The Twilight Swimmer (19 page)

A long pause on the other end of the line. Then, “Joy ride, huh? I get it. Okay kids. I suggest you park that cruiser right this second and start running, or you may soon find yourselves in a world of trouble.” And with that, Sally turned off the radio on her end.

Brandi was breathing fast, exhilarated. She slipped out of the cruiser and snuck around the back of the dumpsters, then made her way back to the clinic’s emergency entrance as casually as possible. She leaned against the wall, her hands jammed in her pockets, and tried to act bored. A few moments later, Dallas burst through the door with his head on a swivel. He didn’t even see Brandi. All he saw was the emergency lane, where he’d left the cruiser. Empty now. And the cruiser was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh god. Oh god, this is bad. This is so bad.” Dallas began jogging along the front of the clinic, headed the opposite direction from the dumpsters and his hidden cruiser. He was scouring the area, but didn’t stand a chance. Those kids on their joyride were probably halfway to Delaware by now. Brandi was so full of adrenaline that the laugh she cut loose actually made her jump.

A moment later, Conrad stepped outside with his radio in hand. He watched Dallas jog down the street, then turned to take in the sight of his daughter leaning against the building and trying to master her smile.

“What’s he running away for?” asked Brandi.

“Seems to have misplaced his vehicle,” said Conrad, his brow deeply furrowed.

Brandi nodded, feigning concern, then ducked inside the clinic.

Conrad leveled a steady gaze at his daughter, and she held her breath, paranoid he could tell she was responsible for the missing cruiser. But his eyes quickly softened and one corner of his mouth turned up with sad affection.

“Get walking,” he said. “Sally is still expecting you at the station. Has a broom that needs pushing, most likely.”

“It’s five miles,” said Brandi with a groan.

“Then I guess you better walk fast.”

Without waiting for a response from Brandi, Conrad took out his radio and started walking after Dallas.

Brandi spun on her heels and darted inside the clinic. On her way past the registrar’s desk, she flashed the woman a warm smile. The registrar gave her a little wave, her eyes twinkling at the thought of the handsome young shark attack victim finally getting his friendly visitor.

Outside the Swimmer’s room, Brandi pressed her ear against the door. She listened for the expected voices of the Swimmer’s physicians, but heard no voices at all. Only the steady beeps of medical machinery, muffled by the heavy door. With a final glance back toward the lobby, she gave the doorknob a twist and shouldered her way inside the room.

The shades were drawn, leaving the room in almost total darkness. But there were nightlights plugged into several sockets, which gave the room the haunting effect of being lighted from below. Shadows climbed up the walls and expanded, giving every innocuous shape in the room the character of a reaching hand scratching toward the ceiling. The Swimmer’s bed was perpendicular to the back wall, made of heavy plastic and contoured to accommodate built-in diagnostic equipment. The rear third of the bed was hinged at its base, allowing for the patient to adjust its angle, to lie down or sit up. At the moment, the bed was fully horizontal, and the Swimmer was lying flat on his back.

There was no blanket to cover him, no sheet. Instead, the doctors had wrapped his badly irritated flesh in layer upon layer of bandage. Brandi could smell a salve of some kind, rather pungent, slathered on the Swimmer’s skin beneath the bandage. The medicinal odor was off-putting, and Brandi involuntarily covered her nose with her sleeve as she shut the room door behind her.

“Are you awake?”

No answer from the Swimmer. She could hear him draw shallow breaths, could see the slow rise and fall of his bandaged chest, but he did not stir. She crossed the room and leaned over him, examining him more closely. The bandage appeared to be wrapped around his face as well, with slits for his mouth, nose and eyes. But these bandages were thinner, and were not attached to the rest of his body. They were draped over his face, clinging to his skin by the same oily adhesive that had accosted her nose when first she entered the room. She drew a deep breath, grabbed the edge of the bandage between her thumb and forefinger, and carefully peeled it away to expose his face.

