A Vagrant Story (9 page)

The new clothing felt like fulfilment of that promise. He’d included sneakers, good ones, if not a little worn. There’d be no point in including sneakers if he wasn’t due to run anywhere. Henry snagged on that thought, realising the high toned desperation of his own imagination. He uttered a sigh as if cancelling a wishful grab for a distant straw. With an officer stationed at the door it would be impossible to sneak out. Henry saw little this doctor could do even should he try aid in an escape.

The doctor checked his watch, then made way to Henry. “Have you still got those pills?”

“Y-Yeah.” Henry clutched them tight and hadn’t let go since.

“Take one when I tell you.”

“But why?”

“It’s your only chance. If you stay here they’ll arrest you. The pills will … put you out for a bit, then I can take you out on the gurney.”

“But the guard will see!”

“Have you been looking. That guard’s spending more time chatting to the nurse than paying attention to you. I know the woman. She’ll be back from her lunch in five minutes. I’ll sneak you out on a gurney when he’s not looking.”

“Then why do I need to take the pill?”

“We can’t risk any mistakes. If you’re awake you might move.”

“I won’t move.”

“And if we bump into something? What if someone wants to see under the sheet, could you stay still then? You think it‘s just one guard out there? They‘ve got more scattered around the hospital, if even one of them tries check us we‘re done for.”

“All those police … just for me?”

“If you were a normal witness they wouldn’t need this many men. You’re not just a suspect - they want it to be you.”

Henry tightened up on that. Up till now he’d been working on a hunch built on nothing more than an active imagination. These were the first words to verify his fears. He felt it immediately, the shiver of undiluted panic.

“B-but why do you want to help me?”  

“I know you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re a good kid and they’re on a desperate hunt for a suspect. I can’t let them pin those crimes on you.”

“But … you’re a doctor. You’re supposed to-”

“Save lives. Call me by any title you want, saving lives is my only prerogative. And if I let them have you it’s like I’m throwing you to the wolves. I’m going to save your life. If I don’t then I might as well quit my job right now.” He smiled a clumsy half smile.

Henry returned the grin. “T-thank you.” 

The doctor looked away when he heard the nurse speaking from the hallway outside. She and the officer spoke loud and openly to one another. This guard likely wouldn’t be bothering them for a while.

“Okay, it’s time,” the doctor whispered. “The nurse should keep him busy.”

The doctor leaned down close to Henry’s ear. “Okay, Henry, listen to me. After you take the pills you’ll fall asleep so I need you to remember something, you got me?”

Henry nodded, shivering.

“Good. Okay, I’m going to wheel you out in a gurney but I can’t take you through any direct routes without attracting attention. That means main exits are off limits. The safest way out is down the basement elevator. There’s a fire exit in the boiler room you can use to escape into the storage yard. From there, I want you to hop over a high wall which will be on your left. You’ll land in a laneway, follow it to the main street.”

“Why are you telling me? you’ll be there when I wake up.”

“The tablets I gave you will knock you out for a short while. It should take nearly an hour to wear off. I’ll hide you in the boiler room then return to my duties so as not to raise suspicion. I’ll pretend your still here then claim ignorance when they find out. Right now the police still think you’re asleep so they won’t check for a while anyway.”

“What if someone finds me while I’m still asleep down in the boiler room?”

“The janitor hardly uses that room anymore, just in case I have the master key to the building, I’ll lock it for you and leave the fire exit open.” The doctor glanced to the doorway. “Okay, the nurse is back from her lunch. It’s now or never, are you ready?”

Henry took one pill and pinched it between two fingers. Against every bit of doubt he found his hands moving gradually toward his mouth. He swallowed in one. His vision hazed and with it Henry began to anticipate the darkness of sleep. Instead, he found his head falling back. He didn’t go asleep, he just couldn’t move. What he saw was like looking through someone else’s eyes, all the vision without thinking to rationalise.

The doctor had told him he would sleep the whole way through. There was no sleep in this. This feeling, it clutched him like a waking nightmare. He felt afraid, though he couldn’t really feel so much as imagine the familiarity of fear. It was paralysis, a gripping paralysis. Finally, that most anticipated darkness appeared, but came in the form of a blanket folded over his face.

As sounds around echoed into senselessness, Henry felt pressure on his chest like someone leaning down. An obscure voice whispered words he could barely hear or stand to remember.

“Gullible idiot.”

The darkness remained, his senses drifted in and out. What he felt next might have been the bumps of movement, or the thud of his brain beating against his skull. It continued for a while, so too the murmurs of people they passed. Each new sound brought with it a promise of freedom, so long as new ones came he knew they were still moving and hadn’t been caught. Each one of those new sounds went lost on him no sooner than he heard them. His mind swam round and round until the next reset. In each passing moment he awoke anew with the mental comprehension of a new born baby, and he couldn’t even cry to vent his confusion.

Those sounds dispersed, replaced by droning gurney wheels rolling on a concrete floor. The gurney moved faster in this place, as though safer to do so, or as though the doctor lacked a good excuse if caught down here.

They stopped. A noise like rattling steel touched Henry’s ears. It sounded like steal rubbing off steel, an almost intolerable sound similar to metal floor grating. The rattling stopped along with the gurney‘s wheels. Suddenly a noise of groaning steel droned in Henry’s ears. It was like a heavy steel door opening right next to his head. Slowly, he felt the gurney roll forward until arriving at a total stop. Footfalls walked away. The heavy door slammed shut.

There came a lonely silence, but not a total silence. Loud creaks, like those of churning pipes sounded above. They popped as though they’d crack open any second.

