by Z. Rider
Then it’s easy.
The door swings wide. Fresh air sweeps into my lungs. I knuckle sweat out of my eye and look up the corridor they’d pointed him toward.
I can’t take those two guys, but I can hope they drop him off somewhere.
I’ll get him the fuck out of here somehow.
The halls are silent.
Doors swing open to empty rooms.
The halls twist and turn back on each other. I think I’ve been through this section before. I’m not sure. I hate this fucking place. The lights are dimmed, like a hospital in the middle of the night. Ahead though, finally, is a brighter glow, voices.
A nurses’ station.
I’m shaking as I approach it, but I try to look nonchalant.
It’s two nurses, a younger one with hair that curves in toward her jaw, and an older one with glasses that flash in the lights as she turns her head toward me. The lenses are so bright I can’t see her eyes behind them.
Her lips purse.
“Um, I’m looking for someone,” I say.
“What are you doing out?”
“I’m looking for my friend. I just want to find my friend and go. We’ve been here long enough.”
The younger one comes around the counter, holding her hand out like she’s going to take my elbow. “Come on, let’s—”
As soon as I jerk away from her grip, I realize that’s not the right move, and I try to cover it up, make it look like I was just stepping aside. But I also pull my elbow against my ribs and clutch it.
“I’m just looking for someone,” I say. “I’ll keep looking.” I start to walk.
The younger one says to the older, “Should I—?”
I hear the bump of heavy plastic as a phone receiver is picked up. I move my feet faster. The older one says, “Code Yellow,” in the same flat tone A.J. had said You’re bleeding.
I’m trying to not look like I’m trying to run, but I want to get the fuck out of there. This was a mistake. I need to get to the doors at the end of the corridor. Maybe there’ll be darkness on the other side. I can hide in darkness.
I’m four feet from the doors when they flip open. Orderlies charge through—maybe the same ones, maybe different ones. They all look the same—they’re all wide white cotton chests and thick heads. I turn and pick up my feet to run, but not soon enough. My arm is yanked. My legs come out from under me. My breath huffs out when my stomach smacks against the floor.
I yell as my arm is torqued behind my back.
White shoes come toward me—beige support hose hugging thick ankles. I yell again.
The pinprick goes in anyway, and then I’m back in the darkness.
17
Never Again
“I just want to get out.” I’m in a dark-paneled office, and it’s still night outside the windows. They haven’t packed the place up yet.
My God, does it never end?
I clasp my fingers in my lap, feeling small in a high-backed chair. The desk in front of me is a massive piece of work, its deep wood grain shining with polish. The doctor taps the end of his pen against the arm of his chair—he’s sat back in it, his other hand on his thigh. He’s staring at me.
“When you get out, what will you do?” he asks.
I’ll get rid of the note. Get rid of the fucking note before A.J. sees it. It’s tucked into that W.E.B. Griffin paperback he bought at Books-A-Million, the one he’s going to read on the plane. I’d wanted him to find it when he was in the air, when he couldn’t come over or call me or even shoot me an e-mail saying, Jesus, Nate, what the fuck?, but now I don’t want him to ever find out I wrote that it’d be all right if he didn’t come back. It was a stupid thing to say.
I still need to find him. I’m not leaving here without him. I tell the doctor, “We’re going to go hang out on the river. A.J.’s leaving tomorrow. We’re going to stay up the rest of the night and spend time at the river before he has to go.”
The doctor sets the pen down and leans forward, steepling his fingers.
His eyes are black, and he tilts his head a little, like a crow studying a worm. The blue-shaded lamp makes him pale, makes his dark hair glossy like feathers.
“Just tell me how to get out,” I say quietly.
He tilts his head toward a door while he says, “You know the way.”
“Thank you.” I rise. He watches me, his head turning with me. Those sharp, onyx eyes. The door is in the wall behind him. His chair creaks as he tracks my movements.
