“None of your concern. We’re not here to hurt you any further. Just do as we ask and you’ll be fine.”
The passenger and driver didn’t look convinced, but still they dropped their clothes and began to lower themselves to the floor.
Marta and John went about tying their wrists behind their backs, then their ankles. They tore some sheets and placed the fabric strips in the driver and passenger’s mouths to keep them quiet.
Eli said, “Hurry, get dressed.”
Ashley had known this part was coming but still she felt apprehensive. John was already taking off his shirt and pants. Ashley, steeling herself, unbuttoned her jeans.
The clothes, once they had them on, didn’t fit well. They were too small on John, too big on her. The bulletproof vests didn’t help either. But it wasn’t like they had time to switch outfits. Already several minutes had passed. Too many minutes. The last thing they needed was someone who may have seen them briefly to become curious, or someone from the nursing home notice the ambulance still parked at the end of the exit.
John slipped through the opening up front into the driver’s seat. Ashley slid into the passenger seat. The passenger had been wearing a baseball cap with the ambulance’s name, which Ashley now wore. The driver’s cap was on the dash. John fixed it to his head and put the ambulance in gear.
• • •
Six blocks, but in the afternoon traffic it took them nearly fifteen minutes before they reached the Medford Medical Center. They had to circle the building twice to find the right place to enter. There was the emergency entrance, but this wasn’t an emergency. What they needed was the ambulance bay.
This turned out to be in an underground garage. John steered them down the ramp and slowed at the bottom, not sure where to go next. Ashley pointed toward the right, where several other ambulances were parked.
John pulled into an empty space and parked the ambulance and glanced back through the opening.
“Wait here.”
Eli asked, “Where are you going?”
“To get a wheelchair.”
John and Ashley climbed out of the ambulance. They met at the rear of the vehicle and surveyed the garage. Farther down was an elevator. Next to it was an entrance into the basement level of the hospital.
“Maybe inside,” John said.
He started toward the entrance, but Ashley waved him off.
“I’ll do it.”
She hurried ahead and walked right through the automatic doors. She made sure to keep her head tilted slightly down, so the bill of the cap obscured her face from any cameras. There wasn’t any security inside the doors waiting to check ID. John had figured there wouldn’t be. And if there was, she and John were in uniforms. They looked official. No reason for anyone to stop and question them, especially with a pair of patients.
Three wheelchairs were parked just around the corner. Ashley grabbed one and started back toward the entrance doors.
“You ain’t stealing that now, are you?”
The voice was low and heavy. It stopped Ashley cold. Blood thrummed in her ears. Her heart thudded against her ribcage.
“I’m just joshing.” A man walked up beside her. “You okay?”
She blinked. Forced a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Just a long day.”
“I hear that.”
The man wore a plain uniform. He wasn’t security, and he wasn’t an orderly. A janitor, maybe.
The man gestured at the wheelchair. “Need a hand?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”
She pushed the wheelchair through the doors, the man keeping pace just behind her. For some reason she expected him to follow her all the way to the ambulance, to again offer his assistance, but he stopped just outside of the doors, pulling a small container out of his pocket. She wasn’t sure what it was at first until he popped the lid, scooped out some black stuff, and stuck it in his mouth. Dipping tobacco. Gross.
“I know, I know,” he said, a sheepish grin on his face. “I’ve been trying to quit. Maybe someday.”
She forced another smile and continued on to the ambulance.
John asked, his voice a whisper, “Everything okay?”
Ashley just nodded.
They opened only one of the back doors. Eli came out first, but in a very slow manner, like he was ten years older with a bad hip. They helped him down, then helped Marta down, who acted even frailer. She was the one who used the wheelchair. Eli stood beside her, the resilient husband, holding her hand.
John wrapped his fingers around the wheelchair’s handles and released a heavy breath.
“Now let’s try to make this work without getting killed, shall we?”
forty-one
We squeeze into the first elevator we find. It takes us up to the first floor, where two nurses get on. Both stare down at their cell phones without a word. They remind me of those commuters on the subway platform obsessed with their gadgets, and right now I’m thankful for them-it puts less focus on us. They get out on the second floor and we ride the elevator up to the third floor.
A signboard outside the elevator directs people either left or right: Cardiology, Oncology, Endoscopy. David’s specialty is Neurology.
An orderly heads our way, a young guy carrying a clipboard.
I ask, “Neurology on this floor?”
“Nah, you have to go back down to the first floor, head up the corridor a bit, then get on the elevators by MRI. That’ll take you up to Neurology on the third floor.”
“But this is the third floor.”
He shrugs. “We’re like rats in a maze, you know? Building’s messed up like that.”
We thank him and wait for another elevator and take it back down to the first floor. Down a long corridor to another bank of elevators where we wait with a bunch of other people-some staff, mostly guests-and then manage to squeeze into one of the elevators that stops on the second floor to let a few people off, then on the third floor to let us off.
Another signboard greets us. Pulmonary, Renal Dialysis, Neurology.
“Bingo,” I say.
We head toward the left. Some more people pass us-nurses, orderlies, even a doctor or two-but the one that gives me pause is a security guard. An older guy, Hispanic, thick mustache and gray hair. He nods at us and then we’re past him, just like that, the large sign for Neurology looming ahead.
“You know,” Eli says quietly, walking beside me, “there’s no guarantee he’ll be here.”
“Way to stay positive, Pops.”
“John, do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t call me Pops.”
I’m tempted, of course, to call him Pops again, but by that point we’ve reached the doors leading into Neurology. Inside is your basic waiting area, chairs lined up against the wall, a few tables with scattered magazines, a flat screen TV showing some looped medical infomercial. There might be a dozen or so people waiting, spread throughout the room.
The reception desk is divided into three sections, with three different women spaced out behind three different computers. All of them wear headsets. Two of them are currently waiting on patients, either scheduling new appointments or taking insurance cards.
I walk up to the third woman, right in the middle. “I’m here to see Dr. Smith.”
The woman wears a plastic smile as she clicks her mouse, places her fingers on the keyboard. “Name, please?”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I need to see him right now.”
“Sir, do you have an appointment?”
Off toward the right, a door opens and a nurse steps out. She holds the door open with her back as she reads a name from a clipboard. Immediately an old woman gets up from a chair, setting down an old issue of US Weekly, and begins limping toward the nurse with the use of a cane.
Eli and Marta and Ashley are behind me, Ashley now standing behind the wheelchair.
I motion them toward the door and we start moving as one, beating the old woman with the cane by only seconds. Behind me, the woman with the plastic smile calls out, “Sir, you can’t go back there,” and the nurse holding the door open starts shaking her head, saying, “Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?” but we walk right past her, me first, then Eli, then Ashley pushing Marta in the wheelchair. Another nurse says something, her voice going loud, but we ignore her too and head down the hallway.