RICKMAS 2024

For those who wished to disappear, the Appalachian Mountains were as good as any place. People minded their own business though by their clannish nature, any newcomer was noticed. However, what a man did on his property was his own business. And when the fed’s come knocking, locals circled their wagons in a stoic muteness. The holler hid many secrets: moonshine, murder, and now money.

Bearer bonds, actually. Six hundred and forty million’s worth.

Sure, he stood out among the townsfolk, his tailored suits at odds with worn flannel shirts and Carhartt coats. Hans Gruber stood at a dangerous crossroads, but he was a dangerous man. And here in this backwoods town with his biggest worry being a near blind sheriff and two deputies more interested in scoring free drinks at the local bar than apprehending a criminal mastermind, he liked his odds.

In addition to a quiet little cabin nestled off one of the many switchback roads carved into the face of the mountain, Hans could buy silence. On the off chance somebody managed to catch his scent, they wouldn’t find his safe house from the road. And if they did, well, the dense forest surrounding him would suffocate the sharp crack of his pistol.

It would be a quiet Christmas, Hans mused, effortlessly lighting a cigarette as he surveyed his snow covered kingdom. After that nasty business at Nakatomi Plaza, this change of scenery suited him just fine. Here he could lick his wounds and plan his next step. This part of the world moved “slower than molasses,” according to the locals.

Perfect.

With his adrenaline finally subsiding, Hans grimaced and stubbed out his cigarette. He rubbed the stabbing pain in his shoulder. The cabin wasn’t anything luxurious, such extravagance would be noticed. Fortunately, his team threw enough money for a quiet delivery of creature comforts, namely clothes and something of a Christmas feast. He hoped Mr. McClane’s Christmas dinner with that cute wife and kids of his would be merry. It’d take a couple weeks to sort through the wreckage and confirm Hans Gruber still breathed. He’d take the news hard, Hans was sure.

Limping to the washroom, he tugged his shirt off to inspect the damage. Under the bulb’s weak light, the bruises to his left side looked darker than before. Yes, he’d sustained a fall during his escape, only three stories, but god damn catching that ledge hurt. One of his men dragged him to his feet and shoved him into the waiting box truck. The ride wasn’t comfortable, but a couple pills dropped into his hand solved that problem.

Carefully, he bent over to dig through his toiletry bag in search of that fucking orange pill bottle. He finally found it, a growl rumbling in his throat. Empty.

“Scheiße!”

Hans regretted his momentary loss of self control, and clutched his side in silent agony. Staring at his reflection, he took in his less than polished appearance as the pain ebbed. He wasn’t stupid. The human body was a complicated network of systems working together for maximum efficiency. All it took was a bad enough injury to require medical intervention. And perhaps it was a rare oversight, but Hans quietly wished for a physician on his payroll.

He mulled over the idea, spending the next ten minutes dabbing his various cuts and scrapes with store bought antiseptics. Sneering at the speck of blood staining his dress shirt, Hans shrugged into a soft charcoal colored cashmere sweater.

Snow swirled outside, making Hans feel like he was in one of those snow globes parents purchased for their children as souvenirs. The thought of his current visage being in one of the windows of such a toy elicited a delirious smile. Laughter would hurt too much.

Hans fell into a fitful sleep, his dreams a fevered blur of burning money raining down upon him in a snow globe imprisonment.

“Man, it’s comin’ down something fierce,” Theo commented from the passenger seat as Karl crept along the snow dusted road, careful to keep their SUV between the lines.

The larger man grunted, more concerned with finding the well-hidden driveway to Hans’ hideout. He and Theo reconvened in a similar town nestled in Kentucky. Nobody paid them any mind and Karl was content to let Theo do the talking. Tony’s death still infuriated him, so he held onto that anger, let him motivate him, much preferring it to the alternative.

Things would get better once they reconvened with Hans. One, he held control of the purse strings, and two, there was no denying Hans’ intelligence. The sooner they linked up, the sooner they could divvy the money and leave. Tapping the brakes, Karl turned right to the near invisible snow dusted gravel road. Trees crowded the path, their headlights unable to penetrate the darkness beyond. Karl nodded appreciatively as they completed their descent.

Hans’ cabin wasn’t anything special. Two stories, old, a dull red roof blending in with the foliage, making it virtually impossible to see from the road. He wasn’t particularly fond of the fact it was one way in, one way out, but they’d prepared for that possibility too. Hans and Theo wouldn’t enjoy the trek, but if they had to flee on foot, they’d be better prepared than most.

“Is he here?” Theo asked, clicking his tongue at their rustic lodgings. “There’s no lights on.”

