“Clayton, I think they’re in danger now. Your daughter, and your granddaughter. You need to help me while you still can.”
He studied my face. “You seem like a nice man. I’m glad she found someone like you.”
“You need to tell me what happened.”
He took a deep breath, as though steeling himself for a coming task. “I can see her now,” he said. “Staying away won’t protect her now.” He swallowed. “Take me to her. Take me to my daughter. Let me say goodbye to her. Take me to her, and I’ll tell you everything. It’s time.”
“I can’t take you out of here,” I said. “You’re all hooked up here. If I take you out of here, you’ll die.”
“I’m going to die anyway,” Clayton said. “My clothes, they’re in the closet over there. Get them.”
I started for the closet, then stopped. “Even if I wanted to, they’re not going to let you leave the hospital.”
Clayton waved me over closer to him, reached out and grabbed my arm, his grip firm and resolute. “She’s a monster,” he said. “There’s nothing she won’t do to get what she wants. For years, I’ve lived in fear of her, did what she wanted, scared to death of what she might do next. But what do I have to fear anymore? What can she do to me? I’ve so little time left, maybe, with what I have, I can save my Cynthia, and Grace. There are no limits to what Enid might do.”
“She won’t be doing anything now,” I said. “Not with Vince watching her.”
Clayton squinted at me. “Did you go to the house? Knock on the door?”
I nodded.
“And she answered it?”
I nodded again.
“Did she seem afraid?”
I shrugged. “Not particularly.”
“Two big men, coming to her door, and she’s not afraid. Didn’t that seem odd?”
Another shrug. “Maybe. I suppose.”
Clayton said, “You didn’t look under the blanket, did you?”
42
I got out my cell again, called Vince’s. “Come on,” I said, feeling awash in anxiety. I couldn’t raise Cynthia, and now I was panicking that something had happened to a guy who only yesterday I would have viewed as a common thug.
“Is he there?” Clayton said, moving his legs over to the edge of the bed.
“No,” I said. After six rings, it went to voicemail. I didn’t bother to leave a message. “I need to get back over there.”
“Give me a minute,” he said, inching his butt closer to the edge.
I went over to the closet, found a pair of pants, a shirt, and a light jacket. “You need help?” I asked, laying the clothes out on the bed next to him.
“I’m okay,” he said. He seemed a bit winded, caught his breath, and said, “Did you see some socks and underwear in there?”
I took another look in the closet, found nothing, then checked the bottom cabinet of the bedside table. “In here,” I said, taking out the clothes and handing them over.
He was ready to stand up next to the bed, but if he was going to leave the room, he was going to have to disengage himself from the IV. He picked away at the tape, pulled the tube from his arm.
“You sure about this?” I said.
He nodded, gave me a weak smile. “If there’s a chance to see Cynthia, I’ll find the strength.”
“What’s going on in here?”
We both turned our heads to the door. A nurse was standing there, a slender black woman, mid-forties, a look of wonderment on her face.
“Mr. Sloan, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
He had just dropped his pajama bottoms and was standing before her, bareass naked. His legs were white and spindly, his genitals shrunken away to almost nothing.
“Getting dressed,” he said. “What’s it look like?”
“Who are you?” she asked, turning on me.
“His son-in-law,” I said.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” she said. “Don’t you know that visiting hours are long over?”
“I just got into town,” I said. “I needed to see my father-in-law right away.”
“You’re going to have to leave right now,” she told me. “And you get back into bed, Mr. Sloan.” She was at the foot of the bed now, saw the disconnected IV. “For heaven’s sake,” she said. “What have you done?”
“I’m checking out,” Clayton said. Looking at him, in his condition, I couldn’t help but think the words held a double meaning. He steadied himself against me as he bent down to draw his white boxers up over his legs.
“That’s exactly what you’ll be doing if you don’t get hooked up to that again,” the nurse said. “This is absolutely out of the question. Am I going to have to call your doctor in the middle of the night?”
“Do what you have to do,” he said to her.
“My first call’s going to be to security,” she said, and turned on her rubber-soled shoes and sprinted from the room.
“I know this is a lot to ask,” I said, “but you’re going to have to hurry. I’m going to see if I can find a wheelchair.”
I went into the hall, spotted a vacant chair up by the nurses’ station. I ran up to get it, noticed our nurse on the phone. She finished her call, saw me heading back to Clayton’s room pushing the empty chair.
She ran over, grabbed hold of it with one hand and my arm with the other. “Sir,” she said, lowering her voice so as not to wake the other patients, but maintaining her authority, “you cannot take that man out of this hospital.”
“He wants to leave,” I said.
“Then he must not be thinking too clearly,” she said. “And if he can’t, then you have to do it for him.”
I shook her hand off. “This is something he has to do.”
“Says you?”
“Says him.” Now I lowered my voice and became very serious. “This may be the last chance he ever has to see his daughter. And his granddaughter.”
“If he wants to see them, he can have them visit him right here,” she countered. “We could even bend the rules some about visiting hours if that’s a problem.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Ready,” said Clayton. He had made it to the door of his room. He’d slipped on his shoes without socks, and had not yet buttoned up his shirt, but his jacket was on, and he appeared to have run his fingers through his hair. He looked like an aged homeless person.
The nurse wasn’t giving up. She let go of the chair and went up to Clayton, got right in his face. “You cannot leave here, Mr. Sloan. You need to be discharged by your physician, Dr. Vestry, and I can assure you he would not be allowing this to happen. I have a call in to him right now.”
I brought the chair up so Clayton could drop himself into it. I spun him around and headed for the elevator.
The nurse ran back to her station, grabbed the phone, said, “Security! I said I needed you up here now!”
The elevator doors parted and I wheeled Clayton in, hit the button for the first floor, and watched the nurse glare at us until the doors slid shut.
“When the door opens,” I told Clayton calmly, “I’m going to be pushing you out of here like a bat out of hell.”
He said nothing but wrapped his fingers around the arms of the chair, squeezed. I wished it had a seat belt.
The doors opened, and there was about fifty feet of hall separating me from the emergency room doors and
