Chambers quickened his pace and a second later was turning down a long corridor where the hospital laboratory was located. He slipped into the sprawling, open suite, which was well-lit from above with banks of sleek, brushed-aluminum fluorescent light fixtures. A few lab techs were busy processing samples, and a nurse was dealing with a line of patients at a long counter.
Chambers walked through the lab, still limping as he passed the reception station, and proceeded into the work area. He grabbed a patient chart and pretended to look inside while he thought about how he was going to get out of the hospital. He had no money, no car that he knew of—Farber had said the one Chambers had been found in was stolen—and nowhere to go.
He closed the chart and headed toward the back of the lab, where he noticed an elevator. He took it up to the second floor and glanced out into the hallway: the sign indicated patient rooms, the cardiac care unit, and ICU. None of these would do.
He needed food and a quiet place to think. But if the police started searching the hospital, it would be best if he was out of the building. Or would it? If he was lucky enough to avoid a search, he could wait a few hours and then leave. By then, they would be focusing their efforts elsewhere—why would a sane person remain in a place where the police were looking for him?
The third floor was more promising, as the directory indicated that it was where the doctors’ lounge was located. As he approached, the smell of chicken and potatoes hung in the air. His stomach contracted again.
He walked into the lounge and hesitated as he glanced around. A couple of physicians were sitting on a couch reading journals. Another was half-reclining, her eyes closed, the exhaustion of a long shift etched in her face. He continued on into the adjacent cafe, picked up a tray, and surveyed the food. I’ll take a little of everything, he felt like saying. Instead, he settled for a scoop of potato salad, a tall Coke, a ham-and-cheese sandwich on wheat, and a container of yogurt.
At the register, an elderly woman smiled at him and began ringing up his food. “That’ll be six-eighteen.”
“Oh,” Chambers said. “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you this is on Dr. Farber. He asked me to have you put it on his account.”
The woman hesitated and crumpled her wrinkled face. “I really need verification—”
“I should’ve told you before you rang it up.” He leaned closer to her graying hair and lowered his voice. “Dr. Farber lost a bet,” he said as he noticed the other cashier with the Washington Wizards T-shirt on. “Took the Wizards and lost big. Kept forgetting to pay up. Told me to grab a late lunch and have you put it on his tab.”
“Dr. Farber shouldn’t be betting on basketball games. I didn’t never think of him as the gambling type.”
Chambers shushed her with a finger to his lips. “He’s...a little embarrassed about it.”
The woman nodded, consulted a hospital listing, and entered a key code into the register. She placed the receipt on the tray and nodded.
Chambers shoved the receipt into his shirt pocket. “I’ll make sure he gets this so he can deduct it from what he owes me.” He winked at her and carried his food over to one of the tables in the far corner of the cafe, where he had a clear view of the entire lounge. With one eye on the entryway, he consumed the entire meal in less than five minutes.
He pushed the tray aside and rested his face in his hands, trying to assemble what few facts he had into some sort of a cohesive scenario that might help him discover who he was: He had been shot in the thigh, stolen a car, and gotten into an accident on the highway after hitting a center median. He’d had emergency surgery, the police wanted to speak to him, he couldn’t remember his name, and he had no identification on him. Despite his best efforts, it was not coming together. He fought back a yawn, gathered his energy, and pushed himself up off the chair.
Chambers left the lounge and felt the sudden heaviness of exhaustion pervading every part of his body. He made his way down the hall, checking nameplates on the walls, looking for a place where he could rest. He found the doctors’ on-call room and pushed in through the door.
Three cots were set up inside the cramped room. He gingerly climbed on the one against the wall, curled into a ball on his side, and fell instantly into a deep sleep.
The Virginia state policeman checked his watch and pressed the phone receiver to his ear. “We had security posted at all stairways and elevators the minute we realized he was missing.... Yes, sir, we’ve scoured the bottom floor.” The man looked at his partner. “Yeah, I guess it’s possible he got through to another floor before we posted the guards. He could have left the hospital, too. If I were him, that’s what I’d do. Get as far away as I could. But if he’s still here, what goes up has to come down, you know what I mean?” He nodded, then looked at his partner. “Any ambulances missing?”
