The Stainless Steel Rat

It wasn't really consciousness, but a sort of ruddy, pain-filled blur. A gut-gripping nausea fought with the pain, but the pain won easily. Part of the trouble was that my eyes were closed, yet opening them was incredibly difficult. I finally managed it and could make out a face swimming in a blur above me.

"What happened?" the blur asked.

"I was going to ask you the same thing…" I said, and stopped, surprised at how weak and bubbly my voice was. Something brushed across my lips and I saw a red-stained pad as it went away.

After I blinked some sight back into my eyes, blur-face turned out to be a youngish man dressed in white.A doctor I suppose, and I was aware of motion; we must be driving in an ambulance.

"Who shot you?" the doctor asked. "Someone reported the shots and you'll be pleased to know we got there just in the old nick of time. You've lost a lot of blood—some of which I've replaced—have multiple fractures of the radius and ulna, an extensive bullet wound in your forearm, a further wound in your right temple, possible fracture of the skull, extremely probable fractures in your ribs and the possibility of internal injuries. Someone got a grudge against you?Who?"

Who? My darling Angelina, that's who. Temptress, sorceress, murderess, that's who tried to kill me. I remembered now.The wide black muzzle of the gun looking big enough to park a spaceship in.The fire blasting out of it, the slugs hammering into me, and the pain as my expensive, guaranteed, bulletproof underwear soaked up the impact of the bullets, spreading it across the entire front of my body. I remembered the hope that this would satisfy her and the despair of hope as the muzzle of that reeking gun lifted to my face.

I remembered the last instant of regret as I put my arms before my face and threw myself sideways in a vain attempt at escape.

The funny thing is that escape attempt had worked. The bullet that had smashed my forearm must have been deflected enough by the bone to carom off my skull, instead of catching it point blank and drilling on through. All this had produced satisfactory quantities of blood and an immobile body on the floor. That had caused Angelina's mistake, her only one. The boom of the gun in that tiny room, my apparent corpse, the blood, it must have all rattled the female side of her, at least a bit. She had to leave fast before the shots were investigated and she had not taken that extra bit of time to make sure.

"Lie down," the doctor said. "I'll give you an injection that will knock you out for a week if you don't lie down!" Only when he said this did I realize I was half sitting up in the stretcher andchucklinga particularly dirty laugh. I let myself be pushed down easily, since my chest was drenched in pain whenever I moved.

Right at that moment my mind began ticking over plans for making the most of the situation. Ignoring the pain as well as I could I looked around the ambulance, looking for a way to capitalize on the bit of luck that had kept me still alive while she thought I was dead.

We pulled up at the hospital then, and there was nothing much I could do in the ambulance except steal the stylus and official forms from the rack above my head. My right arm was still good, though it hurt like fire whenever I moved. A robot snapped the wheels down on my stretcher, latched onto it and wheeled it inside. As it went by the doctor he slipped some papers into a holder near my head and waved good-by to me. I gave him back a gallant smile as I trundled into the butcher shop.

As soon as he was out of sight I pulled out the papers and scanned them quickly. Here lay my opportunity if I had enough time to grab it. There was the doctor's report—in quadruplicate. Until these forms were fed into the machinery I didn't exist. I was in a statistical limbo out of which I would be born into the hospital. Stillborn if I had my way. I pushed my pillow off onto the corridor floor and the robot stopped. He paid no attention to my writing and didn't seem to mind stopping two more times to rescue the pillow, giving me time to finish my forgery.

This Doctor Mcvbklz—at least that's what his signature reads like—had a lot to learn about signing papers. He had left acres of clear space between the last line of the report and his signature. I filled this with a very passable imitation of his handwriting. Massive internal hemorrhage, shock… I wrote, died en route. This sounded official enough. I quickly addedAllattempts resuscitation failed. I had a moment of doubt about spelling this jaw breaker, but since Dr. Mcvbklz thought there were two P's in multiple he could be expected to muff this one too. This last line made sure there wouldn't be any hanky-panky with needles and electric prods to jazz some life back into the corpse. We turned out of the corridor just as I slipped the forms back into their slot and lay back trying to look dead.