Into the Wilderness: Blood of the Lamb (Book Two) (25 page)

It was light when next she woke. She stared up at the fly-specked ceiling, running her tongue over her lips. They felt dry and cracked and tasted of blood, as if she'd chewed them in the night, and her broken arm was throbbing mercilessly within its restrictive shell.

The terrors of the night came back to her, and she wriggled up against the wall until she could properly see her legs. They were covered with bloody scratch-marks, and her stomach lurched at the terrifying memory of the marauding beetles and the worms. But then she saw the blood that caked her ragged toenails, and it dawned on her she might well have done this damage to herself.

Everything came back to her now: the guards…the truck…the needle in her skin…her stupid plan. What had she
been thinking? She was worse off than ever now and of no use to Lazarus whatsoever. Was he even still alive? She tried to push this new fear from her mind. Her predicament was bad enough already without the added possibility that all her terror and humiliation had been for nothing. Footsteps thudded in the hall outside, and she could hear voices and the opening and shutting of doors. She had to think quickly, figure out how to extricate herself from this mess. And most urgent of all, she had to find a way to stay in the hospital without remaining trussed up like a chicken ready for the pot. But now the key scraped in the lock and the same fat woman who had drugged her appeared again.

“Morning, cherub!” she said. “How did you sleep?”

Maryam studied her closely for a moment, sizing her up.

“Much better,” she croaked. Her voice was hoarse from screaming. “Thank you for your help.” She smiled, hoping the woman would see by her demeanour how truly sane she was. “Who are you?”

“Veramina,” the woman replied. She checked the bucket by the door and picked it up. “I'll be back in a minute with a clean one and then we'll fix you up with breakfast. I bet you're hungry, eh?”

Maryam nodded, trying to look enthused. “Yes,” she said, although the aching in her arm blocked all desire for food.

As she waited for Veramina to return, she tried again to think through some conceivable course of action. First she must convince them to release her from this foul restraint—but not appear too well or they would send her straight back to the camp. It was hard to focus when her head felt thick and heavy and the pressure on her broken arm was this intense. If only it
would settle so she could plan. Would the cursed thing never heal? Self-pity threatened to overwhelm her but she pulled herself back from it. Until she heard for sure that Lazarus was dead, she would not give up.

Veramina finally came back, carrying a faded dress and a bowl of runny scrambled eggs. She placed the food down on the floor next to Maryam's bed and studied her with a practised eye. “If I take off that strait-jacket so you can eat and have a wash, you're not going to do anything silly now, are you, dear?”

“No,” Maryam assured her, trying not to show the breadth of her relief. Step One. Now she had to convince Veramina not to tie her back into that dreadful thing once she had washed.

She stood and waited patiently for Veramina to untie the straps. As the pressure came off, her arm dropped to her side and she moaned in pain at the sudden movement.

“What's wrong?” Veramina asked.

“My broken arm,” she said. “They put it in this cast, but it hurts so much it drives me mad.”

“But child, that doesn't sound right. Usually with a plaster cast—”

With a flash of pure inspiration Maryam interrupted her. “In fact, that's what got me here. It's been unbearable, and yesterday I couldn't stand it any longer—I just snapped.”

“Pain, you say?” A deep frown formed between Veramina's eyes. “Before they set it, did they x-ray it?”

“X-ray?” Maryam shook her head, genuinely confused. “All they did was cover it in this hard plaster. They didn't even set the break.” This was true. She'd seen how Mother Evodia treated breaks, sometimes having to force the bones back into place. She'd dared not question the ship's doctor when he'd merely
slopped the white plaster over top of the break and ordered her to hold it still until it set. Besides, what had she cared? Joseph was dead.

Veramina's frown transformed into a snarl. “They're animals. They really are.” She shook her head and sighed before flashing a quick smile. “Now, child, we can't have you wandering around naked. Let's get you into some clothes.” She held up the shabby floral shift. “It may not be the latest fashion, love, but it'll keep you decent enough for now. And pop these clean underpants on too.”

