While waiting for the doors to open, doubts started creeping into his head. Cook County General wasn’t exactly known for its cutting-edge medical research. Cook County General wasn’t exactly known for its quality medical care if you wanted to get down to it. He wasn’t sure why Cook County General would have a team of specialists in whatever disease was keeping Don asleep.

The doors slid open and he stepped inside. He tried to stand still under pale fluorescents that hurt his eyes as the elevator lurched up the four stories to the lobby, but all those stories about Cook County General being a sick joke in the city knocked down the walls of his optimism.

The place was chronically underfunded, for one thing. Nobody knew who was really in charge, only that the city ran the place, so if you had no money left, no money at all, this was where you ended up. Sometimes, on a slow day for tragedy, the news would get all worked up over people literally crawling into the emergency room because they had no insurance and the ambulance companies wouldn’t pick them up. The streets were full of horror stories about the emergency room, of waiting all day for a shot that turned out to be prepared with a dirty needle, of being forgotten, of people dying on the benches and being there all night before somebody called their name, gut-churning tales of malpractice, of doctors stealing drugs to feed their own habits, of AIDS-INFECTED blood, of MRSA contaminating every doorknob, every water fountain, every surface imaginable, of rusty scalpels and dirty floors.

The emergency room wasn’t as crowded as Tommy expected. He stood fifth or sixth in the line at the front desk, and overheard the nurse telling people with obvious injuries to go seek treatment at either Northwestern or Rush instead. Of course, most people, especially those bleeding on the tile floors, didn’t take the news well. “Are you fucking kidding? What the hell is this? You call yourself a hospital?”

“We’re undergoing a change of management,” was all the nurse would say.

When it was Tommy’s turn, he said, “I’m here to see Don Wycza. They just brought him in an ambulance.”

The nurse, a black woman with a face that exhaustion had cut to the skull, checked the charts. “No, I’m sorry. There’s nobody here by that name.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been added yet. I followed the ambulance here.”

The nurse rechecked the clipboards on her desk, then stood and searched a few more places around her station. No luck. “What’s his name again?” the nurse asked. “It’s possible they didn’t bring in the paperwork yet. I’ll see if I can’t find him. In the meantime, you have a seat. I’ll call you if I hear about your friend.”

“Okay, thanks.” Tommy gave a little wave of gratitude, then sank into a chair in the middle of a long line of plastic seats bolted to a long steel bar. He checked his phone. No calls. No texts. He snapped the phone shut and tucked it into his coveralls.

The patients in the emergency room could be divided into three categories. The first, and most popular, group was five people who held bloody towels around some limb, usually either a hand or foot. Summertime, and a lot of drunk people decide to fucking cut loose with a power tool while tackling some exterior home improvement project.

Tommy noticed that patients had their own groups of friends. The guys in the first group, and it seemed to be all guys, all had wives or girlfriends and sometimes young children. Sometimes, if the guys were old enough, the adult children would bring a parent in who’d had too much barbecue and beer and decided to prune the hedge with a chainsaw.

The second group was a little harder to define on its own, but the look of the friends helped. These were people who’d ingested too much alcohol or crack or meth or coke or something else. They had been brought in by one or two peers who desperately looked around for the best opportunity to slip away.

Everybody in the first and second group was being shuttled off to different hospitals.

The third group was only two people; one man and one woman. It was difficult to pinpoint the cause of their distress. Both were nearly catatonic. The man had been brought in by a cab driver who couldn’t wake him up, and had driven halfway across the city to leave him at the only hospital that would take him because he didn’t have an insurance card in his wallet.

The woman’s husband had brought her in. He kept trying not to cry and squeezing her hand. She sagged against the plastic chair and gazed unseeing at the ceiling. A dark stain appeared at her crotch. Urine ran out of the bottom of her jeans and collected on the speckled tile floor. Tommy looked away.

“Tommy, Tommy Krazinsky?” the nurse at the head station called out.

Tommy bounded up. “Yeah? You got him?”

The nurse spoke into the phone, “Yes, he’s here. Do you wish to speak—” After a moment, she hung up the phone. “Ahh, I’m sorry. I was just given a message to make sure you were at this location. I don’t know who was asking.”

“Probably my boss? I left a message at work telling them Don was coming here. Have you heard anything about him?”

“Sorry, not yet. I’ll let you know.”

Tommy sat back down, confused. He wasn’t sure who would be looking for him. He kind of doubted his boss would try that hard to look for Don. He dug around in his overalls, pulled out a handful of business cards. He found the right one, dialed the number.

Two rings. A click. A voice. “This is Detective Johnson.”

Tommy said, “Uh, hi. This is Tommy Krazinksy. Me and my partner met you yesterday at City Hall, the Streets and Sans guys. Don’s at the CCG, but it’s . . . Something’s going on. See, he’s—” There was a high-pitched squeal and the phone went dead.

Tommy tried to call again, but his phone wasn’t working right.

Lee appeared and dropped into a seat across the aisle. “What the fuck is going on?”

Tommy jumped. He hadn’t seen Lee come in.

Tommy was angled so that he could keep an eye on the front door, and looked up every time he heard the automatic doors swish, thinking that maybe Don might have woken up and been turned loose. Instead, he watched as injured people came in, and were sent almost immediately to another hospital. He hadn’t seen the ambulance drivers either. They must have been busy shuttling people over to Northwestern.

Lee looked nervous. He was perfectly groomed, as always, snug in a tailored suit; the tie was color coordinated with his eyes. But something in his movements was off. Lee couldn’t make eye contact, and this was his strength. Lee could maintain an almost supernatural eye contact with people, making them feel at ease, or intimidating the hell out of them. It was his most formidable method of communication, and he was acting as if he could catch some sort of venereal disease if he looked at Tommy. “What the fuck happened to Don?” he finally asked.

Tommy spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know. I went by his place because he didn’t show up for work. Found him unconsciousness on the floor. They brought him here.”

“You and Don are the two Streets and Sans guys that killed a rat in City Hall yesterday.”

Tommy nodded. “I guess so. Unless there was another rat.”

“Your partner told that story over a dozen times last night.”

Tommy nodded.

“He claimed otherwise, but honestly now, did that rat bite him?”

Tommy shook his head.

“It’s important. Did that rat draw blood in any way? The doctors need to know this.”

“No. I saw his hands afterward. No scratches.”

“His leg? Any bite anywhere?”

Tommy shook his head.

Lee’s eyes flicked to the raccoon scratches on Tommy’s hands. “You killed it with a baseball bat?”

“It’s down in the van. I didn’t break any rules that I know of.”