Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
LUNA
I still haven’t been questioned or arrested. I still haven’t been caught for the crime I committed that caused this hospital to lock down. I still haven’t paid the price for anything I have done in the past.
Long may it stay that way.
I might seem invincible, but I certainly don’t feel it.
I’m tired from a lack of sleep, both since I’ve been here and since Jude was born before that.
I’m also feeling weak because of my injuries and also because I haven’t eaten much since I was admitted as a patient.
Most of all, I am still shaken and stressed from having to kill two people today, although it was very nearly three.
If Sadie had died, I’d have scored a hat trick of kills.
Maybe it is for the best that she is still alive.
I’m not sure my conscience could take much more in one twenty-four-hour period.
All I want to do now is go home and be with my family.
But in order to get there, I need a doctor or nurse to accept that I am fit and well enough to leave.
That’s why I am going to go looking for one.
Before I do that, I’m getting changed out of my patient gown, the one with a bit of Gemma’s blood on it.
My own clothing is lying beside my bed, so I quickly get changed, using the privacy that the curtain continues to provide me to stay unseen.
It feels good to take off the gown, but I know I can’t just leave it lying here on the bed for a cleaner to find.
Not when they might notice the blood and hand it over to a police officer.
So I stuff the gown into my bag and plan on taking it home with me, where I can dispose of it myself in a safe and secretive way.
Then I use what is left in a bottle of water to wash any traces of blood off my hands, but there isn’t much.
The gown carries all the evidence, which is why it is now hidden away.
Once I’m back in my own clothes, I zip up my bag, put it over my shoulder and then pull back the curtain.
When I do, I see the kind of thing I expected to see.
A busy ward, full of staff members and patients.
I almost feel I could walk out of here without saying a word to anybody.
Maybe I won’t get noticed and stopped and, if so, I could be in a taxi in the next ten minutes, which would be nice.
But someone will notice I have left at some point when they come to check on me, and I don’t want anybody getting suspicious of why I suddenly vanished, so I better go and alert at least one of these nurses that I plan to leave.
‘Hi, excuse me,’ I say to a nurse I don’t recognise, so this must be the first shift she has worked since I came here.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks me before checking the time. ‘Visiting hours haven’t started yet. You shouldn’t be in here.’
‘I’m actually a patient,’ I say before gesturing towards the bed I just vacated.
‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry,’ the nurse apologises.
‘That’s okay. I was here because I fainted earlier and didn’t feel well after waking up. But I feel much better now, and I really want to get home because I have a baby son who needs me, so I was hoping I could get discharged?’
‘I see,’ the nurse replies. ‘Let me just go and check your notes and speak to the doctor, just to make sure there isn’t anything he needs.’
‘Do you have to? Like I say, I feel fine and I really need to get back to my son, so…’
‘It won’t take a moment,’ the nurse tells me. ‘Wait here.’
She leaves me then and it’s frustrating to have to linger for longer.
But I wait for her to return, hoping that when she does, she has good news for me.
There are enough sick patients here who can occupy their time, so I’m hoping they’ll have no problem with me giving them one less person to look after.
It takes a while for the nurse to return, and the more I wait, the more I think about the evidence I carry in my bag and how it would only take a tap on the shoulder from a police officer to bring my world crumbling down.
But the next person I see is the nurse and not a police officer, and as she reaches me, I show her a hopeful smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘The doctor is very busy at the moment. In fact, we all are. It’s been a crazy morning.’
I sense an opportunity to possibly get some information about what has been going on with the two bodies I left behind.
‘I was wondering what happened. I heard the alarm. Is everything okay?’
‘No, far from it,’ the nurse replies, as I hope she is the kind of woman who talks too much and too fast before she has a chance to stop herself.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I shouldn’t say,’ she replies, which is no good.
‘I won’t tell anyone else. I promise,’ I reply, hoping to tease the gossip out of her. Can she resist?
‘Some lunatic from the local prison was here visiting a patient but she tried to escape. She killed the prison officer she was with. But she fought back and she died too.’
I make sure to seem staggered by that news.
‘Oh my god,’ I say, as aghast as I can be.
‘No one else at the hospital was in any danger,’ the nurse is quick to tell me, as if she realises it was a mistake to talk so freely and is now worrying I’m going to go straight to the newspapers. ‘It all happened away from any patients or members of the public.’
‘That’s a relief,’ I reply.
‘But that’s why we are all so busy this morning, so it’s going to be a while until the doctor can see you,’ she tells me.
‘I really need to get home. My baby needs me,’ I repeat.
‘I appreciate that, but I can’t let you go without being checked over by the doctor,’ I’m told.
‘Can’t you? If you do me this favour, I’ll do you the favour of not telling anybody about what you just told me. After all, I’m sure your bosses won’t be pleased to know you were just spreading some confidential information around that could reflect poorly on this hospital and its safety.’
The nurse stares at me as if I have just betrayed her, which I suppose I have. She thought I was trustworthy, but now I am blackmailing her with the information she told me in confidence.
‘I really need to get home to my child,’ I say, trying to emphasise the human element more, so the blackmail is not the only thing she is considering. ‘Please, just let me go home.’
‘Fine,’ the nurse says, shaking her head but looking like she’s ready to see the back of me, and I don’t blame her after what I just said. ‘But if the doctor asks where you went, I’ll tell him that you were supposed to stay. I’m not getting in trouble for you.’
‘Deal,’ I reply before I go to walk past.
‘Wait,’ the nurse calls, and I freeze, wondering what possible mistake I might have made that could have given away that I’m a killer about to walk away from the scene of the crime totally free.
‘Where did you leave your gown? I can’t see it on your bed,’ the nurse says.
Damn it. She’s asking about the gown. The one I have in my bag. The one with Gemma’s blood on it.
‘Oh, I got changed in a bathroom earlier and left it in there. There was a clothes basket. Is that okay?’
The nurse looks at me for a moment before shrugging and turning back to my bed to presumably tidy up after me. I don’t need to hang around to watch her do that.
I walk off the ward and get out of the hospital as quickly as I can.
When I make it outside, I call a taxi, noting the strong police presence over one side of the car park and hoping none of the officers there take any interest in me before I can get out of here.
But they don’t, and when my taxi arrives, I leap onto the backseat and give the driver my home address, relieved when he drives us away and the hospital recedes quickly in the rear-view mirrors.
I’m glad to be away from that place.
I’m eager to go home and dispose of my bloodied hospital gown.
I’m desperate to go home and be with my family.
I’m also ready to deal with whatever obstacle presents itself next.
I expect that obstacle will have a name.
Sadie.