Bottled Abyss (28 page)

Outside rain clouds had gathered to the east and were pushing toward the city.

The homeless man babbled something about “ringing up those vinegary donkeys, ring ‘em up, ring ‘em up, ring ‘em up
sour
!” and then blew out a raspberry and took a big joyful sigh. Janet approached, feeling like an assassin, for after all, she was taking away something meaningful from the man, and damn if she didn’t know exactly how that felt. No way in hell did she feel she was saving him… but that was up to him to decide, not her.

The man didn’t sense her standing over him and hardly moved as she poured an ounce of fluid over his dirt-creased brow. He made a ragged sound, brought up phlegm, and coughed out a coin. It landed under his legs. Janet took out a tissue from her coat and went to grab it.

She yelped as the man caught her arm. “Whatcha going and doing?” His bleary eyes tried to focus.

“I dropped my money.”

“That’s
my
money.”

Janet tugged at her arm, seeing the hypodermic needle wagging back and forth, still lodged in his arm. She felt sickened by the sight of it. “Let go of me or I’ll scream.”

This got him. He released her and watched, strangely amused by her picking up the coin with a tissue. She was about to thank him when his eyes found the needle in his arm. He let out a wail, a big semi-toothed channel opening in his beard, and quickly yanked out the needle.

“Holy Grim. Holy Grim. Holy Grail. Never going over to Johnny’s house again!” he hollered and fought to his feet. “Never again, God Almighty save me from this!”

He tripped, ate the ground hard and regained himself. It was clear he was still sky-high but his revelation had jumpstarted him. Janet watched the man increase his pace down the street, impressed when he reached full speed. She took out her coin purse and dropped the coin inside, making a mental note to buy some gloves.

Rain came down first in a mist and then minutes later in a steady drizzle. She saw the Fury standing in the shadows of an abandoned building across the street. It leaned against the brick wall with a scaled hand smeared in bloody mucus. Even from the distance she could see its chest heaving and its black stone eyes imploring.

Janet headed back to her room.

It had been some time since she’d made herself up. Janet felt like she wasn’t just in different clothes, but in different skin. A low cut black dress, but not so low as to send other women sneering, or draw attention, just enough to pique curiosity and throw someone off balance. That was the hope anyway.

The half bald man in the
Loma
Linda
Hospital
mail room did not have time to be impressed with breasts, however. He was working, and furiously. His eyes slid away from his computer monitor for just a moment. “Can I help you?”

Janet held up the sealed envelope. “Do I just find a mail-drop for letters to patients or give the letter to you?”

“Is the patient’s full name on there?”

It was.

She nodded.

“Room number?”

“I’m not sure what it is.”

Unceremoniously, he reached through the window and took the letter. He typed something on his computer and mumbled to himself, “Josue… Eduardo… Ramirez.”

He waited while something loaded, then snorted, double-checked the screen. Janet was about to ask if Josue was on a special floor, since he was under guard. She couldn’t find the right words though, not without appearing to be there to extract information.

And it turned out, no probing was required. The man swiveled around in his seat and tossed the letter in a slot marked FLOOR 4 – WARD C.

Janet found herself staring and quickly asked, “How long will it take to be delivered?”

The man turned his pale blue eyes on her, his expression bland. “Probably by lunch time.”

“Thanks, ‘preciate it.”

“No problem.”

Janet guessed that mail might be reviewed before Ramirez got to read it, but there were no hidden shivs or razor blades inside, just a flowery get-well card, signed in her best handwriting,
See you soon—Jan
.

Stacy Roberts had changed. Or maybe Janet had. Either way, the woman was not somebody Janet could tolerate in large doses. Throughout the tour of the various pavilions and Children’s hospital, Stacy did not shut up. She yammered on and on, about this and that, as though every word she uttered would earn her a dollar. Janet didn’t recall Stacy being so obnoxiously hyper, and she was really looking forward to the moment they parted ways. Stacy made Faye look like a sedated slug. The difference being that her energy and bubbly nature didn’t strike Janet as authentic. Faye was just built that way, but Stacy had purposely built herself that way, for whatever reason.

You’re sizing people up like Evan, and you need to knock that shit off.

This encounter made Janet appreciate not having Faye around. After everything had happened the way it had, it wasn’t how she wanted to leave things with her friend. Not Evan either, she supposed. Janet wished they could be working on this together, as a team. She wanted to call them back, but that would have to happen at a better time. Right now, they’d only want to talk about Herman, and Janet preferred to push him as far back into her frantic mind as possible.

