A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  “Got it.”

  “But you’ll probably die at the hands of an inmate first.”

  “Yup. Can I go in?” I point to the entrance.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but can we speed this up?”

  He blinks at me and then suddenly raises his gun.

  If he orders me away, I won’t get a second chance—I’m positive Chase will physically restrain me from even trying.

  “You really are nuts!” he says.

  “You have no idea.”

  I hear running footsteps coming up the drive. Chase shouting “Stop!” as the guard moves out several steps and orders:

  “Proceed to the door. Upon reaching the door, press the lever until it opens and proceed through. Failure to fully—”

  I stride to the door and shove it open.

  Inside, I turn just as Chase reaches the entrance. His stricken face is the last thing I see before the door falls shut, locking me in.

  8:12 P.M.

  * * *

  I take in what was once the waiting area. The ugly pattern of the green and blue seats, which look a lot like the ones in the Naperville ER and my shrink’s waiting room, as though they all ordered from the same catalog. The cushions are torn, two of the seats upended. The TV on the wall hangs at an angle, as though it could fall at any time. And like everyone here, it’s cracked.

  Ambient lighting shines near the top of the room, and I realize that the windows have only been boarded up most of the way, leaving a few inches of light to drift inside.

  The laminate floor is streaked—I don’t want to know with what, but based on the smell, I could take a guess.

  I move toward the door near the check-in desk—and then falter when a woman drifts over in a rolling chair and smiles.

  “Can I help you?” she says. Her skin is ashen, her hair matted to her head as though she’s slept on it for days, the corners of her mouth cracked and bloody. She’s wearing a My Little Pony sweatshirt.

  “Uhh . . . yes,” I say. “Can I come in?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s for patients and authorized personnel only.” She smiles.

  She’s missing most of her teeth.

  I glance at the open door to the emergency room bays and try again.

  “I’m trying to find the staff lounge.”

  “I’m sorry, that lounge is off-limits to patients,” she says slowly and carefully, as though she just learned that line.

  “Uh-huh,” I murmur, looking around.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with a crazy, though it’s admittedly been a while. The last one was six months ago—a guy waving around a gun at a truck stop that was convinced everyone else there was a lizard.

  A scream issues from down the hall. A man’s shout. The scream again.

  I lick my lips, unnerved. Make a mental note to avoid that wing.

  I smile slightly, back up, and then stride for the doorway.

  “No, no no!” the woman cries, leaping out of her chair. She’s barely five feet tall, but comes at me like an attack Chihuahua.

  I back away, hands up.

  “I have pizza?” I say.

  “Sorry, you’ll have to go around back,” she says, straightening her stance a few feet from me.

  I glance at her shirt. “I have ponies!”

  She stops.

  “You do?”

  The question is so innocent, I wonder what her name is, who she was before this. She’s got to be forty—is she someone’s mom, wife, sister? Was she a postal worker, a preschool teacher?

  She clasps her hands, beside herself.

  “Three of them. But I need to see where the lounge is so I can bring them in. Okay?”

  I sidle past her and she watches me go as though she’s just met Britney Spears.

  “Which way was it, by the way?” I ask.

  She shrugs happily.

  I move swiftly past several examination rooms, purposefully not looking inside them. Covering my mask with my hand against the smell. There’s no lounge here, and definitely not one with lockers. It’s got to be in the main building.

  I move through the permanently open electric doors toward the hallway—and then stop.

  It’s crowded with people. Some of them milling, some sitting against the wall. Others sleeping—or dead—in the middle of the floor.

  I search for a different route to the main building, but there isn’t one.

  I go back, stare down the corridor, hoping some of them have moved.

  What am I doing?

  What if I’m not immune? If I get sick, I stand to infect Chase, the girls.

  I wonder if it hurts, going insane. If you know that it’s happening.

  I’ve thought several times in my life that I was, as I spiraled into obsessive rumination. I wonder if it’s like that.

  Because if it is, if everyone’s crazy is their own brand of daily madness just a thousand times worse . . . I wouldn’t live through it. Wouldn’t want to. And I wonder if that’s why they’re here, without food, water, or sanitation. Because languishing with your demons for too long is inhumane, too.

  For the first time since pushing my way through that door, I’m scared. Am having trouble catching my breath. Want to take off my mask so I can breathe, but don’t dare. I swallow convulsively as I walk off, trying to get it together.

  I glance at my watch. 8:21.

  I start toward the hall and balk. Walk off again, and come back.

  They’re not that different from you on your worst days.

  Technically, you have the same virus in your blood, just in a different order.

  Or however that works.

  Julie.

  Lauren.

  Truly.

  I push my way into the hall. Weave past people in scrubs, jeans, a suit, as a few of them pick at my hair and clothes. Step carefully over one person and then another, hoping no one grabs me by the ankle.

  “Hi,” a young man says, looking at me.

  I nod as though we were passing on a street.

  “Wanna be my girlfriend?” he asks.

  I keep walking.

  “Hey,” he shouts, and then he screams the bloodcurdling cry I heard earlier, at which I push through the people in front of me and trip over someone on the floor and go sprawling on top of them.

