"I'm tired," Shank said softly, still lounging in his chair in the corner, as though the barging in of large violent husbands into hospital rooms was an everyday occurrence in his life. "At present, I'm not exactly in a bad mood, and I'd like to keep it that way. So if I were you, my friend, I'd leave quietly right now."
Hirschfeld blinked and turned to Shank, as though seeing him for the first time. "Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm Shank. It's not important who I am. It's more important you listen to what I said. If I were you, I'd leave quietly right now."
"I didn't know you had a boyfriend," Hirschfeld said to Rickie. "It makes sense. It explains why we've been having so much trouble lately."
Rickie attempted to speak, but found she could not, her throat constricted as it was from fear.
Hirschfeld's single-minded energy had to go somewhere, deflected as it was by Shank's interjection into the flow of his mission to retrieve Rickie from the hospital bed and return her to the certain and hideous bondage he doubtless had planned. Accordingly, the big man took a menacing step towards Shank, as though to direct a jumbo portion of rage via two large clenched fists straight into Shank's weathered, unshaven face.
"You don't want to do that to me here," Shank said.
"Say what?"
"You don't want to do that to me here," Shank repeated, speaking slowly, and softly. "I know you feel like doing it, but I'm telling you, you don't want to. For your own good, I'm asking you to reconsider." Shank continued to slouch casually in the chair, as though a bored parent talking to a stubborn child. "I know who you are, Hirschfeld. I knew you'd come here. That's why I've been sitting here without sleeping for the past eighteen hours. Because I knew you'd come charging in here like this. I can't let this whole thing come to a head here in this hospital room."
"Oh but I can," Hirschfeld smiled thinly. "And I will." His bull neck tightened, his clenched knuckles turning white. Rickie had seen this posture before; it always came right before Hirschfeld exploded. She realized with a start his sudden appearance in the room caused her to sit bolt upright, the resulting strain on her abdomen the fresh cause of a dull, booming ache inside of her.
Shank reached casually into the inside pocket of his jacket as though to remove a pistol and removed what appeared instead to be an astonishing roll of greenbacks about six inches thick. "Y'know, Hirschfeld, guys like you bore the crap out of me, so over the years I've found ways to make these types of confrontations more interesting. There's fifty thousand dollars here in my hand. What I propose to you is we leave this room and enter the elevator together. When the elevator door closes, I'll drop the fifty grand on the floor. I'm betting you can't pick up the fifty grand and make it past me and leave the elevator in one piece."
Nothing stirred in the room. The two men stood staring at each other. Rickie began to weep silently. Time passed, but whether it was seconds, minutes or hours, she couldn't be certain.
"Leave the elevator in one piece," Hirschfeld finally said--a statement, not a question.
"Leave the elevator in one piece," Shank affirmed.
Suddenly Hirschfeld's focus turned inward. He slowly shook his head and unclenched his fists, as though somebody had pulled his plug. "No," he said. "No." He walked to the door, glancing back at Rickie before returning his gaze to Shank. "I'll see you later," he said.
"Yes," Shank replied.
As suddenly as he'd appeared, Hirschfeld was gone. Rickie felt she could not immediately cope with what she'd witnessed; her emotions were simply scattered over too large a space, the energy required to gather them together was beyond what she could muster. It seemed something must eventually be said to Shank, but she could think of nothing. She sank heavily back upon her pillow and closed her eyes. There was a little prickle of darkness in the back of her mind. The prickle formed itself into a black hole and she fell deep into it, falling farther and farther, until there was nothing left but rushing blackness.