As silently as I could manage, I followed behind them and peered into the open door. It was opened just enough for me to have a little vertical window. There, sitting straight up and smiling, was the girl. She was awake. The nurses busied themselves around her, asking her questions and the like. Her big, brown eyes drank them in as she looked around, a sense of wonder in her face as if the world was a new and terribly grand place to be.
Then, she met my eyes. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, not knowing what to do. Without hesitation, she smiled at me and waved as if we had been friends a long time. I smiled too and waved back, even as Nancy excused me and shut the door in between us. It didn’t matter all that much. I had learned enough for one night.
The beautiful girl loved Chopin.
The next day, everyone whispered. Yesterday, the rumors had been practically shouted around the hospital. People galloped like herds of African beasts and huddled around her room. Now that she was awake, the din became a whisper. The persistent yammering continued, but she could hear it now. For some reason, that fact made everyone tiptoe. Strange rumors began to abound, but the one consistent one was the girl had no memory whatsoever.
For the first time, I had a legitimate excuse to enter the girl’s room. Her waste basket needed emptying and the floor needed a good mop. I entered the room like a gray ghost, trying to blend into the background. As soon as the door shut behind me, I looked up to see the girl staring directly into my eyes with a large grin, just as she had the night before. In any other situation, I might have looked away. It wasn’t often that someone looked directly at me in that manner, and when it did happen, I usually became instantly uncomfortable. The little twinge in the pit of my stomach would flare into my chest, and the eye contact would be too much for me to bear.
That didn’t happen this time though. No twinges and no fluttering in my chest. Even her room smelled different. Most had the scent of antiseptic and sometimes body smells like urine or worse. Many people went nose blind to these sorts of things about a hospital, but I never seemed to. The beautiful girl’s room smelled like incense or burnt flowers, as if someone mixed sandalwood and jasmine together in a bowl and slowly burned the best parts of it into the air.
“Hello,” she said to me. “What’s your name?”
I looked into her eyes, all big and round like a deer.
“I’m Toby.”
“I don’t know my name. Everyone keeps asking, but I don’t know what to tell them. Do you know what my name is?”
I shook my head, and she looked disappointed for a second.
It was eerie every time I looked at her after looking somewhere else. The lack of tattoos was always startling at first, but as soon as my eyes adjusted, all I saw was how lovely and fragile she was.
In a whirl of motion, Dr. Patel burst into the door with tests results and other papers in her hands. I quickly got back to my duties, breaking eye contact with the girl. Dr. Patel didn’t seem to see me at all. Once again I was the gray ghost.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Patel.”
“Hello, Dr. Patel.”
“It says here that you don’t remember who you are.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
I looked over at the pretty doctor. She was still in that initial state of fright after seeing the girl. The jarring notion of what she was that didn’t seem right. It was like looking at someone who had been badly burned or scarred. The different nature of their appearance shocked your system, but eventually your brain told you they were alive, human, and deserving of your respect. Dr. Patel’s eyes seemed to stay in that state of fear while she studied the girl. Her voice was stern and clinical in its tone, but under her eyes, the good doctor was screaming.
“Well, all of your tests came back clean. You are perfectly healthy.”
“That’s good.”
Dr. Patel was staring down at her papers and seemed suddenly focused on what was written there. I knew better; it was a trick the other doctors had when they had bad news and didn’t want to face the patient. While I didn’t think Dr. Patel had bad news just then, I did believe she was using this trick to not look at the girl any longer than necessary.
“Yes, it is. I will assign a psych evaluator to come in and have a talk with you.”
“Thank you.”
The doctor nodded and left the room without another word, still staring intently at the papers before her, as though to reveal some mystery.
A slimy thing moved in my stomach and threatened to expel my breakfast. If Dr. Patel, a woman who had seen and treated all manner of horrific wounds and diseases, flinched in fear at the girl’s appearance, what would a regular person do? What would an evil person do?
I hurriedly finished up what I was doing, and when I packed up my mop cart and turned around, the girl was staring at me again, eyes wide and honest. Looking into those eyes, a person could get lost. I wasn’t used to that. I never wanted to get lost while sharing glances with others, but for whatever reason, this was all right.
“I know why,” she said out of nowhere.
“You know why what?”
“Why they don’t report you. About the music, I mean. I know why none of the patients report the music you play.”
My breath caught. How had she known? I only played music to her the one night. My mouth went dry, so I licked my lips. It didn’t seem to help.
“Why?”
“Because it makes them feel real.”
“Real?”
“Yes, the music makes you feel alive. In here, you feel like a thing. Something they are keeping alive, something they poke and test. The music reminds them they are people, they are real. They don’t want to risk losing it.”
I stood there just looking at her. My mouth might have been slack. It was hard to tell. With a nod, I left her room a different man. In five minutes, the girl had turned my entire world upside down. Then, I thought about Dr. Patel and her horrible expression, the horror she was hiding and what that might make her do. I looked across the brightly lit hall of level four to see the good doctor talking in fierce whispers with two of her other colleagues. Dark clouds threatened the corners of my eyes.
