And Then You Were Gone

by R. J. Jacobs

  “Emily? Can you talk? Is anyone around right now?” She sounded scared, off balance.

  I’d walked outside without my shoes, and now, soles on the rough concrete, my feet were freezing. Through the window, I could see Cal tousling Andy’s fur, Andy leaning into his touch.

  “At the moment, I’m outside. Sorry about before. I didn’t mean to just show up.”

  “Emily, listen …”

  I was in deeper trouble, I thought. Detective Mason was coming to arrest me. It was only a matter of time.

  “I shouldn’t be calling you. But I just have to.”

  I switched from one foot to the other, my toes curling into the denim on my shin.

  “Between us?” she asked. “Okay? Team rules?”

  I wasn’t sure where her newfound trust was coming from. In the face of everything, it felt all the deeper and somehow humbling. “Of course, team rules. Just us.”

  A pause as she hesitated.

  “You know the burn case you asked me about? Last week?”

  “Yeah, of course. It’s on TV. We were just watching …”

  Something told me to go no further, as if raising the stakes might stop her from saying why she’d called. I guessed she’d seen what we just had. I leaned toward the front windows where I could see the dark screen.

  Through the phone, I heard the click of her door closing.

  “Emily, there’s something new. Definitely unexpected.” Her words were hurried, like a tape being played slightly too fast. “An hour ago, a burn victim woke up in ICU. He’d been in a coma for two weeks, so the nurse didn’t know what to make of what he was saying. They’d thought it was an accident—a lot of meth cases come through there. Accidents, again and again.”

  I knew this. Hospital budgets, ethical nightmares.

  “Okay …” I had no idea where she was headed.

  “Well, they thought this guy was the same. Country guy, not the usual homeless type. He wasn’t talking, obviously, and had no ID. They assumed it was drugs. Then he woke up. Emily, he told them he’d been drugged. Then set on fire.”

  My heart pounded. Cars whooshed down the road behind me. My eyes were on the back of Cal’s head, his hand on my dog.

  “Emily, he said a name—Matt. He said Matt, specifically. I mean, it’s a very common name, but what are the chances? Where are you now? Are you somewhere safe?” Her voice lowered farther, a whisper now. I pictured her face turned away from the door, elbows propped on her desk like a shield.

  Was I somewhere safe?

  What’s safe? And who’s chasing whom?

  “I’m home,” I said. “I’m fine. Allie, how did you hear—?”

  “The hospital liaison called me to report it … as a crime. She said she didn’t know if he was out of his mind or what to make of any of it. But Emily, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.”

  “What about Detective Mason? Does he know?”

  “Yeah, he’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning, if not tonight. That place is going to be jam-packed with cops very soon. Emily, just stay where you are. I want to send a patrol to keep a lookout around your house. Consider this an apology for the way I acted earlier. For acting like you were crazy.”

  I extended the phone to check the time. Just after nine.

  “Where’d you say he was?”

  “I didn’t.” She coughed. Then I could hear the fatigue in her voice. “He started in Vanderbilt’s burn unit, then transferred when he got stable. The nurse said he barely survived the twenty minutes in the ambulance.”

  I traced a half-hour circle around Vanderbilt on a map in my mind. She’d said rural; rural meant north and west. The other sides of town were developed that far out.

  I guessed. “Summit Medical?”

  I could hear her breathing. Her voice sounded stern. “Emily.”

  She’d answered for me. “Got it,” I said.

  “Emily, please, please, don’t go anywhere. Whatever is happening, this is psycho. A serial killer.”

  I looked at the time again.

  My old friend. I hoped in my heart that she’d actually meant to tip me off—I’d have done the same for her. My hand found the cold brass doorknob.

  “Thank you,” I said, before hanging up. “Allie, thank you so much.”

  “Emily, no … really—”

  But I hung up.

  Of course I was headed there.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Cal turned as I walked in.

  Everything had changed. Now I was the one at the door, the one who suddenly wanted to run.

  “What?” he asked. His gaze was steady but his hands were still shaking.

  It was almost too crazy to say.

  “You’re not going to like this,” I told him.

  He gave me a look.

  “Any of it. All of it. What I just heard, and where I’m about to go.” I grabbed my coat.

  “Tell me.”

  Summit Medical was about thirty-five minutes out with no traffic and me speeding. No time to be vague. “Well, look … thirty-five hours to go, right? I guess I better just tell you.”

  I relayed what Allie’d said, trying to line the pieces up so it didn’t sound completely nutty.

  Cal looked at me in a puzzled way that I recognized. It meant my words had come out way too fast. I tensed and released my hands a few times. “Let me say that again,” I said.

  He squinted. His mind, like mine, surely searching for connections.

  “I don’t get it. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Look, I don’t really know what I’m saying, but I know I need to go there. Like now. I know I need to find out what I can.”

  It was a nightmare that kept unfolding. I needed to peel back the next piece.

  He’ll try to stop you. The panic attack was fake.

  Allie lied.

  Cal stood. “I’ll go. I’ll drive.”

