Confidentiality



Chapter One




David Tamaki, Dr. Tamaki, was sweating bullets.  Or at least he was sweating over them.  The man laying on his metal table had been shot twice with high precision.  The first bullet had just been an attention getter, it had slammed into the man’s left shoulder and passed right through.  The marksmanship had been excellent, or perhaps lucky, and the bullet had done no damage to the bone.  

The second shot hadn’t been so friendly.  Dr. Tamaki’s trembling hand was having trouble finding the invasive piece of metal that had buried itself deep into the patient’s abdomen.  He stopped his search for a moment to wipe the sweat off his forehead.  He ran his latex gloved hand through his short black hair without even noticing the blood he was smearing into it.  

David looked up from the hopeless mess on his exam table and into the dark eyes of the predator that was standing by the door.  The man instantly noticed he was being watched and his powerful frame tensed.  He raised the small handgun he carried and aimed it at the doctor’s heart.  

“Get back to work, Doc.”

“Please, this isn’t an emergency clinic.”  David protested for the tenth time.  “This man needs an anesthesiologist and a trauma surgeon...I...I’m just a general practitioner...”

“Just fish the lead out of him, Slant.”  The thug snarled.  “Or even George Clooney won’t be able to save your sushi sucking ass.”

David grit his teeth at the man’s racial slur, but he didn’t dare retaliate.  He picked up a different pair of long tweezers and pushed them into the gory hole.  The young man on his table suddenly surfaced into agonizing consciousness.  He took a deep breath to scream, but the man who had dragged him into the office was quicker and had his hand firmly clamped down on his mouth before he could make a sound.  

Despite his wounds the man thrashed violently against the hand that held him.  He was muscular and under different circumstances he probably would have won the fight.  However the wolf held him down firmly.  Blood slopped off the table and onto the floor in an obscene pantomime of abstract art.

“Get that Goddamed bullet out before he loses any more blood!”  The intruder roared.  “I can’t lose him!”

“If you really cared for your friend you’d take him to an ER!”

“Fix him!”

David’s heart slammed against his ribs as the man forced the muzzle of the gun into his throat.  When the gun was pulled away he shakily took a hold of the tweezers that were still embedded in the man’s stomach.  His victim whimpered pitifully and started to kick.  He managed to knock over the tray next the exam table, sending a glass bottle of hydrogen peroxide to the floor where it shattered noisily.      

“I can’t work on him while he’s struggling!”  David cried in horrified frustration.

The man smiled coldly and put his gun down on the table so that he could use that hand on the injured man’s shoulder.  He clench his fingers into the bloody wound with a white knuckled grip.  David’s patient arched his back in anguish and violent fear.  His muffled scream raised the hair on the back of David’s neck and twisted his once cast iron stomach.  The young man’s bright blue eyes rolled back to white and he slipped mercifully back into unconsciousness.

“There you go...all calm.”   

David stared at the heartless madman and wondered if the bullets he was looking for had come from the gun that was once again aimed at his heart.  For the thousandth time that night he cursed himself for working late.  It had been nearly eleven and everyone else in his medium sized practice had gone home hours before.  

David wasn’t much older than the man dying on his table.  He had graduated a few years ago and still had the burning desire to save every life he touched.  Consequently he had stayed late to study blood work, and when the buzzer downstairs had gone off, he’d answered it.  He had thought it might be an emergency, he had been more right than he’d ever cared to be.

The gunman cleared his throat menacingly and drew the doctor’s attention back to the problem at hand.  Looking back to the blood soaked torso David nearly retched.  He’d never seen a gunshot wound before this and he was finding it increasingly sickening.  He took a hold of the slippery tweezers once more in a desperate attempt to locate the offending bullet.  

He finally found the gold he was digging for.  It took a surprising amount of force to pull the bullet free.  The villain held his hand out in a silent demand to be given the incriminating object.  Having finally removed the bullet David found there was still lots of repair work yet to do.  Work he wasn’t sure he had the skill to perform.  The stress of the past half hour and the fifteen hour work day slammed his sense.  David’s stomach twisted painfully and he threw up what little he’d eaten that day onto the blood stained floor.

“You’ve got a pretty weak stomach for a doctor.”  The man chuckled.

“I am not used to working like this.”  Dr. Tamaki panted.

“Well you’d better learn to adapt.”

“And if I can’t?”

“If he dies, you die.”





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