Even in the dark room, she could see the discoloration. Exposure to sunlight had left his pale skin as pink as a piglet. On his eyelids and nostrils, and at the corners of his mouth, the burned skin had blistered and had already begun to peel away. Still worse, she saw deep cuts running along one side of the Swimmer’s face, from his ear to his throat. The doctors had stitched the lacerations with heavy thread. But what about…

She lifted the bandage wrapped around his neck and discovered that the doctors had sewn shut his gills as well. Brandi was horrified at the sight of the gills flexed against the tension of the stitches as the Swimmer tried and failed to draw air through his neck. There was a pair of metal tweezers lying on a nearby counter, and Brandi snatched them up. Rushing despite her best efforts to work slowly, she slipped the pointed end of the tweezers into his gill and cut through several stitches. Viscous fluid leaked through the opening she had made, but did not deter her. She worked for a few seconds more, cutting away as much thread as she could with her blunt instrument. When the tweezers caught on a particularly tough stitch, she felt it pull against his delicate flesh. The Swimmer let out a moan, in obvious discomfort, and she withdrew the tweezers immediately.

“I’m sorry,” pleaded Brandi. She hopped up from the bed and scurried over to the window, parting the shades just enough to peek through. The sun was nearly down, but she didn’t want to expose him to any more sunlight. On cue, she saw a familiar station wagon pull up to the rear of the medical clinic. Spider rolled down his window and leaned out, scanning the back lot for some sign of Brandi. He didn’t think to look at the windows.

“Spider!” she yelled out to him. “Keep the engine running!”

“What is this, a bank robbery?” Spider hollered back.

“Keep your voice down!”

“You’re the one who’s yelling!”

The Swimmer was restless now, shifting his weight and pawing at the bandages still wrapped around his neck. But he was moving in slow motion, an obvious effect of heavy drugs coursing through his bloodstream. He must have been in great pain when they first brought him to the clinic, Brandi thought. Or perhaps he was struggling and they needed to sedate him to keep him still. She knew firsthand how strong he was. Stronger than most men, even when injured, she supposed.

That moment, a gentle knock on the door. Brandi was badly startled. She dropped to the floor, hiding behind the Swimmer’s bed, and covered her mouth with her hand to prevent herself from making any noise.

“Ms. Vine?” It was the registrar, opening the door just wide enough to poke her nose though the gap. “Heads up, sweetheart. Your dad is looking for you.”

Brandi popped up from behind the bed and looked over the Swimmer. The registrar grinned down at her, conspiratorially.

“Can you buy me five minutes?” Brandi asked.

“Don’t you know who you’re talking to? I bat these baby blues at him, and I can buy you ten.” She pushed her whole head through the gap so Brandi could get a better look at her blue eyes. “I arch my back, and I can buy you an hour.” Now the registrar laughed aloud, charmed by her own naughty joke. Brandi held her finger to her mouth to shush the registrar, who took the hint and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Brandi stood up and looked down at the Swimmer. It took him a few moments to find her eyes with his own, the gray irises penetrating even now. “Okay, time to get you out of bed,” she said to the Swimmer. “Can you walk?”

She knew the answer to her question without him answering. If he could barely meet her eyes, how could he walk? How could he even stand up? She looked down at his bandaged arm and saw the thin tube of an IV protruding from the cloth. It was connected to a standing IV rack, the bag half-full and releasing clear fluid at a steady drip.

“I hope this doesn’t kill you.” She yanked the IV out of his arm, then held her breath waiting for an alarm of some kind to sound. To her great relief, there was no alarm. “If that was pain killer, morphine or something… I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me for this. But we gotta go.”

She felt his heavy hand fall on her wrist. Despite the bandages that thickened his fingers, he managed to squeeze with surprising strength. Now his eyes were locked on hers. He was still dazed, but seemed to recognize her. She studied his eyes for a long, silent moment, looking for any sign that he approved of her rescue efforts. She would have welcomed condemnation as much as appreciation, anything that gave her a boost of confidence to continue or an excuse to abandon her plan. But all she saw in his eyes was pain. And fear. Yes, she could see fear. In such a strong creature, she found the sight to be deeply unsettling.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” It was Spider, standing outside the open window. He had parted the curtains with his long arm, and craned his neck to get a look inside the room. “We’re stealing a mummy?”

