Free Spitting Image by Patrick LeClerc Page B

automatic doors were opening wide, then closing halfway, then opening again.
    “Got me,” I said. “Maybe the emergency was for the door guy.”
    The mystery was solved when we got our bags out of the truck and walked to the building to find a man sprawled in the entryway. The automatic doors kept trying to close and bumping open on his prostrate form.
    “Hey, look,” I said. “It’s Ronnie.”
    “Either that, or Kenny Rogers has let himself go,” said Pete.
    Ronnie Bartlett was a drunk, which was not generally a big deal, but he also had a seizure disorder. That didn’t make him a bad person, either, but when he drank, he didn’t take his seizure meds, and that made our lives difficult.
    “Ronnie.” Pete prodded the man with his foot.
    “He’s out,” I said. I squatted down and looked in his mouth, then checked his pulse. He wasn’t choking on blood or vomit, he was breathing slow and deep and his pulse was strong and steady. “Grab the cot. I’ll throw a line in him in case he seizes again and we’ll drive him up to the General.”
    We got him out into the truck, I checked him over. Nothing more than the usual results of his many poor life choices. So I started an IV and sat back and enjoyed the ride, breathing in the alcoholic fumes coming off him.
    Really dedicated alcoholics smell like that all the time. It’s not as simple as booze on the breath. It oozes from their pores. It’s not even all that unpleasant, when placed on the spectrum of smells encountered in the back of an ambulance.
    We dropped Ronnie off at the ER, to the delight of the staff, I’m sure. I sat at the EMS desk to write the report and Pete headed through the waiting room, heading for the bathroom.
    “That’s for patient use only,” said one of the secretaries.
    “Sweetheart, you have no idea how patiently I’m gonna use it,” he replied, snagging a magazine off a table on his way.
    I stared at my report. I was happy in a way that it had been a routine call. I could treat drunks like Ronnie in my sleep. Good thing, since my brain was too busy torturing me with images of Sarah with somebody else.
    I was sure it wasn’t real. Mostly sure. She was safely in hiding someplace, avoiding the college Wasn’t she?
    It was like watching a stage magician. You know he didn’t really make the volunteer from the audience disappear. But part of you wondered. Looked in vain for any sign of a trick.
    But it was so convincing. Even knowing they could do that, it was hard to totally discount what I’d seen.
    And, assuming it was staged, why? Were they trying to goad me into doing something stupid? Just firing a shot across the bow, letting me know they could mess with me any time they wanted? Or, even worse, were they going to sabotage Sarah’s reputation or career, and wanted me to see them do it? Just to show me they meant business, and to hammer home just how easily they could hurt me, and hurt the people I cared about?
    First things first, I decided. The fact that I was dealing with shapeshifters meant I couldn’t trust what I’d seen. I’d have to verify, double check before I went off half cocked.
    That was a good rule of thumb anyway. How many of Shakespeare’s tragedies could have been resolved happily if the protagonists had made certain before believing a rumor. Or just learned to check a pulse. But old Bill had known the human impulse for knee jerk reactions. Probably why his work still spoke to people after four centuries.
    I sighed and pulled out my phone. I hesitated a moment, Sarah wanted time to think, without me bothering her, but this was important. This could be a real threat, if they were messing with me again.
    I scrolled down to her number and pushed the button.
    She waited three rings to pick up, which was a long time for her.
    “What’s up?” she asked, her voice flat, terse.
    “Where are you right now?” I asked.
    “Sean, this really isn’t going to work like that.”
    “No, wait. I wouldn’t bother