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  Once again, Academy training kicked in. Burnside used both of his hands to clamp onto the psychopath's hand and began to violently twist his body back and forth. The psycho screamed as his wrist bent unnaturally from the abrupt movement, and he released his grip on the gun-butt. Burnside seized the opportunity to push the offender away with his left hand, while he drew his 9MM with his right. The psycho stepped back and clutched his sprained wrist - apparently surprised he had been stopped in his attempt to get the gun. Before he could react, Burnside brought the gun to bear on his right shoulder and pulled the trigger.

  A deafening, thunderous blast resounded in the confined space as sparks shot from the barrel of the pistol. A bloody wound opened in the psycho’s shoulder and he clutched at it as he collapsed from the force of the bullet. His heavy body hit the floor with an enormous thud, vibrating the wood panels under Burnside’s feet.

  Burnside continued to train his gun on the fallen psychopath as he cautiously skirted around him and moved toward the woman sitting on the floor against the far wall.

  "You fucking shot me! You asshole!" the psychopath wailed, as he began blubbering like a baby.

  Burnside glared at him, contemptuously, as he approached the woman sitting on the floor.

  "Are you all right, ma'am?" he asked.

  She slowly lifted her face toward him and despite all that had happened, he was still shocked when he saw her injuries. She had a bulging purple cheek, cut lip, bruised forehead, and swollen right eye that he was sure she couldn’t see out of. She studied him for an instant with her good eye and glanced over at the hulking body rolling around on the floor.

  "Thank you, officer," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

  "No problem, ma'am,” he replied.

  Burnside reached down, grabbed her hand, and lifted her to her feet. He couldn't remember feeling as triumphant as he did at that moment. He felt like an action hero from a movie as he helped the woman to her feet and led her toward the door. Then, just like a movie, he heard footsteps approaching in the hall and saw an older officer walk through the door. The second officer stared gape-mouthed at the carnage, as if he had never responded to a violent call in his career. He glanced down at the bulky body passed out on the floor and looked back at Burnside, who was still supporting the injured woman with his right arm.

  "I’ll call an ambulance," the older officer said.

  "Good idea," Burnside said, rolling his eyes.

  There was an investigation into the shooting. The injured woman's testimony, combined with the evidence at the scene, supported the legitimate use of self-defense. The fact that the psychopath outweighed him by almost eighty pounds didn't hurt his case either. The psycho also had enough cocaine in his system to power up a small third world country. Burnside was cleared of any wrongdoing and he gained a new respect from his colleagues. After that, they stopped treating him like a rookie and began inviting him to all the cop social events. He was once again on top of the world.

  Burnside actually smiled as he lay asleep, dreaming. He opened his eyes when he felt someone touching his arm. He was in a hospital room lying strapped-down on a cot. He looked up and saw a nurse strapping a blood pressure cuff on his right bicep. Glancing right, he saw a grim-faced police officer standing by the door with his arms folded across his chest. A second officer was standing in the hallway outside talking to another nurse. The reality of his situation came flooding back to him with surreal, nightmarish clarity. He went in an instant from feeling like he was on top of the world to falling into a deep chasm where no light or hope could reach.

  Chapter 3

  Brain-scan

  A second nurse entered the room to draw blood. Burnside wasn’t worried because he had never minded needles. He watched the sharp tip pierce his skin, felt the quick sting, and felt fully alive for the first time since waking up from his dream. He enjoyed the sensation of the viscous red liquid being sucked out of his arm. Blood was life. If he could bleed, he was alive. When he thought about prison, he felt half-alive like an animated corpse.

  When the nurse left, Burnside closed his eyes. Images from the courtroom brawl invaded his mind like a burglar in the night. He imagined the scene in complete detail from his reaction to the verdict to the court officer’s baton knocking him into oblivion. He opened his eyes and concentrated on the blank wall ahead, trying to block out everything else.

  Burnside heard footsteps and turned to see a pretty, young brunette EMT and an overweight male orderly enter the room. The orderly grabbed the end of the cot near Burnside’s feet and shoved it from the back while the female EMT guided it from the front. The cot’s wheels squeaked as they pushed him across the floor. Burnside glanced down and saw the ugly, hairy orderly with the crew-cut glaring down at him with apparent contempt. When he looked up, he saw the pretty EMT’s soft white chin.

  That’s a much better view.

  They wheeled him through an emergency room brimming with frenetic activity. He could see people moving around in his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t tell what they were doing. The noise from a dozen different conversations assailed him.

  Things quieted down as they led him out of the ER. He tried moving his arms again, but the leather straps were secure. Glancing left, he saw one of his police escorts walking alongside the stretcher. The cop was young and powerfully built with a shaved head and a perpetual scowl on his clean-shaven mug. Looking past the burly shoulders of the ugly male EMT, Burnside saw the other officer following behind. He was older, with gray hair and a mustache. He looked shorter and thinner than the younger cop.

  Only two officers. I like the odds, Burnside thought.

  He stared at the ceiling moving above him as they wheeled him down what appeared to be an endless labyrinth of corridors. Finally, they arrived in a white-walled room that looked a lot like the one he had just been in.

