distracted and in a hurry.

The Zombie Officer – Part Two

Eight slash six slash nineteen eighty.  It was just another date to me when I penned it on Mrs. Harold’s charts.  It was a tough time of year for her.   Thirteen years ago her husband had been murdered.  Yesterday was the anniversary of his death.  He was a good man but  in the days following the 1967 race riot the police were less than motivated investigating a black man’s murder.  The killer was never found.

The event had left her hearing voices, especially his.  She was a sweet lady.  Her family had to commit her about a year after the incident   She had a son who lived in Chicago who she asked me to check in on yesterday. It was against our institutional policy to get involved in our patient’s lives outside of the hospital but Mrs. Harold had a special place in my heart.  In our therapy session I let her know he was doing well and that he had opened a bar near Comiskey Park which had become popular with White Sox fans.

As I finished the entry on her chart it started.  There are days when life punches you in the gut.  Then there are days when life punches you in the gut, kicks you in the gonads, punches you in the kidneys, slams your face into the curb and follows that up with a baseball bat to the back of your head.   This was one of the latter and I was about to take the first blow.

Director Jenkins asked me to step into his office.  He explained there had been a morphine theft that morning and I was the only person who had been in the med locker.  Security was searching my office and any patients I had seen since then.  I sat stupefied in his office for a good 30-45 minutes until Dennis Mason, the security guard came in and said I didn’t have the drugs.

I walked numbly to the break room while the director discussed my fate with the head Doctors and a couple of managers.  I couldn’t get my mind around why things were going badly.  It wasn’t a nasty sort of summer day here in the Milwaukee area.  The weather was just fine.  And no, there wasn’t an impromptu visit or call from an unwanted relative.  For once I had even gotten up on the right side of bed.  I should have known that for things to go unusually wrong, they couldn’t start down the typical “rotten day” path.

I was left here standing and looking out a window in our staff break room.  It was quaint and homey room, that is to say it had the decor of my aunt and uncle’s home and it wasn’t large enough to be put to some other productive use.  I poured myself a steaming cup of Folgers.  It was hot and bitter.  The harsh taste and searing heat always had a way of keeping my mind anchored in the here and now.  Today I needed that, enough had already gone wrong.

My colleagues, Drs Jim Craik and Dick Brown where sitting at the small table behind me chattering about the front page of August 6th Milwaukee Sentinel.

“Jim, you read about these riots over in Pennsylvania?”

“The Cuban refugee mess?”

“Yeah, those.”

“I heard about ’em.  My nephew is in the Guard.  He’s stationed there.  He called last night just to let us know he wasn’t hurt.”

Damn it, why couldn’t I focus.  I just wanted my brain to do what I intended.  I’m never short of opinions and normally I’d be in the middle of any current event discussion.  But with riots being the theme of the day I had to fight off a dark thoughts of my future being rampaged by a mob of head doctors and management.

“6,000 people in a shanty town my nephew says and they all go crazy at once.  The paper said 65 injured.”

“Say Douglas, don’t you know someone over at Fort McCoy?  Aren’t there a bunch of Cubans there too?”

The sound of my name registered in my ears but something in my head forgot to do anything more with the fleeting sounds.

“Theirl Douglas, are you there?”

I was never really fond of my name, Theirl Douglas.  I was adopted by my dad’s sister and her husband at birth.  Apparently my dad was off in Korea and my mom wasn’t worth him remembering.  My aunt wanted to keep her family’s last name alive so she stuck it at the front of mine.  It was an ugly mess for a moniker but I’ve made due with it.

“You ok?  You’re about as spaced out as a couple hippies on a date with Mary Jane.”

“Yes I am here.  Fort McCoy, uhm, yes  Johnny Hanson is there.”

“He was your roommate that kept steeling your girls wasn’t he.”

“Yeah, that was him.  I haven’t heard from him for a while but last I did they weren’t having any problems.”

I couldn’t help but thinking that he was probably too busy steeling Cuban wives and girlfriends to notice any real trouble brewing.  My thought was interrupted by Elizabeth Walker entering the room.  She was the only female psychiatrist on the staff and the head Dr on my wing.  She was a good 10-15 years older than me.  Early to mid 40s by my guess.  It was hard to tell since she stayed in shape for her age.  Nobody had the guts to ask her about her age, she was as strait laced and by the book as they came.  She had a rule for everything and enforced a no-fun zone about anything work related. Jim and Dick weren’t too fond of her, so upon her appearance they scurried out of the room like a couple of kids trying to avoid chores for the evening.

