Delirious (20 page)

“How long will that take?” Charlie asked.

“A few hours,” she said. “No more than three.”

Charlie thought. It was strange that something as dire-sounding as encephalitis would seem like a blessing. It felt curable, at least. Even though he hadn’t been entirely truthful about all his symptoms, he’d been honest about his lost time. Perhaps Rachel’s first suggestion was correct: something was physically wrong with his brain. Waiting a few hours for an explanation for the madness of the past
several weeks was a small price to pay. He couldn’t do anything for

Gomes now. The police would find him soon enough. But perhaps

something could still be done to save himself. “Do you want me to wait right here?”

“That’ll be fine. I’ll get one of the nurses to draw your blood.” “Bring it on,” Charlie said. For the first time in days he felt a small

glimmer of hope. A swelling brain felt a lot less scary than a mind he

couldn’t control.

I
t took a few minutes of gnawing before Charlie realized that he was biting down on his knuckle. It was a habit he’d developed as a kid, around the same time his father had stopped taking medication for psychosis and started behaving erratically. Few in his class had teased him about it. Without peer pressure to stop it, the habit had become part of Charlie’s makeup. His classmates had seen it as a sign of his competitive nature, a visible barometer of the intensity that propelled Charlie to excel in all facets of school life—academics, athletics, and popularity.

It wasn’t until after a particularly stressful exam in college that he stopped. In study group, he had actually broken skin and begun sucking out his blood. A woman had noticed a thin line of red dripping down his chin and had screamed loudly. The embarrassment had brought the habit to an immediate and long overdue end—until now.

Charlie rose and paced around the small enclosed examination area. The equipment was for the most part familiar: a blood pressure machine, bins of sterile instruments, bandages, a small oxygen tank, and several intercoms and buttons for alerting staffers to emergent situations. He sat down on a swivel stool that he’d pulled out from underneath a desk fastened to the wall. The bed was making him uncomfortable. It felt more appropriate for the truly infirm. He kept the curtain drawn and listened to the sounds of patients crying out in pain, of doctors and nurses consoling and healing. Charlie pictured each measure from the first Charlie Christian tune that he’d memorized. The mental exercise was at least helping him to relax. Perhaps,
he thought, when he held a piece of paper in his hands, something that had been generated from lab tests, produced by computers, validated by technology, he would embrace the idea that he could be seriously ill. Until then, this whole experience served one important purpose—to keep Mackenzie in the dark about the kill list.

Charlie began to think about what would happen if he was truly sick. With his mother in a coma and his brother incapable of help, what would he do? Who would take care of Monte?
Randal,
Charlie thought. If needed, he could call Randal.

Gomes’s dead corpse came to him.
Would I be putting Randal’s life in danger? Could I hurt him as well?
Charlie couldn’t fathom the idea. It churned his stomach. If Charlie had a Dr. Jekyll living inside him, he remained elusive. That was the most frustrating thing of all. As much as he tried, Charlie could not recall any memory from the night Gomes was killed. Not a single one.

More time passed. Dr. John had yet to return. Despite the sounds and commotion taking place behind the thin white sheet, Charlie assumed that no major traumas had delayed her. He began to wonder what was keeping her and was growing increasingly anxious at the prospect of waiting longer than she’d estimated. He looked down at his watch and checked the time. Nearly two hours had passed since he first set foot in the hospital.

He thought about checking in with reception to see if Rachel had called. If she had, he might opt to leave. They could phone him with the lab results if necessary. Nothing about how he felt physically—no headaches, nausea, or other symptoms—made him concerned he might drop dead if he left.

He was just about to rise from his stool when he saw a woman’s legs through a gap in the curtain. It wasn’t Dr. John, for this woman’s legs were white, not brown like the skin of an Indian woman. Charlie sat back down on his stool and waited for the woman to pull the curtain open. Her feet did not move. She just stood outside his examination area, her shoes pointing in toward him, as though she were about to step inside at any moment.
Perhaps she’s just reviewing the results,
Charlie thought.

