Cunningham’s rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the tile floor, but otherwise the ward was quiet. Most of the patients — those who were permitted free run of the hospital’s common areas throughout waking hours — were still in the commissary finishing dinner, or in the day hall watching TV.
A few of the hard cases lingered in their rooms, but they were so heavily sedated as to be barely sentient. Well, at least she’d persuaded Cray to consider lightening McMillan’s dosage.
At the door to Kaylie McMillan’s room, she paused and, as a standard precaution, looked through the plate- glass window before entering.
Kaylie was there.
Hanging.
Hanging from the grille of the air vent, Jesus, hanging with a rubber bedsheet around her neck…
Kaylie’s words, less than an hour earlier. Not mere paranoia. A confused confession of suicidal intent.
Cunningham snapped a glance at the orderly, who was staring past her at the sight framed in the window. “Call security,” she said, not shouting, the words precise and calm. “Tell them we have a suicide attempt. Go.”
The orderly ran for the nurses’ station.
Cunningham found the latch button, depressed it with her fist, heard the release of the steel door’s pneumatic lock.
Then she was inside, pushing the plastic chair out of her way and running for Kaylie in the far corner, Kaylie who was suspended near the steel toilet she must have mounted to reach the ceiling, her body swinging slightly, blonde head lolling to one side, her back turned, left arm drooping, and Cunningham grabbed her….
Get her down, get her down. Still a chance to save her if her neck wasn’t broken — and if she hadn’t been hanging for too long…
The noose was knotted under Kaylie’s chin. Cunningham turned Kaylie toward her, groping for the knot, and she had time to see that Kaylie’s right elbow was crooked close to her chest, her hand wedged under the rubber noose to prevent asphyxiation, and her eyes — blue eyes, pretty eyes — were open wide.
Ambush.
This one word bloomed in Cunningham’s mind, and then Kaylie’s two legs came up together, bending at the knees, and with two slippered feet she kicked the nurse squarely in the face.
Dana Cunningham was a large woman, horse-strong, but the double kick caught her off balance, and she went down in a swirl of vertigo.
Kaylie cast off the noose and dropped to the floor.
Cunningham snatched blindly at Kaylie’s ankle, seized hold, yanked the girl to one knee. Got her, she thought with a flash of triumph, before Kaylie spun sideways and hefted the plastic chair and slammed it down on Cunningham’s head.
Pain dazzled her. She forgot Kaylie, forgot everything except the orderly’s name.
The orderly was still on the phone with security when he heard a crash from the far end of the ward, then Cunningham’s cry, and he knew there was worse trouble than a suicide.
“Got a situation here,” he said into the phone. “Sounds like — oh,
He saw her sprinting along the hallway, straight at him — Kaylie McMillan in her blue cotton trousers and blouse.
Behind one of the locked doors, some other patient started a furious rant, roused to excitement by the activity in the hall.
The chief security officer was saying something over the phone, but Eddie didn’t care. He dropped the handset and sidestepped away from the desk into the middle of the corridor, blocking the exit.
“You’re not going anywhere, lady.”
He was sure he could take her. She was only, like, five foot four, hundred pounds, and the drugs she was on ought to make her sluggish, dopey.
Then he saw her face, and there was fever in her eyes, something feral and inhuman.
She ran straight at him. He tensed for a collision. He wished he wore glasses. If she went for his eyes—
At the last instant his nerve faltered just slightly, and he stepped to the side and tried to tackle her as she blew past. He got both arms around her waist, spinning her around, slamming her against a wall, then felt a hot blast of her breath on his face, and he was fumbling for her wrists, fighting to control her hands before she found a way to hurt him.
Worried about his eyes, he forgot his groin, until she reminded him with a sharp knee thrust that bent him double.
“Fuck,” he coughed. “Fuck… bitch…”
He took a swipe at her face, catching her cheek, and suddenly her fist came at him, and with a grunt of rage she shattered Eddie’s nose in a rush of bloody mucus.
Pain dropped him to his knees. He clutched his face, amazed at all the blood, humiliated and angry and too dazed to do anything about it.
Distantly he heard her mumbling a low, repetitive chant, urgent and monotonous.
“Time to go. Time to go. Time to go…”
When he looked up, he saw her retrieve something from the desk — the keys, damn — she needed the keys to unlock the ward door, which was key-operated on both sides.
As she tried each key on the ring, he lurched to his feet.
She spun, wielding the keys as weapons, their sharp teeth protruding from between her knuckles.
He thought of his eyes. “You win,” he whispered, backing off.
The next key she tested was the right one. The ward door opened, and she ran outside, slamming it behind her.
Somewhere the distressed patient was still shouting, his cries ululant and surreal.
“Eddie…?”
That was Nurse Cunningham, emerging from Kaylie’s room far down the hall, a glaze of red on her forehead.
“She’s gone,” Eddie said, finding it hard to talk while breathing through his mouth.
“Well, chase her.”
“She took the keys.”
Without the passkey he and Cunningham were locked in, and to be honest, Eddie was just as glad about that. He didn’t want to tangle with the McMillan woman again. She’d been pumped up, more than just crazy. It was like — hell, like she was on speed or something.
Cunningham registered his statement, then slumped against a wall. “Call them.”
Eddie still didn’t react, until the nurse fairly screamed the order.
Security. Damn. He still had the chief officer on the phone.
Eddie stumbled to the desk, found the handset dangling from its cord, and spoke four words into the mouthpiece:
“There’s been an escape.”
53
Cray pulled on his black slacks and shirt, then smiled at himself in the bedroom mirror.
Black. His favorite color. Camouflage for a predator.
