I had gotten into the hospital at least. Now all I had to do was find Jennifer.
I tucked my chin into my chest to hide my face. I pushed the cart along the hall, moving as quickly as I could. Sure, I was in disguise, but it wasn’t much of a disguise, was it? I mean, if someone walked by me really fast without paying too much attention, they might not notice anything peculiar. But the second anyone took a closer look at me, I was pretty much toast. A smallish sixteen-year-old kid with his overalls rolled up at the cuffs and sliding down at the sleeves: I must’ve looked like a sixth grader dressed up for Halloween. If I was going to reach Jennifer—if I was going to find out what she’d seen and what she thought was going to happen—I was going to have to do it fast, before anyone spotted me.
Where did I begin to look? I didn’t think there’d be any patients down here in the cellar. The halls were pretty empty. There were no nurses or aides or anything that I could see. Most of the doors were closed, and the few that were open revealed offices, baths, and a furnace room. I figured I had to get upstairs.
Luckily, there were arrows painted on the wall pointing to the elevators. Also luckily, I reached the elevator without bumping into anyone. Even more luckily, no one came by after I pushed the button and stood waiting for the elevator to arrive.
The door opened. The elevator was big, empty. My cart and I both got on. There were only two more floors in the building. I had seen the offices on the first floor, so I guessed that the patients’ rooms would be on the second. I pushed the button for the second floor.
That’s when my luck ran out.
The door had started to close when I heard a woman’s voice: “Hold it! Could you hold the elevator, please?”
I froze. I prayed the elevator door would close before the woman reached it. But it just seemed to hang open forever. Then, slowly, slowly it started to slide shut.
And there was the woman now, coming into view, reaching for the door.
What should I do?
If I didn’t hold it for her, it would look really suspicious. So quickly I reached out and grabbed the edge of the door. It slid back. The woman got on.
“Thanks so much,” she said.
I nodded, trying to keep my head down so she wouldn’t see how young I was. Also, the motion to hold the door had sent my sleeve rolling back down over my hand. It looked ridiculous.
But you know how people act in elevators: they don’t look at each other much. The woman turned away from me at once and pushed the first-floor button. She faced the door as it shut. I quickly rolled my sleeve back up again.
The elevator ground upward, slow, slow, slow. The woman stood with her back to me. She was a tall, thin woman. I don’t know how old—maybe thirty. She was wearing a suit, the skirt and jacket the same color. She had short brown hair. That was pretty much all I could see, standing behind her like that.
“Are these the slowest elevators in the world or what?” she said—but she still didn’t look at me.
I was in a panic. I knew if I said too much, my kid’s voice would give me away. If I didn’t say anything, she’d turn and look at me.
So I made my voice as old-sounding as I could and grunted. “Yeah.”
“They take forever,” she muttered, but she was talking more to herself now.
Then the elevator reached the first floor. The door opened.
“Thanks again,” the woman said. She turned her face my way, but she didn’t really look at me. Then she was off the elevator, walking away.
I started to sigh with relief—but it caught in my throat as two men stepped into the elevator to take the woman’s place. They pressed the same button I had pressed—they were going to the second floor like me. They barely glanced my way. Like the woman—like most people in an elevator—they faced the door.
“I don’t see how they can make any more cuts,” one man said.
“I know. The staff is down to the minimum as it is,” said the other.
“On the other hand, where’s the money gonna come from?”
“Right—that’s the big question.”
The elevator stopped again. Second floor. The door opened. The two men got out and turned off to the left. I pushed my cart out after them. I couldn’t take the chance of following them, so tucking in my chin, I started down the hall directly in front of me.
Turned out not to be such a great idea. When I looked up, I saw a hallway with doors on either side of it. But in the middle of the hall, there was an open space with a counter. Behind the counter I could see two people, one a guy and the other a woman. They were both large. They were both in white. Nurses or aides, I guessed. They glanced up at me as I came their way, so I figured it was too late to turn around without making them suspicious. I just kept pushing the cart toward them.
The corridor had a quiet, late-night atmosphere. As I went along it, I stole glances at the doors to my left and right. The doors were wooden, heavy. Each one of them had a small metal label holder next to it. The labels had names on them: Sanders, T.; Monahan, G.; Callahan, B.; and so on. So there was my plan. All I had to do was keep walking down the halls and reading the names until I got to Jennifer’s.
I pushed the cart down the hall, looking left and right as I went by the doors.
“How ya doin’?”
I nearly jumped at the sound of the voice, but it was just the male aide. I’d reached the counter where he was standing. He was a big guy like I said—very big and pale-faced with very broad, square shoulders that made him look like a tremendous block of cement. I didn’t answer him. I just made a sort of greeting gesture at him with my head and kept pushing my cart along. When I was past him, I didn’t dare look back to see whether he and the other aide were watching me or not. I half expected them to notice my baggy overalls, my young appearance—to call after me, “You there, stop!”
But they didn’t. I just kept pushing the cart down the hall, kept reading the names on either side: Walters, C.; Christiansen, P.; . . .
