6
ANSON
The sun was coming up when we pulled into the parking lot of Roper Hospital.
Vincent found a space near the emergency entrance, about forty feet from the wheelchair ramp leading up on the left side.
Unlike the hospital’s main entrance, which was quiet, the emergency entrance was bustling with people.
Two ambulances were in the drive, along with half a dozen staff members in scrubs and white coats.
As we walked calmly past, I caught bits of the clipped conversations.
“Head trauma, not wearing a seatbelt! Ruptured spleen! Nonresponsive! BP is—” There must have been some kind of car accident. A woman, maybe twenty at most.
Walking with a limp and cradling the cast around my broken arm, with Vincent and Paul on either side of me, we fit right in.
Nobody gave us so much as a glance. We stepped past the chaos outside and through the automatic doors to the waiting area of the ER.
A large check-in desk flanked the wall opposite us.
It was designed to accommodate four staffers, but at this early hour, there was only one—a large black woman with her hair pulled back in a bob, wearing purple scrubs.
She looked as if she’d been working all night, taking silent inventory of the injured standing in line to talk to her with the indifference of someone nearing the end of their shift.
She held a phone between her cocked head and shoulder as she typed, while simultaneously speaking to the elderly man currently on deck.
He was pressing a blood-soaked towel to the side of his head.
Vincent gave me a soft nudge and nodded toward three cops huddled around a vending machine in the far corner.
Agitated. Arguing about something. I didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t mean much.
We didn’t know who was involved in all this and had to assume the dirty cops had shared our names with other dirty cops—maybe even our pictures.
Van Man and Sam Porter might have put out arrest warrants, for all we knew.
I was thinking about all this when I realized Paul was gone.
A sharp scream came from behind us, and all heads turned.
A girl on a gurney.
Fifteen. Sixteen.
Curly blond hair. Long. Partially braided, the rest wild. She wore a short jean skirt and a black tank top, both filthy. No shoes.
Strapped down.
Back arched as her entire body thrashed.
Two more cops.
Three paramedics—one holding an IV bag in an outstretched arm above her head, another attempting to inject her with something, the third trying to keep the gurney upright with the two cops as she thrashed and jerked, sucked in a breath, and screamed again.
“Holy shit, that’s Twill,” Vincent said in a voice barely above a whisper.
He started toward her and I grabbed his arm. “We can’t—”
“The hell we can’t.”
Even as he said it, I saw his eyes jump from the two cops near her to the other three back by the vending machine. He shook my arm away but otherwise remained still. No doubt he was thinking about the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans.
“Who is she?”
“Twill was at Finicky’s when I got there. She ran off a few days later; been planning it for weeks. Welderman said they found her in Woodland sucking dick for bus fare. Then they told us she was dead. Buried out in the field somewhere.”
I closed my eyes for a second and tried to visualize the photographs on the wall by the stairs. It took me a moment, but I found her. “Third row, fourth from the left up at the top.”
“Huh?”
“Her . . . never mind.” There was no reason to give Vincent yet another reason to think me odd. “Nobody ever mentioned her. I didn’t know anyone tried running away before us.”
“Oh, they tried, but nobody ever made it.”
That clearly wasn’t true. If they’d lied about this girl being dead, maybe they lied about others, too. Easier to keep everyone in line when they think there’s no way out. We’d gotten out. Sort of.
She let out another scream and jerked at her bindings with enough force to cause the gurney to jump, even with all the hands attempting to hold it down.
The three cops at the vending machine ran over to help.
Twill disappeared behind a wall of bodies.
That’s when I spotted Paul. He was standing near an open door to the right of the check-in desk with an empty wheelchair. He silently mouthed, “This way,” and motioned at the hallway behind him with a bob of his head.
If the woman behind the desk noticed Vincent and I step out of line, she said nothing. The cops were too busy to notice much of anything.
When we reached the door, Paul casually turned the wheelchair around and started down the hallway.
He ducked through another door on the left labeled “Radiology Prep.” Inside, he thumbed the deadbolt, locking the door, and led us to an open cabinet filled with scrubs, masks, gloves, and booties with elastic bands.
There were lockers, too. Each numbered with keys.
Reaching into the cabinet, he pulled out a set of green scrubs and tossed them to Vincent.
He handed me a white gown with blue stripes—the kind you tie behind your neck and leave open in the back. “Suit up, gentlemen.”
“Twill’s out there.”
Vincent’s words stopped Paul cold. “As in the Ghost of Twill?”
“As in Twill’s not really dead. They just brought her into the ER tied to a gurney. She’s completely out of it. I’m guessing she’s on something.”
Paul’s mouth fell open and his gaze dropped to the floor. “Twill doesn’t do drugs.”
“It’s been months. We don’t know where she’s been or what she’s been doing.”
Paul once told m he’d lived on the streets. I could see his mind churning, working out the possibilities. When he looked back up, there was a determination in his eyes. “We have to help her.”
“She’s surrounded by cops,” I quickly told them both. “And she’s not the reason we’re here.”
“She’s a bitch, but she’s still one of us,” Vincent fired back. “She’s exactly the reason we’re here. Same as the girls and the Kid. No way we’re leaving her behind.” He started changing out of his clothes and glanced back at Paul. “How’d you even know this was here?”
Paul was clearly thinking about the girl.
It took him a moment to snap back. “If you ask Ronald and Gert DeSilva, my foster parents from two years ago, they’d tell you I had a habit of running into things like doors and tables and sometimes Ronald’s belt.
I spent a lot of time in this hospital.” He held up his left hand, his pinkie jutting out at a slightly off angle.
“When I broke one of my prized digits, I needed X-rays. They make you change in this room. Clothes go in the lockers, then they take you down the hall to dose you with cancer rays.” He nodded at the cast on my arm.
“I figured we put the gimp in a wheelchair and nobody will give us a second look.”
Vincent finished with the scrubs and pulled a matching mask off the shelf. “I’m unlikely to ever heap praise on you, but the fact that I’m not actively abusing you means I approve.”
“Understood.”
I made no move to change clothes, and when Vincent noticed, he frowned at me. “Now what?”
I held up the gown. “What if we need to get out of here fast? How far are we going to get dressed in this stuff?”
Vincent considered this, then turned his glare back to Paul. “The gimp’s got a point.”
Paul wasn’t about to be deterred. He rummaged through several cabinets and found what looked like a laundry sack with a drawstring at the top. “We put our clothes in here and tie it to the chair. If we need to change back, we can.”
Reluctantly, I took Libby’s locket from my pocket and slipped it around my neck before changing into the gown.
My thoughts bounced from the scene in the ER to whatever we’d find on the fourth floor.
Father once told me situations like this were much like chess; it was always best to anticipate what would come next and what would happen after that.
Always try to stay four or five moves ahead of your opponent.
I had to factor in what Vincent might do. What Paul might do. The girl would be trouble. I couldn’t hear her screaming anymore, but I knew she was. I couldn’t help but wonder who else would be screaming by the end of the hour.