  “How long is this MRI going to take?” the younger cop asked.

  “Not long. Maybe ten minutes,” the female EMT replied.

  Burnside saw the officers eye each other nervously and then look down at him as if he was a volatile lab specimen.

  They look nervous. Good. They should be.

  “We can keep him strapped down, right?” the older officer asked.

  “I couldn’t tell ya. My job is to bring him here. You guys are on your own now,” the EMT said, smiling as she left the room.

  “You’re not leaving too, are you?” the gray-haired cop asked the orderly.

  “Sorry, guys, gotta go,” the orderly replied as he darted out the door.

  “Thanks, we appreciate your help,” the older cop said, scowling.

  A middle-aged female tech with short black hair entered the room. She stared at Burnside with wide brown eyes.

  “Is he….dangerous?” she asked the officers.

  “Don’t worry Ma’am,” the tall, powerfully built officer said. “We’ll make sure he cooperates.”

  Burnside thought the explanation didn’t satisfy the tech as she stepped back, glaring at him as if he was a serial killer. The other officer, the middle-aged cop with the graying black hair, stepped over to the stretcher and fumbled with the strap holding down Burnside’s left wrist.

  “We’ll start with the wrist straps, cuff him, then do the legs,” he instructed the younger officer.

  “You can’t put handcuffs on him,” the tech said. “The metal will interfere with the machine.”

  “That’s why we brought these,” the older cop said, producing a set of plastic ties.

  The muscular cop approached the stretcher and began to methodically undo Burnside’s right wrist strap. Before he completed the procedure, he pulled out a set of plastic ties and prepared to snap them on one-handed. As the leather strap was released, he slid the plastic cuff on smoothly and snapped it shut. Burnside didn’t put up a fight. He continued to lie on the stretcher staring vacantly at the ceiling.

  The middle-aged officer removed the left strap and used his body weight to hold do
wn Burnside’s arm as the young cop tied his other wrist. Despite the sweat he saw beading on their foreheads, Burnside thought the operation went quite smoothly. He continued to lie passively while they undid the leather restraints and replaced them with plastic leg straps, which were wider than the hand ties. He complied as the cops each grabbed an arm and lifted him up.

  The officers were forced to tie Burnside’s hands in front of him because he had to lie on his back in the MRI machine.

  Big mistake.

  Burnside knew the procedure was dangerous because he could still manipulate his arms enough to cause serious damage. If he had to, he could even use the plastic restraints as an instrument of strangulation. He had seen this very thing done to another cop with metal handcuffs. After that incident, he never allowed a prisoner to be cuffed with his hands in front again.

  Burnside used his powers of restraint to keep from lashing out immediately. He needed to wait until the time was right. He remembered how he felt when he was a cop guarding dangerous psych patients who were under arrest in the Emergency Room - often accompanying them on excursions like this one. He remembered the tension of not knowing if or when an unstable patient would explode during a routine procedure and start swinging. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling and at this moment he had no intention of proving these officers right by flying off the handle.

  At least not yet.

  Burnside thought it was bizarre that he was experiencing the same situation from the other side. Never in his wildest dreams could he have predicted a one-hundred-eighty-degree role reversal. How could he know, when he was guarding dangerous patients, that he would eventually be the dangerous patient? It was like a bizarre, turned-around déjà vu. He grinned as he contemplated the absurd irony of it all.

  They escorted him to the massive scanning machine with its hollowed-out center. Burnside had to move his feet in an awkward shuffling motion to prevent his legs from being tangled in the leg restraints.

  “Lie down there,” the older cop instructed him, pointing down at a long, flat panel, extending out from the hollowed-out area of the machine.

  Burnside complied and thought the officers looked relieved when the tech arrived to take over the operation. They stepped back to let her in, but still looked ready to pounce if he made the slightest move.

  “You need to keep perfectly still for the machine to work,” the tech told him as she placed his head in a brace that would minimize any head or neck movement. “So you can’t move at all. Okay?”

  Burnside’s answer was a barely perceptible nod as he stared at her calmly, as if bored by the whole routine.

  “This panel you’re lying on is going to slide into the MRI chamber. You might feel a bit claustrophobic, but you must remain absolutely still. It’s also going to be loud. Okay?”

  Again he barely nodded. The tech didn’t look convinced and glanced nervously at the officers as she walked to the nearby control panel. She typed on a keyboard and the panel began sliding into the hollow opening. The officers moved away from the machine and stood against the back wall behind the tech. Burnside thought they looked as if they had a superstitious fear of the machine.

  Burnside closed his eyes as he slid into the bowels of the MRI scanner. He opened them when he felt the panel stop moving. Looking up, he saw a curved white surface directly above. The white surface appeared to be completely pristine and pure, no imperfections. His mind needed an escape and this machine was it. Maybe the MRI would cleanse him of his imperfections and make him the person he was before the conviction. He didn’t like who he was becoming, but he saw no other alternative. Burnside tried to let his aggressive feelings wash away as he stared at the smooth white surface.

  “Don’t move at all,” the nurse’s muffled voice spoke faintly to him as if she was far away at the end of a long tunnel.