I couldn’t believe it. Somehow, I was actually getting away with this. If I could just find Jennifer before I was caught . . .
I reached the end of the hall and turned the corner. The next hall was empty except for a single nurse all the way down at the end. She was just coming out of one of the rooms. She crossed the hall and went into the room on the other side. Then everything was quiet. Not a voice, hardly a sound. Just the buzzing of machinery. The hum of fluorescent lights. And then the rattle of my wheels as I pushed the cart along more quickly, reading the names as fast as I could: O’Brien, T.; Porter, Q.; Sales, J.; Malloy, R. . . .
I stopped short, the wheels going silent.
Sales, J.
That was Jennifer!
I was so surprised to have actually found her, I almost didn’t notice it. I looked around over my shoulder. Still no one else in the hall. I backed up to Jennifer’s door.
My hand went into my overalls, into my coat pocket underneath. My fingers curled around the Buster. I figured they must lock the patients in at night and I’d have to break through. I reached for the doorknob with my other hand—and to my total surprise, the knob turned easily. It wasn’t locked at all.
The door came open.
It was dark in the room, but the light from the hall fell in, a thin wedge of light. As I pushed the door open more, the wedge spread wider and wider.
I saw a desk. I saw a picture on the wall. I glanced down the hall. No one there. I pushed the door wider. I saw the foot of a bed. More of the bed. Then . . .
“Sam Hopkins!”
My heart felt like it was going to explode. There she was—Jennifer!—sitting up at the head of the bed. She was clutching the blankets to her chin in fear. She was staring at me with eyes open wide. But in the next moment, the fear washed out of her expression as she fully recognized me.
“Sam Hopkins!”
she said again.
You would not believe how loud her voice sounded in that quiet hospital.
“Jennifer, shh! Shh!” I whispered desperately.
She leapt off the bed and came rushing toward me. She was wearing a flannel nightgown, white with flowers on it. She had her arms spread as if she was about to wrap me in a tremendous hug.
“Sam Hopkins!” she said again—and though this time she whispered it, it still sounded awfully loud.
I held out my open hand at her like a traffic cop, trying to get her to stop, to stay where she was. I grabbed the trolley-cart out in the hall. Took one more quick look around out there to make sure no one was in sight.
But someone was.
The nurse. She had come out of the room she was in. She crossed the hall again and disappeared into the room on the opposite side.
Now I understood. She was checking on patients, one after another. Coming this way. At the rate she was moving, I figured I had about five to ten minutes before she reached Jennifer’s room.
Quickly I pulled the cart into the room and shut the door, plunging the room into darkness.
I didn’t see Jennifer reach me, but I knew she was beside me when she clutched my wrist in both her hands.
“You came for me!” she said.
“I never thought I’d find you,” I told her.
“But you were magic.”
“I’m not magic, trust me.”
“You are.”
“Whatever.”
“When I was screaming, they put me in another place,” she said. “They locked me in.”
“Just keep your voice down, will you?!”
“The room was white. It was empty. I had to stay there until I was quiet.”
“Shh!”
“They gave me medicine to make me sleep. But I didn’t sleep. I just got quiet.”
I wished she would be quiet now!
“Then they brought me to this room. It’s better here.”
“Okay, okay.” I didn’t have time to listen to her life story now. That nurse was doing her rounds, on her way. Who could tell how fast she’d get here? I needed to find out what was going to happen tomorrow—I needed to find out now.
Jennifer’s two hands were still clutching my wrist. I clutched her two hands in my two. I shook her hands to get her attention. Even though it was dark in the room, there was some light seeping in around the edges of the window blind, and now that my eyes were adjusting, I could make out Jennifer’s face. Her eyes were eager, focused on me. “Listen,” I said. “Listen.”
“I’m so happy,” she said. “I’m so happy you’re here, Sam Hopkins.”
“Yeah, just try to be happy quietly, okay? We have to act fast. You have to tell me what you saw.”
“Saw?”
“About the dead—remember? You said there were going to be so many dead. Tomorrow, you said.”
“So many dead,” she echoed in a low, awestruck voice.
“Where?”
“What?”
“Where, Jennifer? Where are the dead?”
She blinked, confused. She shook her head. “Everywhere.”
“No, but where are they going to be?”
She shook her head again. She was still gazing at me with that eager look, but it was clear she didn’t know what I was talking about.
I tried again. “Where did you see the dead, Jennifer?”
“In the common room.”
“In the . . . ?”
“Then in the phone room later.”
“Jennifer, that doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. It was awful. They were lying on the chairs and on the floor. There was so much blood.”
I was so frustrated, I wanted to shake her. How long could I stand here talking to her before that nurse reached us, before she found me here and sounded the alarm?
I shook Jennifer’s hands in mine again. I knew what was happening. She was telling me her hallucination, just like she did before out by the willow tree. It was up to me to figure out what it meant.
“Okay, okay,” I said again. “So you saw the dead people lying around the common room.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see anything else?”
“Blood,” she whispered.