Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  “Her room,” said Gower politely. He didn’t want to expend any more needless time on listening to this pompous ass making not so subtle hints about the government picking up the tab for Theodora’s hospital stay.

  “Of course,” replied Shawn. He adjusted his tie and led them to the elevator. Through a double set of glass walls they could see that there were still a few reporters in the lobby. “I’ve had to hire extra security in the hospital, to keep the journalists from wandering around the place, popping in on each and every patient to see if they can get a few words in with the young girl.”

  Redmond glanced casually at Gower. His understanding was that they would simply disappear with Theodora, not that they would get into some kind of jurisdictional fight with the hospital administration, the hospital security, maybe even the local police department, and anyone else who was watching. But he relaxed. Gower generally had a plan for these types of matters, although this was more publicized than anything else they’d participated in.

  “And where’s that security right now?” asked Gower as Shawn punched the elevator button to the third floor.

  Fool that he was Shawn didn’t think anything of the question and replied, “There’s a man in the lobby. Another is patrolling the hallways. He could be anywhere in the hospital, just as long as he keeps those idiot reporters out of the private rooms. Oh, the lawsuits from patients.”

  There was another hand movement from Gower that Redmond interpreted as an indication not to worry. If they couldn’t get her out of the hospital, they would find a way to take her legally. Gower could dig up a social services employee if he had to do just that. He could dig up just about anyone he wanted, if he were of the mind to do that. And after all, she was one of the most infamous young women in the world. If the powers that employed them were of a mind then she simply could be stashed away in some psychiatric institute until such a time where it became necessary to dispose of her properly.

  The elevator dinged and the doors clunked open, horsing itself open with a screech of protest. “I’ve got to get the mechanic on that elevator,” Shawn said, more for the government men’s benefit than for himself. “We’ve got patients who desperately need to use this elevator.”

  They stepped out and found themselves a few feet away from the third floor nursing station. “Nurse Tou,” Shawn called and Redmond saw the attractive Asian woman’s face twist into an expression of distaste for a brief instant before she transformed it into a neutral mask. “How is our little heroine?”

  The nurse smiled, but the smile was obviously not meant to be warming. She didn’t like Peter Shawn and Peter Shawn didn’t like anyone. He liked money and he was of the opinion that too much of the pie went into the pockets of the nurses, which meant that less of the pie went into his own pockets. She knew it and she knew where Shawn could stick his false sentiment that had only been produced on behalf of visitors who might speak poorly of him in other settings.

  “Miss Smith is still sleeping,” announced Nurse Christine Tou in a voice that also announced that woe be the man who dared to walk into the room and wake that girl up. “She’s been through a lot.”

  Shawn frowned. He glanced at his watch and then checked it against the wall clock that was prominent behind the nurse. “Shouldn’t she be awake by now? After all, the reporters want a chance to speak with her and these two gentlemen need to...” He paused. “You didn’t say what you needed with Miss Smith, did you?”

  Gower smiled affably. Educated, well-versed professionals like these needed another story than the one he’d told Bridget Little. “It’s a matter of security. Not something we can divulge to you.”

  Tou frowned. “What exactly are you going to do? Talk to the girl?”

  “Nurse Tou,” protested Shawn. “It’s not our place to ask questions of men like these...”

  “Then who?” asked Tou. “Who will ask the questions? Who gets to protect that girl?”

  “What makes you think that Miss Smith needs protecting?” asked Gower softly, staring directly at the nurse, issuing a silent challenge. Her black eyes stared back at him, defiant. She didn’t like his blonde good looks, or the piercing glance of the other man who hadn’t said a word so far, who stood back and appeared as though he was...waiting. She didn’t think much of men who charmed their way into what they wanted, or were threatening by omission. The blonde-haired man didn’t wait for an answer. He said, “Tell me which room she’s in.”

  She paused and then pointed. “That one.”

  Gower turned away from her and strode over to room 301. He opened the door and sighed when he saw that Theodora was gone. He turned back to the nurse, “Where is she?”

  Tou crossed her arms over her petite frame and furrowed her brow. “She was there when I checked not five minutes ago.” Find her your damn self, she thought peevishly.

  Shawn moved past him to look into the room. “Perhaps the bathroom?”

  Redmond walked into the room and carefully examined every bit of the area. Under the beds. In the lockers. In the bathroom. And then the curtain on the window moved, letting a cool breeze in from the ocean perhaps three miles to the west, showing the man exactly where Theodora had exited. He said, “Looks like she went out the window.”

  “The window,” exclaimed Shawn petulantly. “Now who’s going to pay for all of this?”

  “Search every room on this floor,” ordered Gower. “I’ll check the exterior before coming back in. If the nurse is correct then she can’t be far.”

  “Wait one moment,” Shawn protested, even as Redmond headed out of the room. He received a cold glare from the tall blonde-haired man. “You can’t...”

  Gower turned to Tou, who had moved from the nursing station to just beside the door. “I’ll need an up-to-date description. Let’s start with what she was wearing.”

