I should have known. Like the big man said, he misses nothing.
I’m good at a lot of things, but lying to large men with guns and loud voices isn’t one of them.
“Teddy, you know that’s not allowed. What were you looking for, anyway?”
“I, uh…Someone who said he knew my great-uncle was visiting, and I just was curious when he was here.”
“Oh yeah?” Ronnie asks, picking up the clipboard. “What’s his name? I can check it for you.”
“It’s not important. I—I was just kind of wondering,” I stammer, backing away.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” chuckles Ronnie.
I turn to go.
“Hey! You forgot your book!” Ronnie glances at it. “Love’s Savage Kiss, huh? This any good?”
My humiliation is complete as Ronnie scans the back cover. “Nice reading, kid.”
“I told you. It’s for my mom. She left it here.”
“Riiight. You did. My mistake.” Ronnie grins as I turn and walk toward the elevator, which I take down to the parking garage.
As I bike away from La Purisma General, a dozen thoughts are tumbling through my mind, one after the other. I need to think this out.
I steer my bike over to the curb and pull out my cell. My mom answers on the second ring. “What’s up, honey? Trouble finding the book?”
“Nah, I got it. Listen, we’re not having dinner for like an hour, right?”
“Maybe a little longer. I’ve been in the garden. Why?”
“I thought I’d stop at Caleb’s and hang out.”
“I don’t know, Ted. You sure you can keep it to an hour?”
“I promise.”
“All right, then. Say hello to Doris for me.”
“I will. Thanks, Mom!”
I click off and head over to La Veranda Boulevard. Caleb’s is between the hospital and our house, so it works out perfectly.
His mom’s car isn’t in the driveway. She’s most likely at the gym, which is pretty much where she’s been living since Caleb’s dad left. The front door is unlocked, so I sprint upstairs.
As I expect, he’s hunched over his drawing table, finishing up yet another perfectly sculpted superhero beating the pants off some other superhero.
And yes, the guy being punched has a ponytail.
Way to work out those issues, Caleb!
He pushes the paper away and looks up at me.
“So,” I launch in right away. “Remember when Donna Yamada told us that some man had visited her father and asked all sorts of questions about Great-Uncle Ted?”
“Yeah. That was kind of creepy,” says Caleb.
“The same guy came to my house while we were gone. He’s coming back tomorrow. My dad says he’s from some newspaper in Hawaii and he’s writing a story about that unit my great-uncle served in.”
Caleb puts down his pen. “And he came all the way here? How important was your great-uncle anyway?”
“That’s what I said. But you haven’t heard the weirdest part. I think he was at the hospital, asking about room 1405.”
“Wait. Before you go any further, shouldn’t we tell her about this?”
“Tell who?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“I just think Isabel might, I dunno, find this interesting, don’t you?”
“Yeah, probably.”
I sit on his bed and we stare at each other.
“So…call her,” he says.
“You call her,” I answer.
“It’s your news,” Caleb says, sounding logical for the first time in his life.
I hate him.
“Yeah, but it’s your house, so it’s your phone,” I suggest.
“So what? Use your cell.”
He has me there. So now I have to call a girl. So what? So it’s weird. Don’t ask me why, it just is.
“I’ll call,” I say slowly, “but…it has to be on speakerphone, and you have to talk too.”
“Deal!” Caleb says happily.
I dial Isabel’s number, and she picks up.
“So…what’re you doing?” I ask, feeling like this is how phone conversations probably start with girls. Since this is a first, I’m kind of winging it.
“Um…reading. You?”
“Just hanging out here with Caleb.”
“Hi!” Caleb yells at the phone.
“Am I on speakerphone? I hate that,” the disembodied voice of Isabel says.
“Sorry. It’s just that I wanted to tell you about what happened today at the hospital, and—”
“You went to the hospital? I want to know everything!”
So I tell them. When I get to the part about how impossible it is to get into the room, there’s a sigh at the other end of the phone. Clearly Super Detective Ted has disappointed Isabel.
“I guess that’s that,” Caleb says, flopping down on his bed.
“That’s what?” Isabel says. “Something’s in that room. Don’t you think, Ted?”
“Yeah, but how do I find out what?”
“We could create a diversion!” Caleb suggests. “Like Isabel could pretend to be sick to lure the nurse out of the station, and then you could sneak in and—”
I cut him off. “Three things already wrong with that plan. One, no one gets into the hospital without signing in with the security guard, and he won’t let us in unless we’re visiting someone. Two, even if Pearl isn’t the on-duty nurse, it might be someone just as bad. They won’t just jump from behind the desk. These are trained professionals. And three, this Mrs. Krausz lady already said she doesn’t want any visitors. So if I just walk in there, she’ll call security and that will be that. And I’ll have to explain it to my mom, and—”
I sit in the seat by Caleb’s desk, weighed down with the impossibility of the task in front of me.
For a moment the three of us are silent, lost in our own thoughts.
Then there’s a chuckle from the other end of the phone. That low, grown-up laugh I’ve grown to loathe.
“What? What is it?” I blurt out.
