On Fire
Page 76
The windows of his room on the first floor of the hospital are without curtains. He can lie like this on his stomach facing them, his head on his pillow, and look out, pretending to be asleep. Coach lights exhibiting a sleepy yellow glow dot the gently sloping grounds. Short lighted bollards run along wandering sidewalks, stamping circles of light on their asphalt surfaces. Park benches made of concrete sit empty near the top of slopes.
Sallow, artificial light pours through the window and falls on the painting on the wall above his bed. It lights up the picture’s multi-colored flowers and the big butterfly that flutters above them. It shines on Bogdan’s face, on the small lines and puffiness that were never there before.
Bog lays silently, eyes running back and forth over the outside view. He listens to the whispering AC unit installed over the window. He thinks, “Larks still bravely singing fly.” Then he draws a breath.
Bog rolls, precipitately, unexpectedly, sticks out a hand to catch himself, and falls like a stone to the tiled floor. Of course the ubiquitous camera doesn’t get to see him wince, but its audio decidedly picks up his groan.
Bog counts the seconds, wondering how long it will be before those in charge of him respond and invade the room like hessians, throwing on bright overhead lights and surely blinding him. He keeps counting, for no reason other than to satisfy one of a seemingly endless train of impulses, all of them out of control. Like all of his urges and thoughts at the moment, this one has been let out of the corral and is now running quite wild, appearing and disappearing without reason from his stream of consciousness.
“Larks still bravely singing fly.”
There. That thought again.
He hears steps running up to his door, which flings open, the lights going on, blindingly, as expected, a millisecond later. Two orderlies, both male, youngish, and a nurse, female, oldish, step into the room imperiously. In just under thirty seconds. Is that good or bad? He doesn’t know.
“Mr. Cerny!” exclaims the nurse.
She lets the orderlies try to grapple him, but he keeps extending his arm and pointing to his wrist.
“Did you hurt your hand, your wrist, Mr. Cerny?” she asks in a booming tone of voice usually reserved for toddlers and the incipient deaf.
Bog nods his head, almost as if to suggest that this injury has somehow struck him dumb.
The nurse seems actually annoyed by this. She places her clenched hands firmly on either side of her hips, fit to be tied. Whatever she was doing, that has now been interrupted. This whole thing is going to take much longer than she would like and she has no desire to hide that this has clearly put her out.
“Okay, boys, get him up. We’re going to have to take him to X-ray.”
The orderlies labor to get Bog on his feet. He has trouble getting up in fact and seems unsteady. The orderlies march him out of the room and down the hall to medical evaluation’s X-ray room, seating him in a sophisticated mechanically operated chair with thick, white vinyl cushions. He rests his head back and closes his eyes. They reassure him and tell him not to move as they leave to go find an imaging tech. Bog knows it’s going to take a while to roust someone.
Bog isn’t sure but figures there is probably an orderly just outside the door. He doesn’t care. Rather, he just jumps up, really flies from the chair, and runs into the little office that gives off to the side of the X-ray room. He looks quickly around and sees a computer screen and a keyboard. So far so good.
Sitting down, he immediately goes to work bringing the machine up and is pleased to see its connection to the internet. Funny, all this typing and his hand doesn’t hurt. Wonder why? He snorts his derision and gives his captors a mental middle finger.
Bog pops up email, inserts Rashida’s address, and composes a quick note before hitting send and shutting the pc down. They’ll regret putting him into the agency system. Now he has found a way to transmit the contents of Zak’s USB drive to UNK untraceably and free of any possible interception.
“Larks still bravely singing fly.”
He grins as he resumes X-ray’s diagnostic chair but hopes the camera in the room doesn’t pick it up.
Chapter 77