“Otherwise known as Prince Charming,” Sam says drily.
A moment later, Elmer returns with a small case with a red cross on the side and nods in the direction of the hallway. “Let’s go.”
I worry about what I’m doing getting involved with these guys, but Thomas might bleed to death if he doesn’t get help soon. I’ll take help from whoever I can get it from, even a bunch of guys who’ve named themselves after cartoon characters.
“Lead the way,” Sam says.
I turn to head back the way I came, occasionally looking over my shoulder to make sure they’re staying with me. As we make our way down the halls, the men move in unison, like a flock of geese shifting direction in the sky.
When we push through the double doors back into the hallway where I left Thomas and Oscar, I see that it’s completely dark. A sickening pool of dread rises and soaks through me.
Sylvester raises the lantern. I see both Thomas and Oscar on the floor. Thomas must have rolled over onto his glow stick. I immediately rush to Thomas’s side while Elmer goes to Oscar, whose bullet wound is obvious. I’d forgotten about Oscar in my panic about Thomas.
“No, him first!” I say, pointing to Thomas, my hand shaking.
Thomas has gone a gray-white color. His eyes are frantic underneath his eyelids.
Elmer looks at me and then at Oscar and says, “I have to treat the worst first. Unless he’s an enemy combatant.”
“No! Yes! He’s that, then. An enemy. Just … please, please help Thomas first!”
He turns toward Thomas to assess his condition. Thomas moans a little when the light from the lantern shines in his face but barely seems to notice when Elmer peels back his boot. I’m relieved to hear him, even if he’s suffering, because it means he’s still alive and hasn’t bled out onto the floor.
“I need help moving them. I’ll take a closer look when we get them back to camp,” Elmer says.
Camp?
I’m worried he means back out into the storm, but then I look again at their bare feet and realize that wherever their camp is, it must be inside.
The men lift Oscar and then Thomas in turn, putting them on a drop cloth they find nearby. They drag both up the hallway. The four men break into a jog at exactly the same moment. I follow behind them as we head deeper into the basement. I doubt I could have backtracked and found my way back out again.
We finally come to a large room that looks very much like the rec lounge, except there is no television and no sofa. The only furniture is a folding table and several plastic chairs. I also see some blankets in the corner of the room.
Sam says to me, “We assumed something must have happened. They cut the power, and we haven’t received our rations in the last twenty-four hours.” He points to a door in the far corner. It has a largish swing door at the bottom, like a cat flap. “Usually it’s like clockwork. Our captors come at precise intervals with food and water.”
I’m only half listening because all I’m thinking about is Thomas, but the word captors snaps me back to attention. I look at Sam. I’m curious and confused. I guess you could see the nursing staff here as captors. But still. These guys talk like they’re prisoners of war.
I look over at Elmer. He’s covered Oscar with blankets and raised his feet onto one of the chairs. He’s now working on Thomas. I watch as he cuts away the lower leg of Thomas’s ski pants and then ties a tourniquet just above his knee. I find myself tensing, trying to look and not look. Sam sees the worry on my face.
“Elmer is the best medic around. He can work miracles, even with the few medical supplies they give us.”
Sam is looking at my clothing, like he can’t make sense of what I’m wearing but the wheels are turning in his mind. For some reason I decide it’s best not to mention the blizzard outside.
“When was the last time you had any contact with your, you know, captors?” I ask.
“They rarely speak to us directly,” Sam says. “Obviously, because of the language difficulties.”
I shift my weight back and forth. I need more information from them, so no matter what they say, I nod in agreement.
“Have you ever tried to escape?” I ask.
“Where would we go?” Sam asks. “It’s desert in every direction for hundreds of miles. That’s assuming they don’t shoot us first.”
Desert? I don’t know what’s happened to these guys, but I’m not going to be the one to tell them they’re about as far from a desert as you can get.
CHAPTER 20
Elmer works on Thomas for an hour or so. Just getting his boot off without aggravating the wound takes half that time. I try to stay away but can’t, even after Elmer shoos me back for the tenth time. I rest the back of my head against the wall, my face tilted toward the ceiling. That dripping sensation is back. I feel like another memory wants to come, but it won’t. I think the stress of what’s happened has delayed it somehow.
Sylvester offers me something he calls an MRE. I’m not sure what he’s talking about. It looks like a granola bar. I take one and thank him but don’t eat it.
After half an hour of watching me pace, Sam approaches me and says, “There’s a place to wash up down the hall. I strongly suggest you use it.”
I look down at myself. I’ve got dirt, blood, and that weird blue dye that they use in porta-johns all over my coveralls and probably on my face. Maybe the smell of me is getting to them.
He holds his lantern out to me, but I show him my glow stick.
“I’ll be okay.”
I walk into the outer hallway. A deep, eerie quiet instantly surrounds me. I feel like I’ve been ambushed by the emptiness. I wave the glow stick around. Everything is the silvery gray of unfinished concrete.
