by Louisa Luna
“Vega,” said Cap, shaking her gently. “We can’t escape from this hospital while you’re bleeding out, and they’re looking for us. We have no clothes and no ID. We have to just start this process over, find Otero and talk to him.”
“Caplan, Otero must have fucking put us here,” Vega said, pulling away from his grasp. “He needed to stash us somewhere while the Janes got sent somewhere else.”
Cap’s face froze as he considered it. He set his phone on the stairs and grabbed the gauze and medical tape from her, which was not difficult, her hold loose and getting weaker.
“Let me tape you, please, quickly,” he said.
She lifted the right side of her gown and he tore a strip of gauze with his teeth, then worked fast and lined strips of the tape along the sides.
“What you say makes sense,” he said. “But we’re not going to get far. Not with this particular set of constraints.”
They heard a door open in the stairwell a few floors above them, and then voices. Vega curled her lips against her teeth and made some fierce eye contact with Cap. Move.
Cap threaded his arm through hers and then really examined the extent of her blood soaking the gown, dripping down her right side in a sheet. They started again down the stairs, faster now.
Vega couldn’t tell if the voices were closing in, if the people they belonged to were coming down the stairs. The air in the stairwell was hot and stagnant; Vega got nauseous if she inhaled too deeply so she kept her breaths shallow and only through her nose.
When they reached the fifth floor, Cap pointed to the door and pulled Vega gently to him, so he could whisper in her ear.
“We have to try one of them.”
She nodded. Cap pointed to himself. Him first. She nodded again. He pulled the handle and went through. Vega leaned against the door and listened to the murmur of the voices above her. They weren’t coming yet but they might soon. She wanted to wait for Cap’s all clear, but she would go through the door if she had to. It would not be the first time.
* * *
—
Cap came out onto a floor identical to the one he and Vega were being kept on except this one had people, equipment, noise. He kept his head down, tried his best not to be noticed, and walked straight down the hall like he belonged there.
He glanced to the rooms on his right, heard the sounds of televisions and music, water in sinks and toilets flushing. He peered to the side out of the corner of his eye, looking for the first closed room door, knowing that the chances of a patient being asleep there would be better. He found one and went in, pushed the door closed quietly behind him.
He quickly looked to the bed and saw a man asleep there. Cap exhaled in silent gratitude to someone or something and took in the basics: around sixty; copper gray hair surrounding a wide bald strip in the middle; tanned face with mouth slack, open just a bit; hooked up to half a dozen machines. From the outline of his body under the sheet, Cap thought he and the man would perhaps wear similar clothing sizes if Cap could in fact lose the gown, if he could find said clothes, assuming they were somewhere in the room. Which was a lot of luck to count on. If Cap believed in luck.
Cap padded around the bed toward a standing wardrobe in the corner. He opened it and saw no clothes, but resting on top of a drawer inside was an extra gown. Good enough. He grabbed it and held his breath, slowly walked around the bed, his own gown stuck to his back with sweat.
He got to the door and opened it a sliver, peered through to the hallway. He knew he just had to go through, get to Vega so she could switch out her gown, and then, and then—he didn’t know. Not a lot made sense so he had to follow the instinct, and the instinct was to run.
* * *
—
Vega slumped against the door but held on to the handle, keeping her arm stiff so she wouldn’t slide down to the floor. Above her a door had slammed, and the voices had stopped after some shuffling of footsteps, but Vega knew they’d be back, and if it wasn’t them it would be others.
She held her phone in front of her, saw she had a couple of bars, and saw some texts from McTiernan (“Pls call when you can” and “Anything new?”). Also messages from Sarita Guerra and Mia, both of which she scrolled past. Nothing from Cap yet. But at least she had service. She tapped her map app and let it load, the roads and streets populating around the blue dot that was her. Southland Gate Hospital. You are here.
She pressed McTiernan’s name and held the phone to her ear, heard a spotty ringtone. Then, his voice mail picked up.
“McT,” she said weakly, cupping her hand over the phone.
She hadn’t planned to use the nickname she’d heard Mia call McTiernan, but she found herself low on air so that was how it came out.
“It’s Vega,” she continued. “I’m in a hospital called Southland General. What we talked about last night, about this being your thing…” She paused, let the lids fall over her eyes for a second. “If it turns out that it is, I would need your, uh, your skills any time now.”
She heard the door a few floors up open and close again, the slam echoing off the walls. Vega’s eyes shot open, and she tapped the red disconnect button with her thumb. There were no more voices this time, just feet. She tried to identify exactly how many pairs but had trouble with it. More than two, fewer than five.
So she went through the door, almost ran right into Cap. He said nothing, shuffled her into a bathroom a few feet away, closed and locked the door.
Lights fluttered on. Vega backed up and sat on the edge of the toilet seat.
“I got a gown,” said Cap, shaking it out. “Let’s get this one off.”
He untied the string around her neck, and Vega held her arms out straight so he could pull the gown off. She watched him stuff the bloody gown in the garbage and then look her over, taking inventory of the situation. Then he yanked a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and wet them in the sink. He handed her a wad.