Karl jerked his head towards Hans’ vehicle parked nearby, but undid the safety on his pistol just in case. After a quick perimeter check, Karl’s apprehension lowered seeing no footprints other than his own. Satisfied, he pushed in, holding his pistol loosely on the off chance he was wrong. Theo scurried in after him, flipping the light switches in search of an unoccupied bed.

The first door, the one to the master bedroom, contained Hans, white faced and grimacing, the pistol aimed at the door shaking in his grip.

“Hans, we’re good,” Theo soothed, raising his hands in supplication. “It’s cool, man.”

“Theo,” Hans grunted, dropping the gun to the bed. “About fuckin’ time you got here.”

Instead of arguing, Theo watched Hans struggle to his feet, holding a hand to his side. The usually unflappable Hans Gruber looked awful.

“Hey man, you hurt?” Theo asked, offering a hand. With his usual sneer, Hans slapped away the help and limped down the steps, each step punctuated with a groan. Karl watched on unamused, his massive arms folded. Seeing him, Hans remembered it was Karl who dragged him to their escape vehicle. The henchman wasted no time prodding Hans’ battered side, catching Hans when he hunched over in pain.

“Broken rib,” he remarked. “At least one.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Hans wheezed, gingerly lowering himself on the couch. Theo and Karl look at each other in silent conference. The sight of their leader, a man always firmly in control, reduced to a pale, disheveled shell unsettled them.

“You look like shit,” Karl grunted.

“And you look like a bear who’s learned to stand upright,” Hans countered though his tone lacked his usual command. Truth be told the pain had gotten worse, developing into a slight pressure on his left side that made breathing slightly more difficult.

“You need a doctor,” Theo announced, always the most pragmatic of the three. Karl and Hans glared at the voice of reason as if he were mad.

“Do you think I haven’t considered that?” Hans spat, another bolt of pain ripping down his side. “The risk—”

“Is better than the alternative,” Theo interrupted. “We’ve come too far to lose now because of your stupidity.”

Karl kept silent, highly aware if Hans kicked the bucket, they were all fucked. He remembered passing a small hospital on the way in, about twenty miles away. Sighing, he grabbed the keys.

“No,” Hans barked. “No hospitals. It’s too dangerous.”

“This isn’t Los Angeles,” Karl growled, too tired to deal with an argument. “The FBI isn’t looking for us yet. I highly doubt they ever would here.”

“And if they do?”

“Then we’ll deal with it. But if we continue to sit here and listen to you whine, I’ll blow my brains out.”

“What brains?” Hans huffed, staggering to his feet once more. The pain fired up again. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

The small hospital at the edge of town was quiet that night, holding its breath for the drunken fist fights and heart attacks Christmas Day would bring. Two of the nurses busied themselves decorating the tree behind the nurse’s station with various medical supplies. Finn blew one of the gloves into a misshapen star to top off the ridiculous tree.

Dr. Harper Slaughter conferred with the triage nurse on their newest patient, a man in his early forties who’d suffered a fall while hiking.

“Why anybody decided to go hiking today’s beyond me,” Bonnie clucked, passing Harper the man’s intake information. “But he’s a handsome fella. Foreign too! Maybe he’s single.”

“Bring him on back and set him up in bed three,” Harper sighed, ignoring Bonnie’s less than discrete observation. Perpetually single, Harper focused on work. This wasn’t where she wanted to spend her life, but she was a hometown girl and felt an inane sense of duty to her townsfolk. Or trapped by it. Either was possible.

Snagging the rolling stool by the door, Harper pulled the divider to give the mother and son some privacy. The boy had sustained a laceration to his eyebrow whilst climbing a tree.

“Hey, Destiny,” Harper greeted the mother, a classmate of hers who’d always treated Harper kindly. Life hasn’t gone the way she expected either, a prom queen who’s settled young with a mill worker, but she was happy. The boy cradled in her lap, however, was not.

“Hi, Cameron. Remember me?”

“Uh-huh,” the boy sniffled. “You fixed Johnny’s broken arm.”

“Yep,” Harper smiled, brushing the boy’s hair from his face to get a better look at the cut. Already, she knew it’d require stitches. “We’ll get ya patched up so you can go home and play with all your Christmas toys. Were you a good boy for Santa?”

The boy warily flinched at the contact, already aware what was to come. Tears pooled in his eyes. “I was. Please don’t give me stitches!”

As mom and doctor console the boy, Harper heard the next patient, the idiot foreigner, grunt as he collapsed into the neighboring hospital bed, the paper covering crinkling under his movements.

“This won’t do,” a gruff voice sounded. “He needs a private room.”

