Her right arm came up rattlesnake-quick and the handcuff locked around Donaldson’s right wrist. The other cuff was already attached to her left.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I just want us to be together.”
Donaldson’s finger tightened on the trigger, and then abruptly relaxed. He blew out a stiff breath. “Just like old times, huh?”
Behind them, the hallway filled with chatter and commotion.
“I’ll push your right side,” he said. “Use your left hand on your left wheel. Move your ass, or I’ll cut my losses, shoot you, and drag your corpse outta here.”
“Jeez, somebody missed his Metamucil.”
Lucy began pushing. Each rotation of the wheel brought a groan.
“Sounds painful,” Donaldson said. “What other terrible injuries have you suffered, little girl?”
She didn’t respond. Their progress was slow, awkward.
“Hurry,” Lucy said. “I hear people coming.”
Donaldson glanced back. A group had formed at the far end of the corridor-a nurse, a few orderlies.
“So what exactly did you have to endure?” Lucy asked.
“Let’s just say I got screwed. There’s the elevator. Less talking, more moving.”
Steering proved difficult. One of Lucy’s outstretched feet banged into a hallway drinking fountain.
She cried out, “Fuck! Do you drive like that?”
“So you do have some feeling left,” Donaldson said, backing her chair up. The gun was pressed against her shoulder, but in order to push, he had to hold it sideways. “I was hoping you weren’t paralyzed.”
“I want you to know that I prayed you weren’t a vegetable. That would have broken my heart. There’s the elevator. Push me to the panel.”
Donaldson leaned to the right, maneuvering the wheelchair alongside the lift.
Behind them, someone shouted, “He’s over there!”
Lucy pressed the DOWN button.
“Come on,” she said. “Come on!”
Five seconds later, the doors spread apart and Donaldson manhandled her inside.
She pressed the “L.”
Footsteps pattered down the corridor, getting louder with each passing second.
“Hurry…hurry hurry,” she said.
The doors began to close just as a security guard came running into view, yelling at them to stop.
He didn’t make it in time, and the lift began its descent.
Donaldson exhaled hard, puffing out his cheeks. “So what’s the plan? I push you all the way to Missoula?”
They lowered past the third floor.
Then the second.
Lucy said, “How about we get to safety, and then we can see how this all plays out? You fucked me up pretty bad, you know.”
“Little girl, you don’t know the meaning of those words.” He winked. “Yet.”
The doors spread apart.
“Okay, I got a plan,” Donaldson said, “But you gotta uncuff me.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to depend upon the kindness of strangers and get us a vehicle.”
“You won’t hurt me, big bad D?”
“Not yet. Not until we get ourselves out of here.”
“Okay, I’ll uncuff you. But you have to get the key. I can’t reach it.”
Donaldson shook his head. “Always a fucking game with you.” He gave the chair a shove, bumping Lucy’s foot into the elevator door. She yelped, grabbing the attention of a nurse at the reception desk. Bringing up his gun hand-still handcuffed to Lucy’s-Donaldson placed the barrel against her head.
“You see this gun, Nurse Ratched?”
The nurse nodded, her mouth agape.
“Unless you want me to splatter this young girl’s brains all over your ER, you better give me those keys, pronto.”
The nurse stayed perfectly still.
“Now!” Donaldson barked.
She reached under her desk, rifling through her purse, dumping it out, eventually holding up a key ring.
“Toss them on her lap,” Donaldson said.
The keys arced through the air and landed on Lucy’s thighs with a jingle. Lucy scrunched up her face.
“Where you parked?” Donaldson asked.
“It’s…the black Honda. I parked in the employee’s lot on the side of the building.”
“Another fucking Honda?” Lucy scowled. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Get over here and show us. Move your ass.”
The nurse hustled over from behind the desk. “It’s this way. Please don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
“He doesn’t feel regret,” Lucy said.
The nurse led them through the automatic doors out into the warm night, the chair’s wheels clicking along the pavement.
In the distance, a gaggle of news vans topped with satellite dishes had taken over the far corner of the general parking lot.
“Which way?” Lucy asked. Her breath was labored. Behind her, Donaldson grunted like a draft horse.
“We’re almost there,” the nurse said.
She guided them toward a satellite lot with numbered parking spaces, semi-illuminated by a handful of street lamps. The nurse stopped abruptly, causing Lucy to bump into her, prompting another howl.
“I’m sorry, I…um, forgot that it isn’t handicapped accessible.”
Lucy and Donaldson peered down the concrete stairs.
Twelve in all.
“Which car is it?” Donaldson asked.
The nurse pointed to the black sedan parked next to a streetlight.
“Thanks, kindly. You can do me one more favor, if you don’t mind.”
The nurse’s face crinkled in fear. “What?”
“You can be our diversion.”
Donaldson raised the gun and shot the nurse in the leg. She collapsed, moaning and clutching the newly-formed hole.
“Let’s bright side this,” Lucy said. “At least you’re already at the hospital.”
Donaldson leaned down and whispered in Lucy’s ear. “You like roller coasters, little girl?”
Lucy set her jaw. “The bigger the better.”
“Then let’s do this.”
Donaldson shoved the wheelchair forward. For a brief moment, the front wheels hung out over empty space, and time seemed to stop. Then gravity took control, and the chair tilted forward.
Donaldson wedged his gun between Lucy’s back and the chair, and held on tight.
The first two steps were accompanied by Lucy’s screams, each one shrill and childlike.
Momentum kicked in, jerking Donaldson forward.
Bump.
Scream.
Bump.
Scream.
Bump. Bump.
Scream. Scream.
By the time they reached the bottom, Lucy’s voice was hoarse.
“It hurts!” she cried.
Sweating, heaving, Donaldson leaned his bulk onto the wheelchair. He bent down, panting hot against Lucy’s cheek.
“You got pain meds on you, bitch?”
“We can talk about it in the car. Let’s move, D! You have any idea how many cops will be swarming this place any minute?”
“The lady doth protest too fucking much. I think you’re faking it. Do you have any idea the fucking agony I’m in, while you’re playing games? My arm is broken in fifteen places. If you want me to drive out of here, I need the pain to stop. Now if you’ve got meds, give them up.”
Lucy batted her eyelashes. “Pain is a beautiful thing, Donaldson. It’s intensity. It makes you feel alive. So SUCK IT UP, YOU FUCKING CRYBABY! I don’t have any meds. I haven’t hit my morphine in seven hours. How do you think I got out of my room? Now wheel me to the fucking car!”
Donaldson jerked his handcuffed wrist back and shoved it between the seat and Lucy’s back. Then he pulled out the gun and took careful aim at her left foot.
“Tell me how beautiful this is, little girl.”
He fired.
Three of her toes disappeared with a BANG! and a small cloud of blood.
“Fuck!!!! Goddamn! You fucking fuck!”
Lucy bellowed at the top of voice, the echo bouncing back off the hospital and rushing out into the forest.
What was left of her foot shook like an aspen leaf.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Lucy took a deep, trembling breath.
“Pain is good,” she said in a steady, level voice. “Pain is good. I still don’t have any meds, D. You want to shoot off my other foot?”