  Why would I want to move? I’m being cleansed.

  Burnside shut his eyes and thought about the pure white surface above him. He heard a loud mechanical humming as the machine went into operation. He relaxed as he imagined all the negativity of the past few months dissipating.

  Maybe this is all a nightmare and I’ll wake up to find myself in my former life; going to work, living with my girlfriend, going out with friends, following the rules.

  Burnside let the white wash over him, cleaning away all the anger, aggression and negativity in his system. He imagined he was metamorphosing into a being of pure spirit that could not be influenced, hurt, or coerced by any physical thing in the environment. For the first time in months, he felt safe and free.

  Drifting. Floating.

  Burnside enjoyed the feeling of freedom from the flesh while he listened to the loud humming of the machine that drowned out any background noise. After a while, the humming stopped and the panel began moving again. He opened his eyes and saw himself traveling down the pristine white tunnel toward the gateway to reality. It was not a place he wanted to go. A sudden terror seized his mind.

  They’re going to send me back to jail with the most violent and debauched human beings in society.

  In the machine, he was free. Out there, people would continue to abuse him with their accusations, punishments, and persecutions. A seething rage boiled in his mind as he thought about leaving the purity of the machine to return to a cynical, dangerous world. Burnside felt all his muscles tense as he remembered the drab gray walls and black iron bars of the jail he had been held at for the last four months.

  They're not going to drag me back to that hell for something I didn't do.

  Burnside looked up to see the two officers standing above him like scientists observing an unstable laboratory experiment.

  “Okay, pal, we need you to sit up,” the younger officer instructed as he grabbed Burnside’s left shoulder.

  The officer’s touch inspired movement far beyond any that he might have anticipated. Burnside’s upper torso shot upward as if he had been filled with a thousand volts of electricity. His fists shot out with the momentum of his body, striking the younger officer in the forehead. Burnside’s cuffed fists smashed into the officer’s skull with a sickening thud. The officer’s eyes rolled up in his head as he slumped to the floor. The older officer stood frozen in a state of shock. When he finally recovered his wits, his instinct was to move away from the prisoner, rather than make any attempt to restrain him.

  The light of sanity drained momentarily from Burnside’s eyes. His face contorted into a spasm of animal rage as he glared at the panic-stricken officer. He tracked the officer’s movement like a predator stalking its next meal.

  Burnside slid smoothly off the panel, scanned the room, and realized the female tech had fled. He took a long stride forward and suddenly realized his feet were shackled only inches apart. The ties on the ankle restraints tightened before he could move his legs, plunging him toward the floor. Burnside’s adrenaline-heightened reflexes kicked in and he thrust his arms in front of him. His hands smacked against the floor and he pushed hard. He did an improvised push-up and moved to a squatting position.

  Burnside saw the officer fumbling for his gun. He thrust out with his arms and pushed upward with his legs, lunging like an uncoiling spring. His cuffed hands slammed into the cop’s neck. The momentum sent the officer reeling backwards as the gun flew from his hand. The cop tried to regain his balance, but toppled hard and hit the floor with a thud. Burnside fell on the officer, pinning him with the weight of his body. He pressed the plastic restraint into the soft, yielding skin of the cop’s neck. The officer choked and gagged as he fought for breath. Burnside glared maniacally into his panic-stricken face with an expression of intense satisfaction.

  Suddenly, his expression changed as an image flashed into his mind of a psych patient attacking him in a similar manner.

  What the fuck am I doing? Am I really going to kill this guy?

  Burnside remembered the fear when the madman pinned him to the floor. It had taken two EMTs and two nurses to pull him off. The vivid memory made him ce
ase the strangulation and draw back as if he had touched a live wire. The officer coughed and gasped for breath as the restraint was removed from his throat. Burnside pushed himself up and stood over the fallen man, staring down at him.

  Did I almost kill that guy? What am I turning into?

  Burnside staggered back to the MRI panel and sat down.

  The last thing I want to do is kill one of my former brothers.

  Another part of his mind disputed the assertion.

  But the bastard is going to drag me to prison for something I didn't do!

  His conflicted mind tried to reach a compromise.

  It doesn’t matter. There will be other opportunities to escape where I won’t have to kill anyone.

  Burnside sat on the MRI panel as he watched the fallen officer slowly push himself up with one hand, while he clutched his neck with the other. Looking for his partner, the cop saw him lying on the floor on the other side of the suspended machine panel. He pulled a radio from his belt with a trembling hand.

  "Officer Jones to any available back-up," the cop said as he released his grip on his neck, picked up his gun from the floor, and leveled it on the prisoner. "The prisoner has broken loose. He's taken out Daniels. I'm in the MRI screening room in Metro-East Hospital. I need back-up. I repeat, the prisoner is loose and I need back-up," he paused to await a response.

  "1745 is en route from Prospect Street," an unknown officer's voice replied over the radio.

  "Officer Burke en route from the ER," another voice spoke from the radio

  "1738 on the way from downtown."

  "1752 on the way from the south side."

  There was a brief pause before the dispatcher's voice cut in