“I’ll check,” the other officer said, then walked off toward the ER intake desk.
A few moments later, the officer returned just as his partner was hanging up the phone. “Well?”
“All ambulances accounted for.”
“Well, this is just fucking great. FBI’s getting involved. Agents are on their way over from the Washington Field Office.”
“Feds?”
“Yeah, they say he matches the description of a guy they’re looking for.”
“We need to find him before they get here or we’ll never hear the end of it.”
The cop nodded. “We’ve got maybe thirty or forty minutes. Let’s do a thorough search of all floors. Between hospital security staff and the units already on their way, we’ll be able to cover the place in twenty, twenty-five minutes.”
“Fucking feds,” his partner said as they strode purposefully down the hall. “This is
our
manhunt.”
Michael Chambers was in such a deep sleep he had hardly moved since lying down on the cot. In the past two days his body had been subjected to the type of trauma that would ordinarily take weeks to recover from. But for the time being, a few hours of uninterrupted sleep would have to suffice.
At the moment, he saw himself wading barefoot through a rose garden. There were bright reds, whites, yellows, pinks... colors and varieties of roses such that he had never seen before. He stopped and looked down at his feet, which were standing in the cool, moist peat moss. A sweet scent hung on the air and he sucked it in deeply, filling his lungs with the competing aromas.
He looked down again—and saw deep gashes across his feet, blood oozing everywhere, as if the thorns from the rosebushes had swarmed his bare legs and sliced the skin to shreds. He bolted upright in bed, instantly awake, and realized he was dreaming.
As he struggled to see his feet in the dark, the door opened and light spilled into the small room, creating a tall, thin shadow on the wall next to the cot.
Chambers threw a hand up to his eyes to block the light. He looked around, still agitated from the nightmare, dizzy and completely disoriented. “What are you doing?” he shouted.
His visitor, dressed in a light blue uniform, closed the door slightly and the room darkened again. “Sorry, sir, hospital security. I—I didn’t mean to wake you, but a patient’s taken off and he’s wanted for questioning by the police. We’ve got orders to search all rooms. Nobody’s come in, I take it.”
“I’ve been on for thirty-three hours straight,” Chambers said, recalling what Dr. Farber had said to him. “I’ve been dead to rights ever since I fell asleep.”
The man nodded, pulled out his flashlight, and swung it around the room beneath the three cots. “Okay. All clear.” He apologized again for disturbing him and left.
Shit.
They were searching the entire hospital. He wouldn’t be able to leave, at least not for a while. But since this room had already been checked, he would hopefully not have to pass the scrutiny of a real cop, one who wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded with a physician’s woeful story of exhaustion.
He lay back, closed his eyes, and within seconds was drifting off again to a deep sleep.
The evening air had dipped below twenty degrees. Lauren hiked up the collar on her down jacket and watched as people filed into the cozy Herbert Green Middle School gymnasium. She tucked her gloved hands deeper into her pockets and closed her eyes.
You can do this
.
Lauren caught sight of a smiling man who was bundled up in a parka, standing near the gym entrance. He was greeting people as they approached, even helping an elderly woman who was having a difficult time pulling the door open. After holding it for her, he took a moment to play with a little girl whose mother was reading a flyer she had been handed.
The man reminded her of Michael... outgoing, always willing to help, good with people. Qualities Lauren wished she herself had.
Lauren had gotten used to relying on Michael when facing an uncomfortable situation. He would be there by her side, coaxing her through it, always claiming to understand what she was going through. But having never been riddled with phobias of any sort, Michael could in no way understand the difficulties an agoraphobic faced in everyday life... the accommodations that had to be made. The excuses that had to be given. A fear of open spaces, of being out in public, of standing in lines, sitting in movie theaters, riding in elevators... as a psychologist, she understood what her problem was.
Her case had its roots in an unresolved event from her childhood, the repressed anxiety surrounding the shooting of her father and the pain caused by his eventual death. Years later, the loss of something else central to her identity—her practice—had brought it all to a head.
