Medical Hostages

By Shawn Jennings

Duke, the leader of a bike gang, is in custody for murder. He plans an escape by feigning illness and hospitalization. But an unexpected turn of events results in two gang members and Duke holding a medical floor of patients hostage.

Patients will die if the police don't meet their demands within hours.

The drama follows Duke and Drs. Mindy Fletch, director of the Intensive Care Unit; and Craig Russell, a family medicine resident; in this tense hostage stand-off.

Will the bikers find freedom? Will hostages die? Can Mindy and Craig survive and prevent deaths?

In times of stress, people often discover new directions and strengths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9780228893646

Shawn Jennings

Shawn Jennings was a family physician in Saint John, New Brunswick, for twenty years until his brainstem stroke in 1999. Since then, he has been involved with Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick and numerous local and provincial committees. Shawn lives in Rothesay, New Brunswick.

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Copyright © 2023 by Shawn Jennings

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-9363-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-9364-6 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1  Duke

Chapter 2  Craig

Chapter 3  Mindy

Chapter 4  Craig

Chapter 5  Duke

Chapter 6  Mindy

Chapter 7  Duke

Chapter 8  Duke

Chapter 9  Craig

Chapter 10  Mindy

Chapter 11  Craig

Chapter 12  Duke

Chapter 13  Mindy

Chapter 14  Craig

Chapter 15  Duke

Chapter 16  Mindy

Chapter 17  Craig

Chapter 18  Duke

Chapter 19  Mindy

Chapter 20  Craig

Chapter 21  Duke

Chapter 22  Mindy

Chapter 23  Craig

Chapter 24  Duke

Chapter 25  Craig

Chapter 26  Mindy

Chapter 27  Duke

Chapter 28  Craig

Chapter 29  Mindy

Chapter 30  Duke

Chapter 31  Craig

Chapter 32  Mindy

Chapter 33  Duke

Chapter 34  Craig

Chapter 35  Mindy

Chapter 36  Duke

Chapter 37  Craig

Chapter 38  Mindy

Chapter 39  Duke

Chapter 40  Craig

Chapter 41  Mindy

Chapter 42  Duke

Chapter 43  Mindy

Chapter 44  Craig

Chapter 45  Mindy

Chapter 46  Duke

Chapter 47  Craig

Chapter 48  Mindy

Chapter 49  Duke

Chapter 50  Craig

Chapter 51  Duke

Chapter 52  Mindy

Chapter 53  Craig

Chapter 54  Duke

Chapter 55  Craig

Chapter 56  Mindy

Chapter 57  Duke

Chapter 58  Craig

Chapter 59  Mindy

Chapter 60  Duke

Chapter 61  Mindy

Chapter 62  Craig

Chapter 63  Duke

Chapter 64  Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter 1

Duke

Phillip Duke Edwards lay handcuffed to a bed inside the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, Alberta. Beside him, a correctional officer named Brian dozed in a chair.

Duke glanced at the clock on the wall—seven a.m. The day was clear, from what he saw out the window to his right. He was in a room with three other patients. The overweight guy to his right snored all night, and a few times Duke coughed or groaned to interrupt his sleep, but that only resulted in momentary breaks in the racket with accompanying splutters and grunts.

Duke was a big man with long dark-brown hair tied into a ponytail. Muscular tattooed arms bulged out of a pale blue hospital gown. He thought he must look ridiculous in this nightgown. He scratched his unruly beard.

Duke was brought into the hospital yesterday for intensive investigations from the Calgary remand centre. He had been sitting in there for six months awaiting trial, and from what his lawyer said it might be another year before it started. But of course his not-guilty plea wouldn’t correspond to the jury’s verdict. After all, he did blow Randall’s brains out. The guy had cheated him out of drug money twice and deserved to have his head splattered, but he’d still be alive if he hadn’t pulled a gun on Duke.

But Duke wasn’t going to meekly plead guilty and be sent to federal prison for life. No, he was going to make the legal system work. He had seen screwups in the courts before, leading to the guilty being freed. But it was a long shot. Once in federal prison, he’d be there for life. The remand centre was his only chance for escape.

Duke shifted to get his weight off his aching ass. It had been a rough sleep, between his roommate snoring and Duke trying to get comfortable with one wrist handcuffed to the bed railing. At one point he had been tempted to climb out of bed, knee the guard in the face, take the keys, and escape.

But he had a better plan.

Duke grinned. The stupid assholes. He wasn’t sick. He had complained of headaches, nausea, abdominal and back pain, dizziness, and fatigue. He got the poor nurse and doctor at the remand centre confused and frustrated. They suggested it was probably anxiety but booked him for scans that were weeks away. He told them his lawyer had agreed to record a video of him describing his suffering and how the medical staff ignored him. The doctor was so scared of being sued that he admitted him to the hospital for quick investigations late yesterday afternoon.

Duke glanced at the clock again. Everything was going as planned. Only about another two hours.

Chapter 2

Craig

Craig wearily reached for his cell phone on the nightstand to turn off the alarm. He grimaced and vowed to change the wakeup tune to something else for the umpteenth time as he brought the phone close to his face and hit the off tab.

It was seven a.m., and he had gotten three hours of uninterrupted sleep. The night on call had been busy. He saw four people in the emergency department on consults. He’d admitted two of those: a case of pneumonia in an elderly male patient and a dehydrated fifty-eight-year-old lady who had been ill for two weeks and deserved a workup. In addition to these four cases, he assessed a few inpatients with problems. The few hours of sleep were lifesaving.

