Page 106 of Deathless & Divided

Setting the useless clipboard aside, Damian unbuttoned the dress shirt he wore underneath the stolen lab coat. Ben’s chest continued to rise and fall in a rhythmic fashion alongside the ventilator’s timing.

The monitors keeping track of Ben’s heartbeat and breathing from the three leads attached to his chest became a game of sorts to Damian. He watched the lines strike up with every heartbeat and the green line monitoring breathing function fly up in time with the ventilator. Every minute or so, the screens would blink out and reset themselves. It gave a quick few second interval that Ben’s vitals weren’t being monitored.

The ventilator itself was on an entirely different monitor. There were no leads attached for that particular device, but Damian knew it would send out a warning sound to the front station if it was somehow turned off.

Damian didn’t plan on turning it off.

Not a flicker of hesitation or concern could be found in Damian’s emotions as he continued watching the monitors and Ben’s lifeless figure. His own heartrate was calm and his breathing steady. Never had killing someone felt so entirely natural to Damian. He’d always thought a lot about his victims before a job was done, but this one didn’t feel the same at all.

Lily had a lot to do with that, of course.

When the monitors blinked out again, resetting their tables, Damian quickly unplugged the leads coming from Ben’s chest to the monitor. Before the machines could recognize that they no longer had a set of wires to track, Damian attached another set of leads into the machines.

Earlier, after he’d grabbed the lab coat with the nametag attached, he’d used it to get inside a supply room. There, he’d found vital leads in designated bins. Quickly, so he couldn’t be caught, he followed the instructions on the covering of the underside of the sticky leads and attached all three leads to his own chest and abdomen.

As the monitor finally reset itself, Damian watched as his own vitals lit up the screen. There was little to no change between his heartrate and what Ben’s had been. Keeping an eye on the ventilator breathing for Ben, Damian inhaled and exhaled in time with the machine so that the green line monitoring breathing function would remain the same, too. As long as the monitors continued reading that everything was normal, the ventilator would remain stable and without warning.

Damian waited for the monitor to blink out again. When it did, he slipped the oxygen monitor clamped over Ben’s finger onto his own. Now, the blue line keeping track of the oxygen saturation inside the body wouldn’t read anything different, either.

“You’ll get it a hell of a lot easier than most of my hits have, Ben,” Damian said, knowing the man couldn’t hear him anyway.

Damian reached over and unclipped the ventilator tube from the attachment at Ben’s mouth. Air hissed from the tube as the machine pushed a steady stream of oxygen through. Immediately, Ben’s chest decompressed from the lack of air.

Damian continued breathing in time with the now useless machine. The monitors never changed. They never gave off the warnings they should have to the front desk as a patient was dying in his bed.

A shadow crossed the blind covered windows in front of Ben’s room but kept on going straight past. Damian waited a good three minutes and then he waited another two. All the while, his breathing stayed steady and his choices never faltered.

When he was sure Ben DeLuca’s heart had stopped beating or his brain function would be seriously impacted by the loss of oxygen, Damian waited for the machines to reset once more. He unplugged his leads from the machine and replaced them with Ben’s again. He pulled the oxygen clamp from his index finger and slid it back over Ben’s. Damian pressed hard around the rubbery material so any evidence of his fingerprint inside would be gone or smudged with Ben’s and he replaced the breathing tube to the apparatus on Ben’s mouth. The man’s chest began to rise and fall again with the help of the machine, but Damian knew it was already too late.

The machines finally started beeping with their warnings. Flat lines showed across every vital sign.

No life recorded.

No heartbeat.

There was always a slight delay, but not much, before the machines at the front station would show the warnings as well. Damian had watched them over the last couple of days as he and Lily came and went, visiting the few people who had been caught in the crossfire of the Trentini home shooting.

How easily they overlooked a killer. Damian didn’t even care anymore. Being able to blend in meant he was just another face in the crowd. His job was so much easier because of others stupid mistakes.

Still unconcerned and calm, Damian buttoned his shirt back up, grabbed the clipboard and left the room. He didn’t close the door as he stepped outside and turned to walk back down the hallway in the same way he came. Keeping his gaze down on the unknown patient’s paperwork, Damian slipped outside the doors of the ICU, glancing back in just enough time to see nurses rush into Ben DeLuca’s hospital room.

Damian had carefully chosen his time to hit Ben DeLuca. With the time at five minutes after twelve in the afternoon, the hospital was just beginning its lunch rush. Staff worked to serve the patients outside of the unit while other nurses, doctors, and hospital employees made their way down to ground level where the cafeteria was located. Family members of patients in the large hospital swarmed the place with takeout as they came and went.

Elevators filled with souls and Damian was lost in the sea of people. Taking the lab coat off, he folded it up and tucked it under his arm. He dumped the clipboard into an unsuspecting nurse’s bag as he stood behind her in the elevator. When nobody was looking, he pulled the light brown, short haired wig off, bunched it up, and tossed it into a garbage can as he walked out of the elevator with five other people surrounding him.

Just another face.

Another patient’s family member.

Damian walked out of the hospital and didn’t look back.

“Handsome,” Lily appraised, her hands fluttering over the lapels of Damian’s tux.

“Oh?”

“Very.”

Lily’s demure smile sent a shot of lust straight down to his cock. She acted like she didn’t even know.