“Get in here! I can’t lift him on my own.”

“It’s a ‘him?’ Looks like an ‘it’ to me. Looks like a thirty-year sentence in a federal prison, actually. What are you thinking?!” Even as Spider uttered the question, he was hoisting himself through the window and tumbling out onto the floor.

“Graceful,” said Brandi with a smile.

“I’ve got a bad ankle, don’t forget.” He crossed over to the bed and loomed large beside Brandi. “Who is this guy? Your boyfriend?”

“Questions later. Get his arm.”

Together, they pulled the Swimmer into a sitting position. Then they each lifted one bandaged arm and worked their way under its weight until they could support him, awkwardly, across the dramatically sloping platform of their shoulders.

“Could you be just a little bit taller?” asked Brandi, with breathless sarcasm.

“Jokes later. On three. One, two, three!”

They hauled him out of bed and onto his unsteady feet. His weight nearly made Brandi topple over, but Spider leaned hard the opposite direction to take the Swimmer’s weight himself. The effort nearly sent Spider sprawling, but he managed to keep his balance long enough for Brandi to pull back. It was a complicated procedure, finding the right weight distribution between the two of them, but they somehow managed. And within a few seconds, they had the Swimmer halfway through the window.

“What would we do if his room was on the second floor?” asked Spider. He didn’t expect an answer, and Brandi didn’t give him one.

 
              They folded down the back seat in the wagon to create a large enough space for the Swimmer to lie down. He was still bent uncomfortably at the knees, and his bandages strained, but they managed to wedge him in. Spider struggled to keep the Swimmer’s feet inside the back end of the vehicle so he could slam the rear door. “It doesn’t stay closed if you don’t slam it!” he assured Brandi, when she protested his violence. But they finally managed to ready the wagon for escape, and Spider had indeed left the engine running. Brandi climbed into the passenger seat and gestured for Spider to put the vehicle in drive. Moments after the wagon started rolling, Brandi had her door open again and was hopping out.

“Moving vehicle!” Spider hollered.

“She has to see me walk out!” Brandi answered as she climbed back through the clinic window.

“Who’s ‘she’?” Spider hollered, after Brandi had already disappeared from sight. He turned to the Swimmer, unmoving in the back. “Who’s ‘she’?” he asked in a whisper, not sure their ward was still conscious.

               A few minutes later, Brandi strolled down the clinic hallway and into the lobby. The registrar was chattering at Conrad, spreading out folders across her desk and insisting that he look at them. Brandi couldn’t tell what the folders contained, but she could tell by her father’s posture that he was struggling to remain patient while the registrar wasted his time. The woman looked up as Brandi snuck out the front door of the clinic, gave her a subtle wave, then returned her attention to Conrad and the folders.

“Can this math be right? I tell you, sheriff, sometimes I think I’ve got no brain in my head at all!”

When they were finally on the road and clear of the clinic, Brandi unfastened her seatbelt and climbed over the front seats to join the Swimmer in back. Spider reached out as if to grab her ankle and stop her, but she was too quick.

“That’s not safe, you know. Climbing all over the… What if we got in an accident? I’m not saying there’s even a tiny chance of that, because I’m what you call an amazing driver. But in theory, it could happen. And you’d fly ass first into the windshield. Might be the safest way to hit the windshield, now that I think about it, but that’s not saying much.”

Spider would have continued his monologue indefinitely, but he caught sight of Brandi in his rearview mirror. She had boosted the tweezers from the clinic and was now using them to remove stitches from the gill on the other side of the Swimmer’s neck. Spider was so aghast at the sight of her jamming a metal implement into a man’s throat that he nearly lost control of the wagon.

“Oh my god! Am I helping you torture a dude? I didn’t sign up for this!”