Craig Russell was a family medicine resident doing a two-month stint in internal medicine at the Foothills Medical Centre. He had grown up in the coastal town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and gone to Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick in Saint John. He had decided to expand his experience, so for residency placement he listed and was accepted in Calgary, a destination far from home.

The first year of residency was exciting and gruelling, and his mood had shifted up and down in response. He missed his family, the Bay of Fundy, the salty air, the south breeze off the water, the fresh fish, and his friends.

Craig rubbed his head as he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to wake up. Dr. Mindy Fletch, a respirologist, was his assigned mentor for this internal medicine rotation, and she had been on call with him last night. She was a capital-B bitch. Cranky. He couldn’t say anything without getting a sarcastic remark in return. She didn’t want to admit some poor guy with severe pneumonia because it was stupid that nursing homes couldn’t manage IVs. She went on and on like he could change that rule in the middle of the night. And then he had to fight her to admit the poor lady with the unknown illness. She should have assessed the lady herself if she didn’t trust his medical assessment. But no, her majesty was too lazy to get out of bed.

There was something about her, though . . .

Craig had to meet her at eight a.m. for rounds. He got up, took off the surgical scrubs he wore on call, and threw them into a hamper beside the door. The residents’ on-call room had no window and pale-yellow walls without a picture, poster, or decoration to warm it up. It only had room for a bed and a night table. His father’s sailboat had more space below deck. He walked to his small bathroom in his underwear to brush his teeth, wash, and shave. He pulled out his day clothes and a fresh pair of underwear from his gym bag lying at the base of his bed. After he finished dressing, he returned to the mirror in the washroom to brush his hair.

He thought he looked pale. He needed the ocean breeze again. That’d put colour on the face of any man. He combed his curly brown hair off to one side, but it had a mind of its own and refused to stay. He grinned at himself. Usually he kept his hair short, but he hadn’t had time to get a haircut. You gotta love me as I am, he reminded his reflection in the mirror.

He had time for some oatmeal and a coffee in the hospital cafeteria before he headed to the floor to make rounds with Dr. Fletch. God, give me the strength to survive Dr. Fletch, he murmured with a smile as he left the room.

Chapter 3

Mindy

Dr. Mindy Fletch turned off her alarm at seven. She hadn’t slept well, but that wasn’t unusual. It was the whisky. She knew that but couldn’t resist the calmness a shot of it gave her before sleep. She knew she shouldn’t drink when on call but temptation had won, despite a vow of abstinence earlier in the day. She felt miserable failing again. There always seemed to be an excuse to have a nip. And then another wee shot. And another. She didn’t drink when on call for the intensive care unit, and she shouldn’t have had alcohol last night, either.

Her husband David didn’t sleep with her when she was on call, and she couldn’t blame him, but lately he seemed so distant. She wondered about his accounting practice; perhaps things weren’t going well. She needed to have a heart-to-heart with him tonight.

Mindy flung the duvet back and sat on the edge of her bed. She had to stop drinking so much. She feared becoming dependent on alcohol and didn’t want to go down that road. So that was it: no whisky tonight. She angrily rose and marched into her bathroom.

While she showered she remembered when she first started using alcohol in the evening. A young man with severe pneumonia had gone into respiratory failure and, despite appropriate antibiotic use and ventilation, died. His family was naturally anxious during this time, and upon his death they turned their grief into anger directed at her. They said some harsh things. Mindy reflected on the case numerous times but honestly could find no fault or neglect in managing this young man. There must have been some unknown, unrealized, underlying problem with his immune system to allow the infection to advance so rapidly. Still, that didn’t help soften the sharp words directed to her from the family that tormented her mind for months. She gradually lost her appetite, wasn’t sleeping, and felt weak and unhappy.

One night David suggested she have a drink of scotch to help her relax. It felt so good. She laughed for the first time in months and quickly fell asleep. A few days later she had another drink when those nagging doubts and memories arose. Over the next few months it became a nightly habit, unless she was on call. Eventually insomnia returned despite the whisky, and she took a pill to help her sleep. Then a few cases in the ICU began to cause her stress and she resorted to an occasional nip of whisky from a bottle she kept in her desk drawer.

Mindy finished showering and put on a plush white bathrobe after drying off. She blow-dried her long red hair in front of the mirror. Idiot! she admonished her reflection. She’d always had great self-control. You had to be focused and able to resist temptation to become a doctor. All through university and medical school she could turn down invitations from friends to go out and have fun when studying was required. A few boys dumped her because she was too severe—or at least that was what she thought.

Mindy applied her makeup. She was still attractive at thirty-eight and all her life she had drawn looks from boys, but beauty can be a curse. Many expected her to be a bimbo, and this drew mixed reactions when they realized she was attractive and intelligent. Perhaps that was why she had chosen the ICU as her focus of work: she was good at critical care and secretly liked showing men that women can do the hard stuff too.

Mindy left the bathroom and entered her walk-in closet. She chose a green dress with black trim around the sleeves and a V-neck, liking how it hugged her waist and flowed over her hips. After slipping it on she turned around in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. Perhaps this was why that family had given her such a hard time: they had no confidence in an attractive woman being as good a doctor as a man. Did her male colleagues get as many probing