Chapter 5 - The Room.

He'd been exceptionally patient. He'd been sitting in the boring waiting room for almost an hour, hiding behind the magazine whenever anyone came by, patiently watching Room 542. Hobbs could afford to be patient now that he was back in control.

The room had had many visitors over the past hour. Hobbs had watched as the people streamed in and out, all seemingly subdued but not unhappy, chatting in hushed voices, hugging each other and generally acting the way a close-knit family should. It made his blood boil - this group of mismatched fags pretending to be what they weren't. If anything, it strengthened his resolve to rid the planet of the lot of them.

Eventually, though, the parade of visitors diminished and there were only two left in the room - an older woman with an atrocious red wig and a well-built thirty-something blond guy. He strolled surreptitiously by the doorway every so often to get a glimpse of the room and its occupants. Hobbs didn't recognize the blond guy, but he remembered the woman from back at the trial. She'd been the loud mouthed one screaming at him after the sentencing hearing about 'protesting'. The bitch.

After the last batch of visitors left, the door to the room had been left wide open, allowing Hobbs to hear bits of the conversation between the remaining two and the patient. He couldn't hear much, but it was enough to confirm that the patient was indeed the man he was here for - Michael. Justin's friend and the first item on Hobbs' 'to do' list.

The only hold up was that the two remaining visitors didn't sound like they were ever going to leave. But, just as Hobbs' patience was beginning to give out, he watched with delight as one of the nurses strode purposefully into the room and announced that visiting hours were over and that they needed to leave so that the patient could rest. Hobbs could hear the bitchy woman's rather loud complaints but then he heard the big guy's low, mellow voice murmuring something which quieted the woman.

"Would you go already, Ma? Please. I'll be fine," said a third voice, complaining almost as loudly as the woman had earlier.

Reluctantly, the bewigged lady was finally convinced to leave, the blond guy holding her by the shoulders and physically guiding her out of the room.

"We'll be back first thing in the morning, Sweetie," the woman yelled back over her shoulder. "You get some rest now, you hear!"

"Go, Ma. Go!" drifted out from the room.

'Excellent!' thought Hobbs. Now he just had to wait until the nursing staff had finished its rounds. Hobbs stepped into the men's toilet so as not to be conspicuous after all the other visitors were shooed off the ward. Another twenty minutes passed and then Hobbs could tell by the quiet outside that all the activity had pretty much died down. He peeked out the door and noticed that only one nurse was left at the station down the hall, and she seemed engrossed by something on her computer. He slipped out into the deserted hallway, swiftly made his way to room 542, and pushed open the door with his shoulder.

The room was dark except for the muted glow coming from the LED displays of the various medical equipment arranged around the head of the bed. There was just enough light to see the man lying in the large hospital bed, his eyes closed and his breathing even. Hobbs pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his jacket pocket and slid his hands into them. It took him only a minute to scope out the room and decide on his plan of attack.

Hobbs had Taylor to thank for the two months of community service hours he'd had to put in at the AIDS hospice. It had creeped him out having to be around all those gaunt, emaciated, living skeletons all day, but he had picked up quite a few useful tidbits of knowledge at that hell hole. One such nugget of wisdom had been a familiarity with modern IV machines. Several of the hospice patients had used the machines to regulate the dosage of drugs they were being given. And those in their final days had often been provided with machines that would allow them to self regulate their own pain medication. Hobbs had spent more than enough time at the hospice to learn how the machines worked.

So, when he noted that the IV machine in room 542 was the same model as those he'd worked with before, it gave him an idea. The perfect way to get rid of faggot number one on his list - accidental drug overdose. All he had to do was push a couple of buttons, instructing the machine to pump four times the current dosage of morphine into the patient, and then walk away. The machine would do his job for him.

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The elevator doors weren't even fully open when Brian pushed his way through, then he took off running down the fifth floor corridor towards Michael's room. The lone nurse still sitting at the nurse's station was momentarily stunned by the unexpected sight. Brian ripped around the corner and slammed into the door of room 542, fumbling at the door handle briefly before the latch gave and the door swung open.

