Spooky Little Girl (6 page)

“Yeah, I’ll see you tonight,” she replied, still half-asleep and trying to fully open her eyes.

“Good luck!” she called after Alice, a millimeter of a second before she heard the door slam again.

With her finger firmly pressed on the map on top of the spot for the courthouse, Lucy searched out the window, trying to figure out where she was. She didn’t know the town very well, but she remembered certain landmarks from her trips up before. She had just passed Alice’s favorite diner, and she was sure she was readily approaching the bar where she had had one of her last affairs with Jack Daniel’s. The bus emitted a loud gasp as it pulled to a stop, the doors creaking open.

“Next stop, courthouse,” the driver announced over the intercom, to Lucy’s relief, particularly since Lucy had explained to the driver when she’d gotten on the bus that she had no idea where she was going. The bus driver, a ruddy, plump woman in her sixties, had patted her hand and told her not to worry; she would make sure Lucy knew when the courthouse stop was. A minute or two later, Lucy saw a large, brick clock tower with a spire on top that she knew had to be the landmark. Sure enough, the bus pulled directly in front of it and stopped, and the doors flapped open with several mechanical groans.

“Courthouse,” the driver announced, then turned and pointed to Lucy. “This is you, sugar,” she said with smile, and Lucy picked up her things, slipping in line with the other riders filing their way out. She waved at the driver before she disembarked with a little “Thank you!” and the bus driver waved back and smiled.

On the street, it had bloomed into the perfect spring day. The sky was a clear, bright blue, the kind of blue Michelangelo used when painting the heavens in the Sistine Chapel. The sun shone a perfect, soothing white, just enough to tint the day with a bounce. A slight breeze fluttered by, blowing several strands of hair into Lucy’s face.
She smiled and tucked the hair behind her ear, noting how glorious the sun felt on her skin. It was a good day. Map still in hand, she scanned the buildings around her as she walked down the block, looking for anything that resembled the unemployment office. When she came up empty, she looked across the street, and there she saw it, sitting exactly parallel to the courthouse, with
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC SECURITY
in gray and gold lettering across the window.

As Lucy waited to cross the street, a car pulled up next to her, all windows rolled down for its passengers to enjoy the gorgeous day. The melody coming from the car was familiar, but Lucy couldn’t name it until the song surged into the chorus, and that was when she smiled and shook her head as Gloria Gaynor once again declared that she was going to survive.

Lucy turned to check the time on the clock tower: It was 12:34, lunchtime. At first she cursed herself for getting there just in time for the lunchtime rush, but then she laughed at herself when she realized that there was no lunch hour rush when you were unemployed. Lunchtime lasted all day. She heard the walk signal sound and moved forward, but then another gust of wind blew a chunk of hair over her eyes just as she stepped from the curb into the street. When she finally got the hair tucked behind her ear again, she heard a loud torrent of a roar rushing at her with a force that was fast and consuming. Lucy looked up and saw the horrified face of the bus driver who had been kind enough to let Lucy know when her stop was. In a slice of a second so thin there was no measurement for it, that roar pulled her forward, sucked her backward, and then, without hesitation, swallowed her.

Lucy woke up to the sound of a man snoring beside her, but before she found out who was making the rumble, she realized that all she saw was white.

A warm, glowing white the color of cream, soft and easy to fall into.

And then Lucy realized that her eyes were still closed.

With a knee-jerk reaction, her lids flew open and she sat up, looking around. To her left and to her right were single beds, lined up in row after row after row, for almost as far as she could see. There must have been a hundred of them. In each bed, a person slept, with the exception of a few people here and there, who, like Lucy, were quietly looking around and trying to answer the simplest of questions: where were they?

A long, deep snore erupted again. Lucy turned to peer at her neighbor, a middle-aged man with a double chin and a stout nose that clearly had taken most of a lifetime to develop to its current
enormity. Lucy watched him, settled deep in an enviable sleep, as he inhaled through his cavernous nose and then exhaled through his mouth, his lips rippling with every escaping breath. She’d become somewhat hypnotized by the rhythm of his snoring, when suddenly an image of the horrified bus driver’s face crashed into her consciousness like a bolt of lightning.

Lucy gasped, stunned and confused. Her head took a moment to restart, and then, one by one, she began gathering the pieces together. The bus. She’d been on the bus. Something must have happened with the bus. She remembered the wind had been blowing, gentle at first, and then it had become stronger. She remembered the glare of the noon sun and her hair blanketing her eyes, blinding her as she stepped off the curb, then the bus driver’s face, her eyes wide and terrified, towering high above Lucy behind a sheet of curved glass. It was a blur, nothing more than a bite of a moment. That was it, then nothing. Nothing until she had woken up to a snoring neighbor. She was still puzzled, knowing that something had happened. Maybe she’d fallen. She must have fallen and hit her head, and had been taken here, a hospital of some sort, although truth be told, it looked more like an orphanage. Lucy didn’t see any sort of medical equipment beside any of the beds, and looking up and down the aisles, she didn’t see a trace of a nurse or a doctor. She briefly checked herself over—wiggled her toes, made sure she had all ten fingers, bent her knees, felt for any missing pieces of skull or for a head bandage she might have missed. Everything was fine. She was fine. She was whole. Nothing missing, all parts accounted for. She felt extremely rested and relaxed. She felt great. In fact, she felt fantastic.