I must have been standing there a while because it took Nancy several tries to get my attention.
“Toby? Hey kid, you okay?”
When I had snapped out of it, I looked down at the small nurse. I had a good six inches on her. “Nancy, we need to get her out of here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think something bad is going to happen.”
“You off your meds, kid? We can’t just cut her loose.”
“I don’t take meds.”
Nancy looked ashamed for a second then continued, “Sorry, Toby. I didn’t mean that, but we can’t just bust her out of the hospital based on some hunch you’ve got.”
I pointed at the gathering of doctors in the corner. Nancy followed my gaze. She was a practical woman, but she was also smart. The sweet nurse picked up on the real things in life just like I did, and the danger in that gathering was open for anyone to see. Her back visibly tensed.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Have you seen the doctors look at the girl?”
“Yeah.”
“But not for long.”
“Toby, just because they are uncomfortable doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen.”
I looked down at her again. The area behind my eyes began to get hot.
“Look, before you do anything drastic, let me do some snooping. I’ll find out what’s going on. Just trust me a little, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now, get back to work before anyone sees you spying.”
The day passed slowly. I never was one to watch the clock. Things like that were ridiculous pastimes for those who didn’t have experiments and real things to accomplish. However, despite all my best efforts, I found myself watching the clock all day, waiting for it to tick down. I did my work, but it didn’t occupy me. My
mind was in room 462, with the beautiful girl. Waiting was a terrible thing. It felt like living in the middle of a fall. You were no longer where you started, but you had not yet hit the ground. Floating was a good word for it, but it didn’t hold enough meaning. Regardless, the day was an agony.
The clock had nearly struck seven when Nancy found me out back emptying the dirty water of my mop cart behind the dumpster. Her eyes were wild and frightened, and I immediately pushed the sweetly putrid scent of garbage out of my nose to pay her my full attention. The woman’s small frame twitched as if she was being zapped again and again.
“You’re right. We need to get her out.”
“You heard something.”
“No. Well...yes. I don’t want to say what I heard. Just listen to me. We need to get her out of this hospital tonight.”
“She can come stay with me,” I offered.
“No she can’t. This is bigger than us, Toby. She needs to be with people who can start her on a new life. People who can help her hide. I’m going to give her the information for a tattooist friend of mine.”
“You know a tattooist?”
The shock in my voice was sincere. I knew of such people, but had never met one. Perhaps I had and didn’t know it. At any rate, the idea of covering the beautiful girl in tattoos seemed wrong somehow.
“Yes, and that’s the last I want to say on the matter. She has no other good alternative. We need to get her out of here and get her marked.”
I wholeheartedly agreed with the first part even if I didn’t agree with the last. For hours I had been wracking my brain for an answer to her problem, and nothing better than this had come to me. Pondering Nancy’s tattooist friend would be something I did another time.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Go to lost and found and scrounge up some clothes that might fit her. Hoodies and pants are the best. The more of her skin we can hide the better. Come up to level four at nine. Logan is on duty with me, but he always goes for a break at nine to call his girlfriend. It’s like clockwork. When he does, I will shut off the cameras to the whole floor and say there was a glitch and I had to reboot the system. While the cameras are down, we will get her in a cab.”
“Have you...done this before?”
“Shut up and do what I say.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Before I could do anything else besides stare at her in amazement, Nancy shoved her hands into the pockets of her blue scrubs and ran back inside.
I did as instructed. On level one stood the lost and found locker. Children’s toys, old scrubs with tire marks on them, and an ancient camera that didn’t work. These were the contents of the locker. I managed to find a worn-out hoodie and a pair of scrub pants that weren’t too banged up. Both would probably bag on the girl, but they’d do. No underwear and no bras. Mostly, that stuff got thrown in the garbage. I wouldn’t know what size to get her anyway.
Me and my mop cart arrived on level four five minutes before nine. The place was a ghost town. Visiting hours ended at eight and each level only staffed a bare skeleton crew at night. Nancy made eye contact with me from the nurses’ station. Logan was already on his phone and heading to the elevator. He nodded as we passed each other.
As soon as the elevator door closed, Nancy threw the power switch for the level four room cameras. We raced into room 462 in perfect synchronicity.
The beautiful girl looked up in surprise as we did. “What’s going on?”
“We are getting you out of here,” said Nancy as she quickly shut off the machines around the girl’s bed.
Various wires and tubes had to be disconnected before the girl was free. A soft-sounding alarm went off, but Nancy promptly silenced it. I handed her the bundle of clothes and turned away to give her and Nancy some privacy while she helped the girl get dressed. When they were done, she almost looked normal. Her bald head was concealed under the hood of her jacket.
“Take this. You will give it to the driver of the car Toby will put you into. The name of the woman you need to see is Dakota. She is at this address. Dakota will help you.”
“Why?”
For a minute, we weren’t sure which why this was. Did she mean why would Dakota help her or why was she leaving? Both questions were equally important.
“Because if you stay here, something bad will happen to you,” said Nancy.
