9

I waited around until I was sure Nurse Mackey was gone for the day. Then I donned the lab coat that Diane had given me. A small patch identified me as an x-ray tech. I grabbed a parked wheelchair and took the elevator to Anna’s floor.

I carried a clipboard, and, as the doors slid open, affected the weary arrogance of a longtime hospital minion. A young, pretty nurse was sitting behind the desk watching a cop show on a portable television. She looked up and blinked. The blink was a question.

“I’m here to get Anna Shockley,” I said. “They need another chest x-ray. Corman isn’t happy with the last one.” Diane had told me that Dr. Corman was the radiologist known for re-shooting, the man with the pain-in-the-ass reputation. Every hospital has its share of perfectionists, dreaded and reviled by the nursing population.

“At this hour?” the girl said.

“Want to tell him it isn’t convenient?”

She didn’t have to think about that. No one wanted to engage in conversations with the difficult Corman unless such conversations were absolutely unavoidable.

“Come on,” she said. I followed her starched, quick-stepping body down the corridor to Anna’s room. Anna was wearing a hospital gown and sitting cross-legged on the bed. For a brief moment, she seemed the old Anna, caught in a characteristic pensive moment. Then she looked up at us, and I saw the frightened eyes, spooked by shadows, and the open, gawking mouth through which some critical spark had fled, leaving a hollow, broken doll.

The pretty nurse matter-of-factly helped me lift Anna into the wheelchair. “You have to get another x-ray,” she told Anna. “This won’t take long at all, honey.” She patted Anna’s shoulder. Anna mumbled. Her hands dropped to her lap and wrestled with each other.

I wheeled Anna into the elevator, punched the button for the first floor, and whispered in her ear. “I’m getting you out of here. We are getting the hell out of here, Anna.” The elevator doors opened and I wheeled Anna out and down the corridor to the emergency room.

I was parked near the emergency room. I realized that I stood a better chance of getting Anna out to my car if I took her through the E.R. My own experience of emergency rooms suggested that the folks who worked in them were too busy—and when not busy simply too fatigued and indifferent—to stop or question someone in a lab coat taking a patient out of the hospital. Happened all the time. The main lobby might have felt differently about it.

For a change, I was right. I wheeled Anna through the doors and out into the evening. The parking lot was brightly lit and the temperature had dropped. The cold felt welcoming, full of tangy freedom. I helped Anna get into the passenger’s side and closed the door after her. “It’s gonna be okay,” I told her.

I drove Anna to Walker’s. There really wasn’t any other place to go. I assumed someone at the hospital would eventually figure out who had taken Anna. If they were interested enough—and I had no idea how interested they might or might not be—it wouldn’t be hard to discover where I had been staying. Besides, I realized—bitterly—that I wasn’t capable of taking care of Anna; there was no wondrous healing in my love. Walker and The Home were the ticket. I remembered those physicians on his staff.

If anyone came looking for Anna at The Home, Walker would handle them. Walker had had years of protecting his orphaned flock from betrayed parents, spouses, lawyers. He would know what to do. I realized that, despite my ambivalent feelings toward the man, I had great confidence in his abilities.

Anna slept as I drove through the darkness. My thoughts ran in circles of recrimination. Anna’s hospital gown rode up over her knees, and I stopped to wrap her in a jacket. She seemed terribly fragile. A blue vein pulsed in her forehead against the white, sheer flesh. I studied her profile, and I felt a great surge of love followed by a second furious swell—of rage. I wanted to kill Dr. Richard Parrish, the arrogant, unfeeling son of a bitch.

I had wanted to kill those glib watchers at my mother’s death, those smug dispensers of drugs and platitudes, but I had never been able to fix a face to that complacent tribe. They seemed as large and anonymous as the world. But Parrish—Parrish was a man I had met. In his blindness, his professional callousness, he had smashed Anna, hadn’t even seen the damage he was inflicting. And I had brought her to him.

This last thought wasn’t good company for a man who had things to do, so I put it away. I drove toward the mountains, toward The Home.