She busied herself folding up the strait-jacket, allowing Maryam a little privacy as she dressed. When she was done, Maryam perched on the bed to eat. The eggs tasted watery and stale, nothing like the fresh ones she'd collected at home, but she forced them down, hoping the food might settle her stomach and help to clear her head.

Veramina bustled from the room, telling her she'd return as soon as she'd spoken with the doctors down the hall. All Maryam could do was hope this would somehow play into her hands—anything that kept her free of the restraint and of whatever they'd injected into her thigh last night must be useful to her plan.

When Veramina returned, she presented Maryam with four small objects she called pills and instructed her to swallow them.

“What are they for?” Maryam asked.

“The two white ones,” Veramina said, “are paracetamol. They'll help ease the pain in your arm. The little blue ones will keep you calm—the same drug as I used last night. It obviously suits you, given how much better you are today.” She crossed
her arms across her ample bosom and waited for Maryam to swallow them down.

“Do I chew them?” she asked, stalling, trying to decide what on earth to do.

“Heavens no! Just swallow them whole.”

Maryam tried the white ones first, having no gripe with wanting to relieve her pain. They were harder to swallow than she'd imagined; she gagged on the first and needed to drink nearly all the remaining water to wash the other one down. Now she was faced with the two little blue pills. She placed them both together on her tongue, surprised to find they tasted sweet. She raised the glass, surreptitiously spat the pills down the side of her plaster cast and swigged the rest of the water.

Oblivious, the woman patted her shoulder. “Good girl. Now we'll get you freshened up and then I'll get Henry to take you down to check that arm.”

She'd got away with it! She could feel the sticky pills inside the cast. All she had to do now was make sure they didn't fall out when she lowered her arm. She nursed the cast against her chest—which had the added boon of helping ease the pain.

Veramina draped her arm around Maryam's shoulder and guided her down a hallway to a small tiled room, not unlike the bathroom she'd had back on
Star of the Sea
. As Maryam made to enter Veramina held her back.

“I'll give you a little privacy, honey, if you promise me you'll not do anything silly. All right?”

Maryam couldn't believe her luck. She met Veramina's eye and smiled as sanely as she could. “Of course.”

“In you go then. I'll just be here outside the door.”

As soon as the door closed behind her, Maryam rushed to the
hand basin, shook out the little pills and swilled them down the drain. Step Two accomplished, she rinsed her face in fresh water and ran her fingers through her hair to smooth its wiry mass. Above the basin, a small mirror reflected back an unfamiliar face. Lord in Heaven, she looked bad: her cheeks so sunken and her eyes dark-ringed and shot with blood.

Later, after Veramina had returned her to the room to wait, one of the white-suited men she'd seen the previous night arrived to escort her back out through the barred doors.

“See you later, honey,” Veramina called. Despite the woman's kindness, Maryam sincerely hoped she would not. To do so would mean she had failed in her quest.

The man barely spoke as he led her through the building and handed her over to a white-skinned nurse, who ushered Maryam into what appeared to be a small treatment room. It contained a single bed, a basin and a long cluttered bench, its walls lined with heavily stocked shelves. It reminded Maryam of the room on
Star of the Sea
where she'd been bled, and the memory of it did nothing to calm her unease. At once, the nurse began to cut away the cast, struggling to wrench the seamless plaster apart. Maryam tried to distract herself from crying out by studying the boxes and bottles that lined the shelves. There were dozens of them, all containing different coloured pills. She recognised the word “paracetamol” and ran her eyes along the labels, trying to decipher the tiny printed words. Xanax, Staphcillin, Librium, Augmentin, Valium, Ativan. Such strange names. Fentanyl, Thorazine, Amoxicillin, Tofranil, Tegretol, Imatinibiate, Midazolam—wait! She scrolled backwards. There it was! Imatinibiate. She was sure that was the name Aanjay had used.
At last, a real piece of luck.