Destiny smiled sympathetically as she and Harper listened to Bonnie politely told them tough shit. Harper spent a few more minutes trying to make Cameron more comfortable, passing a remote to Destiny and a syringe flush filled with saline to Cameron.

“You remember your nurse, right? The big guy with a mustache, Finn?”

“Yeah.”

Harper leaned in conspiratorially. “Can I trust you to squirt him with this when he comes back in to check on you?”

The boy smiled and snuggled in, excitedly whispering his plan to his mom. Satisfied, the boy was as calmed as he’d get, Harper kicked her rolling stool through the curtain.

“Hello, sir. I’m Dr. Slaughter.”

Hans Gruber lay stiffly on the examination table, his expression carefully schooled to hide the pain radiating from his side. He was a man who prided himself on control—of his body, his mind, his surroundings—but here, under the fluorescent lights of a small-town ER, he felt exposed in a way he hadn’t in years. It wasn’t ideal.

He listened to the tail end of a conversation between a child and the physician. She sounded kind, her tone containing genuine compassion, a rarity in his realm. To distract himself from the pain, Hans tried to picture what she’d look like.

When she pushed back the curtain, Hans was taken aback. First by her name, an unusual name for medicine. She was young, likely in her early thirties, mid thirty’s tops, trimly fit, with striking green eyes that seemed to take in everything at once.

“I hope your name doesn’t lend to your reputation,  ja?” 

“Oh, if I had an penny every time I heard that,” Harper chuckled, glancing at the intake form. “So what’s the story?”

Hans met her gaze, his expression unreadable. “A misstep on a hiking trail.”

Her lips twitched in faint skepticism but she didn’t press. “All right. Let’s see the damage.”

Sliding the stethoscope from her neck, the doctor listened to his back, careful to mind his bruise. Hans winced as she pressed along his ribs, a sharp intake of breath betraying the pain. A musical “hmm” was all she offered. Calmly, she donned a pair of examination gloves and palpated along, instructing him to stop her if the pain grew too much.

Her touch was firm but unexpectedly soft against his bruised and battered skin. Hans flinched despite himself, the sharp jolt of pain breaking through his mask of composure.

“Sensitive here?” she asked, her tone neutral but laced with just enough concern to feel disarming.

Hans forced a dry smirk, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Only when prodded.”

Her lips quirked in what might have been amusement, but she didn’t pause her work. As her hands moved methodically across his torso, pressing along the edges of his ribs and the tender swell of his abdomen, Hans found himself watching her with an intensity he didn’t fully understand.

It wasn’t just the precision of her movements or the care in her touch—it was the way she seemed utterly unshaken, as though she saw through the blood and bruises to the man beneath. Her fingers paused at a particularly tender spot on his side, drawing a sharp hiss of breath from him.

“Here,” she asked softly, meeting his gaze briefly before turning back to her examination.

Hans’s breath hitched, his brow furrowing slightly. He wasn’t used to being handled—literally or figuratively—with such care. Her touch wasn’t coddling, nor was it mechanical. It was purposeful, respectful. It unsettled him, this quiet display of kindness, so foreign in his world of betrayals and power plays.

“Rib fracture,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I’d wager something’s up with your spleen. Might require surgery.”

Hans narrowed his eyes at this development. “No surgery.”

Her green eyes met his again, steady and unyielding. There was no pity in her gaze, only a calm determination, a silent assurance that she wasn’t here to judge or question, only to help.

“How about you let me be the judge of that? Humor me and let us snag a couple scans to at least to see what we’re dealing with. By the time I’m done with your neighbor, we’ll have a better idea, ja?”

For the first time in months, Hans felt the icy walls around him crack, just slightly. Her accent wasn’t half bad, He didn’t trust her—not yet—but he didn’t distrust her either.

Hans gave her a thin smile. “Must we, Dr. Slaughter?”

“If it makes you feel better, you can call Harper,” the doctor smiled, giving rise to another feeling in Hans’ chest that wasn’t pain. “And I’ll order some pain meds for ya.”

For a moment, Hans stared at her, something in her steady gaze cutting through his usual defenses. He gave a small nod. “Very well…Harper. Do what you must.”

Hans closed his eyes, finally allowing himself to relax, the pain in his body now dulled by fasting acting medication. Karl sat quietly at his side as they endured the terrified screams of the boy on the other side of the curtain amid the soothing murmurs of Dr. Slaughter and harried mother.

Stripping the bloody gloves from her hands, Harper offered Hans a crooked grin on her way out. Hans felt himself smile again, the headache of this whole mess giving way to something else. And for the first time in years, Hans Gruber found himself quietly wishing for more than riches.