The hospital was at a level of chaos I couldn’t have imagined. Ambulances lined up one behind the other, waiting their turn to drop off an injured student, only to leave with their sirens on, no doubt going back to the school. Inside was even worse. Droves of parents clogged the nurses’ station, desperate to know the condition of their children.
“We’re never going to get any information there,” Lisa said, pointing to the crowd.
Colin placed his hands on our backs and pushed us forward, through the crowd and toward the elevator. “We don’t need to wait,” he said. He punched the UP button. “There’s a nurses’ station on every floor. And each floor can tell you what you need to know.”
Colin certainly wasn’t the sharpest kid you’d meet, but if he said something about hospitals, I believed him. He had broken more bones than anyone I knew, and over the years, I’d visited him dozens of times. Usually he ended up in the hospital after doing something stupid—last time he’d broken a couple ribs falling out of a tree while chasing a squirrel. The time before that, he thought it would be cool to try riding his skateboard while wearing roller blades.
We stepped off the elevator at the second floor and squinted against the harsh lights reflecting off the polished linoleum. The area seemed utterly deserted compared to the floor below. Colin wasted no time and walked straight to the nurses’ station. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
A middle-aged nurse stood up from behind her counter. She had short, boy-cut hair and wore purple scrubs. She peered down at the three of us. Concern flashed across her face when she saw Lisa’s soot-covered face. “You kids must be coming from that school explosion. Are you okay?”
“We’re fine, ma’am.” Colin leaned against the counter. “We’re just trying to find out if our teacher is okay. Her name’s Mrs. Farnsworthy. We would’ve asked downstairs, but it’s just crazy down there.”
The nurse nodded. “I’ve been down there.” She looked off to the left and sighed. “Those poor parents must be terrified.” She turned to her computer and tapped a few keys. “That’s nice of you kids to come see how your teacher is doing.” She tapped a few more keys. “Mrs. Farnsworthy, you say?”
Colin nodded.
A moment passed while the nurse read whatever was on her screen. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing in my computer yet—they’re busy down there; it might not have been entered yet. Don’t you worry, though, I’ll bet your teacher will be fine.”
She smiled, and then when she looked at me, her eyes widened.
“Wait. You’re that boy.” She shuffled some papers on the desk and held up a copy of the Abbotsford Gazette. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“That’s him, ma’am,” Colin said. “Our local hero.”
“That was just the bravest thing I had ever heard of, young man.” She leaned over the counter. “Is it true you fought them off all by yourself?”
“He did, ma’am,” Colin said, slapping my back. “Dean’s the bravest kid I know. He took on a group of murderous thieves just to help his fellow man. Can you imagine the courage?”
I rolled my eyes. “It really wasn’t like—”
“That’s the other reason we’re here,” Lisa said, squaring her shoulders. “We’d really like to see the man Dean saved. You know, just to make sure he’s okay.”
The nurse’s lips thinned into a grim line. “Mr. Vidmar is down the hall. But I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t look good. He’s in really rough shape.”
Vidmar, I thought. The name sounded foreign. “Is his family here?”
She shook her head. “He has a brother. The admitting doctor spoke to him when we finally tracked him down. I know he’s on his way, but he might not get here until tomorrow.
“Do you think we could see him anyway?” Lisa prodded. “We came a very long way.”
The nurse smiled. “I don’t see the harm, but you’ll need to make it quick. The doctors will be making their rounds soon. Besides, some visitors might do the poor man some good.” She gestured down the hall. “He’s in Room 245, but he might not be awake.”
“We’ll just look in on him then,” Lisa said. “Thank you.”
Room 245 was at the end of the curved hallway, and outside his room was a metal trolley covered in binders. “VIDMAR” was written on one of the binder spines, and all three of us stopped when we saw it.
“You think it will say if he’s going to make it?” Colin asked.
“You can’t read that,” Lisa said. “It’s private.”
“Please. Don’t you think there might be something useful in there?” Colin reached over and pulled the binder from the stack and opened it up. Lisa and I leaned over Colin’s shoulder and glanced down at the page.
Notes scrawled in black ink covered the whole page. There were also a series of dates with notations beside them. Some of the writing was hard to read, but several key words jumped out. Electrocution, multiple beatings/muggings, mentally unstable, delusional, committed to psychiatric facility. I scanned over the rest of the page and stopped at a note at the bottom: “Brother reports several suicide attempts, the latest being January 2008—patient jumped from a bridge.”
“That’s enough,” Lisa said, reaching out and closing the binder. “We shouldn’t read that stuff. It’s not right. Let’s just talk to him.”
All of us were shocked by the things we had read. The chart was nearly an inch thick. We hadn’t really expected the man I saved to be—I searched for the word—unstable. Now the fact that Mr. Vidmar was still even alive defied logic. “You’re right, Lisa. Let’s go.”
The three of us entered the room and stopped by the door. “Rough” didn’t begin to describe the shape of the man. Purple, orange, and brown bruises, along with at least a dozen lacerations, covered his face. Dark hair poked out from below a white gauze that formed a thick band around his head, and his arms, from wrists to armpits, were set in white casts. Machines running wires to his chest beeped and hummed out various rhythms that let us know he was at least alive. I guessed that he was in his mid to early thirties, though with all the bandages, it was difficult to tell.
Lisa peeked in a small backpack next to his bed. I recognized it from the alley.
“Stopwatches,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“This bag.” She reached in and pulled out a handful of stopwatches. “There’s got to be a dozen of them here. She flipped one over in her hand and examined the back. Then she grabbed another and examined the back of it. “They all have initials on the back. R.T., G.H., D.C., S.W.—”
“Dean Curse,” Colin interrupted.