After what felt like an eternity, the woman turned away, her feet disappearing from sight. Charlie rose and pulled the curtain aside.
He peered out into the busy foyer. From the PA system he heard Dr. Asha John’s name being paged.

From the bustle of patients and staffers milling about, he could not identify who had been standing behind the curtain. A movement to his right caught his eye. He turned his head just in time to see a figure disappearing down the corridor that led out of the ER. The figure paused, as if choreographed. She turned and looked directly at him.

He recognized her. She was real enough for his heart to beat madly in his chest.

Anne Pedersen waved her fingers in the air, as if taunting him, and then, baring her teeth in a grin, she laughed. With a tilt of her head, a silent call for him to pursue her, she slipped behind the wall and disappeared around the corner. Charlie shouted her name and took off running.

R
achel Evans had lost track of the hour. Three emergencies had come up between the time she’d hung up on Charlie and the twenty minutes she had allotted herself before phoning Mount Auburn for the promised follow-up. Three hours had passed by the time Rachel finally picked up the phone to call Mount Auburn. It was a forgivable lapse given that Mackenzie was far from harm’s way.

Admissions patched Rachel through to the ER. An RN named Jessica answered the call. Rachel listened to the garbled sound of Dr. Asha John’s name being called out over the hospital PA.

“Yes? This is Dr. Asha John. How may I help you?”

“Dr. John, my name is Rachel Evans. I’m following up on a patient referral I sent to your hospital earlier this afternoon. Charlie Giles.”

“Ah. You must be the friend who happens to be a mental health professional.”

Their unofficial relationship meant added ambiguity when it came to discussing patient status. It might have complicated Rachel’s ability to assess Charlie’s threat level, were she not practiced at dealing with patients who gave only half-truths and misleading information. Dr. John needed to say very little for Rachel to know a lot.

“I realize I have no official relationship with the patient. His brother is a patient of mine. I offered to refer Charlie to a psychiatrist from our office. But I wanted to first get a sense of his state of mind and your initial perceptions if possible.”

“There are no outward signs of infection or any other ailment that would suggest the need for anything other than psychiatric care, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Yes. It’s certainly a start. Did he seem agitated to you?”

“Nervous is more like it. We are running blood work on him. Just to double-check for infection.”

“Sure, that makes sense.”

“I can give you a call when we have those results if you’d like.”

“That would be helpful. In the meantime, I’ll put the word out to our staff to find some names for doctors he might be interested in working with. But again, he doesn’t seem overly agitated or potentially hostile to you?”

“Not at all,” Dr. John said.

Over the phone Rachel heard a scream. It followed the loud crash of a bunch of items hitting the floor.

“Anne Pedersen! Anne Pedersen!”

The cry was loud enough for Rachel to hear it clearly through the phone receiver. She knew the voice. Rachel listened as best she could as the commotion and chaos escalated. She heard somebody shout, “Charlie Giles in three. He’s running down the hall, yelling after somebody. He just knocked Jessica over! You have to get security on this right away.”

Rachel started to say something, but just as she had done to Charlie hours earlier, Dr. Asha John hung up the phone without saying good-bye.

C
harlie Giles sprinted after Anne Pedersen. She was no more than fifteen to twenty feet ahead of him.

Charlie turned the corner, but instead of gaining ground on Anne, he crashed into a nurse who carried a tray of supplies, sending them both falling to the floor. In the low-ceilinged corridor, the din from the clattering of instruments and her metal tray crashing onto the tiled floor echoed with the intensity of a car accident.

Charlie stumbled to his feet. He scanned the long corridor that connected the ER to other parts of the hospital. The nurse he knocked over stayed on the floor and made no attempt to rise. She looked up at Charlie, expecting an apology and a hand up.

“Anne Pedersen! Anne!” Charlie called. Charlie could see a fire door a third of the way down the corridor and ran toward it full sprint. He didn’t open it at first. Signs posted on the door warned of alarms sounding if it was opened. He looked out the window, cocking his head to both sides, and saw nothing.