  “Sorry,” I say, until I realize the body’s cold.

  And then I’m up and hurtling myself out of the hallway toward the waiting area of the next wing. Dashing to the closest thing to a nurses’ station I can find. Scanning the room numbers in the dim light and following the rail along the wall.

  Someone’s shouting. No fewer than four naked people are fighting on the floor.

  At least I think they’re fighting.

  There, across the hall: STAFF LOUNGE.

  I bolt for it, grasp the door handle, but before I can turn it someone grabs me from behind.

  “That’s my room!” he says, tossing me into the opposite wall.

  My vision speckles as I try to suck in a breath. Panicking as I wait for my lungs to obey.

  I roll over and look up at one of the tallest men I’ve ever met and know I won’t survive a beating from him—that anything I do even in self-defense is gonna hurt. Especially given that his face looks like it’s taken twenty punches today alone without a pain receptor ever registering a complaint.

  “You get away from MY ROOM!” he roars.

  “Okay,” I say, scooching back on the floor, hand out in front of me.

  “MY ROOM!”

  “Did you hear there’s pizza at reception?”

  He looks at me like I’m nuts.

  It was worth a try.

  I push up, slowly, noting the weird angle of his leg. Wonder if it’s broken and he’s so far gone he has no idea.

  Getting to my feet, I start the other direction. Glance back. “If you don’t catch me, I’m taking your room!”

  He stares at me for a
n instant, and then he’s lumbering after me.

  I bolt back down the hall past a long sink that looks like a trough. A hose rigged above it drips water from the valve.

  I slow a little around the corner when I realize how much trouble he’s having keeping up until he’s on the other end of the square track. And then cut across the nurses’ station straight toward the lounge.

  This time when I grab the door handle, I just pray it turns. It does, and I slip inside as he comes after me shouting profanities. I push the button and lock it. Take a swift look around.

  It’s not terrible. No bodies, no obvious excrement.

  Pounding on the door behind me.

  I pull the stick-on light from my pocket, punch it on, hold it up. Take in the ceiling tiles, the locker area, the sitting area. There’s a ceramic lamp on the little table. I grab it in one hand and dash it to the tile floor.

  The bottom breaks, but when I shine the light inside it, it’s empty.

  I pull out the chair cushions, unzip them, stick my hand inside the casing. Squeeze the foam between my fingers. Check the bottoms of the drawers beneath the counter, the cabinets. Get up on top of the counter and check the soffits. Nothing there but dead bugs.

  I glance at the time. 8:27.

  The lockers all stand open, only garbage inside them. I feel underneath, gloved fingers skimming the metal surface with rising despair that Chase is right—the guy said what he had to—even as I look around for a broom handle or anything I can use to push up the ceiling tiles.

  My fingers stumble over a bump too big to be a wad of chewing gum. Crinkly when I touch it. I get down on my knees, fingers tugging at the edges of what feels like a baggie. It comes away with a rip of masking tape.

  I look down at the packet in my hand, thumb the blue and white tablets inside.

  There’ve got to be forty pills in here.

  I stuff it in my front pocket as I notice the banging on the door has stopped.

  I snag what’s left of the lamp. Move to the door. Take two quick breaths, and then yank it open.

  Chewbacca comes raging into the room, stops. Sees me as I skirt out. I throw the lamp at him. He fumbles to catch it as the shade goes flying.

  I start toward the nurses’ station, but the screaming boyfriend is coming toward me, something stork-like and weird about his movements, locked arms flung in the air as though they don’t have joints.

  I take off running—the other way, having no choice as Chewbacca emerges in time to yell at the boyfriend, who screams in his face. A thud sounds behind me. The screaming stops.

  Chase was right: I’m going to die.

  I crash into the corner and barrel into the turn, taking out some poor crazy drawing on the wall.

  “Sorry,” I say, as his pencil skitters across the floor. Feeling guilty for knocking down the one guy just minding his lunatic business.

  I stoop, grab the pencil, put it back in his hand . . . and then stare at the landscape on the wall.

  It’s a thatch-roofed village on a river, palm trees in the distance. Reeds grow by the side of the water as kids fish off a skinny wooden bridge. There’s a girl standing before the open door of a hut in a conical hat. It’s exquisite, and I wonder where it is. China, maybe, by the look of the girl and her outfit.

  “Thank you,” the man says in a voice I know.

  Which is how I also know this isn’t China, but Vietnam.

  I turn to the artist and find myself face-to-face with Noah.

  8:29 P.M.

  * * *

  Two thoughts slice through my mind at once, and all the emotions with them:

  Noah!

  And: No.

  A white beard softens the angles of his cheeks, his eyes overlarge in a face gone gaunt, giving them a more soulful stare than ever. The sight of him is wonderful and terrible at once.

  “Noah, what are you doing here?” I say softly, taking in his ashen skin, the thinness of his arms.

  When he doesn’t respond but turns back to his drawing, I reach an arm around his shoulders, give him a gentle hug.

  He pauses. “Do I know you?” he says, looking puzzled.