I put my hand against the thick, scratched wood of the door, reminded for the second time of the scarred-up doors at Gilchrest Elementary. This one even feels like the one that led to that boys’ room where Tug Wilson popped me in the nose. I push, and the light that comes through is the same quality as classroom mornings when the skies were gray with storm clouds.
“No,” says a girl’s voice. “Uhn-uh. Never again.”
I shuffle into the room, my hand still on the door.
“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Mr. Basketball is saying. “You only pissed your pants a little. Just a thimble full.” He pinches his thumb and finger together in front of his perfect white smile.
She hits him in the chest with her coat. “You owe me a really nice night out after this. I’m thinking Le Luxe, then that new club in—”
“Luxe? I’d need to mortgage my kidney to afford that place!”
Empty bins are strewn over a long table, piled haphazardly against a wall. Kate’s boyfriend digs his wallet and phone from one, stuffs them in his coat pockets, as he says, “How about pizza and an Imax?”
One bin sits away from the others, its lid still clamped on. When I move toward it, Kate notices me and says, “So you survived too, huh?” She settles her scarf around her neck, tugs her hair out from under it.
“Yeah, I guess.” I’ve reached that one bin, and I slide it toward me. I know what it’s going to say. Looking is just a formality.
There it is, my own birth date and initials.
“Have you seen the guy I came in with?”
“Uhn-uh. Who’d you come in with again?” She drags her sparkly hat from a coat pocket. “God, I’m exhausted.”
“I’m starving,” her boyfriend says.
“Figures.”
“Are there any other unopened tubs?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “There were just our two and that one when we got here. Are you okay?”
I scrub my face with the side of my hand, looking around at all the popped lids.
“Maybe he got out earlier,” she says. “He’s probably outside getting some air.”
“Ready?” Mr. Basketball says.
She pats her pockets, finds gloves stuffed in one. “Yeah, I’m set. Are we going for burgers?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He holds the exit open. Cold air sweeps in, and with it a rumbling of engines.
“Don’t dawdle,” the boyfriend calls back to me. “They’re warming up the forklifts.” The door starts to close, but Kate catches it and leans in to tell me there’s no one outside. “He’ll probably be out in a minute. They must have misplaced his stuff. Take care, okay?”
She has a smear of fake blood on her cheek.
Then she’s gone.
I start going through lids, tossing them under the table as I reject one after another, looking for March 29th. My chest feels quivery. My fingers vibrate. I chuck another lid onto a sliding pile and grab another. No. No. No.
The idling engines rumble beyond the room’s walls.
I’m running out of time.
He’s still fucking in there.
I have to get him out.
18
You’re Not to Be Back Here
The door I came through says No Entry in red stick-on letters.
High in the room’s corners, glossy camera eyes watch me.
I wipe my palms on my pajama bottoms. My heart’s galloping. My clothes and phone and everything I need are in the bin on the table.
But my friend is still stuck in this place.
He’d never leave me.
I can’t leave him.
I charge the door, throwing my hands against it—expecting it to be locked.
I feel like I’ve spent the whole night banging on things.
It plows open.
I don’t expect the doctor to be sitting at his desk—why would he be: he’s done for the night. But I do expect the doctor’s office to still be there. Only it’s not.
A nurse—the older one from the nurse’s station—strides efficiently down the corridor toward me.
“You’re not to be back here.” Her rubber soles squeak on the buffed floor.
“I’m not leaving without him.” It’s just her, none of the goons. She’ll have to walk all the way back up the hall to the glow of her station if she wants to pick up the phone and call them.
She starts to tell me something, and I push past her, knocking her aside.
“Mr. Janowski! What did the sign say?”
I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck what their fucking signs say. I’m finding A.J., and I’m getting him the fuck out of here.