“I’ll get your hip and leg, okay?” he said.
He began to wipe the blood off as best he could. He’d had blood on him a lot in his life. He knew only a hot shower at maximum pressure with a lot of tough-guy soap, the kind that felt like gravel, would clean it off the skin completely. Otherwise there was the pink or light brown tint, which, in this case, would be fine. The goal was to escape, and the only way they had a chance was if they didn’t look like slasher movie extras.
Vega wiped her neck roughly, glanced down to see blood seeping fast through the bandage. Cap saw it too and pressed another layer of gauze on top of the existing strip, retaped the rectangle, and reinforced the whole thing with more tape in the shape of an X over the center.
Vega tapped the blue dot on her phone.
“Hospital’s Southland Gate, eastern outskirts of San Diego,” she narrated to Cap.
She tried to scroll through the hospital’s website, which slogged along, the service present but not great. She clicked the icon of the hospital’s internal map but the wheel spun and spun.
“There’s got to be at least two exits on the ground floor,” said Cap. “ER and visitor entrance.”
He wiped the last of the blood away from the edges of Vega’s bandage.
“If we can get there, maybe we can just run and get an Uber,” he said, thinking out loud. “Why not, right? We’ll probably get better service the closer we get to the street.”
“There are people in the stairwell,” said Vega. “They were coming down when I came out.”
“We gotta wait, then,” said Cap. “We can’t exactly take the elevator.”
Vega held her arms out again, and Cap put the new gown on her, tied the string in the back.
“Ready?” he said.
Vega nodded and stood. She threw the remaining gauze and tape in the sink and held only her phone. Cap opened the door about an inch wide and peered through. He saw a
woman in scrubs go into a room. He closed the door quickly.
“Busy?”
“A nurse,” he said. “Doing rounds.”
Then he held up a finger. One second. He opened the door once more. All clear.
“Let’s go. Quick.”
He slipped out the door into the hallway and Vega followed, pressing her elbow tightly at her side, over the wound, which throbbed. They went into the stairwell, which was empty and quiet, and started down again, not speaking. When they got to the second floor, Vega tapped open the Uber app and hit Request Car Now. She found the street address of the hospital on the map and dropped a pin two blocks away. Then they made it to the first floor and paused at the door.
“Here we go,” said Cap, sweat trickling down his forehead into his eyes.
Vega hunched over and rested her hands on her knees.
“Uber’s coming in seven minutes. Two blocks away…” She checked her phone screen. “East.”
She turned the phone around in her hands to gauge the direction.
“That way,” she said, holding her left hand out at a forty-five-degree angle away from her body.
Cap followed the line of her arm with his eyes and reviewed the wall she pointed to as if it were transparent.
“Now all we need is a door,” he said.
He turned away from her then and went to the door, opened it a couple of inches, then shut it right away.
“There are people everywhere, and security,” he said, then added, with a sad little laugh, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”
Vega moved her tongue around in her mouth; it felt like it weighed a few pounds.
“We just have to walk through it,” she said. “Shoot for both of us getting out but if just one of us does, then one of us does.”
Cap opened his mouth to speak but then didn’t. Instead he moved his head from side to side like he was deciding between two things.
“I agree with that except for one thing.”
Vega stared at him, in no mood for riddles.
“We don’t walk through it,” he said, allowing himself half a grin. “We run at it.”
* * *
—
Cap burst through the door into the lobby, which was divided into three separate sections with a receptionist at each sitting behind a semicircle of a desk. People milled around and waited on couches and cushioned chairs. There was a gift shop in front of the receptionist furthest from him. And there were security guards, at least six, standing at various posts.
Cap stumbled to the nearest one, a tall black guy, graying hair at the temples, who moved toward him as soon as he came into his view.
“There’s a fire alarm going off on sixteen,” Cap said, adding enough urgency to his voice to seem agitated but not enough to cause a scene.
Not many people seemed to notice him. Only a few turned their heads away from their phones and crinkled magazines and stale coffee for a moment and then went back to their business. It was, after all, a hospital, and he was wearing a hospital gown, not a cocktail dress.
“Sir, it’s all right,” said the security guard calmly. “There was a false alarm on the sixteenth floor.”
His voice was low and throaty, and also somewhat soothing. Cap thought he could probably do justice to a variety of Johnny Cash numbers. His nameplate read H. WILLIAMS, SECURITY OFFICER.
“Nothing to worry about,” the guard continued. “Let’s get you back to fifteen now. What’s your last name?”
“Are you sure?” said Cap. “I could still hear it on my way down the stairs.”
“They turned it off, trust me. There’s no one on sixteen through eighteen—those floors are all under construction right now. Still working out the kinks,” the guard said.
He held out his hand as if he were about to place it on Cap’s back but didn’t, guiding him toward the reception desk just by suggestion. Cap recognized it as something a cop would do.
“You retired PD?” he said congenially.
