The Rising(90)
The evening left his room bathed in shadows, sparing him further glimpses of his life until forty-eight hours ago. The pair of jeans hanging off the edge of his bed, collection of sneakers pushing their way out of the closet. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to look. But something made him strip off the still-stiff cheap pair of jeans he’d bought at the Buy Two store and slide his old jeans on in their place, careful to replace the folded pages containing the results of Dr. Chu’s lab tests into the back pocket. Then he grabbed a pair of sneakers and replaced the cheap ones that were more comfortable than Dr. Payne’s but still not right. Alex felt instantly better, himself again. That’s what it was—he felt like himself.
Except that person didn’t exist anymore; in point of fact, had never existed. His entire life was a lie and changing his clothes couldn’t change that. Still, he fished a shirt from his drawer and pulled his arms through it, the scents of fabric softener and laundry detergent sending a lump up his throat because they made him picture his mother doing laundry, obsessive about adding just the right amount of both.
That lump, and a heaviness that had settled in his chest, accompanied him back to his bedroom door, which he eased open all the way.
“Hello again, Alex,” said the hazy shape of the ash man.
90
PRESCRIPTION
SAM CREPT DOWN THE hospital hall wearing doctor’s scrubs she’d purchased at a drugstore with the very last of her cash. The outfit at least kept her from standing out. She must’ve looked like an intern or orderly, the kind of hospital worker who melted into the scenery. Alex had told her where she could find Dr. Payne’s office and that’s where she was headed now, having no idea if she’d even be able to access it. If it were locked or guarded, her mission would end before it began.
She hated what she was about to do, had to do, in order to create the distraction she needed and give herself time to see if she could find Alex’s medical file on Dr. Payne’s computer. In school it was always the bad kids who pulled fire alarms as a prank or to get out of class. Normally, they got caught, something she didn’t dare let happen here and now.
She also hated being separated from Alex, the intensity of the past twenty-four hours creating a bond with him like none she’d ever felt before. Raiff had driven him to his house to retrieve the sketchbook, while she proceeded to the hospital alone by mass transit with throwaway cell phone in hand to await Dr. Donati’s call about where they could meet. The medical tests Alex had endured, especially the CT scan, seemed to have spun these events into motion. So she needed Alex’s file to bring with her to Donati to prove to him she wasn’t crazy, that all this had really happened, was happening. Amazing that barely a day before she’d been agonizing about whether or not to help the girls of the CatPack, who weren’t even her friends, cheat on an AP bio test.
Grow up, girl!
Well, she’d certainly done that, going all the way from potentially cheating to breaking into a murdered doctor’s hospital office. The fire alarm first, though. Be a lot easier if she could have hacked his computer from an off-site location. Sam knew her way around computers to the point where the keyboard seemed an extension of her hands, but hacking was a whole different discipline she’d never even tried, couldn’t even imagine herself trying.
Then again, not too long ago she couldn’t envision herself cheating on a test, much less on someone else’s behalf. Or triggering a false fire alarm.
Sam waited until she was alone in the hallway and in no one’s view before reaching out toward the pull station. She could see herself hesitating, even freezing, but in the end she pulled down on the alarm in a single swift motion and listened to the shrill squealing sound claim the hall, accompanied by the strobe-like flashing of the emergency lights. She had no idea what the procedure was for critical care, ICU, and operating room patients at this point, only that it would take only between six and seven minutes for the fire department to determine it to be a false pull instead of a real emergency.
That’s how long she had to get to Dr. Payne’s office, too much of the time wasted when the hall filled up almost immediately with hospital personnel spilling out of rooms and stations everywhere. Sam did her best to blend in, pretending to hurry along, shoving an empty gurney before her to avoid being tasked by a higher-up with something else to do.
She abandoned the gurney just short of the bend in the hall around which Alex told her she could find Dr. Payne’s office. Sam recognized it immediately from the crime scene tape strung both across the width of the door and in an X pattern covering the whole frame. A now abandoned chair rested outside the office, Sam picturing a cop or hospital security guard on duty there to keep the crime scene secure.
This hall contained only offices, all of them abandoned by the time she reached Dr. Payne’s. If the door was locked, she could try accessing the office through an adjoining one on the chance there might be a connecting door. Or she could flag down a janitor in the hope of convincing him to lend her his keys so she could check behind locked doors for any patient somehow left behind.
Such a cover story likely wouldn’t have held, but it didn’t have to, as things turned out. The door to Dr. Payne’s office was unlocked and Sam ducked low and slipped between the dueling strips of yellow crime scene tape to enter.
She eased the door closed behind her, aware immediately that the lamp on Dr. Payne’s desk was providing the room’s only light. She pictured his body still settled in the leather desk chair, just as Alex had described. It must’ve been removed from the scene long before, the proper authorities trying to determine how he was killed by something Alex described like a bullet that wasn’t a bullet.