"Sunshine?" Brian yelled into the darkness before he could find the light switch.

As the lights came on, Brian was disappointed to see that the room was empty except for the outline of the patient in the large hospital bed against the far wall. When he'd seen the GPS read out indicating that Justin was at the hospital, he'd simply assumed that the blond was visiting their mutual friend. However, Michael was all alone in the room.

"Shit," Brian mumbled as he quietly approached the bed, trying not to wake the injured man who needed his rest in order to recover.

Brian had already been by the hospital earlier and was able to talk to his old friend for a few minutes. He'd been reassured by both Debbie and the doctor that Michael was doing much better and was almost completely out of danger, although his full recovery would still take several weeks. Brian was going to just duck back out of the room quietly but turned at the last minute and went back to the bed to leave a kiss on his best friend's temple.

As he bent over the side of the bed, Brian noted that Michael's face was very pale. He just didn't look right. Brian reached out and gently brushed Michael's hair off his forehead, alarmed at how cool the man's skin felt. He carefully watched his still friend for several seconds, and when he couldn't see immediately if Mikey was breathing or not, he hit the nurse call button in a panic.

The charge nurse, who was already on her way into the room to find out what the boisterous intruder was doing and to shoo him out, came in moments after Brian hit the call button. Brian turned to her, his panic evident on his flushed face.

"I don't think he's breathing," Brian blurted out, grabbing the nurse by the wrist and forcibly tugging her over to the bedside. "Fucking DO something."

The nurse calmly put two fingers to the side of the patient's neck, feeling for a pulse at the carotid artery, while Brian looked on in fear. She shook her head when she failed to find a pulse and turned immediately to the phone to send an emergency page calling for a 'code blue' crash team. The efficient and well trained nurse had then turned back to her patient, climbed up onto the edge of the sturdy bed and begun chest compressions to keep the unconscious man's blood circulating until the emergency team arrived.

Brian looked on impotently from the far side of the bed. He didn't know what was happening or what to do. He was paralyzed with the fear that his friend was dying in front of his very eyes. Before he could collect himself, he was shoved out of the way by a tall man wearing scrubs who was pulling a cart-load of medical equipment behind him. Within seconds the room was full of people, all efficiently moving around, wielding various implements and medical equipment, talking over each other as they yelled directions or responses to each other.

Brian backed up till he was leaning against the far wall, trying to stay out of everyone's way. He watched as Michael was unhooked from the machines he'd been attached to with various tubes and wires, and the bed was then lowered so the back lay flat, before new wires were attached. The tall man who'd first shoved him out of the way was holding two paddles hooked into another machine with electrical wires. He yelled 'clear', causing everyone else to step away from the bed for a moment, then touched the paddles to Michael's bared chest. The body of the man on the bed arched up. Immediately an electronic *beep, beep* noise rang out from the machine and the emergency team relaxed their stances.

As soon as the immediate crisis was past, a nurse finally noticed Brian who was still huddling against the wall watching as the emergency team packed up some of the extraneous equipment. The nurse came and resolutely guided Brian out of the room and back towards the waiting area, asking him to please stay there until someone could come speak with him. Brian, who was shaking by this point, did as he was told and slumped onto the padded bench by the wall.

Several minutes later, the tall scrub-clad man came out of the room and made a beeline towards where Brian was seated.

"I'm Dr. Stevens," the dark complected man introduced himself gruffly but didn't hold out his hand to Brian. "I need to ask what you were doing in Mr. Novotny's room.

"I'm . . . I'm Brian Kinney. I'm a friend of Michael's. I thought my partner, Justin, was here visiting with Michael," Brian responded, slowly regaining his composure. "Now, why don't you tell me what happened in there and why Michael wasn't breathing when I got here."

"I'm sorry but I can't discuss the patient's status with anyone who isn't family. Did you touch any of the medical equipment while you were in there," the doctor asked, regarding Brian critically as two burly men wearing hospital security uniforms strode up to stand on either side of Dr. Stevens, looming down over where Brian was seated.