  •

  Teddy went out the window of the third floor thirty seconds after Nurse Tou shut the door. It didn’t open much, not ten inches fully spread, but she wiggled her own slight figure out the crack and situated herself on a narrow ledge that wrapped the building. On her hands and knees she perched there, with the wind whistling through her hair, and her equilibrium precariously tested. Slowly she began to move. Hands forward, placed center of the ledge, knees following awkwardly.

  A ring-necked pigeon cooed at her from the end of the ledge where it slanted back into the exterior. The building didn’t have a straight, frontal facade, but dipped back and forth as different parts of the structure had been designed to show off an architectural bent on art deco. It was an old building, built in the thirties or the forties, made to be a nursing home, for those elderly and perpetually sick who would come to recuperate near the sea. Nurse Chapman had told Teddy that earlier, chatting to the young woman as if the information was truly fascinating. Only in the last ten years had it been renovated into a medical care facility.

  The ledge abruptly began to crumble and Teddy’s heart dropped into her stomach. Three floors down didn’t seem like so high when she had been on the inside of the room. Three floors seemed like a huge distance when cement that was eighty years old and inundated with salt water and excessive moisture was starting to break away under her hundred and ten pounds. She scooted forward, scrambling on the tiny ledge, her knees burning with the contact to the rough exterior, and only her foot and the bottom part of her leg swung away into nothingness as a section of the material dropped to the ground.

  It slid downward soundlessly and nailed a set of rhododendrons that lined this side of the building. A chunk of cement bounced off a Lincoln Navigator parked just beside the row of bushes and Teddy sighed raggedly. She swung her leg back up and situated herself more securely on the ledge.

  Looking up she found herself gazing into a hospital room that had been next door to her. There was a sleeping woman in the bed closest to the window and another elderly woman watching television in the other bed. Teddy crawled past. Not only was it too close to her room but this room’s window was
closed and locked. The elderly woman didn’t look away from what she was devoutly watching on the television.

  There was an exit door on the far side of the floor that Teddy was on. She would crawl down the ledge, making the narrow corners until she reached an open window or she fell off. If she didn’t fall off then she could sneak through someone’s room and out the exit door, making for the surgical floor on the first level, where she could find someone’s scrubs or something to replace the pale green hospital gown and robe she was wearing. Teddy glanced down and winced. I could always go for the rhododendrons. They look pretty thick.

  Moving and struggling around the next corner of the building the ledge began to crumble again. She silently said a little Chinese prayer of security and scrambled for a solid piece of the building’s construction. Rocks and pieces of ledge slid away from the ledge, bouncing off windows and careening to the ground below, showing just what would happen to her if she followed the broken ledges.

  Teddy’s knees were beginning to burn with the constant friction and exertion of being misused. She would have stood up but she didn’t think her shaking limbs could take the pressure. She braced herself on her arms and ignored the pain in her side from her breath coming and going too deep, straining the ribs that had been injured.

  When she looked up again she found herself nearly at the far end of the building. But there was a problem. The window wasn’t open. She gazed down at the last row of bushes and wondered if she hung off the ledge how far the fall would be and if she could calculate what her speed would be when she hit or how much damage one hundred and ten pounds could do to the first part of her body that hit the ground. Teddy disregarded the plan. If she were injured in a leg, she couldn’t run. And she desperately needed to be able to run.

  The wind was starting to pick up, bringing a brine smell in from the sea. Her hair had dried in the wind and blew softly around her shoulders, a scarlet mess of curls. She reached up with a hand and tapped on the glass. Then she almost fell off again when someone suddenly opened the window and reached out to firmly grasp her wrist.

  •

  Gower took the stairs and scanned for any vestige of Theodora. She would stand out like a sore thumb. Red, red, red hair and a green hospital gown. No time for her to formulate a plan. No time for her to use her impressive intellect to escape the situation. He exited the building and went far enough out to be able to take in the long row of windows and crannies that was the western expanse of the hospital. The third floor showed that several windows were open, notably the one that she had used. Another on the northern side and one on the far eastern end. But of the girl, there was no sign.

  Taking a step closer he noticed that some of the ledges seemed to be damaged. His intent gaze took in the green shrubbery at the base of the hospital. None of this showed recent disfigurement. She hadn’t fallen or even jumped down there. But she had used the ledge; she had crawled along it or walked along it to get out of the room without using the hallway. He nodded to himself.

  Theodora was still in the hospital. It wasn’t too late.

  •

  Teddy almost shrieked when the hand grasped her wrist. But a man clothed in a similar hospital gown, perhaps in his middle fifties and as bald as a robin’s egg, had deftly opened the window, reached out and grabbed her. He said, “Jesus Christ almighty, are you high or do you think all children should wander along the third floor ledge of a building?”

  Then he helped her inside and returned to his bed with a cranky expression souring his face. The other bed was empty. “You could walk down the hallway, you know, girl.” Then he smiled, a little leer on his face. “Although I didn’t mind seeing the wind playing with your hospital gown.”

  Grunting with disapproval, Teddy smoothed down the pale green garment and attempted to appear outraged. She was at the end of the hallway, not five feet away from the exit door. She went to the door, opened it so that it was a mere crack, and peered out as the bald man watched her interestedly. He said, “And the light in this room, well, it lets me see, um, pretty much everything.” His shiny head bobbed up and down approvingly.