A terrible stench rose from her arm, and she looked down reluctantly as the nurse peeled the shredded cast away. The woman wrinkled her nose and tossed the cast into a bin, as if it were a rotting limb. Maryam's arm was badly swollen, and an open wound wept pus where the jutting bone had rubbed against the inside of the cast. No wonder the injury had refused to heal.

“Shit, you're lucky we found this, kid,” the nurse muttered. “Otherwise you'd probably have lost your arm.” She leaned forward and studied the wound, her lips puckering as she drew close to the source of the rot. “We'll have to operate to sort this out.”

“
Operate?
What do you mean?”

“We'll have to knock you out and scrape out the infection, then reset the bone and put you on a whopping great dose of antibiotics. You've no idea how lucky you are that you're already in the hospital—they never would've sent you here for this.”

“I'll have to stay?”

“I know, it's good luck, eh?” The nurse patted her on the knee. “Not all of us are as heartless as those inhumane pricks who run the camp. A few days of good food and the correct medication, and you'll be feeling right as rain.”

A few days?
Maryam groaned. Even if she
could
steal the Imatinibiate, by the time she got it back to Lazarus he would surely be dead. Sweat broke out on her forehead and she felt tears pricking in her eyes. What a choice: if she stole the cure and made a break for it, she might save Lazarus's life but lose her arm. The Lord really was mocking her, playing cruel games. Was an arm worth someone's life?

The nurse was busying herself over by the basin. Now she came towards Maryam, another hypodermic needle at the ready.

“No!” Maryam cried. “Please don't give me that awful stuff again.”

The nurse eyed her sympathetically. “I don't know what else you've been given, but this is only some Amoxicillin to treat the infection. It'll help you heal. Come now, you can look away if you like…” She injected the drug into Maryam's arm. “There, that wasn't so bad, was it?”

Maryam held her breath, waiting for the terrible mind-bending effects to hit her. What a fool she'd been: she should have run while she still had the chance. Lazarus could be dying at this very moment and now she'd let him down—and Joseph too. She was a failure and a liar, both. But as the minutes ticked away and the nurse began to gently clean around the wound, she realised the woman had spoken the truth. Her mind remained clear.

The nurse wrapped a loose bandage over the wound and tied a sling around Maryam's neck to support the arm. “Wait here and I'll check if we can fix you up a bed in the ward.” She smiled for the first time. “Don't worry, kid, it'll be okay.”

As soon as she left the room Maryam leapt down from the bed. She had no idea how she was going to see her mission through to its end, but she knew she had to take advantage of any opportunity that came her way. It was now or never. She grabbed a whole box of the Imatinibiate and slipped it into her sling, quickly realigning the other boxes on the shelf to hide the gap. All the time she strained to hear the nurse's return, her pulse hammering and her breathing light and way too fast. Now came the really hard part.

She peered around the doorframe. A woman sat at a desk directly opposite, but luckily her back was to the door. Maryam took the plunge: she stepped out into the corridor with her head
held high, as though she had every right to stroll through the building alone. She passed behind the woman and, as calmly as possible, ambled out through another set of doors, relieved to find herself in the main corridor. There were people rushing in both directions and she joined the throng. Her legs were weak and wobbly and she felt as if she couldn't suck in enough air. All the time she was aware that at any minute the nurse would return to the room and find her gone. She could feel the seconds marking off inside her head, convinced her face must show her guilty secret like an open book.

By the time she spied the exit doors ahead she had to fight a powerful ingrained urge to run. But this was both foolish and impossible, as two uniformed guards flanked the doorway. She'd have to pass them to make her escape. To her left she spotted a small storeroom stacked high with chairs. Sidestepping into it, she gained a few more precious seconds to think. Did she have the nerve to stroll past the guards and on out the door as if she were quite entitled to do so? Would the colour of her skin tip the men off to her game? She had no idea. As she hovered, sick with indecision, a large family group, brown skinned just like her, wandered down the corridor beside her. It was another chance too good to miss. She slipped in behind them, trailing close enough to give any casual observer the impression she might well belong. The adults were laughing and chatting, teasing a teenage boy who limped along on crutches in their midst. They appeared not to notice she had joined their ranks.