Concentrate on now.
The hospital. Josue Ramirez. His buddy, the Murderer.

So far everything in the hospital appeared to be sophisticated and secure. Most doors were electronically locked and you either needed an ID card or to pick up a phone for a receptionist to let you in.

Stacy was not shy about bothering receptionists. It wasn’t surprising many people on many floors knew Stacy by name alone. The corridors where her ID badge didn’t work, she had a little routine: she swung her black and purple beaded dreadlocks away from her ear, picked up a phone and said in a sing-songy voice, “Hey, this is Stace! Let me in puh-retty-please!”

Janet wanted to roll her eyes. Just because Stacy worked with children didn’t require her to act like one. Janet allowed that she’d probably become too sullen of a person to process someone like Stacy in a positive way, but that didn’t cure her annoyance. She’d come here hoping for the real dope and all she got was one dope, and it didn’t bode well for her campaign.

There you go again, appraising the poor woman…

Stacy had seemed to forget Janet’s initial query about patients under guard altogether.

“That’s the way to the cafeteria, OINK!” Stacy’s voice echoed through the long hallway.

“What about dangerous people? Criminals? Is it possible to go up to the floor where they’re being held?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” said Stacy. She lifted her badge on its lanyard and swept it across a gray plate on the wall. “Let me show you the lobby for radiology. It’s super fancy.”

“Sounds good,” Janet muttered. “Thanks for doing this.”

Stacy’s dark face broke in a tremendous smile. It was the first genuine thing she’d done today. “It’s my pleasure, Janet.”

They journeyed down an over-bright hallway and passed some restrooms and a water fountain. Much like Stacy’s mouth, the hospital just went on and on. Big hospitals rendered Janet helpless inside now. She recalled the harsh, dreamlike memories of Melody’s last fight before passing away, which had been an awful extension to previous recollections of her favorite aunt, Sarah, dying of lymphoma and her great-grandmother expiring during a voluntary hip surgery. The vastness of these institutions, with all their briskly walking, scrub wearing employees and thought-absorbed doctors, just felt alien; there was a largeness of utilitarian purpose in every sterile corner, but also the smallness of humanity perfuming the air. It should have been the other way around. It didn’t matter if you named a floor after Hope or Inspiration or Health—these things were not consciously accepted as truth, perhaps only a well meaning attempt to soothe. Then again, Janet reckoned you wouldn’t find pavilions named after Death, or Pain or Stress or Misery. Only the true pessimists would seek admission to such a hospital. She imagined it for a moment: black tiled floors, exposed piping in the ceiling, sprouts of steam issuing down in the darker reaches of the winding hallways, wooden stairs that creaked like painful sighs…

“Oh they have Lemonheads!” Stacy shouted and startled Janet. They’d taken a turn at a corner where a dimly lit vending machine squatted.

When Janet jumped the bottle sloshed around in her purse. She’d tested it back at the room with a new rubber cork; no fluid had spilled out when she rested the bottle on its side, but the splashing sound gave her pause. She didn’t want to blindly reach in to check though. Coughing up a coin in front of Stacy would not be opportune. Bringing her Mary Poppins purse, as Herman had liked to call it, closer to her person, she continued on, hoping for the best.

“I’m going to have to get a box of those on the way out. They’re good for blocked salivary glands. Did you know that?”

“Never heard that before,” replied Janet.

Stacy switched gears with little cause for transition. “Up ahead is the
Learning
Center
. It’s here temporarily at the Heart and Surgical hospital—because the other location at the Children’s hospital is being renovated. That’s how I know so many folks here.” Stacy laughed.

“Oh I see.”

“I’m thinking my mentor there can tell you about your legal questions. Was it about criminal hospitals or something?”

“Pretty much,” Janet said, resigning herself.

They walked by a door propped open with a florescent yellow mop bucket. A spilled soda lay on the floor inside a stairwell and two wet floor cones had been placed around the ice laden liquid. Stacy prattled on about her mentor’s love for Spanish soap operas and how she’d gotten her hooked on the closed captioned English translations. Janet read the words on the open door. EMPLOYEE ACCESS.

Stacy took a left turn and was in mid-sentence when Janet cut her off, “Sorry, I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be quick.”

“Oh, there’s one down by the
Learning
Center
.”