“Malin, did you see where Mark went?” she asked.
“He was behind me,” Malin replied. “Did he not come with us?”
She had just long enough to feel a deep sense of unease before Raymond drew her attention. He tried to stand up, groaned loudly, then collapsed back onto his wheelchair.
“I need to speak to Dr. Ackerman,” he said. “That’s the man who is supposed to treat my son. Paroxysmal…Nocturnal…Hemoglobinuria…” It seemed to take every ounce of strength to spit out Daniel’s condition. “Dr. Ackerman is running an experiment…a treatment called Formula 7351. That’s why they sent us here. Where is he? Please, my son is supposed to be an outpatient here.”
“Dr. Ackerman isn’t here,” the nurse said. She moved to stand in the doorway, hands on her hips. “I’m sure we can treat your son, but…well…” She looked down at her shoes, as if reluctant to say the next part. “There is the question of payment. As you can understand, medicine is more expensive than ever.”
This seemed to agitate Raymond, and he began to thrash in his wheelchair. “You have to help us. You have to. We were sent here. They have his medical records.”
“Sir, sir, sir,” the nurse said, getting louder as Raymond worked himself up. “You must calm down.”
Elna laid a hand on Raymond’s shoulder, but he was rocking from side to side now. “It’s okay, Raymond. We have something to barter with.”
He wouldn’t hear it. Somehow, he’d reached a breaking point. “We came all this way,” he shouted, his voice cracking. “You have to help him!” He thrashed and kicked, throwing Elna’s hand off his shoulder. “You have to…!”
“Raymond, buddy, it’s fine,” Malin said, watching helplessly from the corner.
But Raymond clenched his teeth and made a strange guttural sound. Suddenly, he stretched out on the wheelchair, lifting his butt off the seat, and went rigid, his hands curling into claws. He began sliding off the chair.
“What the hell is wrong with him?” Malin said.
“Looks like a seizure,” Elna said, moving around in front of the wheelchair.
“John! John!” The nurse began shouting into the hallway. “Get in here!”
Two more nurses in blue scrubs appeared.
“What is it, Aubrey?” one of them asked. He was young, stern-faced, with a prominent scar across the bridge of his nose. As soon as he spotted Raymond, he pushed past Aubrey and waved Elna out of the way.
The first nurse, Aubrey, came up beside Elna and grabbed her arm, gently pulling her into the corner beside Malin. “Please wait right here. We’ll take care of this.”
Elna stood there, feeling sore and tired and absolutely grungy. She smelled awful and felt worse. Her hair was becoming a solid mass of grime and dirt. Still, she grabbed Malin’s hand and held tight as the nurses lifted Raymond onto the bed. His thrashing had eased, but his eyes were rolled back in his head. The nurses began checking his vitals.
“His heartbeat is very erratic,” John said. “We need to get him to ICU right now.”
Aubrey rather aggressively shoved the wheelchair out of the way as John undid the locks on the bed wheels.
“You two stay here,” he said, pointing at Malin and Elna. “Where’s the other guy who came in here with you?”
Elna shrugged.
“You don’t know where he is?” John asked, glaring, as if her nonresponse had offended him. “You brought a guy in here, and you don’t know where he is?”
“With your security guard, I assume,” Elna said.
“Aubrey, did you see where he went?” John asked the other nurse.
She shook her head.
John made an angry sound and turned away from her. “You two stay here,” he said again.
They pushed the hospital bed out of the room. Elna was tempted to follow, but she knew it would only cause a confrontation. Instead, she went to the nearest chair and sat down with a sigh, listening to the sound of the nurses moving down the hallway, rounding a corner, and fading away. In the aftermath, the silence seemed to press in on her.
“If we came all this way just for Raymond to die as soon as we get inside the building…” She shook her head. “I never should have left the island.”
“We had to try,” Malin said, taking the seat beside her. “For Daniel’s sake. For your father’s sake.”
