Prodigal Blues (27 page)

I released my breath, pulled in another, slower one.
 
"Guys, we have to get her to a hospital."

"
No
!"
 
Christopher was screaming now.
 
"We're
not
taking her to any goddamn place where they're going to stick her with things and s-strap her down on a t-table and put her under… under b-b-bright l-lights and… and…"

I reached out and grabbed his arm, squeezing it as hard as I could.
 
"Calm down, buddy.
 
Listen to—look at me.
 
Look at me!
 
That's right, now take a deep breath, pal, that's it.
 
Now, listen to me, Christopher—
listen
:
 
if we don't get her some medical attention, and fast, she's going to go into a full-blown coma and will quite probably die, and she's come too far and been through too much for us to allow that to happen, got me?"

He nodded his head but said nothing; tears spattered from his eyes onto my sleeve.

"Give me the cell phone."

He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, flipped it open, and handed it to me.

I punched in 911.
 
The emergency operator answered before the first ring was completed.

"Emergen—"

That was all she got out before the phone fizzled.
 
I jerked it away from my face, glared at it like that would coerce it into cooperating, then shook it just because I was. So.
 
Fucking.
 
Angry.

"Oh, this
ain't
happening," said Arnold.
 
"Uh-huh, not now, not
now
, not when we're so
close!
"

I tried the phone again, but its charge was a fond memory.
 
"It's gone."

Arnold took it from my hand, shook it once, held it to his ear.
 
"Don't those emergency operators call right back if there's a hang-up?"

Christopher yanked the phone away.
 
"And how the
fuck
are we supposed to answer?"

I held up my hand.
 
"Knock it off, guys—look, we're screwed as far as the phone goes.
 
Christopher, you need to get us rolling and I mean right the hell now!
 
Go on!
 
Go!
"

He climbed into the front seat and fired up the engine.

"You got an idea?" asked Arnold.
 
"Please tell me you got an idea, college man."

"Bring up the route map on the computer as quick as you can."

Christopher pulled back onto the highway so fast the tires squealed and even left a smoke trail; no small feat, considering what we were hauling; Arnold woke the computer and called up the map; I tried mouth-to-mouth on Rebecca once again because I couldn't just sit there and do nothing.

Arnold asked me, "What now?"

"Grendel's got every other thing marked on there, he's gotta have some hospitals—for chrissakes he grabbed
Thomas
in an emergency room, you can't tell me he doesn't have a few locations bookmarked."

Arnold stared at the screen.
 
"I, uh…"

"What?"

He made two fists and slammed them against his forehead.
 
"I don't remember where we are."

"Just outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana," shouted Christopher.

Arnold took a deep breath and steadied himself.
 
"All right.
 
Gimme the next exit number."

"112, one mile."

"I-69 North, right?'

"What?"

"We're on I-69 North, right?"

"I guess—"

"—the fuck do you mean, you
guess
?—"

"—mean… I mean yes, yeah—I-69 North."

"How far to exit 112?"

"It's right ahead!" shouted Christopher, triumphant.

"Floor this bad boy, big brother—we need exit 116."

"Shit!"

Christopher floored it.
 
The drive between exits 112 and 113 took about seven years, give or take a month.
 
Rebecca's body heat kept fading.
 
I propped up her legs and covered her with the blanket, my coat, Arnold's coat, then, finally, my own body.

"Exit 116, Christopher."

"I got it!
 
What's the map say, how far?"

Arnold did some quick scrolling, double-checked what he found.
 
"Five miles from 113."

"Hang on."
 
He shifted gears and kicked us into a higher and much harder speed.

Rebecca's breathing was so slow it was almost nonexistent; but I still kept up the mouth-to-mouth; these guys had it together, they were back in control of themselves, they were a unit, I'd just be in the way.

"C'mon, honey," I whispered to her still, chill form.
 
"Can't do this to us now, you haven't seen me do my Tommy Lee Jones routine yet."
 
I touched her forehead, her cheek, felt for a pulse.
 
Going… going… going…

"Three miles!" shouted Christopher.

Outside, the world was a messy blur.
 
We were flying.
 
I hoped Christopher could keep a solid grip on the wheel; one slip and this whole mess would jackknife like nobody's business and we'd be a messier blur than the world whizzing past.
 
Probably leave a nastier stain, too.

"What do I do after the exit?" called Christopher over his shoulder.

"Turn left—that's Dupont Road.
 
The hospital'll be about a half-mile down."

"How's she doing, Mark?"

"Not good.
 
Can you make this thing go any faster?"

Christopher laughed.
 
Once.
 
Very softly.
 
"Just watch."

I would never have believed something as old and cumbersome as a VW Microbus could come close to breaking the sound barrier, but that's how it seemed during the next two minutes; the road out there didn't exist; the other cars and trucks were an optical illusion; we were invisible to the police and Highway Patrol; the road bowed before us, bested, apologetic, humbled.
 
The exit sign appeared in the headlight beams.

"You need to slow down now," I said.

"Fuck you, Pretty Boy!"

Now it was my turn to scream.
 
"
IF YOU DON'T SLOW DOWN WE'LL NEVER MAKE THE GODDAMN TURN IN ONE PIECE!
 
I DON'T FEEL LIKE DYING TODAY!
 