I looked at him, confused.
“D.C.” He pointed over the bed to Lisa. “She said one of the initials was D.C., like Dean Curse. Maybe he was going to give it to you for your birthday.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Colin,” Lisa said as she stuffed the watches back into the bag. “They could mean anything.”
Colin shrugged. “I wasn’t being serious.”
“He’s asleep,” I said. “We should go. Maybe come back tomorrow.”
Lisa plucked up a newspaper from a table beside the bed. “Looks like he was reading your article.” She turned to put the paper back on the table and inadvertently knocked a cup of orange juice over Colin’s shoes. “Oops.” She tossed the newspaper to the foot of Mr. Vidmar’s bed and reached for the stack of paper towels on a nearby shelf.
“That better be orange juice and not a urine sample,” Colin said, grimacing at his feet.
The copy of the Gazette had landed partially open, and as I turned to pick it up, I froze. There was an article on page two that caught my attention. I could only see half of it, but what I saw was enough. With shaking hands, I reached out and opened the paper completely.
“What is it, Dean?” Colin was by my side in a flash.
I pointed to the article.
Colin read the title aloud. “Pile-Up on Highway 1 Claims Three Lives.”
“That’s awful,” Lisa said.
“It’s n… not the article,” I choked. Beneath the headline were the pictures of the three victims. The woman I’d seen screaming in the foyer and the overweight man who had freaked me out in the kitchen were among them. Seeing the photos made my stomach drop—the man and woman looked so happy and normal—not at all the way I had seen them in my hallucinations.
My mind struggled to make sense of it all. I didn’t recognize the faces from anywhere other than my crazy visions. “Those are the two people I saw first.”
“What? Who?” Colin asked.
I tapped the two pictures.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Completely. I’d never forget those faces.”
“They’re dead,” Lisa stated the obvious. “You’re seeing hallucinations of people who are… dead. Or going to die.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Is that even possible?”
Collin grabbed the paper and flipped through it until he found the page he was looking for. He slapped it down. “Did you see any of these people?”
He had opened the page to the Obituaries section. A dozen or so people who had died over the last few days stared back at me from their photographs.
“No. None of them.”
“What about the first people you saw?” Collin added. “Do you recognize them? Know them from anywhere?”
“No.”
Colin turned back to the article about the accident and gave it a quick read. “You’re definitely sure you’ve never met these people?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, Colin. I’ve never met them.”
“Maybe just in passing, Dean,” Lisa urged. “Think about it.”
“I’m telling you. I’ve never seen them before. Not recently, that’s for sure. After the mugging, I went straight home… no, wait! Gadget Emporium!”
“What?” Colin asked.
“I stopped at Gadget Emporium. Remember? I told you, that’s where all my bruises came from. It was the grand opening. There were hundreds of people there. I was trampled by at least half of them. They could’ve been there.”
Lisa chewed her lip for a second and then said, “What if these hallucinations are really… visions?”
“Dean.”
All three of us jumped and looked down at the newspaper. For a second I think we all thought that one of the faces in the newspaper had said my name, and it wasn’t until we heard it again that we realized it was coming from the top of the bed.
“Mr. V… Vidmar?”
The man’s swollen eyes fluttered, then opened and searched around the room. He coughed and pointed at me. “Dean Curse?”
“Y… yes, sir.”
His eyes drooped and opened again. He seemed to be struggling to stay awake. “You c… came. I kn… knew you vud.” He struggled to speak, and I had to really concentrate to understand him through his thick Russian accent.
I stepped closer to the bed, and the man strained to shift his weight.
“Sir, we just wanted to come—”
“I’m s… sorry,” the man rasped.
“Sorry?” I said. I wondered if we should call a doctor or nurse—he sounded almost out of breath.
He glanced at my friends and then back to me. “I’m sorry, Dean. I h… had to give it t… to someone. I th… thought I was dying. I couldn’t let it die with me.”
“You’re going to be fine,” I said. “Just hang in—”
“You had to give him what?” Colin interrupted. “What couldn’t die with you?”
“Dmitri… ask Dmitri about Pripyat.”
“Preewhat?” I asked. “Who?”
The machines at his bedside started beeping faster until they sounded like a group of panicking robots.
“What’d you have to give to Dean?” Colin pressed.
“Colin,” Lisa scolded. “Stop. We need to call a nurse.”
“What are these kids doing in here?”
I spun around as three people—a woman in a white knee-length lab coat who I figured was a doctor and a man and woman in faded blue scrubs—strode into the room. “We were just—”
“Are you family?” the doctor asked.
“N… no.”
“Nurse! Get these kids out of here.”
A different nurse than the one we’d met rushed into the room and placed her hands on Colin’s shoulders. “C’mon, you three. You can visit again tomorrow. He needs his rest.”
“Wait,” Colin demanded, “we still have questions.”
“Check his oh-two stats,” one of the doctors said.
The man in scrubs went to the head of the bed and pressed his stethoscope to Mr. Vidmar’s chest. “Sir,” she said, “I just need you to relax and take a couple deep breaths.”
Mr. Vidmar barked something in Russian and then craned his neck around the doctor. “Save them, Dean,” he said, his voice stern and even. “Save as many as you can.”
The doctor pressed Mr. Vidmar back into the bed. “I need you to lay down, sir.”
I wanted to ask more questions, but the nurse grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the room. “You three certainly managed to get Mr. Vidmar excited,” she said. “But you heard the doctor—he needs his rest. I’m afraid that at least for the time being, Mr. Vidmar will only be able to have visits from family. Perhaps in a few weeks you could try again.” She rushed back into the room and swung the door behind her. It latched shut in our faces with a heavy click.