The girl’s face turned serious, perhaps for the first time since she had woken. She looked afraid, and I was sorry to see her that way.
“Don’t worry. We are here to help you,” explained Nancy. “Me and Toby. We are trying to get you to a safe place. Toby, do you have any cash on you?”
I thought for a second about the contents of my wallet.
“I have exactly forty-seven dollars.”
“Okay, I have twenty. Hand it over, Toby. That will get you to Deep Ellum and get you some food. Dakota will help with the rest. She has more connections than I do.”
We combined the money, and Nancy stuffed it into the girl’s hoodie pockets. It wasn’t until we left her room that we heard the all too familiar voice of Logan at the nurses’ station.
“Hey. Why the hell are all the cameras down?”
I was just about the step out into the open hallway when a tiny, white hand grabbed my large, brown one and yanked me back inside the safety of the room. Looking down, I saw the hand was the girl’s. It felt warm and soft in mine. Normally, I hated touching other people. Holding hands was rarely an activity I enjoyed. But this? This was nice.
Nancy hurried out of the room in a mock flurry.
“The damn cameras are off all over the floor. I don’t know what happened. Can you check the main power box in the storage closet?”
Logan agreed and walked purposefully away from us toward the storage closet on the other side of the floor. Nancy turned to the darkness in room 462, where we were hiding, and motioned for us to make a run for it. At that point, I was thoroughly convinced she had done this before.
With me still holding the girl’s tiny hand, we raced across the floor to the elevator. Trying to run silently was a struggle. Thankfully, Nancy planned a sneezing fit right as we began our mad dash. The two of us exhaled a mutually held breath when the door opened as if it had been waiting for us. Ducking inside the elevator, I noticed I had forgotten one key piece of clothing. The girl was barefoot.
“Here,” I said unlacing my sneakers. “You can have mine.”
I had my shoes off and tied onto her feet before the elevator had opened to the ground floor. When I stood back up, she was smiling at me again, but there was no time to revel in it. I took her hand and led her through the empty lobby and out into the receiving area where the taxis stood vigilant in the evening air. The first cab we saw had a disinterested driver standing beside it. Without a second glance, he got into his taxi and nodded when the girl handed him the address.
My heart was thudding feverishly. It was all like a movie. Any moment someone would come bursting out of the door to Baylor, screaming for us to get back inside. Perhaps they’d have a gun and threaten to shoot me. I imagined they’d call me a thief, and I’d kiss the girl goodbye right before the taxi sped off with her safely inside. I’d seen enough movies like that to make it feel like a possibility.
None of that happened. No one chased us, because this wasn’t a movie. Instead, I observed her in front of the opened door to the taxicab, wishing I had words for her that were real. Perfect words. Authentic words. I didn’t have them. The words in my head were test words, not the real ones. They were the words you were taught to say, and those were never enough.
The girl touched my face. It was a gesture that made me slow down and really look at her with a clear mind.
“Thank you so much, Toby.”
Then the beautiful girl threw her arms around me and hugged my neck. If holding hands was something I rarely liked, hugging was something I never allowed. It always made me feel trapped and scared, as if there was nowhere I could go f
rom there. But hugging the girl was different. It felt warm. I could smell the flowery scent that had permeated room 462, and when I hugged her back, I didn’t feel trapped at all. I felt whole and all enveloping. Words came to me. Terrified words, loving words, words that made no sense at all. Words like “forever” and “always.”
“Please be safe,” was all that I could say into the crook of her neck.
Never before had I meant so much in each one of those little words. Each letter held more meaning than it was ever meant to.
The driver honked, separating us from our reverie. Within seconds, the girl was in the taxi and driving away from Baylor hospital, away from me. I could still feel the warmth of her on my clothes. That odd scent of her soaked into my gray ghost scrubs. I watched the taxi drive her away while I stood in the parking lot in my worn socks. The uncomfortably hot sensation of the asphalt seeped up through my socks, reminding me where my shoes were.
There was nothing left for me to do, so I just kept repeating those words over and over again like a mantra or a spell. Every syllable had as much real stuff, as much meaning, as I could manage.
“Please be safe. Please be safe. Please be safe.”
The gray ghost was finally alive.
Chapter Seven: They
We entered the empty hospital room the way we usually entered rooms. One moment we were not there, and the next, the very air molecules in the space vibrated us into being. We no more walked into a room or opened a door as any enlightened being might. One simply had no need for such physical expenditure, not when you transcended physicality altogether.
She insisted on a disguise even though I had changed the air to suit our need for privacy. Humans might have walked by the empty the room, they might even wanted to go inside and see why the blinds were drawn, but they wouldn’t. The air told them not to. The air said to go away and forget this room existed for now.
Still, she knew I would humor her, and both of us appeared disguised in doctor scrubs with white lab coats. Her beautiful red locks were tied up in a mound on her head, and my scars peeking their gnarled heads above the collar of my coat. Both of us looked down at the empty hospital bed before us. It was the natural state of Gods to look down on things.
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