A few yards up the hall, I see a bunch of construction materials, including a stack of plaques that haven’t been mounted yet. I give them a nudge with my foot, and they topple to the floor, clicking like dominoes. There are four of them. I pick each one up and read what they say: “Custodian,” “Mechanical Closet,” “Recreation Lounge,” and “Guest Reception.” The last has an arrow pointing to the left, but I don’t know which direction the sign was supposed to be facing.
Farther on I find the bathroom. It’s exactly like the one we had on our ward. There are no mirrors. There’s also no hot water. Teeth chattering, I pull a stack of paper towels out and swab myself off. They come away in my hands, filthy. I go through the whole contents of the dispenser, dropping each paper towel to the floor after I’m done, until I’ve made a tall, soggy pile. I feel like I’ve just washed off all my war paint after a long, unsuccessful battle.
I cup my hands beneath the running water to take a drink, and suddenly I’m swimming. No, drowning. I have to grab hold of the sink; otherwise, the terrible, spiraling sadness washing over me will suck me down.
I know what this is.
I know what’s coming.
This is the moment. The very moment I found out.
I see the social worker standing in the hallway. The dark outline of her slumping shoulders. Her braided hair backlit by the bluish fluorescent light. She is the stranger holding a briefcase who has come to tear my whole world down.
I push the memory back, out, away. I slam into the wall behind me and press my hands against my ears, but there’s no defense against a voice inside your head.
“Sarah?”
My mother told me never to open the door for a stranger, but this woman keeps knocking and holding up badges to the peephole.
“I’m afraid I have some very sad news to tell you. Please open the door.”
Somehow, in this instant, I know what she’s going to tell me, and I decide I won’t listen. So long as I don’t listen, then it hasn’t happened. I sit down on the couch, put my headphones on, and ignore her. I won’t open the door, no matter how long she knocks. I’ll barricade myself in here forever.
But it doesn’t work.
People with sad news always find a way to get to you. They just go find the
building super and two police officers to escort him, and then you can’t keep them out anymore. They bust in and tell you what you don’t want to hear. They fill out paperwork about your status and your future. And then that’s it. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you can’t ever be the same again.
I feel like I’m falling. I feel that tickle in my stomach as I plunge down into a shaft of darkness, and as I fall, I pull the emptiness around me right into my heart. I want to be one with this nothingness. The empty black nothingness.
But suddenly there’s an abrupt shift inside my mind, and in an instant, this bad memory is a flag snapping in a too-strong wind. It tears loose and is carried off.
Now I’m climbing, hand over hand. Higher and higher. My feet slipping on metal bars that are not meant to be used as steps. I’m climbing to get closer to something, or farther away—I don’t even know. And wrapped up in this pain, as inseparable from me as a parasite is from its host, is the name Erskine Claymore.
I’m on the bathroom floor again, panting.
I make myself stand up, and then I spit into the sink and rinse my mouth, because I taste stomach acid at the back of my throat like I’m going to throw up.
The only thing I can think to do is move. To run. Just like Thomas said. If I move fast enough, I can leave these bad dreams behind and they’ll fall away and evaporate.
I rush into the hallway, dashing one way, then another, like a frantic bird that’s accidentally flown inside a building. I run with no sense of purpose or direction. I just want to get more lost. The hallways are full of turns, full of choices that I refuse to make, and it wouldn’t matter if I did. Because they all lead me to the same place. To pain, to the dull emptiness of grief.
I run and run and run, until I notice that beneath my feet the bare concrete floor has given way to soft carpeting. I stop and try to pull air back into my burning lungs.
Up ahead I think I see a light. I lower my glow stick, and there it is. A small green circle. I head toward it and come to a fancy door made of striped wood with a smoky glass center. The room beyond is dark, but now I see that the tiny green light is from a magnetic card reader. I seem to have come to the edge of where power and outage meet.
I wonder what this place could be. I pull my passcard out, debating whether I should use it. What if it gives my location away? I don’t care. I’m too curious.
I zip the card through the reader and pull the door open.
The room on the other side looks like a hotel lobby, complete with concierge desk. There’s a water feature—the kind that trickles and drips and is supposed to make soothing noises like a mountain brook. In the center of the room is a coffee table made of tangerine-colored glass, two clear plastic armchairs, and a huge sofa with square, white leather cushions and chrome legs. Looks expensive and extremely uncomfortable.
I walk in, sit down, and put my hands on my knees.
Obviously it’s a waiting room.
It’s the kind of place where you sit alone, chewing on a piece of your hair and bouncing your leg nervously. Before you hear adults say that they did all they could but it was too late. Before you pick out a casket. Before you’re told that you’ll be moving to a new home the next day, so gather everything you have into a single bag—everything, including all the happiness you’ve ever known—because they’re going to shepherd you into a bleak new future and you can’t refuse to go.
Before all that, you wait in a room like this. Except it’s a lot less nice.
I stand up and straighten my back. A calm anger strengthens me, sharpens me, as I look around.
It’s all so strange. This is newly built. I don’t understand why the government canceled this project just to start decorating this place like a posh resort. It makes no sense.
