Ramola calls out to Dr. Awolesi, “Where are we going? Which way?”
The guard and the doctor slowly make their way down the stairs. Their three-legged race is awkward and out of rhythm.
The boy remains on the landing between floors, whimpering and belly-crawling in aimless circles. The woman crash-lands on her knees next to the boy and rains two-fisted punches down on his head and back. She spits in his face and pulls his hair, lifting his head off the platform. He squeals a younger child’s squeal, one of heartbreaking shock and despair at the physical realization of the pain and horror of the real world.
Natalie yells, “Fucking where? Come on! We need to go!” but she doesn’t move to open the door herself.
Dr. Awolesi is at the base of the stairs and says, “Take a right, follow the main hallway to the other side of the hospital. Central Street exit. We’re right behind you. Go.”
Holding his head up, the woman leans in, spits in the boy’s face, and bites his ear. He screams and writhes, twisting out from underneath her. He briefly holds a hand over his ear before launching shoulder-first into her chest, bending her backward, her legs pinned under her, driving her into the stairs. The woman arches her back, thrusting out her torso, but then sags, slides, and pools at the bottom of the stairs. The boy blurs with his own attack. The uninhibited ferocity is breathtaking. He punches her head repeatedly, hopping into the air with each strike. He grabs and pulls and shakes her, and he alternates those terrible, full-body-weight strikes with bites of her arms and shoulders and face, latching onto the same area with two quick strikes before moving to the next and the next. There’s no apparent strategy or reason or order to the violence beyond the existence and the instance of the acts themselves.
Ramola opens the door to the first floor and leads Natalie by the hand.
Standing within the ground-floor elevator vestibule is an EMT, the name of his ambulance service written in script across the chest of his white button-down shirt and the company crest patch on his right shoulder. He’s a lanky man, built like a puppet with extra joints and hinges in his limbs, with shaggy brown hair and facial features crowded together but not in a wholly displeasing way. Looking at Natalie and Ramola but shouting into his lapel radio, “This is her? The pregnant one, right?” and then he looks past Ramola and says, “Hey, are you Natalie?” sounding more stern than he looks, like a new mathematics teacher students instinctually know they do not want to piss off.
“That’s me.”
Any air of authority or expertise he has dissipates as he exhales and deep-knee bends with a celebratory fist pump. “Thank Christ. I’m your ride.” He shakes the hair out of his face and strides into the main thoroughfare running the length of the hospital from the ER entrance across to Central Street on the opposite side of the structure. Staff, security, and two soldiers in camouflage fatigues wash past him without regard. He settles against the far wall, holds up his hands at the height of his head and points down the hallway to their right, his long index fingers flipping up and down, a human directional signal.
Dr. Awolesi and Stephen spill out of the stairwell door. Stephen is walking under his own power, but gingerly, as though each step is a new experience in pain. If he has suffered a wound or physical trauma beyond the electric shock, none are visible. He is not in possession of his Taser gun.
Dr. Awolesi says, “Where did the driver go?” She spies the EMT in the hallway and rolls her eyes and shakes her head. She says to the group, “Quickly now, or they won’t let you out.”
Everyone moves at once. Ramola picks up her pace so as not to be in the rear this time, pulling on Natalie’s arm a little, goosing her forward. Within the wider space of the main hallway is a cacophony of shouts, cries, barked orders and questions, crackling radios, individual voices. Dr. Awolesi sprints ahead. The EMT still points and Ramola can’t help but briefly imagine him as the Wizard of Oz Scarecrow ineffectually directing Yellow Brick Road traffic. He flashes Ramola a crooked smile, perhaps a traitorous one born of shock or nerves, or one that speaks to incompetence and incongruity given the graveness of their situation, or it is a wholly appropriate and commiserative Can you believe this bullshit?
There is no parsing which comes first; the sights and sounds are simultaneous. The EMT’s head jerks to Ramola’s right and toward a garish splash of blood and gray matter scarring the wall. The gunshot crack is followed by a second, or is it a third? He accordions into a boneless, grotesque collapse, his body pooling on the tile. What a world, what a world.
More gunshots, and Ramola instinctively ducks but then straightens, shielding Natalie as much as she can with her slight frame. They drift up against the wall. Dr. Awolesi rushes to the aid of the EMT. The fire alarm changes its rhythm and pattern, from two short blasts to a single protracted one with a heavier weight of silence between, the length of which is almost impossible to anticipate.
A man jogs from the direction of the ER waiting area, indiscriminately firing a pistol. One bullet burrows into the drywall a foot or so above Natalie’s head. Behind him, other people are motionless, huddled or splayed on the tile floor, and Ramola cannot tell if they’re taking cover or have been shot. The man is shaved bald, older, and wears a tight T-shirt that shows off his considerable upper-body musculature. His forward movement slows and he weaves and wavers, weight shifting left and right randomly, as though he’s fighting against hurricane-force winds.
