Who's sorry now?

away, looking down at the blood gushing over his hand and the handcuffs. Ron Parker grabbed Walker’s right arm. Walker had turned pale and was about to fall over, staggering to find something to hold on to to keep himself upright.
    The other men ran around the left end of the counter, knocked the man to the floor, and there were gargling yelps of pain from painful kicks.
    Parker heaved the bloody handcuffs over the counter and said, ”One of you use these and hold him down, the other call an ambulance.”
    Then he stripped off Walker’s jacket and shirt and lowered him carefully to the floor. Ripping apart a piece of his shirt he wrapped it tightly around Walker’s left arm above the gaping, gushing bloody hole. Walker had turned even paler, his mouth a grimace of pain before he fainted.
    ”Give me something to twist this tighter,” Ron said.
    One of the officers, with all his weight holding down the tailor with his feet, rummaged around on the table and found a wooden mallet, while the other one was yelling at the tailor and giving him another kick. ”Don’t you dare try to get up, you murderer.”
    Ron said to them, ”Take that man to Matteawan after the ambulance comes to take my boss to the hospital in Poughkeepsie. I’m going with him. I only have two jail cells and can’t deal with him. The State Hospital for the Criminally Insane can handle him.”
    Parker checked Walker’s pulse in his bloody left wrist. As far as Parker could gauge, it was a bit slow, but not dangerously so.
    The sound of the ambulance wailing got louder and louder and a crowd had formed on the opposite side of the street as the tailor was dragged out, kicking and screaming obscenities.
    Two men stopped in the middle of the road and ran inside with a gurney.
    ”Treat him gently. He’s lost a lot of blood,” Ron said, his voice firm.
    ”We can see that,” one of them said softly.
    ”I’m coming with you.”
    ”There’s no need, and no room for you.”
    ”He’s my boss. He’s a good man. I’m coming with you.
    He didn’t even notice that some part of the crowd had started seeping across the street behind the ambulance, trying to look in the back door and then moving furtively closer to the shop to see what had happened. A local officer had turned up to keep the snoops out of the shop. Parker grabbed Walker’s uniform jacket, then ran into the street and climbed into the ambulance.
    There was only a corner where Parker could cram himself into as the ambulance backed into a parking lot, turned around, and screamed off at a terrific speed up the steep main road.
    ”You did a good job with this tourniquet,” the attendant shouted over the noise of the siren. ”But it needs to be loosened occasionally.”
    ”I knew that,” Ron said. ”I took a Red Cross First Aid course at the police college.”
    It seemed to take forever to get to Poughkeepsie even though they were going almost dangerously fast on Route 9. All Ron could do was to take Howard’s shoes off and massage his feet, hoping it might bring him around. Finally he felt a toe move slightly.
    ”He’s coming around slowly,” the attendant yelled.
    Ron thought the attendant sounded as if he was smiling. They suddenly took a turn so sharp that Ron bumped his shoulder hard against the framework of the vehicle. With a subsequent slowing and stopping, the siren died and the back door was jerked open. Two other men in white were waiting. They pulled out the gurney and locked the collapsing structure with the wheels in place. Ron stayed where he was until the process was completed and the men started running through the open doors of the hospital. Then Ron jumped out the back, clutching Walker’s uniform jacket and his shoes, and ran after them.
    A police officer guarding the door grabbed Ron’s arm. ”You can’t go with him.”
    ”I must!”
    ”They’ll let you sit outside while they’re working on him, if you behave. Is he a cop, too?”
    ”He’s Howard Walker, the chief of police of Voorburg. My boss.”
    ”I know him,” the man said. `A good man.”
    Releasing his grip slightly, he added, ”Come along. I’ll show you where you can wash up. There’s blood all over your hands and you’ll scare patients and their visitors. Then I’ll show you where you can sit and wait. I’ll get a message through to the surgery room and tell them who he is, and to treat him well and that you’re waiting to know how he is. Do you need me to sit with you? I