“My father,” Elna echoed. “I have to barter for the midodrine, too. Oh gosh, what a mess.”
She heard footsteps then, low and loud, as if a hippo were coming down the hall. When she looked up, she saw Mark step into the doorway.
“There you are,” she said.
He had a strange look on his face, annoyed and possibly in pain. Had the security guard roughed him up or something? It was impossible to tell because they all looked roughed up just from the long walk to Manchester.
“Where did they take him?” Mark asked, leaving heavily against the doorframe, his hands in his coat pockets.
“Doc, what’s going on?” Malin asked. “Where were you?”
“Had a chat with the guard,” Mark said. “Where did they take Raymond?”
“To ICU,” Elna said. “Down the hall and around the corner. Did the guard try to detain you or something?”
“Yes,” Mark replied, matter-of-factly. “I’ll explain later. Why didn’t you guys go with Raymond?”
“They told us to stay here,” Elna said. “I assume they don’t want us in ICU unless we absolutely have to be there.”
“Got it.” He pushed off the doorframe. “Well, fine then. You guys stay here. That’ll probably work out better for me anyway. Don’t worry. This’ll all be over soon enough.”
And with that, he brought his hands out of his pockets and reached for the door. Just before he grabbed the door with his right hand, she saw what appeared to be a white keycard clutched between his middle fingers and ring finger. As the door swung shut, he stepped back, and she saw the pistol in his other hand, black as midnight in the gray hall.
She had a fraction of a second to register what was happening before she attempted to rush for the door, but she wasn’t nearly fast enough. It slammed shut with a bang, and as she grabbed the handle, she heard the loud click of the lock engaging.
“Wait,” Malin said, still clearly confused. “What the hell is he doing?”
There was a small rectangular window in the door, and Elna pressed her face to it. She saw Mark pulling the keycard away from a small sensor beside the door. As she hammered on the window glass, he turned and strode away from the door, slipping the keycard back into his pocket. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out some small, black object. When a small LED lit up, she realized it was a satellite radio. As he walked down the hall, he began speaking into the radio, though she couldn’t tell what he was saying.
“What the hell is he doing?” Malin asked again, louder.
Mark disappeared around a corner, and Elna shifted her gaze. She could see into the room with the young boy and his parents. The kid was aware and alert, sobbing as his parents held him. All three appeared to be staring at something in the hallway. Elna tried to see it, but she had to move all the way to one side. Even then, she only saw a pair of white sneakers on the floor.
“Oh, no,” she said, with a gasp. “Oh, God. What have we done?”
24
The world kept swimming in and out of darkness. Raymond tried to grab hold of it, to pull himself into it, but the darkness was strong. He vaguely recalled moving down a series of hallways, going up an elevator, and entering some dimly lit place. Even if he couldn’t quite enter into it, he knew the unmistakable smells of disinfectant, cleaning products, and urine. His senses were well-attuned to the smells of a hospital room.
Still, when he finally started to rise out of the darkness, he saw electric lights shining above him and for a moment, he had absolutely no idea where he was. What was this world that had electricity? He’d dreamed of such a place once.
Raymond raised his hand to rub his ey
es, and his whole body felt feverish and weak.
“Just sit still for me, sir.” A strange voice from over his shoulder. “You’re in good hands here. We’re the last fully functioning clinic north of San Francisco.”
“The clinic.” Saying it helped bring him back to reality. They’d made it! Somehow, they’d made it!
He scarcely had time to relish the moment before shouting arose from somewhere nearby. Raymond looked around. He lay in a bed surrounded by various kinds of medical equipment. Two nurses were standing over him, but he didn’t recognize either of them.
“John, what is that?” the woman said. She was gray-haired, with a shiny face and dark eyes.
“Problem with a patient maybe?” John suggested. He was young, stern, with a trimmed beard outlining a weak chin. “Stay with the patient, Aubrey. I’ll check.”
He went toward the door, but suddenly, a man burst through. Raymond saw a face that he knew well and felt relief. Curly black hair, a thick beard, heavy forehead.
