Lost by Dean Murray

by the way that he stopped to consider
his response. "For what it's worth, I think you should go back
and finish up. It wasn't that long ago that I was doing my residency;
I remember the pressure and you're right about it being brutal, but
it's also worth it in the end. You've got a real gift, I can't
imagine trying to sew someone up like that with nothing but an
interior dome light and a flashlight for illumination."
    I mustered an
exhausted smile and nodded. "Thanks, I'm just glad that it looks
like she's going to be okay. Maybe you're right. I've been leaning
that way anyway if for no other reason than I'm not sure how else
I'll pay down my student loans. That's going to be hard enough on a
doctor's salary, I'm not sure it will even be possible on what I make
right now."
    I turned to go,
but he stopped me with a hand on my arm.
    "Mr.
Parks, what actually happened out there?"
    "I'm
sorry?"
    "Those
wounds weren't inflicted by a mountain lion. They were too deep. I'd
say that you and her husband did it to her, but you're obviously
hiding injuries yourself and he's got a couple of bruises that I'm
not sure your sister could have dished out even if she used a crowbar
on him. I've been doing this for long enough to know what the police
are going to think if I send this over without more information than
I have right now."
    The gears
inside of my mind spun furiously for several seconds. I'd gone too
far in my attempt to bond with the good doctor. I'd figured that my
hacks would buy us the time we needed to get Kristin out of the
hospital, but if he was becoming personally invested in our situation
then he wouldn't just wait for the email backlog to clear out, he'd
call the cops himself.
    "Honestly?
I'm not sure. It started out on four legs—at least I think that
was what I saw. It was just so fast. One second it was down close to
the ground and then it was tall. It knocked me down and was on top of
my sister before any of us could react. Her husband shot it with his
gun and it turned and ran away."
    For a second
there was something in the backs of his eyes that told me I'd struck
some kind of nerve with my story, but it only lasted a split second
before his professional skepticism reasserted itself.
    "Are you
trying to tell me that a monster of some kind did this to her?"
    A laugh burst
out of me and I noticed in passing that it had a nice touch of
hysteria to it. "We're screwed. I knew someone would question
the wounds. I told him that there wasn't any way real doctors would
believe that a mountain lion could inflict wounds that deep, but we
didn't know what else to tell people. Saying that some kind of
monster did it is like asking to be committed, but he didn't want the
cops to know that he'd been carrying a weapon illegally.
    "He's got
a permit back home, but it's no good for Louisiana. We weren't even
planning on stopping. The original plan was to just drive straight
through but my sister wanted to get some pictures so we decided to
stop and campout for one night…"
    Doctor Hamilton
held up a hand to interrupt the flow of words. "Okay, the first
thing you need to do is calm down. Fortunately for you I'm inclined
to believe you. I did my residency down five minutes from the Mexican
border. These days it seems like the gangs down there are plenty
flush with guns, but a few years ago that wasn't the case. I've seen
my share of knife fights and I've never seen anything like this.
    "You're a
big guy, you could probably take someone apart like this with a
sword, even a short one, but I'm not so sure you could do it with a
knife as short as this one would have had to have been. I know a guy
who does forensic work on cadavers for the FBI. We took extensive
pictures while we had your sister opened up."
    "So you'll
send him the pictures and he may be able to prove that we didn't do
it?"
    "Yeah,
it's not guaranteed, but it's a start and it gives me a reason to
wait to call the authorities. With any luck he'll come back with
something