The McLaughlin Chronicles: A Kid Called Jason

New York City - Winter of 1998

Perception is everything. The wail of an emergency siren is designed, being something out of the ordinary, to be something to get people’s attention, but in the city that never sleeps it becomes as commonplace as a moose in the state of Maine. The people on the street barely paid it any mind. Any onlookers were more than likely doing so out of idle curiosity. Even the atmosphere surrounding the drivers of the ambulance was a sense of a job, rather than the thought of saving someone’s life. The only ones who seemed to be able to see the situation as it was were the three in the ambulance’s rear. But they had their own reasons and each one different.

The first one was the patient. While she was still beyond the state of consciousness, she still had several bruises, ripped clothing and severe cuts around her carotid artery. With her it was a sense of worry.

The second one was James Thompson, a brown-haired blue-eyed man at the age of thirty-eight. He had been with this particular ambulance crew for about five years now and he had seen his share of serial killings. This one, in his opinion, scared him the most, because it didn’t make sense. To him it was a sense of mystery.

The third was Robert McLaughlin. He had fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes and looked around his thirties. He was new on the team. To him, it was a sense of a mission not yet accomplished. That, however, will be clarified later.

The ambulance pulled up to the emergency room doors, using the driveway specifically built for that purpose. McLaughlin flung the rear double-doors open and hit the ground, before the vehicle came to a halt. Thompson was inside holding the patient still, along with all the other devices they had hooked up to her. There was crew there ready to handle the patient. The look on their faces was so easy to read: ‘Another one!’

They carted the patient into the hospital. Four men and a woman all jittering back and forth, making sure all details were known about the patient before treating her for anything. About half-way to the emergency room, McLaughlin and Thompson stopped and let the rest continue on. Their job was done, though they watched as the patient disappeared into the emergency room. They looked at each other with blank expressions and then, for the first time in a while, they looked at themselves and the blood over their clothing. They shrugged and walked back to the ambulance.

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