“Doc,” he said. His voice was so weak, he wasn’t sure if anyone heard him.
Then he saw the gun in Mark’s hand. A big, black revolver, and it was pointed at the nurse named John.
“What are you doing?” Raymond muttered. Why did he think pointing a weapon at the staff would help them get his son’s medicine? Had the doctor lost his mind?
Mark lunged forward, shouldering John the nurse out of his way, sending him flying back into an IV stand. The sudden violence made Raymond’s mind reel, and suddenly the darkness was creeping into his vision again.
Is he attacking the medical staff? Is this really happening?
The world began swimming in and out again, the walls turning to liquid around him. His body shivered from head to toe, burning with heat, as he struggled to make sense of what was happening.
“Antibiotics and pain killers,” Mark said. He sounded like a monster. “That’s what we’re after. Where do you keep them? Tell me now.”
The last word stabbed into Raymond’s mind. He heard the other nurse, the one called Aubrey, whimper and scramble backward.
“We can’t tell you that,” John said.
In the midst of the fever heat, which filled his whole body, Raymond felt something hard and cold against his left temple. In that moment, the world swam back into view, and he saw Mark looming over him. He’d pressed the barrel of the revolver against Raymond’s head.
“You give me what I want, or I start killing patients,” he said. His deep voice rattled Raymond’s teeth. “This guy first, then I go down the hall, room by room, and just keep shooting. Don’t test me. I already took care of your security guard. Got it? Antibiotics and painkillers. I want everything you’ve got.”
Raymond looked up into Mark’s face, and his features seemed to have changed. He had the glassy eyes of a killer, the emotionless expression of a conscienceless man. It was like a mask had been removed.
“That’s your friend there,” Nurse Aubrey said. “You’re going to shoot your friend?”
“This man is no one to me,” Mark said. “He dies first. You’re next. Then I go room to room. Shall we begin?”
“No, no, wait,” John said, side-shuffling toward the door. He clearly didn’t want to turn his back on Mark. “I’ll get what you want. Please, don’t shoot anyone.”
“Hurry up!”
John fled the room, rushing down the hall. Aubrey had practically burrowed herself into a corner of the room behind a heart monitor machine.
“I hope your friend there isn’t stupid,” Mark said to her. “You guys have no idea who you’re dealing with, so if he thinks he’s going to be a hero…” He left the comment hanging.
Raymond couldn’t believe what was happening. It didn’t seem real. He wanted to protest, to plead with Mark, but he was too weak. He couldn’t get the words out. He felt the darkness returning, and he wondered if he wouldn’t just sink into it this time and stay there.
“John won’t do anything stupid,” Aubrey said. “I know this man isn’t your friend, but can I please check on him? He needs immediate care.”
“Knock yourself out.” Mark stepped away from Raymond, positioning himself near the door. “John better get back here quick. I put up with more than my fair share of nonsense on the road here. I wouldn’t mind killing a few more people today just to work out my frustration.”
“He will.” Aubrey’s voice quavered.
Raymond fixed his gaze on the ceiling and tried to calm himself by taking deep breaths. He felt the nurse putting in an IV, saw her moving about the room, grabbing medication out of a cabinet.
Mark turned on us, he thought. He didn’t feel angry, just sad, terribly sad. This was the world, after all, wasn’t it? He used us to get in here.
As Raymond hovered near the edge of the dark, he heard people approaching, the clack of shoes in the hallway, and he saw Mark taking up a position behind the door.
“It’s us. Don’t shoot. We’ve got what you wanted.” That was the nurse named John.
Mark moved back to the bed, and Raymond again felt cold metal against his temple. He wanted to reach up and bat it away, but he could barely move. The nurse who had been treating him moved into the corner behind the heart monitor.
“Bring what you’ve got into the room and set it on the floor,” Mark bellowed. “Move real careful.”
