Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,92
some clothes like ours, so we won’t stand out on our little trip away from here.” Glancing behind her, Wara saw Alejo pulling off his shirt to change in the opposite corner of the bathroom. “Neither of you turn around,” Braids snickered at her. “Face the wall.”
Wara obeyed. At lightening speed, the short woman helped Wara strip out of her old clothes and pull on faded sweat pants, a bulky, worn beige sweater, and black plastic sandals caked in mud. With crisp efficiency, she then bundled Wara’s hair on top of her head under a floppy-brimmed white hat with an attached black braid that tickled Wara’s waist.
“There you go,” Braids said. “No one will recognize you.” Hands gripped Wara’s shoulder and spun her around to face the men. Surreally, Alejo was sporting a greasy baseball hat, ratty dress pants, and the ugliest homemade sweater Wara had ever seen.
He did a double take, then blinked at her a couple times. “You look like Mariana Condori…she used to sell us fruit in the Quillacollo market when I was a little kid,” Alejo said. “I used to have a crush on her.”
“I think it’s the braid.” Wara bit her lip.
“You look like a nice couple of working class folk, headed home after a long day at the market,” the tall guy said. He followed them out of the bathroom, stuffing their discarded clothing into his ripped plastic market bag on the way. “Time to go. Grab anything you need.”
Wara didn’t need anything. She jogged after the rest of them, feeling the long fake braid slapping her back. She followed the three others into the hallway, which was still eerily silent. With each step, her cheap plastic sandals squished noisily across the tiles.
At the end of the hallway, a fat metal door blocked their path, secured with two golden padlocks. “Keep your face turned to ten o’clock,” said Broad Shoulders. Wara started, then noticed the security camera in the corner facing the door. Patients in Bolivia weren’t allowed to leave the hospital until the bill was paid in full, a process that could take a full afternoon of paperwork. Wara drew a deep breath and followed the others in approaching the door while facing the opposite corner, away from the camera.
Out of the corner of her eye, Wara saw Braids extract something from her pocket. She jammed it into the lock, wiggled, and the padlock released with a soft pop. The other one yielded to her touch within another thirty seconds, and Broad Shoulders removed the two padlocks and slung them over a bar on the door.
“And now we go out,” he said, and Wara followed him outside into the cool darkness of the Andean night.
“Ok, take the stairs on your seats,” Braids instructed, and Wara sat on the cold concrete steps, eyes wide, imitating the others as they scooted down three flights of stairs hidden from the front hospital patio by the concrete wall. The murmur of conversation and screech of guard whistles rose around them. Wara pressed her lips together, really beginning to wonder why they were scuttling down a side stairway of Univalle as if this were some sort of jailbreak.
“Stop,” Shoulders whispered, and Wara froze in place next to Alejo near the bottom stair. He glanced at her in the darkness, and she saw a flash of red light reflect off his irises, then bounce on the concrete wall opposite the last stair. A siren beeped, then hushed, and Alejo’s eyes narrowed.
A police car? Wara began wondering if she should be worried.
It couldn’t be here for us, right?
“They won’t recognize the four of us together.” Braids turned around, crouching on the stairs. “The police car is parked just around the corner.” She eyed Wara firmly. “We’re just people who came here to visit sick Uncle Marco after a long day of work in the market. We belong here. On three, we all stand up and walk towards the street. Slowly. One, two, three.”
Heart drumming in her chest, Wara tried to rise quietly to her feet and follow Alejo and the two, trying to imagine what someone might possibly be feeling who hadn’t just picked two padlocks and escaped from a Bolivian hospital with two complete strangers.
They rounded to the front of the hospital and past two olive green police vehicles, red lights periodically flashing in the night. No one tried to stop them as they passed through the hospital gate and onto the dimly lit street. The two strangers broke