Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out
Part Two
By Triggersaurus
catherine@cjtrigg.freeserve.co.uk

Disclaimer: Yes, I admit it - they're mine. You finally caught me.

In the trauma rooms, the staff stood, mildly stunned by what had just happened. They were snapped out of the trance by the long tone of the cardiogram.

"We've lo.," before Dave could get any further, the body on the gurney, the man who had been shot three times in the chest and who apparently didn't have a heart beat, sat up. He looked confused. Looking around him, he saw a nurse in the corner of the room.

"Hey, um, Mikey? Now what? I mean, do we just keep going?"

The heads of everyone in the trauma room snapped to the small male nurse, who was in the middle of helping himself to sterile drapes on the orders of Dr. Carter in Curtain Three. He looked not dissimilar from a rabbit caught in the headlights of a juggernaught. And then, he put one hand over his ear and whispered something into his collar.

At this moment, something in Kerry snapped. "Excuse me?? Just what in hell is going on here? Sir, I recommend that you lie down again, you're in very bad condition. Yosh, get a different cardiogram, it seems that that machine is broken. Someone get security back here. Sir? Yes, you, Nurse Smith, will you please step out? Go and wait at the admit desk, I want to talk to you. Mark, did you see what happened?"

"I saw the same as you, Kerry. I thought we'd seen all of Chicago's nuts."

"Hmm, well obviously not. Where is security?? There were about fifty of them here a moment ago!"

"Dr. Weaver?"

"What is it, Yosh?"

"I think there's something you should see."

Kerry moved to the back of the gurney, followed by Mark.

"Look."

Yosh held up a cable connected to the cardiogram, and their eyes followed it  down, down, across the floor, to a connection in the wall. The plastic casing the would normally surround the connection had come away from the wall, and instead of a mass of wires and electrical devices, there was a small hole in the wall with an audio cable connected to their cable. "What the..?"

Dave had crept up behind them to see what was going on.

"It's looks okay to me, Yosh." Kerry said. Mark nodded.

"Dr. Weaver, this is not okay! Look, this should be plugged into a 13 amp domestic socket, but it's not! It's connected up to an audio cable which is running at 15 amps."

The two other doctors looked at Dave. Luka's head appeared through the doors between the trauma rooms.

"Kerry? We're sending him up to the O.R."

"Okay, Luka. Thanks." He looked a little longer at the room, and then left again. Dave returned to his point.

"Why would a cardiogram be connected to an audio cable??!"

"You tell me, Dave. I don't have a clue about these things, seems like you know what you're talking about."

"Okay, Dr. Greene, it goes like this. This machine only needs a normal, electrical supply like your TV, or your Minidisc, or your hairdryer," he looked at Kerry, "it produces the sound we hear by itself, monitoring the patient's heart rate, right?? An audio cable though is used when a sound, or music or whatever, is being fed from one place." he paused, waiting for the light to dawn, ".to another. See?"

"Dr. Malucci, are you saying that my cardiogram is playing noises from somewhere else??"

"Yes!"

"But where?? And why?"

"Look guys, I don't have all the answers. You might wanna ask him," he pointed to the nurse, who, contrary to Kerry's orders, was still in the room and still frantically whispering into his collar, "but I'm gonna see where this cable goes."

He started pulling at the wire running through the wall. As he did so, Kerry marched over to the nurse. "Hey!! Stop doing that! I thought I told you to go out to the admit desk? Cut it OUT!" She prodded him with her crutch, knocking him off balance enough so that he crashed into the wall. Coming closer to him, she peered at his collar and noticed a very small, black clip microphone. She yanked at it and pulled it away, bringing a tiny wire with it. "What is this?? WHAT IS THIS?"

The nurse shrank back a little, his eyes wide and circling, desperately looking for something. The man on the gurney sat up again, swinging his legs around so they hung off the edge. "I think we're gonna be in trouble, Mikey."

Mark, who had been checking the guy's vital signs - somehow this guy was still demonstrating all the signs of being very close to death - grabbed him at the shoulders and tried to force him to lie back down. "Sir, I don't know what is going on here, but you're really not well. I strongly advise you to stay here." He emphasized the last two words. With all this weird behaviour, the guy was probably on LSD or something that induced analgesia. Saying things a little louder and slower sometimes helped. But it was obviously not to be in this case, because the fatally wounded man kept on talking.

"Maybe we should tell them what's going on. D'ya think we should, huh Mike? Or do we wait for all hell to break loose when Mr. Spielberg gets here?" He waited for the response, but unfortunately Mike was flattened against the wall, trying to keep as much distance between him and a very angry Dr. Weaver as possible. Which was hard given that she was approximately three inches from his face, taking turns to examine his mic and then him.

"Holy crap! Hey, Chief! I think there's some sort of computer hooked up to this cable!" Dave had managed to pull a length of the wire through the wall, and had obviously has quite a battle at some point because now where there was formerly a small plastic socket, there was a foot-wide gash in the wall. As he pulled a bit more, there was a small crunch and the back of what seemed to be a laptop computer crashed into the wall from the other side. The pounding of feet shortly followed the crunching sound and the laptop was yanked away, ripped the cable out from the outlet in the back, leaving Dave holding it loosely. He stood up, looking startled and turned to face Kerry and Mark. They gawked back at him, completely missing the fact that their two hostages had taken advantage of the distraction and escaped.

"Blue Eagle forty one. We have a breach in security. Repeat, we have a breach in security."

"What kind of breach, forty one?"

"Suspects have been caught on set, three at the front, one at the main security desk and two more scaling the rear fence."

"You have 6 suspects?"

"Affirmative sir. We think there may be more."

"How many more?"

"Maybe 4, sir."

"Why have you waited to tell me this, forty one?"

"Suspects have only just been found, sir. One man at the main security desk distracted our attention - he said he was armed and his accomplice had Mr. Spielberg."

"Is this true?"

"No sir."

"Have we located the other suspects yet? Are they armed?"

"Only one located, we're following him around the edge of the set, sir. Suspects do not appear to be armed."

"Well that's something I suppose. Code Red has been called, more men are on their way."

"Thank you sir."

"Over and out."

The man turned to face the four other men in the office. They were all fascinated with their shoes, their mousemats and the dirt under their fingernails.

"How exactly did we manage to let this happen??"

His voice was dangerously quiet. "Well?? Somehow, at least 7 members of the public have entered this closed set. On the basis that a fake accomplice had kidnapped Mr. Spielberg. Where were you when this happened? WHERE WERE YOU???"

There was a long and uncomfortable silence.

"I don't have time for this. There are still more people on the set and if they break in then we're all out of jobs. And believe me, I will make sure that you guys are not only out of a job here, but everywhere." On that note, Mr. Wells stormed out of the office.