"I AM his fucking family, damn it. Just call his mother, Debbie, or his partner, Ben, and they'll tell you," Brian started to lose his temper, fed up with the ridiculously antiquated hospital policies. "And, no, I didn't touch anything except the call button when I saw Mikey wasn't breathing. Now tell me what the fuck is going on!"

"It appears that someone tampered with the IV machine, Mr. Kinney," the doctor said accusingly. "I checked it myself when I did my last rounds - it was set with the correct dosage at that time. Since then, someone changed the dosage of the morphine drip Mr. Novotny was on for pain relief, resulting in a massive overdose. I'm going to report this to the police. I'll need you to go with security here until they arrive to question you, Mr, Kinney."

"What the fuck! You don't think I had anything to do with this? I was the one who found him . . ." Brian began to protest as the two security guards hauled him to his feet and tried to maneuver the protesting man down the hall as Brian continued to yell backwards over his shoulder to the doctor who remained stationary in the waiting room. "Just call Debbie Novotny. Fuck."

Neither Brian nor either of the security guards noticed the door to the men's room closing just as they passed by, or the face of the man that peeked out around the edge of the door as soon as the group had walked noisily by.

As soon as Brian and his escorts disappeared into the elevator, Dr. Stevens turned and went back into his patient's room, yelling to the nurse as he passed to call the man's emergency contacts and the police and put the calls through to him as soon as possible. The charge nurse scrambled to follow the doctor's directions, already afraid of the fallout that would be heading her way for this incident which had taken place during her watch.

When the nurse was distracted making her calls, Hobbs slipped out of the toilet and scurried down the temporarily deserted hallway to the stairway at the the end of the hall. He was eager to get the hell away from the hospital before the cops were called. He was a little disappointed that once again his plans had been foiled, but it had been fun watching the boyfriend being towed away by the security guards and getting blamed for it all. Hobbs would just have to bide his time and wait for another opportunity to get to Michael.

In the meantime, he already had other potential victims in mind.

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The first thing Justin became aware of was the ringing in his ears. It sounded like someone was blasting a slightly muffled bullhorn next to his head. He wanted to bat the annoying noisemaker away but his right hand felt strangely weak. He tried to blink his eyes to focus on his surroundings, but all the lights and colors were swirling around uncontrollably. He thought he was lying down but somehow he still felt dizzy so he closed his eyes to try and stop the spinning.

He wasn't sure how much later it was when he was awakened by other noises. It was dark now, wherever he was - he couldn't see the swirling colors only swirling shadows. His hearing seemed super sensitive though and every tiny noise grated on the inside of his skull, sending waves of pounding pain radiating out to overwhelm his other senses. He rolled over onto his right side and tried to curl up into a ball, but he was only partially successful, still feeling too weak to move much.

"It's fucking alive, after all!" said an unseen voice, it's timber sounding high pitched and distorted like when you used the echo function on a karaoke machine.

The lights were switched on and the sudden brilliance blinded Justin, sending new pains stabbing through his brain. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and moved his left hand to shade his eyes. He moaned but the added vibrations just exacerbated the pounding in his head.

"You're not looking too good there, though, are you Taylor?" the oddly echoing voice added then laughed, the laughter feeling like millions of shards of glass piercing through Justin's skull, causing him to writhe in pain.

Justin wanted to speak, to beg for help from whomever was there, but his body wasn't obeying the directions from his brain. He heard himself making indecipherable garbled noises. Each sound he uttered reverberated painfully in his head, prompting him to give up the attempt rather quickly.

With his eyes still closed against the agony causing light, he heard a very loud metal clanking noise and then felt something dropped on him from above - whatever it was, bouncing off his shoulder and then landing on the floor in front of his face. The odor of rancid grease coming off the object caused Justin's stomach to roil. He gagged, the involuntary movement jarring his aching body and adding to the nausea. Finally, Justin couldn't hold back any longer - he vomited up the contents of his stomach.

Too weak to even move afterwards, he simply lay there, grateful in a way that he was again losing consciousness.

