The Hour of Bad Decisions by Russell Wangersky

cornered, but I was off my game – I was tired. For that, I blame the trombone player. And the coronary from earlier that night – he hadn’t made it – the two drunks who fought with beer bottles “just like in the movies” and had more open bleeders on their faces than you’d normally see in a month. The lady with the kidney stones who was screaming even though we’d laced her up on Demerol.
    I was double-shifted, too, because we were short on doctors and I’d agreed to work two, back to back. That can really drain you. The right combination of nights, and you can fall asleep in the cafeteria, face-down in the scrambled eggs.
    But back to Miller. I just refuse to call this guy Elephra.
    He said he was a taxi driver, that his car had slid sideways in snow down a St. John’s hill, fetching up hard against a light pole. Not much of a margin in the taxi business, so there are a lot of clapped-out, repainted old cop cars with lousy tires. The kind of car where the engine warning light stays on permanently, so the drivers stick a piece of masking tape over it so they don’t have to think about it. The drivers aren’t much better.
    Yeah, I hear what you’re thinking. Another reason to be paying attention.
    So Miller had smashed up a cab, and now his back hurt. He said it had been injured before.
    I had him take off his shirt and his sweater and then he said he had to take his pants off, too, to show me where it hurt, and he spilled everything out of his pockets. Out of one front pocket, change – I remember a balled-up five-dollar bill – and car keys. From the other, the knife.
    One minute, things were normal – well, as normal as a hospital emergency room gets in the middle of the night, and the next I had this big knife in my face. And it wasn’t completely like a threat, although it was threatening. He didn’t say he was going to cut me up, just held it there as if showing me the possibilities.
    Not for long. He put it down on the end of the examining table, but the blade was still open, and not far from reach.
    Then he started to tell me about his daughter.
    â€œI didn’t know I had a daughter,” he said, “because the doctors” – he underlined the word, I didn’t – “said I couldn’t have kids, but then I saw a girl on the street one day and when she looked at me, I knew I was looking at my daughter. You have kids, doc?”
    Yes, I told him, not quite lying, a boy and a girl.
    â€œAnd you know they’re your kids the minute you look at ’em, right?”
    That kind of seized me up right there. It didn’t matter, though. He just kept talking.
    â€œThat’s when I knew, and I tried to figure it out in reverse, you know, figure out how it was possible. I’d had the test and the doctors said I was sterile, that there was nothing there at all, so they must have been wrong again. And my girlfriend didn’t tell me she was pregnant, and then I was gone to Alberta because, you know, we just started pissing each other off, and her mother, man, her mother was a piece of goods – always in my face about the smoking and the weed, so it just seemed easier to start fresh somewhere else, even if it was Calgary. But it should be against the law not to tell someone he’s a father, right doc? Right?”
    â€œRight.” Sometimes, it’s easier just to agree. He’d broken off talking, and he was looking at me kind of sideways, his head tilted.
    â€œAre you a blue?” he asked suddenly.
    Now, what’s the safest way to answer that question? I just shrugged, hoping he’d find the answer to be obvious.
    â€œYou look like a blue to me,” he said. “I can usually tell. That’s good.”
    â€œThat’s good?”
    â€œYeah, good. Would have been different if you were a red. But I can see there’s a lot going on with you, doc. A