John entered the room, followed by two other staff members. They were carrying small cardboard boxes, and Raymond heard the rattle of pills and small bottles.
“This can’t be everything,” Mark said.
“No, there’s more,” John replied, with evident bitterness. He turned and strode out the door.
Raymond swooned again. The next time he rose from the darkness, he saw two faces hovering over him. One he knew. The leering, unfriendly face of Mark. The other he did not know. A small woman with blonde hair in a long, white doctor’s coat. He felt her probing at the wound on his right arm, little spikes of pain running up to his shoulder.
“Hello, Raymond,” she said. “I’m Doctor Ruzka. You’re going to be okay.”
“My arm,” Raymond said. It took a massive act of will to get the words out. “Will I lose it?”
“I don’t think so,” the doctor said. “You reached us just in time.” She seemed remarkably professional despite being only a few feet away from a lunatic with a gun.
That lunatic was our friend, Raymond thought, sadly. When did he become our enemy?
Mark moved away. Raymond heard more people in the room, more boxes, pills, and bottles, muttered angry words.
“This is much better,” Mark said. “Much better. Bring me one big box for all of it. Hurry up.”
As if to drown out these words, the doctor kept talking to Raymond. She had a nice, soothing voice, but he had to concentrate hard not to slip away again.
“I’m sure you’ve been through a lot,” she said. “It couldn’t have been easy getting here, but you did it.”
Raymond couldn’t hold on any longer. He slipped into the darkness again, swimming there for a while. A loud bang roused him some time later, though he wasn’t sure if it was the same day. He felt better. The fever had mostly left his body, and when he tried to move, he was able to raise his left hand in front of his face. Terrified voices were speaking from somewhere nearby, and Raymond quickly lowered his hand again. He shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep, hoping to overhear something that would make sense of all of this madness.
Selene sat cross-legged at the edge of the porch watching Sniffy run around the vineyard. She needed to go inside and check on George and Danny again, but she’d put it off. What was the point? Elna was never coming back. She knew that now. It couldn’t possibly have taken so long to sail down the coast to Manchester and back. They wrecked, or they’d been captured. Or worse. Nobody had said it out loud. Norman tried to be positive, and the Dulleses stayed busy, but it was in all of their eyes.
It’s time to stop waiting for them and prepare for the future,
she told herself. It’s up to you now.
Not today. She rose and called for Sniffy. She could put off giving up completely until tomorrow. One more day before she accepted the worst-case scenario. Sniffy was so fixated on sniffing the trellises that Selene had to call him a few times before he finally came running.
“You get over here,” she said, as he came padding through the vines. “You listen to Mommy, okay? She’s got a lot on her mind.”
She scooped him up, hugged him, then set him down again. As she headed inside, Sniffy raced past her and headed for his water dish in the far corner of the tasting room. As he noisily lapped water, Selene headed down the hall to the lobby, where she found George Pasqualee. He was sitting up, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders as he stared at the crackling fire in the big, stone fireplace. Norman sat in a padded chair in a corner, and he seemed to be repairing a hole in a sock with a needle and thread.
“George, how are you feeling today?” Selene asked.
“Aw, don’t worry about me,” George said, waving her off. The creaky sound of his voice alone told her everything she needed to know. He was weak, prone to passing out if he exerted himself, and listless. “Check on the kid. He needs more attention than I do.”
“Has anyone looked in on him today?” Selene asked, moving across the room.
“He was sleeping when I went in there a while ago,” Norman replied. Darning socks was apparently a new skill for him, and he cursed under his breath as something went awry. “No sign of our people?”
“No,” Selene replied, headed for the hallway to the guest rooms.
“They should’ve got back now,” Norman said. “Even if they had some delays, they should’ve got back.”
“I know, Norman. I know.” She tried not to sound annoyed as she left the lobby and headed for Danny’s room.
She cracked the door to his room and peeked inside. Immediately, a sickly smell washed over. She saw the boy curled up under a sheet facing the bedroom window.
Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 46