"Gross. I'm not fucking cleaning that shit up," the echoes said in the background, the last thing he sensed before everything again faded to mercifully quiet and pain-free black.

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"Brian Kinney! What the fuck is this shit the doctor's telling me about you fucking around with Michael's IV?" demanded Debbie as she barged into the basement office where the hospital security guys had been holding Brian for the past hour, followed immediately by her exhausted looking beau, Detective Carl Horvath.

"Shit, Deb. I didn't touch a goddamned thing. Michael wasn't breathing when I got here. All I did was call the nurse," Brian protested in an equally loud voice, scowling at the hulking security guards as he spoke. "Carl, would you please tell these fuckers who I am so I can get out of here."

Carl flashed his badge and introduced himself to the two guards, telling them he'd take it from here. Carl quickly ushered both Brian and Debbie outside and then cornered Brian, demanding an explanation. Brian explained again what had happened and then immediately asked Debbie how Michael was, since everyone had refused to give him any information from the time he'd been removed from the fifth floor.

"The doctor said Michael's going to be fine," Debbie reassured Brian, adding a hug and a red-lipstick coated smooch to his cheek. "They pumped him full of something to counteract the morphine and he's awake again. Thank God you found him when you did, Brian. The doctor said that it was the quick response to the overdose that saved him. If you hadn't found him, who knows when the fuck the incompetent nurses would have come around. He could have died. Thank you for saving my baby!"

Brian put up with Debbie's gushing for about two minutes total before it got to be too much for him. Brian started to back away, but Debbie wouldn't let him go till they'd all seen Michael. The trio headed back up to the fifth floor together, Debbie chattering all the way.

There were now two uniformed police officers outside of Michael's door. Carl showed his badge again and escorted Deb and Brian inside. This time the lights were all on when Brian entered and he could see Michael propped up on pillows on the bed, his eyes open and a welcoming grin on his face. Brian let out a sigh of relief at this proof that his friend was okay.

"Brian!" Michael trumpeted as soon as his friend came through the door. "They told me you were the one who found me. Thank God you got here when you did."

Hey, Mikey," Brian drawled, trying to resume his usual nonchalant mask now that he'd been assured of Michael's well being, but not quite able to hide a small happy grin. "Would you quit being such a drama queen and trying to die on me every day. I can't take this shit."

"Sorry, Bri. What was I thinking? I'll try not to keep dying since its so hard on YOU," Michael joked, reaching out to squeeze Brian's hand as he smiled up at the clearly relieved brunet.

"Michael!" interrupted Ben as he barreled through the door, racing to his husband's side.

Brian followed Carl out of the room as Michael and Ben reconnected, the younger man reassuring the older one that he was going to be fine. In the hallway, Carl was conversing with the uniformed cops so Brian held back, waiting to talk to Carl alone. After a few minutes, Carl shook each of the other cops' hands and then walked over to Brian, a very unhappy look on his lined and worn face.

"It looks like this was done deliberately," Carl confided in a hushed voice. "Both the doctor and the charge nurse checked on the machine earlier and they both say it was set correctly. But, after they revived Michael, the doctor noticed the dosage had been upped four-fold. The machine doesn't appear to have malfunctioned. That means someone had to have intentionally changed the dosage. But nobody saw anyone around here until you arrived. What were you doing here after visiting hours anyway?"

"I came here to find Justin," Brian explained. "I used the lost phone service we have on both phones and tracked his phone here to the hospital. I figured he was visiting Michael so I came up here as soon as I arrived. That's when I found Michael not breathing. I never did see Justin though. . ."

All the drama about Michael had pushed Brian's concern about Justin to the back of his mind until now. But this reminder brought all his worries to a head once again. He pulled out his phone and hit the app again to check on the current location of Justin's phone. A new map popped up indicating that Justin was now on the interstate out in one of the northwestern suburbs of the city - not far from the neighborhood where Justin had grown up, Brian noted. Now, what the fuck was Justin doing out there this time of night?