But being in the field didn’t solve her problem; it had merely allowed her to diagnose it sooner. After four years of therapy, she had learned how to decrease its effects, how to compensate for and work through her condition. But she had not completely recovered.
A loud rapping noise on the side window startled her. She cleared the fogged interior glass with her forearm and saw Carla Mae standing beside the door.
“You coming in, or should we just hold the meeting without you?” With her round face bundled up, and with her shouting through the closed car window, it was hard for Lauren to tell if her new acquaintance was being friendly or antagonistic. But the slight squint of the eyes told her Carla was smiling.
Lauren took a deep breath, pulled the handle on the door, and popped it open. “I’m coming in, of course. I just didn’t want to be the first one in, you know, having to tell the story over and over again before we even got started.”
The two of them walked into the gymnasium together. Well-worn folding metal chairs had been set up across most of the wood floor. Beneath one of the basketball hoops was a long table outfitted with a black tablecloth and an embroidered, orange Neighborhood Watch emblem.
Carla took Lauren’s elbow and led her to the front of the room. Lauren, however, kept her head down, listening to the echoing chatter of the people. She could tell there was a good turnout. She felt her stomach do a somersault and rested a hand across her abdomen to steady it.
“We’ll get started in a minute,” Carla said into Lauren’s ear. “I figure you can tell us about what happened. Include everything you know. Then tell us what you can about Michael.” Carla stopped for a second. “You all right, missy? You don’t look so good.”
Lauren’s hands were clammy and she felt nauseous. She forced a smile and lifted her head to look at Carla. “Just a little hungry. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you ready for me to call the meeting to order?”
Lauren shrugged. “I guess so. I’m not good about baring my soul to strangers. You’d think I would be, doing what I do for a living.”
“Don’t think twice about it. Everyone who’s been through this can tell you it isn’t fun. But we’re not here for entertainment, we’re here for support.”
Lauren nodded. “Then I’m ready.”
Carla lifted a gavel and struck it twice on a small wood block on the table. The room quieted a bit, and she pounded the block once again. “All right, all right, settle down.” As the noise dropped to a tolerable level, Carla began, “Tonight we’re here for Dr. Lauren Chambers, whose husband, Michael, is the subject of our meeting. You’ve all had a chance to read the flyers you were given on the way in. So, I might as well just have Lauren tell you the rest.”
Lauren lifted her head—and lost her breath. Her eyes darted nervously around the room: nearly the entire gymnasium was full of people, all looking at her, waiting to hear what she had to say. She cleared her tight throat, and took a deep, calming breath.
“Thanks for coming,” she started in a weak voice. “As you know, my husband Michael, is missing.”
“Louder,” a man in the back row yelled. He had a cold stare, a bushy beard, and a black knit cap on.
Something about his eyes bothered her.
“Lauren,” Carla urged, “please continue, a little louder so everyone can hear you.”
Lauren broke her gaze from the man in the back. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I said, my husband Michael is missing.” The words were forced, as if the strain of the situation was making it difficult for her to speak. In reality, it was her anxiety over facing a gymnasium full of strangers.
“I don’t do a lot of public speaking, so I’m sorry if I’m not any good at it.” What she wanted to say is that she’d rather be in bed, hiding under the covers. “Michael went cross-country skiing in Colorado with some fraternity buddies and was supposed to be home a couple of days ago. I haven’t heard from him.” She looked over at Carla, who nodded for her to continue. “Michael is very responsible and I’m sure he’d have called if he was able to.”
“Do you think he left Colorado?” someone asked.
“I don’t know. Unfortunately, there isn’t much I know about his trip, or who he went with. I wrote it all down, but... I can’t find it.”
“So he could still be in Colorado.”
“I guess.”
“But he may not be,” Carla cut in. “He might have made it back to town, in which case we all need to be on the lookout for him. His photo is on the flyer, and a bunch of us worked into the early evening tonight to get a hundred of these notices up all around town. I’ve got another thousand of them, and I’ll need volunteers who can take them into Sacramento, El Dorado Hills, Cameron Park, Folsom, Gold River, Rancho Cordova—the whole Highway Fifty corridor between here and the airport.”