Page 46 of Freaks
And death.
No one made a peep as I made my way over to the double doors, entered the code, and opened them. In the hallway beyond, I ducked my head, walking with purpose past a row of examination cubicles. There were people everywhere. I sidestepped around a woman with a tear-streaked face, clutching a small, red jacket to her chest. A child's jacket. While millions of people were going about their lives in the city of Seattle tonight, this woman was stuck here in this cold, sterile place, praying to god that her son or daughter would make it to see the dawn.
Pretty fucked up.
Working for Charlie had equipped me with a set of skills that I put to good use as I wound my way through the rabbit warren of hallways and corridors. My body was a weapon, a finely tuned instrument, primed to detect one thing, and one thing alone: Sloane Romera. I constantly scanned my surroundings, using my peripherals, searching for any sign of the woman. She wasn't tending to patients in any of the triage bays. She wasn't updating patient records at any of the computer stations. She wasn't in x-ray, and she wasn't outside the labs waiting for results, either. Maybe I'd remembered her schedule wrong. Maybe she'd taken the night off.
Maybe she was sick.
I railed against the unease that settled over me at that thought. If Sloane was sick and she was at home laid up in her bed… If we hadn't met under such strange circumstances… If I were any kind ofnormalman, and I had pursued her in any kind ofnormalway, I would've been able to go to her, take care of her, make sure she was okay. I knew perfectly fucking well where she lived. Her pretty little house perched up on the side of the mountain overlooking the city was out of the way, though. I couldn't just drive by pretending to be lost or visiting another property. If she heard a vehicle winding its way up the road towards her place, she’d be ready and waiting for it by the time it reached the driveway.
I broke into a cold fucking sweat whenever thoughts like this occurred to me. I shouldn't be fucking thinking them. If Sloane was sick, the very best thing I could do was stay the fuck away from her. Her life was complicated enough, and my life didn't exactly allow for personal connections of any kind. If Charlie knew I occupied my days and nights with thoughts of a woman, he’d use the information to his advantage. She would become collateral in a twisted game he and I had been playing for many years. And that I couldnotallow.
By the time I’d scoured the lower floor of the hospital, I'd given up on the hope that I was going to see her tonight. Wherever she was, she wasn't here. But then—
I paused.
Stopped altogether.
My stomach slowly twisted itself into a knot. There she was, standing next to a public payphone, leaning against a wall, talking to another doctor. Her long brown hair was intricately braided around the side of her head and twisted at the nape of her neck. Her cheeks were marked with a high flush of color, and her dark eyes were bright, and shone with excitement as she talked to the man standing opposite her. I knew the guy. I'd done my research on the fucker when I realized how much time he spent with Sloane. Dr. Oliver Massey was a walking advertisement for clean living. A spoiled rich boy whose father had invented some sort of cardiovascular surgical equipment that had made his family millions. With the allowance his parents gave him every month, the arrogant bastard certain didn't need to work. And yet here he was every day, hanging around Sloane like a bad smell.
After so many years working for Charlie, I’d lost the capability to really feel anything strongly. It was better that way. No guilt, no remorse, no shame. But when I looked at Oliver Massey's smiling face as he chatted so casually with a woman I couldn't even fucking say hello to, I was filled with a very strong emotion indeed. I hated Oliver Massey. I seriously,seriouslyfucking hated the man.
Sloane grinned, and then took a sip from a takeaway coffee cup in her hand. "I can't believe he made it," she said. “When he tanked for the third time, I was sure we’d lost him.”
“Just goes to show, you never can tell,” he said. “Makes you wonder how many more flatlines would survive if we kept working on them. A couple more minutes of compressions. Another shot of Epi. Maybe more people would revive if we didn't have to call time of death so soon. Twelve minutes is nothing. I read in a journal last week about a guy who was brought back after forty-eight minutes.Forty-eight.”
I looked around, found a seat to park myself on, and I let my head rock back against chair, staring at the ceiling as I listened to their conversation. God, this prick was such a fucking do-gooder. Probably participated in human rights marches. Probably totted his handmade signs baring slogans like, ‘Meat Is Murder’ outside steak houses, feeling pretty damn pleased with himself. I made a note to stop by Rosaria's on the way over to the apartment later on. I was going to eat a fucking steak the size of a goddamn dinner plate. Extra bloody. I was going to make sure I fucking enjoyed it, too.
Sloane drank the rest of her coffee, crumpling the takeaway cup and tossing it into the trash can beside her. “Alright. I got three more patients I have to see before I can go and get some food. I'll meet you when I'm done,” she said.
“Sure thing.” Oliver flashed his pearly whites as he held up his hand, waiting for Sloane to give him a high five. Who the fuck gave high fives anymore? This wasn't nineteen eighty-five, for fuck’s sake. Sloane slapped her palm to his, giving him a rye look out of the corner of her eye, as if she were mirroring my own thoughts, and then she turned and walked away.
Once Massey had gone, I got to my feet and followed after her, maintaining a safe distance. I knew how to do this. Knew how it worked. I'd tailed her successfully many times before while she was on shift, and it'd been all too fucking easy. As we approached the ground floor elevators, I crossed my fingers in my pocket.
Don't go upstairs. Don't go upstairs. Don't go upstairs.
I had a rule. One that couldn't be broken. I could follow her. I could watch her. But the moment she stepped foot on an elevator, it was game over.
Elevators were strange places. People would stand in line in the canteen. They'd sit next to one another in the waiting rooms. They'd stand side by side in the pharmacy, but the moment you put them in an elevator everyone turned into a chatty fucking Cathy. The closed, confined space made people sufficiently awkward that they ended up shooting tight-lipped smiles at one another, eyebrows raised, as they rocked back and forth on the balls of their feet, ready to make polite conversation about the fucking weather.
The one and only encounter Sloane and I had shared had taken place in the dark. She hadn't seen my face, didn't know what I looked like, but she’d certainly heard my voice. She could have forgotten what I sounded like, or she could have blotted the timbre and the rolling pitch of my deep tenor from her mind on purpose. But it was far more likely that she remembered it with a crystal clarity that would get me into serious fucking trouble the moment I opened my mouth.
Thankfully Sloane sailed right past the elevators, bypassing them and taking a right hand turn back towards the triage bays.
“Dr. Romera. Just in time. I have a present for you.”
Shit, shit, shit.
Gracie, the nurse who had checked me into the waiting room nearly two hours ago, had stopped right in front of Sloane, wielding a clipboard. If Gracie noticed me, she'd know I wasn't meant to be here. She was good at her job. A hard ass. She'd have no qualms about approaching me and forcing me back out into the waiting room.
I casually slowed my pace and came to a stop in front of a notice board that was plastered with leaflets and flyers. Women’s health leaflets and flyers. I glared at a very detailed diagram instructing women how to perform thorough breast exams, tilted my chin down to my chest, angled my face away, and hoped Gracie wouldn't see me.
“Woman in four's got a stab wound,” Gracie told Sloane. “Deep but hasn’t hit anything major. Could be some glass in there, though. They already removed most of it and she’s had an ultrasound.”
“Got it.” Sloane took the clipboard from Gracie and scanned the details. “Wow. This chick got lucky. All right. I’ll take care of this and come back out front when I’m done.”
“Thanks. Oh, and…be warned.” She motioned toward the exam room. “Patient’s boyfriend’s a little uptight. Just a head’s up.” Gracie winked—way cooler than trying to instigate an awkward high five—and spun on her heel, heading back toward the nurse’s station. Sloane entered exam room four, pulling back the curtain and disappearing inside.