  Teddy tried not to blush. “Are you always this interested in women half your age?”

  “Probably a third my age,” he corrected. “I gotta hernia. Can’t do much else but look. Just about killed me to even get up and make sure you weren’t going to fall off the building and break your cute little ass.” He paused. “Watch out for that slant-eyed storm trooper. Nurse Chou. Nurse Tow. Nurse Somethingorother. She’s skinny but mean. Is that who you’re trying to get away from? Is she a lesbian? Is that it? She hitting on you and you had to go out the window?” He paused again, thinking about anything else he might get out of his young visitor, “Is that a Southern accent? I always liked girls from the South.”

  “It’s a long story,” Teddy told him, catching sight of someone at the other end of the hall. Someone dressed in a dark suit, going from one room to another, his motions determined and unshakable. She shut the door with a little gasp. It was worse than she thought. Much worse. It wasn’t people who were going to nag her about the hospital bill or call social services on her or get a psychiatrist in to speak with her concerning her family situation or why she slept on the beach when she didn’t have any money. It was them. She looked around. Ran back to the window and peered out through the curtains. How did they find me? Oh, God, am I in a deep hole now.

  The man in the hospital bed watched with an intrigued expression on his face. He’d had to put up with snotty nurses, doctors young enough to be his son, and the hospital doing things to him that he would have said would be cruel to do to an animal. They didn’t come when he pressed the little call button. They sneered at him when they did come and his wife had informed him that she wasn’t coming back until he, “Mellowed out.” A little girl crawling down the outside ledge of the hospital was engrossing and took his mind off the fact that his guts were bursting out the side of his stomach. “Well, I got all day,” he told Teddy. He looked at her face critically. “You know, I like you better without the make-up. You’re a pretty girl.” He screwed up his features. “You girls wear too much of that gunk.”

  Just below her was a man standing outside in the parking lot, gazing up at the hospital. Teddy resisted the impulse to jump back. Even though it was starting to get to be full darkness the huge, fluorescent street lamps had come on in the parking lot, showing him to be large, blonde-haired, and in a dark suit, with a calculating aspect coloring his countenance. He looked directly at the window that Teddy was at and she froze, hoping that the curtains were successfully concealing her. She heaved a sigh of relief when his intent gaze moved down the row of windows, glanced at the base of the building and then back up again, carefully checking each window. She stepped back out of view and knew she only had moments before the other man made it to this room. The older man had said something about make-up behind her but she ignored him.

  She turned swiftly and said, “I don’t suppose you have any clothes here I can borrow, Mister...uh?”

  “Bartley’s my name,” he told her with a lascivious glint in his clear blue eyes, marveling at the turn of events in his old, dreary life. “Sorry, dear. The wife took them home. So I wouldn’t sneak out of the hospital for a drop of laager and a big, fat stogie. Kind of like you sneaking out. Excepting I’m guessing it ain’t for a beer and a smoke.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Well, maybe you should head downstairs and steal something out of the nurses’ lockers. Think they’re in the basement.”

  “I’ve got a little problem,” Teddy looked around frantically. One man outside watching the windows. Another was methodically searching the rooms for her. It was only seconds before the dark haired one would find her.

  Mr. Bartley, feeling a lot less amorous and spunky than he let on, inspected her salaciously, raising one of his eyebrows. “Well, you could come over and give me a kiss right on the old choppers and maybe I’ll help you.”

 
; Chapter Six

  August 15th

  A Korean proverb states that: A bird that has been hurt by an arrow will be frightened even by a crooked twig.

  “How about if I reach into your guts and finish what nature started,” Teddy growled in response.

  Mr. Mason Bartley, trapped in the hospital for a hiatal hernia, shrugged. “Okay. Okay. I was joshing you. You want out of here. By the look on your face you can’t go out the door, where most normal folk would probably go. Well, there’s a laundry chute right there.” He pointed behind her.

  Teddy twirled and saw the chute, with its handle painted the same color as the rest of the room. It blended in, its face level with the wall. Since this room was at the end of the floor, there was a straight shot down into the basement. She pulled the handle back and looked inside. Blackness stared back out at her. Glancing over her shoulder at the older man lying on the hospital bed, she bit her lip. Can’t go out the window. Can’t go out the door. Only way out. “They use this thing?” she quickly asked the man in bed. She didn’t want to get trapped in between floors because of decades old obstructions, helpless like a bug ensnared in a spider’s web, waiting for two authoritarian creeps to come and collect her.

  “It’s where they put sheets, towels, and other crappy things. Come in here dragging a laundry cart, waking me up when I’m trying to recuperate. Nothing gets stuck, but then they’re just putting linen in there. Not young women, even little ones.” He paused for effect. “Try using your feet as brakes when you slide down,” suggested Mason. When he saw her hoist herself up on her forearms, balancing her body so that her feet went first into the shoot, he protested irately, “Well, you could have flashed me at least.” He had been hoping to get a glimpse of her ass when she went into the chute headfirst, which was the way that he thought she would accomplish the feat.