“I’m sorry, this sounds exactly like one of those games you say you play all the time. It just seems impossible until you find the answer.” Isabel’s voice turns serious. “I think you should sleep on it. I bet you’ll have something in the morning.”
I look at the phone. “I wouldn’t count on it. I don’t think you understand. There is no way I’m walking into that room.”
“I have a feeling you will,” Isabel says. “You’ll figure it out. Your great-uncle wouldn’t have set up that clue if you couldn’t, and you’re really smart. You just don’t know how smart.”
Somehow she makes me feel like the dumbest and the smartest kid in the world at the same time.
“As they say in Italian, A tutto c’è rimedio, fuorché alla morte.”
For the first time since we started the call, Caleb speaks to Isabel with annoyance.
“And for those of us who don’t speak Italian?”
“Oh, sorry,” Isabel says. “It means ‘Only for death is there no solution.’ ”
“Who knows these things?” Caleb asks me.
“I read it in a book,” Isabel says evenly. “I remember stuff.”
I check my watch.
“I gotta go. I promise I’ll call or text you guys tomorrow if I think of anything,” I say.
Mom is profuse in her thanks when I hand over the book.
“Another masterpiece,” my dad grumbles as we sit down to dinner.
I rush through my food and excuse myself.
“Are you feeling okay?” asks my mom.
“I’m just beat. I think I need to go to bed early,” I explain.
I get to my room, kick the door shut, and flick open my trusty laptop. I pull it onto the bed and try to sort out all that’s happened today.
The man who says he’s writing the article on my great-uncle…the impossibility of getting into room 1405. It is impossible, isn’t it?
My eyes fall on th
e pad still on my desk with my great-uncle’s last message:
THE BOX IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. KEEP LOOKING FOR THE ANSWERS. ALWAYS GO FOR BROKE! PROMISE ME!
The box. I start the browser and go to the gaming site I visited before.
There, as somehow I knew it would be, is a title card:
“The Game of Ted 1.2: The Hospital Room Heist.”
The rules have changed.
This time, it’s not a game where you escape from a room, but one where you have to find a way in.
There’s the entrance to the hospital. I click, and there’s Ronnie, or at least a picture of him. I click on the sign-in book and nothing happens. Clearly this is the wrong way.
I click back and it leads me outside. I try again. I try clicking around the floor. Am I supposed to throw something to distract Ronnie, like Caleb said?
Nothing is on the floor; nothing moves.
A dead end.
I stare at the screen.
Like Isabel said, these games always have solutions. I just have to think of this as any other game.
But it doesn’t feel like a game. This time I know it’s real. And eventually I’ll have to actually follow it up in real life.
Isn’t that what my great-uncle made me promise with what was almost his dying breath?
Shoulders dropping, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. There they are. My mother’s eyes.
That’s it!
I wanted to smack myself in the head.
Of course. It’s so simple. And it just might work.
I return to the game and play through the moves. I find myself clicking up to the door of 1405 and going through. There is something on a table, a small black rectangle. I click on it, and the game ends.
That’s it? But I didn’t see the object properly!
Since when don’t these games tell you what you’ve won? It doesn’t feel like it’s over at all.
Still, I have enough experience to know that whatever the black shape is, it contains the key. It’s possibly magnetic, and attached to the metal railings under the bed. I’ve seen these boxes plenty of times.
I begin the game again and play through it. This is a lot different from just finding a bunch of clues. This is breaking a whole lot of rules, and if I don’t want to get caught, I have to have every step down perfectly.
Then a chill settles on me.
I click until I come to the screen showing the nurses’ station.
I click on the clock on the desk. It says 11:45. At night.
With a sinking feeling, I realize immediately what the game is telling me.
I have to go back to the hospital. Tonight.
Slowly, I get up from my chair and lie on my bed, going over the plan in my mind.
Almost immediately, I get up, go to my laptop, and play through the game over and over again.
If I’m going to do this, it will have to be perfect.
I’ll have only so much time to accomplish the goal, and any mistake could mean disaster.
Mom could get fired. I could get arrested.
I wipe the sweat that has beaded on my forehead and check my watch for the hundredth time.
It’s eleven o’clock.
I’ve said my good nights, so as far as my parents know, I’ll be in my room until morning.
As quietly as I possibly can, I turn the knob on my bedroom door and creep down the hallway toward the stairs.
Tomorrow is a workday, so my mom went to bed at ten-thirty. Dad is also in bed, reading. He’ll probably go to the bathroom before going to sleep, but that will be at eleven-thirty.
I silently thank the gods that my dad is a creature of habit, and make my way down to the ground floor. There’s a moon out, and light shines into the darkened house as I move into the kitchen. There, as I knew it would be, is my mother’s purse hanging off a chair. I reach inside and gingerly pull out her lanyard with her ID and pass card on it.
Next stop is the laundry room. I reach onto a shelf and feel around.
Yes! It’s here! I take out what I’ve come for and stick it into my knapsack. I check my watch and see that I’ve wasted valuable time. I race outside and find my bike and helmet.