My eyes sweep back and forth, trying to see if there’s anything worth taking. I see a crystal candy dish on an end table marked with an E.C. It’s filled with candy-coated chocolate mints. Without thinking, I grab one and toss it into the air. Before the candy lands in my mouth, a memory lands first.
“Catch it!” my mother yells.
I don’t.
“Again!” she says, tossing another seed to me.
I miss.
“Ay, Angel, you’re terrible at this!” she says, laughing. “I’m almost out of pepitas!”
“I can do it!” I pout. “One more time.”
We walk and she tosses another pepita. It bounces off the end of my nose. We are now emerging from the subway onto the street. It’s our mysterious yearly trek to the Upper West Side. I have never asked her why we come here before, but today I do.
She takes me by the hand and says, “I like this place.”
“We have parks, too,” I say, defending our neighborhood, which is not this nice or this quiet. And there are too many men without jobs hanging around, and they usually start drinking by noon.
“I know, but this park brings me happy memories,” she says as she swings my hand high above my head.
We find a bench and sit to eat the lunch my mother has brought: beef empanadas, plain white rice, and a Coke. We always sit on this bench, directly across from a big mansion overlooking Riverside Park. My feet do not touch the ground. I swing my legs like I’m kicking the air.
“I wish I was rich. I wish I had a house like that,” I say.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You know, I used to work for the man who lives in that big house.”
“Really? What was he like? Are rich people mean? That’s what Yolanda Cruz told me. They’re all mean and selfish.”
“No, they’re not all mean and selfish. The man I worked for was very nice. He was the best man I ever knew.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
My mother does not reply.
“Mamá?”
She looks up to the uppermost window, and I think I see someone looking down at us. But only for a moment.
“My friends say things about who my father is,” I mumble.
She sighs and waves her hand. “They don’t know anything, Angel. Just remember that you are special, and someone is always watching over you.”
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes and groan. It’s so frustrating! To be so close to remembering and still not be able to see my mother’s face, just a cloud of white. I need to remember things that will help me figure out who’s trying to kill me and why, and this memory has given me nothing useful.
I look around the room again. I pick up one of the pillows. It’s burgundy velvet, corded on the edges with gold thread. I push the nap of the fabric back and forth. My fingers leave streaks. This pillow alone must have cost a small fortune. I tuck it under my arm. I’ll bring it to Thomas. Maybe it’ll help him rest easier.
I continue searching the room, looking for anything else that could help him, and as I round the side of the tall concierge desk I see something even better. A laptop. I fold it up, snatch the power cord coiled next to it, and hang it around my neck like a scarf.
I’ve lingered long enough. I need to get going. I turn around and stop in my tracks. I haven’t entered this waiting area through the main entrance. I’ve come the back way. I face a set of large glass doors with the letters E.C. on them. And now I know what the initials stand for.
Of course.
Erskine Claymore.
I’ve seen these doors before. From the other side. This is South Wing.
CHAPTER 21
I may be smeared with blood and mud, but I’m hoping that the soldiers still see me as a girl, because only a girl would take such a long time in the bathroom. I don’t want to have to explain too much about where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing. I doubt these strange, barefoot guys would get it.
After a few wrong turns I find my way back. As I approach the rec lounge door, I hear an agonized scream. It’s Thomas. I burst back into the lounge and see Sylvester with his knees on Thomas’s chest. I’m about to pull him off when I realize that he�
��s doing it to keep Thomas from writhing around while Elmer works on the leg wound. I rush up to them and wish I hadn’t when I see the extent of Thomas’s injury. His lower leg looks like the muscle has been filleted off the bone.
I turn my head and nearly drop the laptop. I watch as Elmer wraps the leg from the knee down. He returns to his medical kit and produces a syringe and pops Thomas in the thigh. I pray that whatever Elmer’s delusions are, they still allow for proper dosing of meds.
When I kneel next to Thomas, he clutches at me and his eyes open. He’s focusing on somewhere far away, a place he wishes he could go to get away from this pain. I keep staring at him, wishing I could take the agony he’s experiencing and pull it into myself. At the very least, I want to let him know I’m there with him, through every single second.
After a few minutes, I feel his grip relax, and he closes his eyes. His face becomes less ashen. I look gratefully toward Elmer.
“That morphine shot should last him a few hours,” he says.
“Thanks. He seems more comfortable.”
Elmer must have taken Thomas’s hat off at some point. I slide the pillow I brought back with me under his head and notice something I hadn’t before: the roots of his hair. Beneath the black dye, he’s a redhead.
“I brought you a very expensive, fluffy velvet pillow,” I say.
“And a computer,” Thomas says. I put the laptop on the floor next to him. He reaches over and pets it. “Nice computer.”
Elmer points to Oscar, who I now see has his shoulder bandaged. “I think the bullet passed through. Obviously, not his first gunshot wound. He must have seen a lot of action. Do you know which province he was stationed in?”
Province? I’m not sure what he’s talking about.
Elmer motions toward Thomas. “His leg is pretty bad. He’ll need surgery soon or it’ll have to come off.”
I pull him away so Thomas won’t hear me. “Come off? What do you mean, come off?”
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