They had driven almost three hours straight to get here, but there was no mistaking they were still in a small Southern town.
Jeffrey took an empty space right by the emergency room entrance. He didn't get out of the car, didn't turn off the ignition. He just sat there, thinking about what little information he'd been given. Lena had been involved in an explosion. She was being treated at the hospital. She had been arrested.
Those were Sara's words – Sara, who couldn't understand why Jeffrey had stood by Lena all these years, who didn't know what it was like to grow up with no one rooting for you, no one thinking you'd end up doing anything but making your parents' own stupid mistakes. If that were the case, Jeffrey would die a worthless drunk like his old man and Lena would – he didn't know what would happen to Lena. Her only saving grace was that she had rejected Hank Norton as a role model. As for the rest of the people in Lena 's life, Jeffrey had only met one of them, an ex-boyfriend, ex-felon, ex-neo-Nazi whose sorry ass Jeffrey had happily hauled back to prison.
'Hey,' Sara said, softly. 'You okay?'
'Yeah.' He turned to her. 'Listen, I know how you feel about Lena, but-'
'Keep it to myself?' she interrupted. He studied her face, trying to figure out if she was annoyed or angered by the request. Neither emotion seemed to register, and she actually managed a smile. 'Let's just get this over with and go home.'
'Good plan.' He turned off the ignition and got out of the car. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the air, and Jeffrey could see a couple of paramedics leaning against an ambulance, shooting the shit as they waited for their next call. One of them tossed Jeffrey a wave and he nodded back as he walked around to open Sara's door.
Jeffrey warned, Tm not sure how this is going to
'I can wait in the car,' she offered. 'I don't want to get in your way.'
'You're not going to get in my way,' he answered, though the thought had occurred to him. He opened the back door and took out his suit jacket. 'You can examine her. Make sure she's okay.'
Sara hesitated. He knew what she was thinking, that she hadn't felt much like a doctor lately, that with the lawsuit hanging over her head, she didn't quite trust her instincts anymore. 'I'm not really-'
Jeffrey didn't press her. 'It's okay,' he said. 'Come on.'
The glass doors slid open as they walked into the emergency department. Inside, the waiting room was empty but for an elderly man in a wheelchair and a younger woman sitting in a chair beside him. They were both wearing surgical masks, eyes trained on the television hanging from the ceiling. Jeffrey was reminded of the health warnings he'd been seeing on the news lately about yet another new strain of flu that was going to kill them all. The receptionist behind the front counter wasn't wearing a mask, but he guessed from the sour look on her face as they approached that any germ floating around would be too frightened to go near her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the woman cut him off, slapping down a clipboard on the counter and saying, 'Fill these out. Follow the yellow line to the business office to work out a payment plan, then come back here. We're running about two hours behind right now, so if you're not here for a good reason, you might as well go home and try to sleep it off.'
Jeffrey pulled out his badge and placed it on the counter beside the clipboard. 'I'm here to see Sheriff Valentine.'
The woman ran her tongue along her bottom teeth, making it look as if she had a pinch of snuff there. Finally, she gave a noisy sigh, pulled back the clipboard and turned toward her computer, where a couple of clicks brought up a hand of solitaire she'd obviously been playing.
Jeffrey looked at Sara, as if she could decipher the goings-on of the hospital. She shrugged, and he was thinking they'd been given the brush-off when the receptionist heaved another heavy sigh, then said, 'Follow the green line to the elevator, take it to the third floor, then follow the blue line to the nurses' station. They might know what you're talking about.'
He looked down. There were five painted lines under their feet. Two led down a hallway, one led toward the elevator, and the last one, a red line, led to the exit, which was less than ten feet behind him.
Jeffrey picked up his badge and tucked it back into his pocket. He let Sara walk ahead of him toward the elevator. As if by magic, the doors slid open on their approach. The floor of the car was reddish-pink from dirt, and the faint odor of Pine-Sol and vomit filled the air.
Sara stopped. 'Maybe we could take the stairs?'
'What about the blue line?' Jeffrey asked, only half-joking.
She shrugged and got on. He followed suit, pressing the three button, noticing that there was a two but not a one. They both stood there, waiting for the doors to close. Nothing happened, so he pressed the three button again. Still, nothing happened. He pressed the two button and the doors closed. Above them, machinery whirred, and the elevator moved upward.
Sara said, 'I really shouldn't be here.'
He hated that she felt so out of place. 'I want you here.' He tried to sound more convincing. 'I need you here.'
'You don't,' she insisted, 'but I appreciate the lie.'
'Sara-'
She turned around, studying the notice board screwed to the back of the elevator. 'Meth is Death!' one of the posters warned, showing before and after photos of a beautiful blonde teenager who, after a scant year on meth, turned into a soulless crone with no teeth and festering wounds erupting from her once perfect skin. A number at the bottom was scribbled over, a crude drawing of a joint obscuring the last two digits. Another poster outlining the steps to performing CPR took up most of the remaining space. This one was vandalized with the usual graffiti you found in spaces like this: dirty limericks, phone numbers for loose women, and messages for various people to go fuck themselves.
Finally, the elevator doors groaned open and a bell dinged. A dimly lit hallway greeted them, and Jeffrey guessed the lights had been turned off so that patients could sleep. The emergency exit sign across from the elevator gave off a warm red glow, pointing toward a doorway at the very end of the hall. Jeffrey glanced around, holding the elevator doors open, wondering if they were on the wrong floor.
'There's the stripe,' Sara whispered, indicating the single blue line on the floor. Jeffrey saw that it went to the right, past the emergency stairway and around the corner. He looked up the hall to the left, but all he could see were more patients' rooms and another exit sign.
They followed the painted line to the nurses' station. He realized as soon as they got there that the hallway circled around and that they could have just as easily taken a left and gotten to the same place.
'This is why people hate hospitals,' Jeffrey told Sara, keeping his voice low. 'If they can't make you feel sicker, they drive you crazy.'
Sara rolled her eyes, and Jeffrey remembered the first time he'd told Sara that he hated hospitals. Her response had been almost automatic:
The nurses' station was oblong, open at both ends, and packed to the gills with charts and colored sheets of paper. There was one desk with a lamp casting a harsh light over the blotter. A newspaper was folded to the crossword, some of the squares filled in. Jeffrey guessed from the half- eaten pack of crackers beside an open can of Diet Coke that whoever had been sitting there must've been called away mid-snack.