In the back of my head, I can hear the frantic beat of time: TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK
(Bookend II)
“What happened to your arm?” she says, awkward in the day room with the sunshine hot against her legs. A man in a lumpy eighties tracksuit makes seal noises by the doors at the far end, and she finds it hard to not keep looking in his direction. She drags her attention back to her brother. He hasn’t spoken to her yet this visit, but she’ll keep trying until half past. Then she’s leaving.
The plastic seat squeaks as Nate rocks on it. He’s focused on a point on the floor six feet in front of the house shoes Mom and Dad brought him. They’re big and hard-soled and a navy-blue corduroy. Boat slippers.
He curls his fingers around the bandage on his wrist. “I broke a window.”
“Dr. Dibbock said you stabbed yourself with a pen you weren’t supposed to have.”
Nate shakes his head, still rocking. Tension winds inside her. Her jaw twitches, and she presses her fingers to it to get it to stop.
He says, “You see what he’s doing. Lying to make me sound crazy.”
Oh boy, you’re doing a fine job of that yourself, kid. She clutches her bag, knees pushed together. Back stiff.
“I fucking know what I did,” he says to the floor, his chair going creak creak as he rocks. “It was a window, when they were trying to put the straitjacket on me.”
She blows air over her lip, sending a lock of hair fluttering from her forehead.
“Can I see your wrist?” she says finally.
He tucks his hand behind his back, still rocking.
So that’s that.
He’s dead, you know, she wants to say. She wants to grab her brother by the shoulders and scream it. Get him to wake up and get that vital piece of information.
So he can get the fuck out of here. Easy as that! Just say the fucking words: A.J. was killed overseas.
“Why pens?” she asks. “Dr. Dibbock says they keep finding them stuffed under your—”
“Dr. Dibbock says,” he says. “He also keeps saying A.J.’s dead.”
Well there. There’s that much. “Why don’t you believe him?”
“Because I see him.” His fingers make claws. He doesn’t know what to do with the frustration, she can tell, and he turns his hand and clamps it down on his knee. “I talk to him. I keep trying to get him out, but they won’t let him go. They put a fucking bomb in him. I have to get him out.”
She jerks her chin toward the window, heat welling in her eyes. She doesn’t want to think about that again. It wasn’t in him. But he’s close at least. Not in him, just under the floor he stepped on while his unit was securing an area.
Nate’s jaw is hard, his eyes gray flints. He’s still staring at the goddamned floor. For once that works in her favor though; she thumbs a tear quickly away.
Minutes pass. She watches a nurse come through and bend to speak to a fly-haired old woman who’s murmuring to herself. Like Nate, the woman nods without eye contact.
This is her brother’s life, the people he’s around now. She closes her eyes, her fingers pressed to her eyelids. She’s talking the tears back before they can spill.
She remembers the first time Nate had A.J. over for a sleepover. She’d spied on the two of them, peeking through the spindles of the railing on the landing. Who was this boy her geeky brother had brought home? She remembers her nightdress flying out behind her as she thudded back to her own room, so she could slam her door and pretend she hadn’t been watching. Why would I want to spy on you two losers anyway?!
The second hand on the clock above the door sweeps through a minute, then another.
“What else have you been up to?” she tries, but he’s gone again. There’s just the creak of his chair.
“Well,” she says as the second hand sweeps past the twelve again. She finds the strap on her handbag, pushes her heels against the floor, ready to rise.
“He loved you, you know,” he says to the floor, picking at the gauze on his wrist.
She steels herself. She can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep being fucking reminded of this. Can we just bury A.J. Wexel, please? I wanted him to come back as much as you did. Another hot tear wells. She whisks it away with the heel of her hand, sucks a sniffle back.
“Mom and Dad’ll be by tomorrow,” she manages, her voice thicker than she’d like. “Give them my love, okay? I have to work, so I won’t see them for supper.”
He rocks—no indication of whether he’s heard or not.
She puts a hand on his head and bends to kiss him. His scalp is warm, his hair clean if not brushed. At least he talked today. At least he was him today. Sometimes… Sometimes he’s A.J., and that’s even fucking harder.