ALL IN FAVOR?
"

Arnold and I raised our hands.
 
I raised Rebecca's, which was technically cheating but right now I didn't care.

Christopher shifted gears and eased us back to something resembling mortal speeds.
 
We made the exit and didn't jackknife on the turn, and you never heard three people sigh so loudly in unison as we did when the "Dupont Hospital" sign loomed as high and bright as the Star of Bethlehem.

"There," I said, pointing.
 
"There's the emergency room entrance."

"Where?"

"On the left."

"The left?"

"Right."

"Go right?"

"The left—right there!"

"
Right?
"

"
LEFT!
"
 

This was not the time for an Abbott & Costello routine.

Christopher started to go right, corrected himself, and just made the left-side entrance toward the emergency room.
 
We pulled up a few yards outside the ambulance bay.
 
Arnold had the side doors thrown open before the bus came to a complete stop.
 
I started to pick up Rebecca and was surprised at how much she weighed; this girl had some muscle on her.

"What type of diabetes does she have?"

Christopher stared at me.
 
"There are different types?"

"Oh, fuck me…"

"Her bracelet," said Arnold.

"What?"

"It's on her bracelet, the one she wears around her ankle."

All three of us lunged for her legs at the same time; Christopher knocked me sideways into Arnold, who fell forward onto Christopher, pulling him the rest of the way over the seat, causing me to drop Rebecca, who flopped down onto the floor and Arnold was so busy trying to avoid stepping on her that he accidentally kneed me in the nuts and about two seconds later we'd switched from Abbott & Costello to the stateroom scene from
A Night at the Opera
because we were suddenly this mass of groaning, cursing, flailing bodies trying to untangle ourselves from one another, but untangle ourselves we did, pulling back both of Rebecca's pants legs—to discover no medical bracelet on either ankle.

"This isn't happening," I muttered.

"You bet your ass it ain't," said Arnold, snatching something off the floor near my foot.
 
"Here it is.
 
Must've fell off during the orgy."

I took it from him, picked up Rebecca again, jumped out onto the sidewalk, hit the pavement running, dodged an old man in wheelchair being pushed by a younger woman who gave me the dirtiest look, squeezed past another young woman who was coming out with her little boy in her arms (his arm was bandaged; I hoped it wasn't serious), elbowed my way ahead of a balding, overweight security guard who looked like he was about to flirt with the desk-nurse, and shouted:
 
"
I NEED HELP!
 
THIS GIRL IS DYING!
 
HELP!
"

Two nurses and an orderly fell on us like a curse from Heaven; it took them about two seconds to see that this was serious, then the orderly vanished into thin air, re-appearing almost instantaneously with a gurney which the nurses gently placed Rebecca on (when had they taken her from my arms?
 
I didn't remember their having done that) and the next thing I knew one of them was asking me what happened and I said something about her having missed her insulin shots and then another nurse or maybe it was the same one asked did I think it was only one or could she have missed more, as well, and I said I wasn't sure, it had been a long trip and she was usually pretty good at keeping track of her medicine, and the nurse said that was all right, calm down, can you give me any information about her type of diabetes, and I said sure, it's here on her bracelet, but that was silly because the nurse already had it in her hand (when had she taken it from me?
 
I didn't remember her having done that) and was shouting instructions to another nurse, and then someone was on the P.A. paging doctor something-or-other to the ER stat and then Rebecca was gone and so was the orderly and so was the security guard and so were the nurses…

…and I just stood there like the biggest, dumbest, crap-for-crap useless dick this side of a Homestar Runner cartoon and realized that I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

Except for an older couple sitting over near the wall-mounted television, I was alone in the waiting area.
 
I took a couple of steps and looked at the television.
 
Nick at Nite.
 
I Love Lucy.
 
Ricky was grabbing his hair and screaming that Lucy Esmeralda MacGillicuddy Ricardo had some serious splainin' to do.

"I know this episode," I said to the older couple.
 
"This is the one where Lucy does something silly and she and Ethel try to hide it from Ricky and Fred, right?"

They looked at me as if I'd just hawked up a live kitten.
 
So I went back to standing there, quiet, polite, without a clue; portrait of a doofus in action.

Then the overweight security guard came back from behind the automatic doors and asked, "Is she your daughter?"

"No," I answered without thinking.

"Can I have your name, sir?"

Ahem…

Have you ever had one of those moments where a simple piece of information like, oh, say, your phone number or shoe size or wedding anniversary or—just to pull another quick example out of my ass—
your name
suddenly eludes you?
 
If he would have asked me anything else—who was Vice President under Lyndon Johnson, or who shot J.R., or why for the love of God was
Frampton Comes Alive
still one of the biggest-selling albums of all time—those I could have answered; but, no, he had to be a wise-guy and stump the band with an obscure request.

At least there were options available here; I could:
 
1) Shriek like a little girl with the cooties and run like hell; 2) Ask the couple by the television if
they
knew what my name was; or, 3) Look at my I.D.
 
I opted for #3, and was just reading the word "Mark" when the security guard took a step back and said "Wow," with such genuine awe I thought Michael Jordan had just walked in; then the synapses started firing again and I saw the glint and realized that I still had my I.D. in the same wallet with the U.S. Marshal badge—but of course by then it was too late.