The man kicked it three more times, finally cracking the plastic Coca-Cola swoosh. Then, he sat down and cried like a child.
“My wife is sick. I don’t have any more dollars,” he said.
Kate instinctively reached for money to help the man, then realized that she was wearing a hospital gown. Her backside was exposed. She covered herself with one hand and hit the elevator button with the other. Some construction workers looked at her from down the opposite hallway. She could see their eyes cross her bare legs as if sampling food at a grocery store.
“Hey, honey. What’s your name?” a construction worker asked.
She reached for her cell phone. It wasn’t there. No pockets.
“Wait. Don’t go, beautiful!” the man called out, rushing toward the elevator.
The elevator finally opened. Kate hit the button. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1.
“Stuck-up bitch!” the man yelled just as the elevator door closed.
Kate found her breath and focused. There had to be a way to get Christopher away from this hospital. She looked at her watch. Twenty-eight minutes. The elevator door opened. She walked back to her room on the east wing. The hallways were packed. There wasn’t a free bench. A free chair. A free space on the floor. The people were scratching their arms. They all looked sick. And angry. And murderous. And desperate.
“What the fuck do you mean there are no pillows?!” a voice called out.
Kate reached her room. She quickly traded her hospital gown for street clothes, now torn and caked with her son’s blood. She found her cell phone in her coat pocket. There was a little more battery left, but there was no signal in her room. She wandered back into the hallway. She kept walking down the hall, looking for a signal. She passed Mrs. Keizer’s room. The old lady was still unconscious on the bed while her grandson Brady read to her from a chair.
“All the better to hear you with, my dear,” he said.
Still no bars on the phone.
She passed an empty room that was being readied for the next patient as orderlies grabbed a middle-aged man holding on to the bed for dear life.
“My insurance didn’t lapse! I have rights!”
Still no bars.
She walked through the emergency room entrance.
“We’ve been sitting here for forty hours, you son of a bitch!”
“So have I, asshole! Now sit down and wait your fucking turn!”
She walked outside to the parking lot.
She finally got a bar.
She dialed the sheriff. It rang once. Twice. Maybe the sheriff could call in a favor. Get an ambulance to take Christopher out of the hospital. Far away from Mill Grove. Far away from the hissing lady. She checked her watch. Twenty-four minutes.
The phone kept ringing. Three rings. Four rings. Five.
They could get out of here. Run away to some safe place. She would sell the house. They could send her the check. She would spend every dime of it on Christopher’s medical care.
My son is not going to die today.
More rings. Six. Seven. Eight.
The voice mail clicked on.
“Bobby,” she said. “I don’t know how to say this in a voice mail, so you’ll just have to trust me.”
She heard an ambulance wailing. She covered her ears and shouted into the phone.
“I need to get Christopher out of here. Can you get anything? An ambulance. A medevac helicopter. I’ll pay for it. I don’t care.”
The ambulance screamed into the parking lot. The EMTs rushed out.
“But I want you to come with us. I want you to be safe. Because something very bad is happening here. And right now, you are my son’s only—”
She was about to say “hope” when she saw the EMTs wheel out the sheriff on a gurney. The sheriff’s eyes were closed. His shirt cut open, his chest a mess of bloody bandages, an oxygen mask over his face.
Christopher’s mother was speechless.
She looked on, dazed, as the ER doctor rushed out to meet the gurney. Through all of their shouting, she realized that there had been a shooting in the sheriff’s station. Mrs. Henderson, the school librarian, had escaped from jail and shot the sheriff in the chest. The sheriff should have died already, but somehow he was hanging on.
Christopher’s mother raced after the sheriff, but the orderlies stopped her. They would not let her into emergency surgery. It took a minute of stunned silence for her to realize that her phone was still on, and she was