Page 10 of The Librarians
“Thanks.” He accepts the case and rounds the computer terminals.
The man on the floor, his face bloodied, the top buttons of his shirt ripped open in the tussle, appears unconscious. Jonathan can’t help a glance toward where Astrid stands, stark-eyed, at the back of the small crowd. For a week or so the guy came to the library every day and Astrid walked around with a huge smile on her face. Though she never did anything unprofessional on the library’s premises, once Jonathan saw them in the reading area, the guy sitting, Astrid on her haunches next to his chair. They were turned toward each other, their foreheads almost touching, and Astrid gazed at him as if she were aStar Warsfan circa 1998 and he the first image ever released fromEpisode I—The Phantom Menace.
Then he disappeared. For months, so did Astrid’s smile.
In the moment of Jonathan’s distraction, a man with a beanie pulled low enough to obscure his eyebrows sinks to one knee next to the guy and checks his pulse.
Sophie steps closer. “Sir, are you a medical professional?”
Jonathan would have asked the same. He too is unwilling to allow interference by some random dude.
Beanie, a light-complexioned man whose ethnicity isn’t immediately evident, rises and greets Sophie courteously. “Yes, ma’am. I’m a combat medic, serving with the 10th Mountain Division. I can show you—”
He reaches into his pocket, presumably for a military ID. The Brit on the floor rears up, startling everyone.
“Sir, are you okay?” Sophie asks immediately.
He clutches at his head. “I—I suppose so.”
Serves you right, thinks Jonathan. It was low, the way he barged in here to try the same schtick on Hazel. When Hazel innocently passed on the questions Jonathan had already answered six months before, Jonathan had to try hard not to freeze the guy out.
Or look toward Astrid—it would have mortified her.
Sophie crouches down. “Would you like some water?”
“No, thanks.” The guy gets up, unsteady on his feet. “I don’t need anything.”
“Sir, you have a cut on your face,” Jonathan makes himself say. “You might need to clean it.”
The guy, now upright, gingerly touches his cheek. He studies, as if in a daze, the small smear of blood on his fingertip, then glances in Astrid’s direction. “Do you—do you have anything I can borrow?”
Jonathan opens the first aid kit. The man accepts several large bandages and a packet of antibiotic cream with a mumbled “thank you” and heads toward the restroom.
“Would you like to file a police report?” Sophie calls after his retreating back.
He stumbles slightly. “No, no need.”
Sophie sighs and looks around. Jonathan is the first to spot the army medic, now seated in the work gallery, behind an open laptop. They approach him.
“Sir, you were going to show me something?” asks Sophie.
“Oh, right.” The medic offers up a military ID to Sophie. “I hope the gentleman will get himself some medical attention. The cut looks dramatic, but the greater worry is a concussion. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t exhibit the symptoms of one in a few hours, but hopefully it will be a mild case.”
Sophie passes the common access card to Jonathan.Tarik Ozbilgin, it says. Jonathan’s unit once trained with various NATO counterparts and this looks like a Turkish name. The CAC is unexpired; Tarik Ozbilgin is in active service with the army. His pay grade is E7. According to the birthday on the back of the card, he is thirty-six years of age. And if he’s been in the army sixteen to eighteen years, then E7 tracks.
Jonathan hands back the CAC. “Thank you for your service.”
Tarik Ozbilgin chuckles. “Thank you for the tax dollars that support my service.”
Now that Jonathan has seen his name, he hears a slight accent also. They leave Tarik Ozbilgin, possible first-generation American, to his work. The other patrons who gathered to watch the brouhaha have also dispersed back to various corners of the library.
Jonathan finds Astrid in the children’s department, which is mostly empty this time of the day, when kids need to be fed. “Are you okay? You don’t look too good.”
Astrid picks up several picture books that have been left behind on a pair of tubby hassocks. “I’m okay. I just hate it when things like this happen at the library.”
Jonathan wants to put his arm around her and tell her that she deserves so much better. But she’s never confessed any heartache to him and it doesn’t look like she’s about to start now.
He sighs. “I’ll go take a look at the guy.”
