Time Travelers Never Die (18 page)

He closed his eyes, and after a while the threats stopped. They began talking
about
him, rather than
to
him. And gradually the conversation shifted in other directions, notably the quality and performance of the ladies at a local service organization.

He could hear occasional sounds from the booking area. Laughter. People talking. Doors banging. More laughter. They were in a good mood out there.

He tried counting but got bored with that when he hit about two hundred. Time travel had its downside. Not going to do this again, he thought. If I get back home, I’m going to stay there.

Nineteen sixty-five. The Vietnam War would be heating up. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. John Wayne was still making movies. Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing were four years away. Computers were large pieces of hardware and came with punch cards.

His ribs ached. Hurt every time he inhaled. Something probably broken.

After a while, the jailer brought meals. Coffee, chicken, potatoes, and a vegetable, but God knew what the vegetable was, and the rest of it tasted like mush. He ate a little.

When the guard came back and approached the cell, Dave bent his head, looked directly at the officer, and swallowed hard. “I need a doctor,” he said.

The guard looked annoyed. “Sorry to hear it.”

Dave clamped his teeth, pressed one hand to his chest, started to roll over, and screamed as if in sudden pain. “Bad heart.”

“Yeah? You sure?” The guard retrieved the dish and cup.

“Please.” Dave didn’t have to try hard to look as if he was seriously hurting. “I’m having a heart attack.” He was gasping for breath.

The jailer delivered a string of epithets. “I’ll be back in a minute, Dryden,” he said. He went out and returned with the sheriff.

The sheriff looked annoyed. Better things to do. “What’s the matter, Dryden?” he asked. “Something bothering you?”

“Heart,” Dave said, clamping down on the word as if saying it was sheer agony. “Stroke. Last year.”

The sheriff’s features softened. “Okay. Hang on a minute. We’ll get you some help.”

At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomat tox. So it was last week in Selma. . . .

 

 

 

 

SHEL
came out of the jail onto the street and approached the first policeman he saw. “Pardon me, Officer,” he said, “but my uncle Bob was picked up drunk last night. They tell me he got sick and they took him to the hospital. Which hospital would that have been?”

Armed with the information, he flagged down a taxi, rode across the Pettis Bridge, asked the driver to wait, and retrieved his converter from the bushes along the Alabama. The cab then took him to the Selma post office.

He used the converter to return to Saturday morning, and walked inside the building. “My name’s Shelborne,” he told the clerk. “You have a package for me.”

With both units now in his possession, he returned to Sunday afternoon and caught another taxi to the hospital. He still had at least a half hour before Dave was likely to arrive.

Time travelers wait for nobody.
He thought about moving forward, say two minutes at a time, rather than hang around. But he wasn’t sure how many jumps the power pack would support before the red warning lamp came on. So he simply went inside to wait. The reception area was crowded. Not, apparently, by victims of the attack on the marchers, though. Everybody was white, and no one seemed to be bleeding. Shel went back out and began strolling around the hospital sidewalks.

An ambulance showed up, but they were carrying a woman. And, a few minutes later, another one, with what appeared to be an injured child.

Then, finally, Dave.

Two ambulance attendants hauled him out of the rear of the vehicle on a stretcher and transferred him to a gurney. A cop climbed out afterward, and they all went inside.

Shel followed.

They wheeled Dave into the reception area and through a pair of swinging doors into a side room. The cop took station beside the swinging doors. Shel sat down where he had some vision into the side room and picked up a battered copy of
Sports Illustrated
. After about twenty minutes, one of the doors opened, and a doctor spoke to the cop. The cop nodded and followed him back into the room. The door swung shut.

Still holding the magazine, Shel got up, strolled over, and pushed the door ajar. They were taking Dave out another exit. He was connected to a monitoring device and he looked unconscious. A nurse noticed him and frowned. He smiled back, trying to appear casual, and retreated. When she turned away, he hurried through the swinging doors, crossed the room, and went out the other side.

Dave was still on his gurney. Two attendants were moving him down a passageway, while the cop trailed.

They turned off into a connecting corridor, walked past the cafeteria, and stopped in front of a bank of elevators. The attendant pressed the UP button.

The police officer looked his way while they waited. Shel slowed his pace but kept walking. He got there just as the elevator did. When the doors opened, the cop made it clear he wanted no company. Shel kept his eyes averted and walked past. Dave lay supine on the gurney. His breathing seemed shallow.

He heard them get into the elevator. Heard the doors close. He hurried back and pushed the UP button.

Dave’s elevator stopped at the fourth floor. And again at the fifth.

Three women were walking toward him. His elevator arrived, and the women picked up their pace. He got in. One of them called for him to wait for them. He ignored the request and pushed the fourth-floor button, then closed the doors. They shut just before the women arrived.

The elevator went to the second floor. And stopped. The doors opened. A doctor, bald, annoyed, shaking his head, stood just outside talking with an efficient-looking well-dressed brunette. “No, Suze,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t get us into stuff like that.”

“I’m sorry, Jim, but he asked for you specifically.” Her hand reached in to prevent the door from closing.

“You know what pinochle’s like over there.”

“Jim, I didn’t have much choice. I didn’t want to insult them.”

It went on like that for a full minute before Jim sighed and agreed to go, told Suze she owed him, and came into the elevator. She released her hold, and he pushed the button for the third floor.

The doctor got off there, the doors closed, the elevator went up another level and stopped. Shel stuck his head out and looked both ways. No sign of Dave and his attendants. Two nurses sat at desks in a glass enclosure. He got out and walked toward them.

He needed a few moments to get their attention. “Nurse,” he said, when one finally turned his way, “did somebody just get off here with a man on a gurney?”

