Chapter 4: Channel Four

I didn't think about it.

Six years of nights did it for me.

"Nine, Four," I said. "Copy clear. Go get some sleep."

The big man stopped talking into his phone.

He turned around very slowly.

He was about six foot four.

Close-cropped dark hair, short dark beard, a face that looked carved out of something that didn't bend.

There was a cotton ball taped inside his left elbow, under his pushed-up sleeve.

He looked at Ruthann.

He looked at the wheelchair.

Then he looked at me, and something in that hard face just gave.

"Four?"

"Yeah."

"You're Four."

"I've been Four since I was twenty-four."

He put the phone back to his ear.

"I'll call you back," he told it, and hung up without waiting.

Ruthann snapped her gum.

"Well, isn't this a small damn world," she said. "Andie, that's your two units."

I stared at the cotton ball.

Then at his boots, still dripping ice onto the floor.

"You drove the West End Bridge," I said. "Last night. In twenty-six minutes."

"Twenty-five and change. Your blood guy rounds up."

"Nobody makes that bridge in twenty-five on ice."

"Somebody had to."

He said it flat.

"I didn't know it was you," he added. "They don't tell you names. They said a mother, postpartum, bleeding. That's all I got."

"And you just went."

"I've been on that list since I was twenty-two. It's the first time anybody called."

He shifted the hard hat to his other arm.

"I'm Morgan," he said. "Morgan Hadwin."

"I know who you are. You're the one who tells the knock-knock jokes on an open channel at three in the morning."

"Those are good jokes."

"They're crimes. Somebody on Crew Six threatened to cut your line once."

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