  I didn’t hear him, not really. “Sorry to kick you out. You’re welcome to stay.” I was trying for politeness; I could see no real reason he’d want to hang around my mom’s house.

  He slung his arms into his coat. “What? No, I said I’m coming.”

  “You’ll be okay? I mean, is that a good idea?” The question came out unedited, wrong. Ahead of myself, an imaginary version of me had already blown into the Breathalyzer and started off. My heart raced.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  There was no time to discuss it.

  We set off rumbling in the Volvo through back streets to the interstate on-ramp, then onto the steady, nearly trafficless straightaway off I-65 North. Stars above the skyline were tiny pinpricks above the glowing window patterns in white, yellow, and blue—offices closing down as the tourist centers came alive. The city breathing collectively at night.

  Cal had pulled down his cap. It looked like a shield around his eyes. Like blinders, focusing him. I tugged at the tips of my hair; I still wasn’t used to it being short. I leaned against the window, and the glass felt cool against my forehead. Here I was again, scheming to get into somewhere I didn’t belong.

  “I have to find a way in …”

  “Emily.” Cal patted the dashboard. “Come back.”

  I had the feeling of waking up despite already being awake.

  “Am I missing something?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I have to talk with the patient. If I’m wrong about there being a connection between him and the murders, it’ll only cost us an hour. But I have to see. Okay?”

  “And you know he’s at Summit?”

  “Approximately.” I said this with confidence.

  Cal nodded. “She told you the patient’s name?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So we’re going to the hospital where you think this patient is, even though you don’t know his name? How do you plan to find him?”

  “So many questions, Cal.”

  He looked back and forth between me and the road.

&n
bsp; “I mean, how hard can it be? I’m seventy, eighty percent sure this is the hospital, and I know that patient is in ICU. I just have to get in.” I knew my words were running over each other, again—like a wave rushing on top of another wave. “Any ideas?” I asked. “About how I do that? This time of day, it could be strange. I’ll … find a way. I mean, I have to.”

  I considered presenting myself as a psychologist, running up to my office for the old department badge in my desk drawer. But I’d sworn to myself I’d keep my professional integrity. Besides, I was already in enough trouble with the board for the DUI. I was already in enough trouble generally. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I was caught trespassing while on probation.

  “What about a diversion?” I tried again. “A fire alarm? I might be able to get ten minutes alone with him?”

  He laughed a little. It was nice to hear. “Emily, that’s what you said about getting into Matt’s. Is that from a movie or something?”

  “Just ideas.”

  He shrugged. “It wouldn’t work that way in a hospital, anyway. Aside from breaking some serious laws and getting caught on camera, an alarm like that would just throw everything into lockdown. No one in or out.”

  “I’ve got an idea: why don’t you try to walk in first?”

  Says Mr. Just-Grab-the-Laptop.

  He’s right, though.

  Right again.

  I patted the dashboard. “Won’t this thing go any faster?” I asked.

  * * *

  At the hospital, Cal backed into a space at the far end of the lot. When I shoved my door open, he didn’t move.

  “Wish me luck,” I said.

  The swoosh of Summit Medical’s doors reminded me of an airlock as I limped into the wave of overwarmed air. The interior smelled like guilt—the guilt I had over my accident. A psychiatric hospital smelled different—that was all fear. No, this sterile air smelled like a DUI; like pain, like crawling across blacktop. Like the flash of the face of the boy in the back seat of the car I’d hit—I knew he’d never fully leave my mind.

  The cane was long gone—that was from hurrying—so I made my way in the walking boot. Like every hospital, it seemed somehow both sterile and germ filled; I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my jeans.

  Behind the desk, a security guard reclined, arms folded over his bulbous midsection. A massive beard that I restrained myself from analyzing flowed down his chest. On a screen, men in green uniforms silently crashed into men in silver uniforms in blinding white snow. The guard’s fist subtly pumped as I approached.

  I swallowed, realizing I was sweating under my arms. Music played through the hallway speakers. Rod Stewart, of all people.

  Focus.

  I was going to say what, again? Right—I was going to improvise.

  The security guard rocked forward in his chair, hand resting on a clipboard. “You signed in already today?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh! God.” His eyes flicked back to the screen, at some athletic ineptitude.

  The round, institutional-style clock above him said it was nine forty-one.

  “Need to scan your driver’s license,” he muttered, opening his palm.

  Again I had the sense of moving in slow motion.

  If Mason looks at hospital records, he’ll know you were here.

  Thirty-five hours now. Soon, it wouldn’t matter.

  “Where are you headed tonight?” the guard seemed to remember to ask. Skepticism audible in his tone like a first raindrop from a dark cloud.

  A tinsel garland was strung down the hall, even though Thanksgiving was still weeks away. Chrome-colored elevator doors were polished to mirror reflectivity. They showed the other side of the hallway like a screen.

  If you go up, they’ll keep you here. It’s a trap.

  It was no trap, but I did have to lie.

  “L and D.” I smiled. Truth usually leaked out of me, but for the time being Labor and Delivery would have to do.

