This was bullshit. Bullshit. Four days now without a drink, Patrick thought. Four days.
He looked around at his prison-like room, breathing hard. White walls. A narrow single bed, with a mattress about as deep as a postage stamp. One pillow, hard as his mother’s heart. With the intention of slamming it against the wall, he went to pick up the lamp from the bedside table but it was clamped down. Just as well. If he threw anything, nurses and various personnel would come running. They’d give him another needle. The last time he’d caused a fuss, he’d slept for thirteen straight hours.
It was almost suppertime and he’d just gotten a call from Frank Ketch. The lawyer had told him the Chinese were sending someone to the States to talk to him. Big deal. No hardship. He was going to lose his driver’s license for a while. Nothing anyone could do about that. Ketch was working on convincing the D.A. that the cocaine was part and parcel of the attempt to frame him. In the end, in all likelihood, he’d get off with the DUI charge and its ramifications—the lost license, the auto insurance jab—and maybe probation on the cocaine. So he was stuck here for five and a half more weeks. For nothing.
He had to get out. There was no reason for him to be here anymore. He had signed himself in, but he wasn’t permitted to sign himself out. This was insane.
Patrick went to the door and opened it. At least they didn’t lock him in. The long hall outside his room was empty and led to a common area with an elevator. The elevator went down to the lobby, and there was always a security guard there. To get to the common area, he had to pass by the nurse’s station. There were—to his knowledge, and Patrick had looked—no other exits off the floor. Fucking fire hazard, he thought. A death pit.
They fed him breakfast in the morning, then threw him outside for exercise, like a dog. When they brought him back in, he spent an hour with a shrink, then another hour in group therapy. Lunch, then the infirmary for a physical check-up, going over all his vital signs, drawing blood, probably to make sure he hadn’t sneaked anything into his room. Finally, there was ‘common’ time—he hated the expression—with a group of drooling low-life drunks and addicts in the big room down the hall, playing board games, watching the tube.
He wasn’t an alcoholic. There had never been a time in Patrick’s life when he had been unable to function just because he’d been drinking. He wouldn’t even have run from that bloody cop if the guy had just talked to him. If he’d had the opportunity he might still have gotten the DUI, but his briefcase would not have been searched, and he would have charmed his way out of this whole ridiculous mistake.
Patrick stood in the doorway of his room and let out a loud groan. Then he saw the night nurse leave her station. She stepped down the hall, into the rest room, and his pulse raced.
He never gave any thought to what he would do if he actually managed to get out of this place. They had taken his wallet, all his money and his keys. Currently, Patrick had nothing to call his own except the trousers and T-shirt he wore—clinic-issue. But he walked past the nurse’s station anyway, right into the common area and into the elevator. It was then that he realized he was barefoot. Screw it. He’d never get past the guard in the lobby.
But a ray of hope lit his imagination, tantalizing him. Once he was back in his life, he would fight them—holier-than-thou Jonathan and vindictive Ann. And his mother, if he had to. He still couldn’t believe that she had turned on him.
The elevator doors opened to the lobby. The guard at the desk was on the phone. Patrick punched the third floor button fast. The doors slid shut.
So he’d ride up and down all night, he thought. Until someone noticed the elevator’s movement. What the hell. It beat watching TV.
Then Patrick paused to study the button panel. There were three patient floors, then L for lobby and B for basement. He hit B. It peaked on the third floor and started on its way.
This time when the doors opened, he looked out into a furnace room. Feeling another skitter of excitement, Patrick stepped off the car onto cold concrete. He headed past an incinerator, six separate hot water heaters and the furnace itself. On the far wall, behind all that, he found an exit. He had every expectation that if he opened that door, an alarm would sound. But they wouldn’t have dogs out there, or armed guards. This was a rehab clinic, not a jail. What would they do if they caught him? Shoot him?
Patrick pushed on the door and stepped out into the night. Nothing happened. He waited, every muscle tensed, every nerve tingling, but there was nothing.
His legs started moving. The cold bit into his skin. Within five minutes, his feet went numb. He reached a parking lot, then a long driveway.
Patrick started running. Not down the drive, no, because he believed he’d be too exposed. Instead, he crashed into the woods that lined the asphalt. More than once he swore aloud when his bare feet came down on something painful. He finally sat on a fallen log to pull his feet up and try to see the bottoms. The trees blotted out any moonlight, so he ran a hand over one sole. It came back wet. Probably blood, he figured.
But he was free. He was actually out of that horrible place. He was his own man again. In fact, a highly intelligent man who could certainly think his way out of this dilemma. No vehicle, no keys to his own home, no money. Still…
He was pretty sure he was somewhere in Jersey. He seemed to remember crossing a bridge when Ketch’s man had brought him here, and he thought they’d come west, not east.
He needed to find some kind of town. He’d have to bum change from someone—God, that rankled, to be reduced to such a thing—but then he could go to a pay phone and call Verna. She’d come get him.
She was the only person left on his side in the whole fucking world.