to herself. But she doubted that the hole inside her would ever be filled enough.
Her mind slid then to Peter the Fireman. Too much like me, she thought. This made her sad, and unsettled, unable to appreciate that they were both damaged in like fashion, and that should have linked them. Instead she tried to picture him in the isolation room. It was the closest thing to a prison cell the hospital had, and in some ways it was worse. It existed for the sole purpose of eliminating any outside thoughts that might intrude on the patient's world. Gray, stuffed padding covered the walls. The bed was bolted to the floor. A single thin mattress and threadbare blanket. No pillow. No shoelaces. No belt. A toilet that had little water in the bowl to prevent someone from trying to drown themselves in that sad way. She didn't know if Peter would be put into a straitjacket. That would be procedure, and she guessed that Mister Evil would want to see procedure followed. For a moment she wondered how Peter was able to maintain any sanity at all, when just about everything that surrounded him was crazy. She guessed that it took a considerable force of will to constantly remind himself that he did not belong.
That would be painful, she thought.
In that regard, she realized, they were even more alike.
Lucy took a deep breath and told herself that sleep was critical. She needed to be alert in the morning. Something had driven Francis to confront the stocky man, and she didn't know what it was, but suspected it was relevant. She smiled. Francis was proving to be more helpful than she had imagined he would be.
She closed her eyes, and as she shut one dark away with another, she was suddenly aware that she could hear an odd sound, one that was familiar, but unsettling. Her eyes popped open and she recognized the noise as the soft padding sound of footsteps in the carpeted hallway outside her room. She let out a long slow whistle and realized her heart rate had increased, which she instantly told herself was an error. Footsteps weren't that unusual in the nurse trainees' dormitory. After all, there were different shifts, requiring twenty-four-hour attendance, and this caused the sleep patterns in the dormitory to be erratic.
But as she listened, she thought the footsteps paused outside her door.
She stiffened in the bed, craning her head in the direction of the faint, distinctive sound.
She told herself she was mistaken, and then thought she heard the handle of her door slowly turn.
Lucy instantly turned to the bed stand, and fumbling noisily, managed to click on the bedside lamp. Light flooded the room, and she blinked a couple of times, as her eyes adjusted. In almost the same motion, she threw herself out of the bunk, and stepped across the room, banging into a metal wastebasket, which skittered noisily across the floor. The door had a deadbolt lock, and she saw that it had not moved from the closed position. Crossing the room rapidly, Lucy pushed herself up to the solid wooden door and placed her ear against it.
She could hear nothing.
She listened for a sound. Anything that might tell her something; that someone was outside, that someone was fleeing, that she was alone, that she was not.
Silence gripped her as awfully as the noise that had plunged her into alertness.
She waited.
She let seconds slide past her, craning forward.
One minute. Perhaps two.
Through the window open behind her, she suddenly heard some voices passing by beneath. There was a laugh, then it was joined by another.
She turned back to the door. She reached up, threw the deadbolt lock, and with a sudden, swift motion, thrust the door open.
The corridor was empty.
She stepped out and peered to the right and to the left.
She was alone.
Lucy took another deep breath, letting the wind inside her lungs calm her racing heart. She shook her head. You were always alone she told herself. You are letting things get to you. The hospital was a place of unfamiliar extremes, and being surrounded by so much odd behavior and mental illness had made her jumpy. If she had something to fear, it was far less than whoever it might have been had to fear from her. This sense of bravado reassured her.
Then she retreated again into the room Short Blond had once occupied. She locked the door, and before getting back into bed, arranged the wooden chair so that it was balanced up against the door. Not as much as an additional barrier, because she doubted that would work. But propped in such a way that were the door to open, it would crash to the floor. She took the metal waste-basket and placed that on top, then added to the makeshift tower her small suitcase. She believed that the noise of it all tumbling to the floor would be enough of an early warning to rouse her, no matter how deep her sleep might be.
Chapter 23
Was that you?
'It was never me. It was always me.' 'You took risks,' I said stiffly, argumentatively. 'You could have played it safe, but you didn't, which was a mistake. I couldn't see that at first, but eventually I saw it for what it was.'
'There was much you didn't see C-Bird.'
'You're not here,' I said slowly, the tone of my words betraying the lack of confidence I felt. 'You're only a memory.'
'Not only am I here,' the Angel hissed, 'but this time I'm here for you.'
I spun about, as if I could confront the voice that harried me. But he was like a shadow, flitting from one dark corner of the room to the next, always elusive, just out of my reach. I reached down and seized an ashtray jammed with butts and twisted cigarette filters, and threw it as hard as I could at the shape. His laughter blended with an explosion of glass, as the ashtray shattered against the wall. I twisted, right, then left, trying to line him up, but the Angel moved too quickly. I shouted at him to stand still, that I wasn't scared of him, to fight fair, all of which sounded a little like a crying child in a playground trying to confront a bully. Each moment felt worse, every second that passed I felt smaller, less capable. Furious, I picked up the wooden stool and threw it hard across the room. It smashed against the frame of the door, gouging out a chunk of painted wood, then dropping to the floor with a thud.
With every second passing, I felt more and more despair. I opened my eyes, searching the room for Peter who might help, but he wasn't there. I tried to picture Lucy, Big Black, Little Black, or any of the others from the hospital, hoping to enlist someone in my memory who might stand by my side and help me fight.
I was alone, and my solitude was like a blow against my heart.
For a moment, I thought I was lost, then, through the fog of all the noise of madness past and madness to come, I heard a sound that seemed out of place. An insistent banging that seemed, well, un-right. Not exactly wrong, but something different. It took me a few moments to collect myself and understand it for what it was. Someone at my front door.
The Angel blew another chilly breath on the back of my neck.
The knocking persisted. It grew louder, like the volume being turned up.
I cautiously approached the sound.
'Who is it?' I asked. I was no longer completely certain that the noise from the outside world was any more real that the snakelike voice of the Angel, or even Peter's reassuring presence on one of his haphazard visits. Everything was blending together, a soup of confusion.
'Francis Petrel?'
'Who is it?' I repeated.