She pulls her hand into her sleeve and wipes her eye. As she starts to turn away, a tug at the strap of her handbag pulls her back.
When she looks, he’s clutching it with one hand. In the palm of his other, he has a slip of paper. He meets her eyes for the shortest of seconds before tugging again.
She doesn’t know why, but she glances around to see if anyone’s watching. When she looks back, it’s in time to see his hand withdraw from the opening in her purse, empty.
He shoves the hand that had the paper under his leg, rocking. “Get A.J. out,” he says.
He’s looking at the floor again, but there’s a restless tension to it this time. An anticipation. He risks another quick look at her.
She turns for the door. Her steps are stiff, awkward. She clasps the strap of her purse, up by her shoulder, with both hands.
The nurse who spoke to the old woman looks at her.
She nods, her head like a hinge that hasn’t moved in a long time, and she averts her eyes. Behind her, Nate’s chair keeps creaking.
She has to let go of the purse to open the door that leads out of the day room. An orderly backs up a step with a little bow of his head, making room for her to pass. He catches the door from her and sails through.
She looks back at Nate—chewing his nails, still rocking. Still staring at nothing.
Looking down, she widens the opening of her purse with the tips of her fingers. The scrap of paper is pale in the shadows of clutter and junk. She teases it out.
The paper’s warm from his hand. It’s creased and wrinkled. She turns it over.
Breath gutters in her throat.
It’s A.J., jumping off the rocks at Horseshoe Falls.
When she looks up with her lips parted in question, Nate is standing in the window overlooking the hallway. Their eyes meet. Then his dart past her shoulder, widening. She turns.
“How’d it go?” Dr. Dibbock says.
“Oh—he talked a bit.”
“Good, good. What’ve you got there?”
Before she realizes it, she’s let him take the paper. It’s the size of those game cards Nate loved. It
has numbers in circles—values and points. The caption at the top reads Freedom.
“Yes, we keep finding these,” Dibbock says.
A tapping draws her to look toward the window. Nate’s thumping the glass with a finger, as if he’s both trying to get her attention and point at the paper he gave her.
“He does a lot of them?” She finds it hard to drag her eyes back to Dibbock.
“We’d prefer he do them in crayon. For reasons he’s already made obvious…”
Nate yells something through the glass, flattening his hand against it. The bandage is frazzled where it hugs his wrist, its edges picked apart.
“Is it always A.J.?” she asks.
Nate bangs the glass with the side of his fist.
“No, no. He has quite an imagination.”
Orderlies jog down the hall. Dr. Dibbock opens the folder under his arm, starts to slide the card inside.
Nate screams. Both fists hitting the glass.
Delia darts her hand out before Dibbock can shut the folder again. “Could I keep that one? He did give it to me.”
The orderlies’ boots squeak on the floor. The door bangs against the corridor wall. From the corner of her eye, she sees one of the men grab Nate.
Dibbock regards the card for a second before shrugging a little and letting her take it.
“Thank you.” Holding her purse open with tented fingers, she turns the card toward the window, where the orderlies have Nate by his arms and shoulders and are trying to hold him back—but he’s watching. He sees. He does see as she slips the card into the safety of her bag.
She pats it: safe and sound.
His shoulders relax. He stretches an arm like he means to touch her through the glass. There’s a sense that the storm has passed, and he doesn’t seem to notice the nurse sliding the needle into his arm. He stares at Delia, his chest heaving, until his weight sags in the orderlies’ arms.
Dibbock is still there, watching the scene beyond the window. When he senses her looking at him, his regard drops to her. There’s something intent about his stare. Aloof yet curious. She feels like a bug suddenly. With half a nod, she tugs the purse strap up her shoulder before ducking her head and starting down the hallway, her eyes darting at doors and corners, as if she expects someone to stop her.