Brian thought about bringing the issue up again with Carl, but the detective was already back over talking with the uniformed cops about what had happened to Michael. As if the cops didn't already have enough on their plate, what with the bombing last night, now there was what appeared to have been an attempted murder involving one of the bombing victims. Brian was sure Carl would just blow off his concerns about Justin again, so why waste the breath.

He looked back at the phone and noted that the little arrow indicated Justin's phone was moving along the highway heading back towards the downtown area. Brian would just have to keep tracking the damn thing until he found his missing partner. He didn't care if it took all night. Justin had to stop in one place eventually, right? At least long enough for Brian to catch up to him.

Brian tried again to call Justin, but there was no answer and it went to voicemail after ringing through for quite a while. Brian left his standard snarky message - 'Fucking call me, Justin. NOW, you twat!' Then he texted the same message, but got no response either time. Brian would have to wait and watch and see where the phone eventually stopped. And, as soon as it stayed in one place for more than just a couple minutes, Brian would move in.

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Time for a little reconnaissance work, Hobbs thought. He opened up Taylor's phone again and pulled up the 'Contacts' list to check the address he wanted. Under the name 'Emmett', Taylor had conveniently listed his friend's phone number, email and home address.

The house he was looking for was a modest red brick structure with a large front porch located just a couple blocks off Liberty Avenue. The street was a relatively busy one, there were cars driving through and pedestrians walking by even at this relatively late hour. There was a large, expensive SUV parked in front of the house, looking distinctly out of place in this neighborhood. Inside there were numerous lights on and Hobbs could see shapes moving back and forth in front of the drapery-covered windows.

Hobbs decided right away that this place was too busy and there were too many potential witnesses. He wasn't going to be able to take any action against his next target here. He'd have to think about it and come up with a way to lure his victim somewhere much more private. In the meantime, though, he'd watch for a bit and see what he could see, gathering information that he knew he'd find useful eventually.

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Brian watched the map with the traveling locator arrow showing that Justin's phone was still on the move. After about fifteen minutes the arrow finally stopped and remained in one location. Brian looked again at the map and recognized the site, a grin lighting up his face.

"Deb's house! Got ya, Sunshine," Brian murmured as he ran out of the hospital towards his car.

It took him another quarter of an hour before Brian made it across the bridge and back to the Liberty Avenue area where Deb lived. He'd kept an eye on the GPS map as he drove, happy that Justin's phone hadn't moved. Brian pulled up in front of the house, double parking the Vette, and jumped out of the car. He took the front steps of the house three at a time, pounding loudly at the door as soon as he reached the porch.

"Where's Justin?" Brian bellowed as soon as the front door was opened, the loud demand clearly audible even several houses down the block where a silent figure was sitting in a car watching the drama unfold.

From his vantage point in his car, Hobbs couldn't hear the response Brian got from the tall lanky man who'd opened the door, but he could tell that whatever had been said was frustrating Kinney. Hobbs could see the two men arguing. Kinney was shoving something he had in his hand into the other man's face.

"Look for yourself!" Brian demanded loudly. "See. According to this, Justin's phone has been here for at least the past half hour. I've been tracking him all night. So, if he's here, just tell me, alright. I don't care if he doesn't want to see me, I just want to know he's okay."

"Shit!" Hobbs exclaimed as he looked down at Taylor's phone which was sitting on the dashboard of his truck. He quickly grabbed the phone and turned off the power. Then, after searching for a minute in the storage console of the armrest, he pulled out a paper clip and used it to pop out the SIM card from the back of the phone.

"Fuck! It's gone!" Brian yelled from the porch across the street, staring without comprehension at the phone he held in his hand.

Hobbs watched as the red bewigged woman he'd seen earlier at the hospital came outside and then the boyfriend was hustled into the house, the older man's shoulders now slumped in dejection. As soon as the coast was clear, Hobbs pulled his truck out and drove away from there as quickly as he could. He'd have to be more careful using Taylor's phone. He didn't want to just toss it yet - he thought he was going to need it still to complete his plans.

In fact, maybe now that he knew Kinney had been tracking the phone, he could use that little fact to his advantage. . .

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