The nearer one looked up from a clipboard. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why? Is something wrong?”

Yes. There were several more floors and they could be anywhere. “They dropped a pen,” he said.

She smiled tolerantly. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Too time-consuming. He went back to the elevator. It was passing the second floor on the way down. He pushed the button again. Then went back to the nurse. “Miss, is there a stairway?”

She pointed. “At the end of the corridor. Go left. You can’t miss it.” It was too far. He returned to the elevator, and rode it up to the fifth floor. But the corridor was empty. And this time there was no one to ask.

Damn.

He stood frustrated, wondering what to do.

Then he recalled the converter. He set it to take him back five minutes, and was standing well off to one side when the elevator arrived, and Dave and his escort got off.

They walked about halfway down one of the corridors and turned left. By the time Shel reached the intersection, they were at the far end of the passageway, entering a room. The eighth one on the right. The policeman hauled a chair outside the door, set it against the wall, and sat down. Minutes later, the gurney and the attendants reappeared and started back in Shel’s direction. Almost immediately, a doctor arrived, nodded to the cop, and went past him into the room.

Shel pulled back out of sight. Next task was to get past the guard. He set the converter for ten minutes earlier and pushed the black button.

 

 

TWO
people who’d apparently gotten lost were in the corridor. They looked startled when he appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Shel walked past them while they stared, said hello, asked how they were doing, and kept going. He counted to the eighth room on his right and let himself in. A male patient lay in one of the two beds. An older man, with white hair. Every vein in his arms and neck was visible. He looked languidly at Shel.

“Oops,” said Shel. “Wrong room. Sorry.”

The man saw him but didn’t react.

It was a standard hospital room, with several wooden chairs, a tray table, and a window overlooking a parking lot. It also had, of course, a washroom. The washroom was just inside the entrance, with the door facing away from the patients. Shel slipped into it, hoping the patient hadn’t noticed.

He closed the door as quietly as he could and waited.

A few minutes later, Dave arrived. He heard the gurney, and a woman’s voice. “You’ll be fine, Mr. Dryden. Just need to rest a bit. Dr. Hollis will be in to see you shortly.”

There was no response.

“Okay, Mack,” she said. “On three.”

The voice did the count, and he heard somebody grunt as they lifted Dave into bed. Then a male voice: “I’ll be right back.” Footsteps came toward the washroom. Shel backed up so he’d be behind the door if it opened, and set the converter forward thirty minutes. The knob turned, and he pressed the button. The door swung in as the washroom faded from view.

 

 

THE
hospital room outside was quiet. Shel opened the door.

Both patients were breathing quietly. But the guy with the veins was lying staring at the ceiling, and he spotted Shel as soon as he came out of the washroom. “You again.”

Shel tried to shush him. “It’s okay,” he said.

“What are you doing in here?” The guy was trying to sit up straight, but he looked close to a stroke.

Dave’s eyes opened, then opened wider. “Shel. How’d you get in?” “You’re not supposed to be here,” said the patient. Then he yelled for the guard.

The door pushed open and the cop strode into the room. “Where the hell’d
you
come from, mister?”

Shel lobbed the second converter to Dave, who was trying to disconnect himself from the monitoring device. “Just hit the button,” he said. “You’re ready to go.”

He turned back toward the officer and smiled disarmingly. “Who are you?” the guard demanded. “How’d you get in here?”

The aura began to build around Dave. The cop’s eyes swung past Shel and fastened on what was happening in the bed. The guy with the veins stared. “Mother of God.”

Shel hit the button, wondering what the police report would look like.

 

 

WHEN
they got to the town house, Dave asked whether Shel had seen any sign of his father.

“I was a little busy,” he said. “But no, I didn’t see him anywhere.” He got some ice for Dave to put on his eye. “Did you want to go back and try again?”

Dave needed assistance getting to the sofa. “I can see you’re a bit miffed with me,” he said.

“You dumb son of a bitch.” Now that they were safe, the anger erupted. “You could have gotten us both killed.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry.”

“What else do you want me to say?”

“I mean, it didn’t even make any sense. You knew how that was going to end back there.”

“I knew.”

“And you did it anyhow.”

“I guess.”

“Son of a bitch. You remember the agreement we had? We
watch
. We do not get involved.”

David tried to stretch out. And winced.

“What’s wrong with your side?”

“Cracked rib.”

“Great.”

“They wrapped it in the hospital.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

He closed his eyes. Opened them again. “Look, Shel. I couldn’t just walk away from those people.”

“I noticed.”

David tried again to adjust his position. The sofa was too small for him. “Maybe you
do
need a hospital.”

“I’ve already done that. They told me not to move around any more than I have to. Said I’d be okay in a couple of weeks.”

“All right. I guess we were lucky. You should probably get it checked anyhow.”

“I don’t think you need to worry.”

“What were they monitoring?”

“My heart, I guess. I had a coronary.”

“That must have shaken them up. At the police station.”

“I don’t think they believed me.”

“How’d you fool the doctors?”

“Just told them I could feel a weight in my chest. Told them I’d had problems before. I don’t think it occurred to them somebody would lie about something like that.” He sighed.

“What’s wrong?”

“School Monday.” Two days away.

“Uh-oh.”

“I can’t very well go like this.”

“Not exactly. You’ll have to take some time off.”

He grumbled something Shel couldn’t make out. “A day or two wouldn’t be a problem. But two
weeks
? What’s my story? That I got hurt on Bloody Sunday?”

“You might tell them you fell down the stairs. Or maybe you were in a car accident.” Shel took a deep breath. “None of this would have—”