When I get there, La Purisma General looms in front of me, lit up from inside. It reminds me of the last time I visited it at night, when my great-uncle, pulling at my sleeve, made me promise something, I still don’t know what.
I find a clump of bushes near the entrance of the emergency room and carefully hide my bike and helmet under it.
I hold my breath and take off my knapsack.
This will be the trickiest part.
If I get away with this, I’ll have no trouble inside.
Carefully, I unpack my knapsack and silently promise to never again make fun of my mother’s neat-freak behavior. She hates to clean the house and get her clothes dirty, so one day she came up with the brilliant idea to bring a few pairs of scrubs home from the OR to wear when she dusts. I pull out the green drawstring pants and top.
There’s also the incredibly lucky fact that my mom is so small.
I can hear Rowena’s voice in my ears: “You’re as big as your mom now!”
I pull on the scrubs and reach into the pocket. There, as I knew there would be, are a face mask and cap that my mom uses to keep dust out of her hair and cleaning fumes out of her nose.
Now dressed, I carefully hang her ID tag around my neck, stow my knapsack with my bike, and head briskly toward the hospital.
Time to go for broke!
I avoid the lights, staying in the shadows as I creep past the front entrance, where I would have to walk by Ronnie or whoever is on duty tonight.
With our similarly shaped eyes, and everything else covered in the oversized scrubs, I look enough like my mother to pass through, but they all know her and will want to talk. Which will give it all away.
I get beyond the entrance and reach an area flooded with light and activity. The entrance to the emergency room is always busy, even in a small hospital like La Purisma. Someone always has a sick kid, or is feeling chest pains or whatever.
Tonight, an ambulance is sitting at the door, lights flashing.
I move quickly through the throng of aides, EMTs, and other staff. No one even looks up as I stride as purposefully as I can toward the elevator.
I look to my right, and just like in the game, there’s a row of clipboards with paperwork to be filled out. I grab one and proceed to look busy as I wait for the elevator.
The door opens, and I get on. I see that the elevator is empty, and hit the button for the fourteenth floor.
If someone were in here with me, I’d have had to get off on the OR floor, or else they’d be curious why a nurse in scrubs and a mask was going anywhere else.
And the last thing I want to do is arouse curiosity.
I can feel my heart pounding under the flimsy green scrubs. The door opens on the tenth floor, and my stomach tightens in a knot. A gurney pushes in, and—
Oh no!
I note with alarm that it’s accompanied by Clarisse and Crystal, Mom’s friends from the ICU. What are they doing on this shift? If they see me, it’s all over!
NoNoNoNo!
The two of them are, for the time being, bent over the gurney, concerned with securing IV drips and straps.
I slide into the corner of the elevator and turn my back to them, writing furiously on the clipboard in my hands. I know they’ll be getting off on the eleventh floor, where the recovery rooms are located.
One floor. The doors close and the car slowly, agonizingly, begins its ascent. It feels like hours.
“You’re doing just fine, Mr. Ramirez,” Clarisse is cooing to the patient as he moans and shifts.
The elevator slowly settles, and the doors open. Clarisse and Crystal push the gurney out, and once again, I’m alone. I slump against the wall, catching my breath.
This is insane.
When the doors open onto the darkened halls of the fourteenth floor, I see t
he nurses’ station and the glow from the dozen monitors. Pearl is indeed still on duty. No wonder she was in such a bad mood.
A double shift. Nurses hate those.
I backtrack and head in the opposite direction. There is no way I’m going to walk by Pearl, even in scrubs, but the game figured all that out.
Slowly, I count the doors as I walk. Three…four…five. The fifth door. This should be the one.
Checking to make sure no one is in the hall, I quickly open the unmarked door. I slip in and shut it behind me.
I pull the light cord and find myself exactly where I need to be.
Now it’s only a matter of keeping cool and doing everything according to the game.
In front of me, attached to the wall, is a metal box with a big pipe coming out of it. I reach into my pocket and take out a small screwdriver. I pry the hinged cover of the box open and peer inside.
There they are.
Dozens of switches, each one numbered. The circuit breakers for the floor. I have to do this just right.
I count down the breakers from the top. Seventeenth down. The one that controls the new monitors at Pearl’s desk.
If I hit the wrong breaker, the lights in someone’s room could lose power, or worse, some machine keeping someone alive.
I know the building has generators, but breakers have to be reset, and who knows what a few precious minutes could do if I make the wrong choice?
I locate the seventeenth breaker (having counted down three times, just to make sure) and retrieve a second object from my pocket.
My great-uncle’s lighter.
I open it, flick it on, and hold it up to the switch and grimace as the smell of melting plastic hits my nose.
Then, quickly, I push the melted breaker to the off position and turn the light off.
I hear raised voices outside, and wait until some footsteps run past the door before I quietly open it and flatten myself against the wall in the darkened hallway.
I see a large maintenance man with a shaved head, a friend of my mom’s named Gabriel, marching swiftly through the double doors to the nurses’ station.
Gabriel is the one they always call when anything needs fixing.
I creep around to the doors to the nurses’ station and allow myself a quick look through the windows in the door.
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