  “Yes. It’s Wynter,” I say, pulling down my mask so he can see my face.

  “Oh, no,” he says with a chuckle. “You can’t fool old Noah. It’s June.”

  “You’re right,” I say, as a tear slips down my cheek. “Almost summer.”

  He looks at me sidelong and points to the picture. “I was here,” he says. He licks the corner of his mouth. It’s chapped and cracked.

  And his eyes somehow still manage to twinkle.

  “Vietnam,” I say, nodding.

  “How did you know?” he says, looking at me with surprise. “Have you”—he points to the village with a finger more wrinkled than I remember it—“been there?”

  I give a quiet smile. “You told me.”

  It’s a place where, by his own admission, he’d done things he wished he had not. Things that inspired his life work of saving others—and himself, in the process.

  But this is not being saved.

  I look away and swallow. Crane to see down the hall, this time not for Chewie, but for Mel or Noah’s other trusted hand, Zach.

  “Noah, what happened? Where are the others?”

  “Well,” he says gently. “I haven’t drawn them yet. Just be patient, you’ll soon see them all.” About twelve feet away I spot another landscape, of a farm I know very well. A young woman sits on the dirty floor gazing at it, her hair ratted, her face serene as a muddy angel’s.

  A shout sounds from down the hall in the ER.

  Chase. Shouting my name.

  I glance at the watch. 8:37. I open my mouth to say I’m coming, but the boyfriend goes screeching down the hall like a pterodactyl.

  I can’t leave Noah here like this. I take him gently by the arm.

  “Noah, we need to go,” I say.

  “You go on,” he says, patting my hand. “I’ll stay here till everyone’s safe.”

  I lower my head, tears falling to the floor.

  “Please, Noah,” I say, my voice breaking.

  “There, don’t cry,” he says, turning back to the wall. “Old Noah’s right where he needs to be.”

  I fish in my pocket and slip the Sharpie from it, set it down beside him. Take three pills from the baggie in my pocket and slip them into the pocket on Noah’s T-shirt.

  He pulls it open to look at them.

  Chase shouts again, voice tinged with fear, desperation.

  Desperate people do crazy things. One more minute, and I have no doubt he’ll come in after me.

  “I love you, Noah,” I say.

  I get up to leave and then hesitate.

  “Noah,” I say, turning back. “I met Otto.”

  Noah glances up at me, puzzled.

  “Otto?” he says. And then he smiles. It’s the same smile that welcomed Chase and me into his home six months ago. Full of knowing and reassurance. “Otto.” He nods. “Such a gift, that boy. How is he?”

  His eyes shine.

  I swallow. “He’s good,” I say with a small smile. “He’s perfect.”

  I wait a beat longer for a hint of recognition. Any sign that he knows me.

  It doesn’t come.

  I stagger down the hallway toward the main building, forgetting not to see those in the emergency room bays.

  A naked man facing the wall in shame.

  A woman shaking in the corner.

  A figure crumpled on the floor.

  Chase stands in the doorway, the late spring evening streaming in behind him.

  “Wynter,” he says. “Run!”

  I glance behind me as the boyfriend lets out a scream and grabs me by the collar, ten more behind him clamoring for the light. I twist free and sprint, arms pumping, for the door.

  We shove it closed behind me. It shudders with the impact of the mob as I collapse, sobbing, to the pavement.

  9:15 P.M.

  * * *


  Rage and grief are twins you birth at once. With gnashed teeth and high, tight keens.

  Until there’s nothing to feel but pain and stupor.

  I open puffy eyes inside a shed illuminated by a single pop-up light. Chase practically dragged me here after I sank to my knees outside the hospital, frantic as he searched me for injury.

  He crouches on the concrete, heels of his hands pressed to his eyes.

  There’s a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  He’s wearing a fresh mask and gloves, the old ones on the floor where I stripped off my own before slathering myself with hand sanitizer from the bottle he found in the guard’s pocket.

  The shed is a veritable man cave, complete with a TV and the stuffed chair I’m sitting in. It’s got a drink holder built into the arm, currently occupied by the packet of pills.

  The guard is bound on the floor, his mask on top of the work-table along with a walkie-talkie handset.

  “What’re you doing?” he said when Chase brought me here as he tried to inchworm behind a recycling bin filled with beer bottles. “Don’t touch her! She’s sick—she was in the asylum! You touch her and you’ll get sick, too! Oh, God, please let me go.”

  He’s turned now toward the wall, nostrils and vulnerable mucous membranes averted from my contaminating presence, my outburst proof of madness and my infectious state.

  And he might be right. Because I’m entertaining some very unhinged thoughts.

  The words of that old lady cycle through my head.

  Everything dies after all the good is gone.

  The earth doesn’t have to go up in flames for it to be over. A world without people like Noah or Otto is already dead.

  Chase turns his head, takes the hem of his sleeve, and wipes his eyes. And then he straightens and clears his throat.

  He kicks the guard’s feet, which are bound together. “Hey. I’m going to ask you something very simple. And I need you to answer.”

  The guard nods.

  “Where can we find gas? Elcannon’s got to have some stashed around the city.”