The guard looked surprised but then smiled.
“That obvious? How’d you guess?”
“You know how they say dogs of the same breed can recognize each other?” said Cap, thinking, It can’t be as easy as just distracting this guy with old shoptalk.
“Guess that makes us dogs,” the guard said, not appearing offended and not wishing to extend the conversation. He held out his hand toward the reception desk.
“Shit,” said Cap, scratching the back of his head, feigning concern. “Look, I gotta tell you, I’m a little embarrassed. I heard the alarm, and you know, I just had a fight or flight kind of reaction.”
Cap glanced over his shoulders. The other security guards were not looking, one chitchatting with a receptionist, the other watching a news program on the TV in the corner of the ceiling nearest him.
“Nothing wrong with that,” said the guard.
Cap heard the stairwell door opening and closing, peripherally saw Vega moving toward the revolving glass doors to the street.
“Look,” said Cap. “If it’s all the same to you, could I just show myself to the elevator? I know where I’m going, and I’d rather not, you know, make any more of a fool of myself.”
A gently pained expression swept across the guard’s face.
“I’d like to do that, sir, but now that we’re talking here, see, you’re on my watch. I’ve got to make sure you get back to your room all right.”
Cap lifted his gaze just an inch or so above the guard’s right shoulder. Vega had tied the gown in a knot above her knees and to the side—Cap knew she’d thought about it, knew that people just glancing at her out of the corners of their eyes, like he’d done, wouldn’t notice she was in a hospital gown or barefoot. They would know only if they looked right at her. And she’d kept her head down and walked straight with a degree of purpose. Sometimes it was a good thing most people wished to avoid confrontation. Vega was through the door, outside now, and walked with purpose and head down to the left, out of Cap’s line of vision.
Cap looked back to the guard and saw the next few minutes in front of him in his mind’s crystal ball. Would he have to try to knock the guard down in the elevator? Would he try a straight kick to the knee? He was not totally confident he could take the guard; even though the guy had twenty years or so on Cap, he looked to be in decent shape and was almost a whole head taller. Cap forced the images away. That wasn’t how he wanted this to go. There had to be another way.
“Wait, what time is it?” Cap said.
The guard looked at his watch and said, “About five fifteen.”
“This is perfect,” Cap said, doing his best to look like someone who found his keys. “My girlfriend, she’s visiting today, she’s supposed to be here at five thirty. Could we just wait a few minutes for her, and then maybe she could walk me upstairs?”
Cap let it hang. The guard didn’t give anything away in his face, which way he was leaning, so Cap just jumped.
“Please, it’s only a few minutes.”
The guard gave him a sad-eyed smile and said, “Five minutes, sir, how’s that. You want, you can sit down and wait,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Cap, genuinely grateful.
Cap turned around and saw Vega running by, this time in the opposite direction, on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, toward the adjacent parking structure, a smear of blood seeping through her gown. He walked to the glass and put his hands on it.
“What the hell was that,” said the guard behind him.
The other guards stepped forward when they saw Vega run by, one of them pulling his phone from his belt.
“Sir,” said the guard behind him, still kind but stern this time.
And then two uniformed cops emerged from the stairwell exit, one black and one white, both out of breath.
C
ap didn’t wait for their eyes to land on him. He shoved the push bar on the disabled-access door and just ran.
* * *
—
Vega had minimal feeling in her feet, but she ran toward the parking structure at full speed anyway and hoped Cap was behind her. She tore up the ramp and squatted to get under the entrance barrier, barely slowing down.
She kept running, veered right looking for the ramp to the lower levels, and when she saw it surged even more. Her side no longer hurt, but her head was light, and all her extremities tingled. She ignored everything and just continued to pound her feet down the ramp, the echo reverberating off the concrete walls.
She slipped behind a van and leaned against the fender. She peered around the corner, pressing her face to the van’s rear door. She heard more fast steps and then some yelling.
Then she saw Caplan come down the ramp, picking up speed, but the black and white cops from the sixteenth floor were behind him; they were picking up speed too and yelling at him to stop. Neither had his gun drawn, which Vega thought was a good sign.
With all variables as they were, she did not have many options, but she ran through them anyway. All of them involved leaving Cap behind. She bent over her knees and was aware of the sweat and blood coming off her body, watching both drip on and around her dirty feet, feeling useless.
* * *
—
Cap had to stop. Vega was out of sight, and the cops were on him, fifty feet and closing. He felt like so many shoplifters and petty thugs he’d busted when he was a cop, their faces fallen and rueful, having missed their escapes by an inch or a hair or a mile. He remembered that moment when they realized they were cooked, how they’d stop running or driving, sometimes literally throw their hands up, angrier at themselves than they were at him.
Although plenty had been angry at him too.
Cap slowed his pace and then stopped, in the middle of the floor, and turned around to face them. They continued to run at him, and he thought he would make it easy for them so he put his hands behind his head and laced his fingers, not that he had anywhere to hide a weapon at the moment.