“I’ve heard you’ve had a bad start to the day Theirl,” Elizabeth started.

Although she was all business while at work she was one of the most socially connected doctors here at Sunnyside.  When she did chat she was always wondering about how people were.  She could remember your family tree and social circle better than you could yourself.

“When you work at a mental hospital you should expect a few insane days now and then.”

“I don’t know if you should be making jokes about what happened,” she replied.  “They said the entire morphine supply was gone and the only person in the med locker this morning was you.”

“That’s what hurts, it feels like I was set up to get stuck with the blame.”

I couldn’t help be think she was just there to see if she could get me to confess.  She never appreciated my irreverent sense of humor and I’m pretty sure she thought it had a chemical origin.

She shook her head at my comment.

“I came here to let you know what the board decided.  There’s no evidence that you took the drugs.  They accounted for your morning and searched everyplace you’ve been.  The drugs aren’t there.”

“Good, so I’m off the hook then.”

“No, I didn’t say that.  They are concerned it was an inside job and they don’t know you weren’t involved.  Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if you were.”

There, now we have it.  I love it when people jump to judge you.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, and not the good sort of warm and fuzzy.

“Well if I’m a thief why are you fraternizing with the low life?”

I started toward the door when she reached out for my shoulder and turned me around.

“I came here to tell you that you have been reassigned.  You’re going into the lock-down section.  Oh and I need your key to the med locker, we are not going to let this happen again.”

“Fun, nice take down.  I hope you’ve enjoyed getting me out of your wing.”

“I didn’t say it was fun.  It was inevitable, you are goof off and you are going to get burned.  I hope that you learned something.”

“Avoid the crazy people, that’s about it.”

“Director Jenkins said you should take the rest of the day off.  I wouldn’t expect to get paid for it either.”

And with that she left the room.  What a bitch.  At least I still had my job. The lock-down wing was home to the padded cells and the people so far gone I’m not sure why we try therapy on them.  Well, that is tomorrow’s problem.  Today there was nothing else left for me to do at work today so I went and packed up my briefcase, hopped in my Bronco and headed into town.

The Zombie Officer – Part One

August 6th, 1980

RACINE, Wis – An armed burglary attempt at the 3rd Savings and Loan of Batavia branch in Racine was thwarted by a local hero, Officer John Francis.  Three unidentified gunman entered the branch around 1 pm.   Witness report that they shot both tellers upon entering the premise then ordered the manager to open the safe.  Officer Francis was across the street at the local Dunkin Donuts drinking coffee when he heard the shots and responded.

John Marshall was in the Dunkin Donuts at the time and described what happened.  “The officer, I didn’t know him, well, he started at the sound of the shots.  He fumbled with his wallet and threw $2 on the table, drew his revolver and ran across the street.  I saw him storm threw the door and heard ten or twelve shots and saw him fall forward.”

Sarah Elms was in the Savings and Loan at the time.  She said Officer Francis  ran threw the door and all three gunman turned on him.  “They had machine guns or Tommy guns or M-16s or somethin(sic).”  Sarah said in a statement to the police.  “They turned on him as he came through the door.  Poor guy, they must’ve shot him 10 to 15 times, a bunch hit him in the head.  It was such a mess, a bloody mess.”

Witnesses confirm following the shooting of the Officer the robbers turned their attention back to the manager to finish opening the safe.  Everyone confirms there was a general state of shock among the patrons.  Just as the manager finished with the combination, what can only be described as a miracle occurred.  Officer Francis pushed himself up to his knees, picked up his revolver and drug his damaged body in the direction of the safe.  Several women present shrieked at the sight of his battered head tilting awkwardly, blood slowly flowing down what was left of a face as he moved toward the robbers.

The robbers quickly turned their attention to the resurgent Officer.  They once again opened fire on the officer.  Police estimate 30-45 rounds were discharged at him.  Sarah Elms stated “The officer lost his left arm in the gun fire.  Both of his legs where shattered, I could see his bones.  My God, I just don’t want to remember.”

The manager, Alfred Southwick, said “they just ran out of bullets.”  All accounts state the robbers froze after their guns emptied and pulled their triggers in shock.  At that point Officer Francis raised his remaining right arm and put two rounds into each of the robbers, killing each of them.

Doctors at the local hospital have no idea how he managed to subdue the criminals.  “I’m not a believer in the ethereal,” said Dr. Edward Charles, “but this was super-human.”  A true hero showed his strength today in Racine, Wisconsin but sadly we will never have the chance to ask him where he found it.”