"If I had to bet, I'd say it's a violent reaction to some new kind of narcotic. Whatever it is, I hope it's not widespread. That's all we need. A new drug plague." He sounded vaguely disgusted. "The crap people put into their bodies these days."
The man and the woman walked in a huddle to the door and left.
Skyler sat up. He felt a tug on his chest and looked down. There were wires attached to him, held on by white tape, and extending across the white cotton bedspread. And next to him was a contraption, a silver pole on wheels standing close to the bed, and attached to it was a large plastic bag—it looks like blood—and here was the truly scary part: the bag of blood was attached to a tube and the tube flowed down and was attached to him! He could see the red liquid moving down the tube and disappearing underneath a bandage. He raised his arm and the flow lessened.
It's going right inside me.
His eyes followed the wires, and he gathered them up in his left hand and lifted them, holding them high. They curved down and then up again and led to a machine. It had two green-tinted screens, across which white lines danced and squiggled in reputing patterns. It was the machine that was emitting the blips and beeps that had suddenly sounded loud.
He tried to calm himself. You are not on the island. You've seen the operating room of the Big House, and it doesn't look like this. You are someplace else.
He tried to recall how he had gotten here, what had happened just before. But he could not remember anything. He had been in the motel room, he thought. He tried hard to remember but could not; he saw Tizzie's face, then Julia's.
He knew he was losing it. He felt panic rising. He told himself he shouldn't give in to it, but he couldn't help himself — it was like a wave that started inside him and then moved outside. It grew all the time so that it became huge, as large as the room, and it turned against him, threatening to come crashing down upon him. Those doctors, those nurses, the uniforms.
I have to get out of here!
He pulled the wires violently, ripping them across his chest and felt the flesh tearing. The sounds! The pulsating blips merged into a continuous monotone, then turned into a high-pitched whine. Beeeeeep!
He grabbed the tube and tugged. It didn't give, so he picked at an edge of the bandage and tore it off — and looked horrified at the glass needle puncturing his vein. The whining continued. Beeeeeep! He grabbed the needle and pulled. It came spurting out, and now blood was pouring out from everywhere, from his vein and from the tube, suddenly flopping about like a loose hose, spraying red fluid everywhere, on the white bedspread, on the floor, on his arm, his chest. The sound seemed deafening.
They'll hear it! They'll come!
So he had no alternative but to flee. He leapt out of bed — he could see he was wearing some kind of pajama bottoms — and tried to stand, but suddenly he was feeling weak, very weak, or was it that he couldn't find his footing? — that he was sliding on the blood? He went down hard and landed on his rump. Then he lay for a moment on the floor, where he could see under the bed the feet rushing in and hear the sound of excited voices. He felt arms lifting him up, placing him back on the bed, people holding him down, those uniforms again and those faces, pushing in too close. A hypodermic.
A sudden quick pinch in his upper arm.
"There, that ought to do it."
The hands were still holding him down, but they seemed to be pushing, too, so that soon he found himself at the bottom of a well, sinking under the weight of the water. It turned everything blurry, the faces, the white cap. It muffled the sounds. He was going under, back to his dream, back to his nightmare.
Maybe he was, after all, on the island, in the basement of the Big House. Maybe — it was his last thought before he succumbed to unconsciousness—maybe I've never really left it!
Chapter 23
Jude and Tizzie burst into the emergency room just as a young man with black hair and a scarred complexion was being treated for a knife wound. He was drunk and struggling, and it took two nurse's aides to pin him to a dressing table while a doctor swabbed the wound, blood covering the fingers of his latex gloves.
They had reached the hospital in no time flat, once the motel owner had calmed down enough to tell them what had happened. Scared out of her wits when Skyler had staggered into the office, bleeding on the reception desk and then collapsing on the floor, she had yelled at them as soon as she saw them.
"Your friend almost died," she said. "Turned out he cut himself. But he's sick, too. How could you leave him alone all day?"
She had called an ambulance and that had led to an unwelcome visit by the cops, and then a battery of questions and papers to be filled out — all of it complicated by the fact that she knew nothing whatsoever about her guests other than the names scrawled on the register. That Jude had paid for the rooms in advance — in cash — was of particular interest to the police.
But once the owner looked at Tizzie and read the distress on her face, she softened, going so far as to offer them a cup of coffee from an automatic percolator perched upon a bookcase. Tizzie had declined and took the directions instead, while Jude grabbed a fresh shirt and pair of pants.
Now, in the emergency room, they tried in vain to get the attention of the doctor. Tizzie cleared her throat.
"Excuse me," she said, loud enough to carry over the muffled grunts from the drunk, whose head was being pressed into the table by a bent elbow.
"Sorry, we're busy right now," the doctor shot over his shoulder. "You shouldn't be in here anyway."
Through a pair of swinging double doors, they found a nurse's station and asked if a man had been treated with a hand wound.
"Couple of hours ago," replied a nurse, punching a keyboard and searching a computer screen. "Here it is. 6:20 p.m. Admitted 7:10. No identification. We couldn't get a name out of him. So we listed him as John Doe."
She looked up and studied Jude. "Your brother, huh?"
Jude nodded.
"Thought so. You can go visit him if you want. Room 360—that's on the third floor, elevator down the corridor to the left."
They started to go.
"Wait a minute," she said. "I need a name. Address. Information on health insurance."
"We'll be back, settle it all up," said Jude, escorting Tizzie away by the elbow. "We've got to see him first, make sure he's all right."
The elevator door opened, and they ducked inside.
The door to Room 360 was closed. They opened it quietly and slipped inside. The room was dim, except for a night light above the closest bed, which was empty. Beyond was a drawn curtain, and behind it they could hear the piercing rhythm of a heart monitor. Tizzie went first, walking quietly and peering around the curtain.
Skyler was fast asleep.
His right hand was bandaged, a plastic blood bag was hanging from a stanchion and feeding a tube that went into his arm, and an oxygen tube was clipped to his nose. On the bedside table, the monitor chirped and sent its green blip dancing across the screen in waves.
"Doesn't look like the kind of guy who would trash a motel room," said Jude.
Tizzie approached the bed and took Skyler's good hand in hers.
"He must have been scared to death," she said. "What do you think is wrong?"
"Who knows? Raised on that island, there are probably all kinds of diseases he's never been exposed to. He could have anything."
Jude put his palm on Skyler's forehead, which did feel slightly feverish.
"The cut he did to himself," he continued. "There was a broken glass in the bathroom sink and a lot of blood. He probably panicked when he saw it, freaked out and ran outside."