  He nodded. The previously pumping fist extended a thumb, pointing. I thanked him and strode past, wondering if being hobbled in the boot made me look more or less suspicious.

  In the elevator, departments were listed. I found ICU on level four and pressed up, lighting the button beneath my finger. I imagined Detective Mason behind me, maybe already driving toward the hospital, already knowing which way he would go. When the door opened, I stepped out onto the floor. Luckily, the department wasn’t massive, and the doors were partially glass.

  Between the elevator bank and the nurses’ station, the hospital smell hit me again—unmistakably medical, and full of fear and memories. Why was that, exactly? For all the advances of medicine, couldn’t someone figure out how to improve the scent of recovery? My ankle throbbed. My fingers pressed where the cuts in my palms had recently mended.

  I started down the corridor, then I froze. I could see the blonde of a nurse’s hair—alone, talking with no one, eyes apparently fixed on her computer screen. There was no excuse in my mind for being where I was. Getting on the elevator was one thing; strolling around, popping into patient rooms would be another.

  She sat still as a statue.

  Wait.

  When you stop, you think. There’s almost no way not to. Like air travel, like a straight interstate, like no TV—all your thoughts and doubts surface and demand contemplation.

  I waited for what seemed like forever.

  Really think about this. It’s too crazy.

  Be patient.

  A bead of the sweat from under my arms ran hotly down my side.

  Standing there, I tried to get a sense of how the floor was organized. Newly admitted patients seemed to be in the first few rooms, a special mark outside their door noting an intake. Allie hadn’t said the name, but from her description I was looking for a male between thirty and sixty, obviously bandaged over much of his body.

  A tone sounded, and the nurse buried her phone in her blonde hair before striding down the hall, away from me. When she disappeared into a room, I followed the hall, looking through the glass pane of each door.

  It was late but not late enough that everyone was asleep. TV light coated many of the white blankets with blue flashes. In the first room was an elderly man; in the second, a woman about my age. At the third door, I stopped. White bandages ran up an arm from fingertip to shoulder. The nurses’ station still empty, I clicked the door’s metal lever and pushed inside.

  When I pulled the door closed, the man looked up at the sudden sound. His watery eyes showed confusion at me not being in scrubs or a white coat. The dry-erase board beneath the TV listed the date, the day of the week, and his name in black marker. James Mandel. Allie had said he’d been unable to speak for months; I was sure talking with a stranger was going to seem very peculiar. We shared the soundless, softening gaze of two unfamiliar animals approaching each other. A gentle nod, slow movements. I pulled a privacy curtain around the bed and sat down in a wheelchair beside him. I eased closer.

  His eyes seemed expectant, slightly scared. Half his face was pink and damp, likely from the moisturizer his nurse had applied—healing to the point where it had begun to look like human skin again. His hairline now began halfway back on his scalp; the gray clumps that remained were as thick as a wig. In the middle of his face was his half-nose, twisted upward, scorched. His breathing was a soft murmur.

  “Mr. Mandel?”

  He nodded hesitantly.

  Machines cast shadows over his bed, humming softly. The windowsill where cards from loved ones normally sat was bare. Right—he was indigent. Who knew how long he would even be able to stay.

  The TV was muted, but the images reflected in his eyes—alternating intensities of pale light. He’d been awake for only a day but already seemed to be in the sort of half sleep that warps time in a hospital—where Judge Judy blends into Maury, into a nurse coming in, into physical therapy. Someone always knocking on your door; someone always with a pill, a question, a form
to sign. Now, I was that someone.

  The joints of the wheelchair creaked as I leaned forward.

  I touched my chest. “I’m Emily Firestone. I’m sorry to come in to see you right now. I know you’re trying to rest. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”

  He stared at me blankly. For a moment, I thought he might not reply. Maybe he’d call for a nurse, or close his eyes, finding talking impossible. “Okay,” he acknowledged finally, in a deep Tennessee drawl, surprisingly clear-cutting through all the apprehension and damage. “You the cops?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I’m here because I need your help.”

  “No, thanks.”

  I heard the flames in his voice as he spoke.

  I leaned behind the curtain, glanced at the door. No movement outside, yet. The windows were only blackness and our reflections. Below, flaxen halos in the lot where Cal waited.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”

  His head cocked, suspicious. His eyes closed contemplatively, then they popped back open like a doll’s. “Where’re you from?”

  Nowhere, I thought. “I’m just me,” I offered as a kind of explanation. “I’d wait until you had recovered more, but I don’t have much time.”

  He shrugged.

  A shadow moved under the door—the nurse passing by.

  I lowered my voice. “I understand you told the case manager about the person who attacked you. Can you tell me what you remember?”

  He looked toward the foot of his bed, over the length of his body. “The man who did this? You’re looking for him?” His voice cracked as if he was repelled by the memory’s general direction.

  “I think the person who attacked you also hurt my friends.” I wasn’t able to say the word killed. “I’m trying to stop him from hurting anyone else.” It sounded very Scooby-Doo when I put it that way, but it was basically what I was trying to do.

  He shook his head, but his eyes stayed on mine. “Don’t.”