The Last Reflexive

By: Col. Brunhilda 'Iceberg' Buriman, ret.

Sorority Sister of Pi Loda Cum

Chapter Eleven: Sloppy Q&A

The Chief took a moment to quell his need to piss and ran to the open doors of the ambulance, as the driver came running back to help. They found Harriette humming to painkillers while cursing for the technician to get her off with his tongue quickly. The technician pulled his sopping wet face from Harriette's quim when the door swung open and his partner hoped in, which brought about another round of cursing the short ride. Harriette also cursed the loss of the tongue as they pulled the stretcher from the ambulance.

The Chief hovered over Harriette as she was moved. The media was all over them, in their faces asking questions. The Chief found themselves followed into the hospital by lights and cameras. The Chief became concerned about his need to piss, and the situation was getting dire. He was to the point of losing control and didn't want the television crews to add a wet yellow spot to his brown cigar streaks, so he finally waved them away and called a few uniformed officers over to keep them at bay.

"Harriette, how are ya," he asked, out of breath from holding his bladder in control, while yet chomping on the cigar which was now half its original size.

"The ride was most excellent but too short. I need my whisky and a cigarette. And I'd feel a hell of a lot better if you got that fukin chicken-shit parasite away from me," she snapped, pointing in Boyle's direction as he approached with his big shit-eating grin. "I'd like to rid the world of one more asshole..." she said as they all passed through another door.

"Harriette..." Boyle hissed under his breath, obviously upset.

"Calm down, Harriette, calm down," the Chief said, looking to Boyle. "And Boyle, I told ya to shut your trap and leave her alone."

"Okay, okay," Boyle said shrugging.

"I'm here now, and dis is my baby. Now get outta da way," the Chief ordered. Boyle obeyed, flipped closed his notebook and stepped aside to be swamped by reporters. He was fuming and wanted the Chief to hear him, but knew better than to bother him when it was so obvious he needed to piss bad.

"Chief, I was only..."

"Who the hell told you to follow da ambulance anyway," the Chief screamed at Boyle. He left him standing with the reporters and followed the stretcher into the emergency room. Dude tagged along at a discreet distance, wanting to stay out of the limelight, paying close attention to the faces in the crowd.

The team of doctors and nurses disappeared with the stretcher and Harriette behind a curtain. Chief went back into the lobby with Dude and the hounds.

"Wish I had a statement from Harriette, they so love her," he said into the air. "But I gotta piss first!"

"No smoking, Chief," a nurse said pointing to the cigar. In his usually gruff manner, the Chief showed her it wasn't lit, and in fact it was sopping wet limp. He left her gagging to the disgusting wad and rushed quickly to the nearest washroom.

"How 'bout a statement Chief," several news hounds asked in a jumble, following him into the john. God, he hated these news people. He looked around to see if he could catch the female reporter who writes the 'Men's Washroom Talk' column. She's known to dress like a man in order to obtain access to men only washrooms after dirty gossip.

"What happened at St. Nick..." they asked as the Chief pulled down his zipper to free his penis.

"...How's Dirty Harriette," they asked as the urine started to flow and the Chief let out with a horrendous sigh of release, which was caught on camera. The Chief struggled to ignore the gnats around him so he could continue pissing. Only one other time in his life did gnats annoy him as much as they were now. He was in the army fighting the Nazi's in the Great War. He was forced to defend a position filled knee deep with strewn body parts, and every species of gnat, and every family within in miles came to feed, driving him crazy during a forty-eight hour fire-fight. The questions came as buzzing, forcing him to concentrate on the gentle roar of splashing piss.

"...Who shot her?"

"...Why?"

"What's the department doing to protect the safety of our houses of worship?" On and on the questions came in rapid fire, until the Chief was finally empty and he turned far enough to shake himself off on the nearest reporter.

"Oops, sorry," he offered. At that a camera zoomed in to catch the brown cigar stains. All eyes went to the stains.

"Is that blood? Harriette's blood," someone asked. The Chief had to think fast.

"Yes, damn it, of course it is," he said seriously.

Outside the washroom uniformed cops began moving everyone back away from the entranceway, making room for the approaching Mayor, who entered surrounded by guards and more media folk. The reporters went charging out and the Chief washed his hands. He then tried rinsing the cigar stains from his shirt, but only made them worse. He then exited to meet the mayor, who spotted the soggy cigar and large brown blotches, which his jacket couldn't hide. He sighed in resignation. The Chief cursed himself for wasting such a good smoke and was about to put it back in his mouth when he thought otherwise.

"Here," he said to Boyle as the detective approached. Boyle held his hand out to have the Chief slap his soggy cigar butt down onto his palm. It landed with a splat that set out a spray of brown gunk staining the front of Boyles blue suede suit. Boyle attempted unsuccessfully to jump back, shoving the microphone held by a female reporter into her mouth, causing her a bloody lip.

"Wha... Oh, fu... you Chief!"

"I'm gonna sue you for this," the reporter sputtered through the material of the hanky she held to her mouth. A nurse who saw what happened came rushing up.

"Throw dat out for me," the Chief ordered Boyle, ignoring the reporter. His voice expressed his frustration. He then turned to face a couple familiar news people who were part of a mob asking more questions than he could hear at once. The Mayor walked up and they shook hands while whispering to each other. With the Mayor's arrival the media folks increased their vocal barrage.

"Chief, how's Harriette?"

"She's only wounded," said the Chief. "We should know more soon."

"Mr. Mayor, is it true your wife is having an affair with her high school phys-ed teacher who now lives in the Filtchem Nursing Home?"

"Say what!? Why do you people create such trash?"

"Hey," yelled the Chief. "Lets' keep with da subject on hand," he demanded.

"Who shot Harriette?"

"We're not sure, yet."

Over and over and over the same questions were blurted out, fired into his face, until along with the Mayor he got fed up. At that point he held up his hands and asked for quiet, and the media rushed up to capture his brown cigar juice blotches again, reporting them as blood stains. The Chief and Mayor faced the mob, the Chief with some trepidation about his stains, and the Mayor with some of his finer poses, ones he felt showed his resolve and his better side. Chief tried giving them some carefully worded information.

"Put it dis way. An unknown number of perps, I mean perpetrators, attempted to rob and vandalize Saint Nick's," the Chief began as a noisy murmur quieted down to listen. He tried continuing, as the Mayor continued posing for photographers. "Detective Karson happened to be on da scene, and was wounded defending the church. The perpetrators killed a priest, nun and couple parishioners. More than dat I don't know at this time," he finished, waving for his officers to move in. The unsatisfied reporters started barking again, demanding more answers about the blood stains. The Chief struggled to appear confident, as a frustrated Mayor decided to try calming the crowd, without hamming things up too much.

"You've heard the Chief and until we have some answers, that's all we are able to say at this time," the Mayor shouted above the din. "As soon as we have more details we'll let you know. In the meantime, I want the citizens to know that my office is going to get to the bottom of this," he said, turning to the Chief and growling under his breath. "I've had it! I'm getting me one of those under-the-desk secretaries for me."

"Yo guys, get these newsies back," the Chief yelled to the uniformed officers.

"This is still a hospital," the Mayor added. At that he nodded to an obscure figure standing to the side and a dozen men came out of nowhere to mingle with the crowd. This was the Mayor's special strike force, his Special Whiffer Assault Team. A dozen specially chosen males who've spent the day eating beans and cabbage. It was a subtle maneuver, and it took about fifteen minutes for them to disperse a crowd this large.

"I want ya to meet someone," the Chief said to the Mayor.

"Who?"

"He's known as Dude."