“He just knocked me over,” the nurse said as an orderly helped her to her feet.

“You! You! Stop right there!” yelled the orderly.

The orderly was easily six foot five, at least 220 pounds. He wore light green hospital scrubs and carried a Nextel mobile phone.

“Did you see that woman?” Charlie screamed to the nurse, who was picking herself up off the floor. “Did you see her?”

She didn’t say a word. Her knees were shaking as she got to her feet.

“You stay right there,” the orderly said. He put the Nextel to his mouth. “Security! Security! Send a team to the ER right away.”

“You don’t understand,” Charlie began. “That woman who was just here, she’s the key to everything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister, but you better not try anything funny,” warned the orderly. “Just stay right there until security comes.”

Charlie saw Dr. Asha John appear from around the corner. She entered the corridor through the ER, her eyes wide with concern. Charlie figured he had thirty feet between him and the orderly. It would be enough of a head start.

“There was a woman. Please tell her that you saw a woman!” Charlie pointed toward the nurse he had knocked over, but she was gone. She must have slipped away when Dr. John entered the scene.

“Just stay where you are,” the orderly said. “Security is on its way.”

He pointed his Nextel mobile phone as though it were some sort of weapon. Past the orderly, down at the end of the corridor nearest the hospital entrance, Charlie saw two security guards approaching. They were armed. Both had hands on their belts, presumably readying to draw a real weapon. This time Charlie didn’t hesitate at all. He took off running.

“Freeze!” one of the security guards shouted. “Get down on the floor with your hands behind your head!”

Charlie turned but kept running. He was stunned at the ground they had already gained.

Panic gripped him. Sprinting through a set of double doors, Charlie stumbled into a large industrial laundry facility. Large rolling bins piled high with towels and sheets were everywhere. Bags of laundry hung from heavy chains, attached to a matrix of ceiling-mounted guide tracks. Sounds from the loud washers and dryers bounced off the concrete walls and floors.

He pushed one of the bins aside and jumped another with a hurdler’s stride. He reached the back of the room, flipped himself over another bin, this time tipping it over and spilling stained, filthy sheets and towels onto himself as he crashed hard into the floor. Charlie stayed buried under a mountain of fetid laundry. He began to
gag and bit down hard on his tongue to keep the bile rising up his throat from spilling out.

He was at least fifty feet from the entrance now. He was shielded from the security guards’ line of sight, low to the floor, with the pile of laundry on top and the felled bin in front. Unfortunately, that meant he couldn’t see them, either. His only cue that they were in the room was the shadow cast on the ceiling from the swinging double doors as they swayed open and shut.

A minute passed before he heard them.

“Do not move!” one of the security guards ordered. “Do you understand? We know you are in here. There is no exit from this room. Stay where you are!”

They fell silent. Charlie’s heart raced in his chest with a rhythmic pounding that mirrored the tumbling sound of the dryers. Charlie stayed pressed low to the floor. He kept the laundry piled on top of him. There wasn’t much distance between him and the security guards now, he figured. If he stood to run while they were in front of him, he’d be an easy target. His only hope was to wait for them to pass and then try to slip out the door he’d come through.

“We won’t hurt you. Stand and reveal yourself,” said one of the security guards.

By the sound of their footsteps he knew they were flanking him and closing in fast. The guards kept shouting for him to stand up. Their voices echoed off the walls, making it difficult to discern just how close they were. Charlie’s eyes caught the reflection of movement in the glass on one of the washers. He could see at least one of them! As long as he stayed on that trajectory, he could watch his progress in the reflection of the washing-machine glass. He watched the distorted reflection come and go between washing machines. They kept calling his name.

“Mr. Giles. We’re not going to hurt you. We are here to help you,” said one of the guards.

Keep on coming,
he thought. The guard in his line of sight was closing in fast, no more than ten feet from him now. His distorted image disappeared from the bubbled washing-machine glass. The next time Charlie saw it, the guard would be standing right on top of him. Charlie took in a breath, held it. Then he sprang.