Now more than ever Henry longed to tear the blanket off his face. The heat in the room was fierce and this cover did little to placate the issue. Though thinking on instinct alone, these emotions were good signs. At least now he could form the mental linguistics required to want the blanket removed. At least he could feel fear again, and feel the burning heat enough to hate it. These were the first of his restored senses. By time he became aware of himself he’d fallen off the gurney. Crawling on the ground like a mole in day time, he slipped on his glasses in the hope his double vision would cease.

The room continued to wobble in and out of double and single vision until hot steam shot straight into his face. It hit hard enough to straighten his sight to a stable single vision. Rubbing his eyes to be sure he found himself alone in a small room lined from ceiling to the walls in pipes.

“The boiler room?” he spoke groggily, only then realising his location. It also dawned on him that the trip down here, together with returning to normal, might have taken a lot longer than it seemed to him. The doctor did say the effects would last a whole hour.

He walked forward on jelly legs, winding around pipes that ran through the middle of the room. He slammed through the fire exit as though fleeing a collapsing mineshaft. He’d made it to the outside, to a laneway lined with snow. He found himself awash with sudden biting cold which almost sent him shivering to the ground. To his left, he saw the wall which should take him back to the main street

Sparing no more thought, he dragged some storage crates up against it for climbing leverage. Everything the doctor promised turned out true. He was safe, he was free. He could keep running and never be found. He could be free.

***

Rum, Alex, and Sierra had made near two runs around the hospital to no avail. Spirits low and bodies tired, they chose to rest in an elevator landing between stairwells.

Evening drew closer. Snow outside the window fell like ash from an otherwise calm, if not clouded sky. There were twice as many people in the hospital now, and just a slight fading trace of hope.

Sat on top of a stairwell, Rum began gloating as if distracted in his own private victory. “Hopeless … I told you guys it’d be hopeless. If only you listened to me first. I could be home by now.”

Sierra paced around the room. “This can’t be all there is. They took him to this hospital I know it. This guy couldn’t have just disappeared. He could be in the next room for all we know!”

“We already checked the next room. He’s gone.” Rum said.

“Hate to say, but Rum may actually be right,” Alex said. “This was the nearest hospital so they would have brought him here by default. Once they get his insurance in order, then off he goes to a better hospital.”

“We asked from the staff and the patients, Blondie,” Rum argued. “We’ve done everything we can do. It’s probably for the best anyway, saves us a lot more trouble.”

Sierra thumped Rum over the head. “Shut the hell up, you could have gone home any time you wanted!”

Rum pronged to his feet, grabbing her by the collar. “You’re right, I could have. Guess I spend too much time babysitting you.”

Sierra clenched her fist, holding it up with the intention to strike.

“Cut it out,“ Alex said. “We’ve stopped for a few minutes and you two are already at each other‘s throats. Look, we’re here anyway we might as well have another go around. Maybe we should try look at it from another angle. Maybe the guy in the fire wasn’t our guy. He might have just worked there. But Jack Matters might have come in as a guest, so why not check the guest list?”

Sierra and Rum backed away from each other with plentiful hesitation.

“You think this place keeps a guest list?” Sierra said, eying the deteriorating walls as if the décor spoke for itself.

“I’m out of ideas then.”

Rum began chuckling to himself, gradually growing louder until bursting into laughter. The joke appeared to have started as a private one between himself and himself but shortly pitched into something of an all out belly laugh. It sounded like a victorious, spiteful laugh. 

Even Alex had to scowl for his poor form. “That doesn’t mean we’re giving up yet.”

Old Rum washed a phoney tear of joy away, holding up a piece of paper for them to see – the suicide note.

Sierra snapped it back. “How the hell did you get that? You sneaky little git, you picked my pocket!” He didn’t stop laughing. “You think this is funny?”

“Not that you little she-cow,” Rum said. “You messed up.”

“The hell are you talking about?” She brushed over the note again.

“Open your eyes, Blondie. The note says he went to see that Matters guy at his bookies. Did that place look like bookie to you?”

“Well I … didn’t really see what it was like. It…”

“Was a general goods store. You don’t keep books in a store like that.”

“I doubt it‘s all that legal,” Sierra said.

“It’d make terrible cover. Illegal gambling needs a place off the beaten track, a place people go in and out all day so not to draw attention. Come on Alex, your brain might be shot but you can figure these things out.”

Alex pondered a moment. “The note did suggest the building would be something a little more shady. It also seems to imply this Jack Matters owns more than one building. It seems plausible we could have hit the wrong one.”

“But then … what about the fire? What about the man you and Henry rescued?” Sierra said.

“What about him?” Alex replied. “We rescued him. Nobody else would have so we can be glad we went a little off course. Time to resume I think.”

“But!”

“You want a reward or something, Blondie? You heard Alex, we don’t need the guy, let’s go.”

“You know the old drunk’s just being a selfish git again!”

“Well he can occasionally be helpful in his own selfish way. Whatever the case, it seems we‘ll have to look for our Mr Matters at one of his more frequented locations.”

“And where’s that?” Sierra asked.

“We’ll have to go look.”

“Are you really sure about this?”

“Surer than I’ll be scrambling around this place. We were getting nowhere anyway.”

“I’d still like to see how he’s getting on.”

“For a nice fat thank you, a big warm hug to make everything okay? There‘s nothing here, time to go. That guy‘s none of our business now. We’ve done anything we‘re going to.”

“Let’s find Henry first,” Alex said.

Rum groaned. “Oh come on, leave that dud here, he’ll only slow us down. I advise you listen to what I’m saying. I‘m the only one of us who seems to know what he‘s doing.”

Alex placed a finger to chin in contemplation. “Let’s see, Henry was on the third floor … or was it the second? Maybe we should just check at reception.”