“Shut up. You’re a jerk,” she said. Her voice was shaky, but she seemed to be more alert. “Get me out of here.”
“Julie, we can’t. I’m sorry — you’re not strong enough…”
“Knock it off. Look at you. If you can get in here, I can get back out.” She sat up a little and started pulling at the IV lines in her arms. “What are these, anyway?”
Malcolm stepped forward. “Most likely they’re delivering the drugs that are keeping you mildly sedated,” he said. “They probably aren’t doing much to you right now, other than keeping the pain at bay and slowing your blood a little.”
She frowned, trying to remember where she’d seen him.
“Dear me, they’ve definitely been keeping you quite sedated.” He reached out a hand and placed it on her shoulder. “My name is Dr. Malcolm Fischer, remember? We met when you were brought here.”
She nodded, slowly.
“I met your friend here a few moments ago in a janitor’s closet.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Finally came out of the closet, eh, Ben?”
“Really? Right now?”
She laughed, turning again to the IV lines. “Well I appreciate your grand plan to come see me, but you honestly thought you’d just waltz in here, say ‘hi,’ then leave?”
He was stumped. What was his plan?
“I’ve got a better idea,” she continued. “You two get me out of this hospital, take me somewhere we can talk, and you,” she pointed at Malcolm, “tell me what you know.”
Malcolm smiled. “I like a girl with spunk.” He nudged Ben and winked. “Sounds like a plan.”
Julie pulled out the two needles from her arm and sat up higher in the bed. Ben hoisted Malcolm up and into the ceiling vent hole, and turned to help Julie. She was standing now, gaining her balance. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her eyes looked like she hadn’t slept in ages. She ran a hand through her hair in vain, then gave up and turned back to Ben.
She stepped in front of him, her bare feet lining up directly in front of his shoes. Standing there with no shoes on, a head shorter than Ben, wearing only a hospital gown, he noticed just how small she seemed. She looked up at him with her big brown eyes.
“What are you waiting for, ranger?” she asked. “Let’s do this.”
She grabbed his hands and placed them on her sides. He felt his face flush, and he swallowed.
“What? Stop freaking out. It’s just like your middle school dance, except now you’ve got to lift me up in the air.” She paused, cocking her head to the side. “You have been to a dance before, right?”
He swallowed again.
“What is your deal?”
“Yeah, what’s the hold up down there?” Malcolm called from the ceiling.
“You — you’re just, uh, kinda…”
She grinned. “Kinda what, Ben?”
“Kinda naked, I guess…”
She blinked, bit her lower lip and stared at him, letting him stew in his own embarrassment for a few seconds.
He tightened his grip on her sides, preparing to launch her upwards, and…
She leaned forward and kissed him. Long and slow, the type of kiss he’d never experienced.
His ears suddenly felt hot. She pulled her head back slightly but slid her body closer to his. Then she leaned in, close to his hot ears, and whispered.
“Does that help a little?”
He swallowed for a third time, unable to make words. He nodded once.
“Good. Thanks for coming to get me.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
As ben slid his right foot through the hole in the ceiling and reached to replace the air vent panel, he heard someone open the door to Julie’s room.
“Uh oh, guys,” he said to Malcolm and Julie in front of him in the small shaft, “we’ve got trouble.”
Suddenly, a shout rang from the room below them. “Code zero! We’ve got a breach in the quarantined sector!”
Ben didn’t speak paramedic, but it didn’t take much to crack that code. He started to call ahead to the other two to hurry, but a new problem faced him when he looked up.
There’s no way we’ll make it.
Even if they could somehow shimmy quickly through the tight space, the hospital staff and whatever other government officials were here would only have to wait for them at the other end.
They needed another plan.
“Malcolm, can we get out of this shaft any other way?”
“Sure, but we’ll have to unscrew the grate again, like we did for Julie’s room.”
Ben considered it.
“Do it at the next one you find. They’ll figure out pretty quickly what we did to get in and out of that room, and we need to get out of here some other way.”
Malcolm didn’t stop moving forward until he’d reached a ceiling grate over another hospital room. Julie slid up next to him to help, but when Malcolm had unscrewed two of the four screws holding the grate in place, he changed his mind.
“Slide back a little. I’m going to do this the fast way.” He slid forward, over the grate, letting his shoes come to rest directly over it. He lifted his foot as high as it would go in the small space and slammed it down.
Ben could see the grate twist and fall through the hole, one of the remaining screws having popped under the force. The fourth and final screw was all that was holding the grate in place, but Malcolm bent it out of the way and hopped down into the room.
Julie and Ben followed.
“They’re going to search each room, but they’ll probably be slow since they need to put on the suits and keep things contained,” Julie said. “They won’t take that chance.”
The two men nodded and looked around. They were in another hospital room, as small as Julie’s, but this one had two beds — both empty. Apparently ‘quarantine containment’ didn’t mean the same thing as ‘luxury quarters’ to the hospital staff.
Ben rushed to the door and opened it a crack. “There’s no one in the hall yet. That doctor who ratted us out must be back in the main lobby already.”
“They’ll be coming in, though,” Malcolm said. “Let’s at least get out of this room.”
They followed Malcolm out into the hall. As Ben stepped out of the room, he saw the double doors at the end of the long hallway spring open, followed by three men in containment suits and two others behind them, wearing tighter, clear protective suits over their normal clothes.
But it wasn’t the suits that Ben noticed first.
It was the guns the three men were holding.
“Stop, or we’ll shoot!” one of the men yelled. Julie immediately turned and ran the other direction. Malcolm and Ben had no choice but to follow. Ben waited for bullets to slam into their backs, but they didn’t come. Instead, he heard their footsteps as they started to run, and their conversation.
“Sir, should we engage?” one of the men asked.
“Negative. Only if there’s danger of a breach,” another answered.
They ran toward the single door at the opposite end of the hallway, and Malcolm pressed the horizontal bar to open it. It pushed in, but the door wouldn’t budge.
“Of course it’s locked,” he said, cursing.
“In here!” Julie shouted from the right. Ben turned to see where she was and found her inside a large office room, full of cubicles and computer stations. The men followed her in, and she closed the door behind them. “It’s an office, but it was cleared out when they quarantined the hallway. There’s another entrance a little ways back, so we’ll need to block that door, too.”
She ran to the other end of the room and looked at the door. Ben came over to help, and together they slid some of the tall filing cabinets against the door. Malcolm did the same at the door through which they’d entered, and then converged again at the middle of the room.