Oh, shit
, she realized as she slapped the blankets on the bed.
Oh, my God. No wonder
. County. She was in a county hospital. No wonder there wasn’t anyone around or a nurse to be had.
Damn it
, Lucy swore to herself.
How the hell did I wind up in county? Where’s my
purse?
she thought, whipping her head around to scan the table beside her. She saw her cowboy boots lined up neatly by the side of the bed, but nothing else.
I’ve got to find my purse
, she thought adamantly.
My insurance card is in my purse. Besides, I’m fine. I am perfectly okay; there is no need for me to stay in a hospital anyway, county or otherwise. I probably had a tiny concussion, but I am fine now
.

Her purse. Where was her purse? Lucy realized that it must have gotten lost during all of the commotion. Clearly someone had called 911 and an ambulance had brought her here. Who knew where her stuff had ended up? Another wave of dread washed over Lucy. If they didn’t know who she was, then they hadn’t known who to call to inform of Lucy’s whereabouts, or even how she was. Alice had to be worried sick. It was clearly already morning, and the last thing Lucy remembered was looking at the clock on the courthouse at 12:34 the day before.

Lucy searched the side table for a phone. The table was empty save for what looked like an old intercom speaker the size of a small alarm clock. On it was a red button, which Lucy instinctively pushed.

“Nurse!” she called into it, trying not to sound too frantic. “Nurse! Anybody! I need to make a phone call. Can anyone help me?”

Lucy released the red button and waited for a response. After several seconds, she heard a staticky crackle, and then a tinny woman’s voice replied, “Please report to the front desk.”

What?
Lucy thought, taken aback.
The front desk?
Where was the front desk? Which way was
front
? All Lucy could see were rows and rows of beds. There didn’t seem to be any end to them. Then, as if on cue, Lucy looked down at the foot of the bed, on which was perched a tiny little metal sign that read in small, chipping red letters,
FRONT DESK
, with an arrow pointing to Lucy’s left.

Anxious to get Alice on the phone to let her sister know that she was all right, Lucy pulled back the covers, to discover that she was
fully clothed in what she had been wearing when she’d butted heads with the bus the day before—her jeans, a white broadcloth shirt, and a brown corduroy jacket.

Wow, I guess that’s county for you. Look at that. So cheap they can’t even let you suffer in a hospital gown. How generous. You have to be sick in your own clothes
. Not that she’d rather be wearing a hospital gown, but still. Something a little more comfortable would have been appreciated. Then again, she didn’t exactly remember being uncomfortable, either. In fact, she thought she might have had one of the best night’s sleep she had ever had. She didn’t recall tossing or turning, waking up, being thirsty, needing to fluff pillows, or even pulling up covers. None of the snorers—and judging by the symphony erupting all around her bed, there were plenty of them—had disturbed her sleep in any way, and Lucy was a light sleeper, evidenced by how many times a night she had to wake Martin to have him turn over when he snored.
Hooray for concussions
, Lucy thought.
They make you sleep like the dead. If there was a concussion in a pill
, she thought, and smiled,
they could run Ambien right out of business
.

Lucy swung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled her battered black square-toed cowboy boots on. She tried to be quiet, but knocked her engagement ring on the rails of the bed while pulling on her right boot, sending a metallic echo ringing throughout the hall. As the exaggerated echo bounced off wall after wall after wall, Lucy winced and stood still, waiting for the shouting and grumbles that she was making too much noise.

But nobody said a word. Nobody even moved or stirred. It was quiet as the battery of slight, wispy breaths and alternate snores rose and fell, building and collapsing as the rest of the ward continued to slumber.

When she finally reached the front desk after trudging past what seemed like an eternity of beds full of sleeping patients, the pleasant
woman seated behind the desk looked up at Lucy, smiled, and said, “Please proceed to this room.”

She handed Lucy a slip of paper with “SD1118” printed on it, and then pointed to her left. “The SD wing is that way.”

“I just want to check out, or release myself,” Lucy tried to explain to the woman, but the woman simply smiled in return.

“That way,” she repeated pleasantly again.

“Can I make a phone call?” Lucy asked. “My sister has no idea where I am.”

“SD1118 is where you’re supposed to be,” the attendant concluded. “You’ll find everything you need in there.”

Lucy knew she was getting nowhere with the woman, so she smiled in return, nodded, and started off in the direction the woman had instructed. Lucy was bound and determined to find a phone somewhere. All down the hallway were doorways with heavy-looking old wooden shellacked and paneled doors, each marked with brass letters and numerals, as in SD1098, SD1099, SD1100. Every door was closed, creating a long, windowless tunnel of glossy, dark wood that glimmered from the fluorescent lights above. There was no hint as to what might be inside—a classroom, a lounge, or an office that might have a phone. Lucy trudged on until she arrived at door SD1118, paused for a moment in front of it, and then turned the ornate brass doorknob and stepped inside.

Two rows of university-type plastic desks—chairs with writing surfaces attached—sliced through the center of the classroom. The desks faced a lectern that rested on a small, raised stage littered with what looked like theater props, including a stack of books, dishes, some odd pieces of old furniture, and several old steamer trunks. The seats were filled with a wide assortment of people—there was a rail-thin gentleman in a very clingy and shiny blue cycling outfit, complete with helmet, resembling a human lollipop; a large, thick
middle-aged man in camouflage coveralls and a matching vest; a blond middle-aged attractive woman in a body-hugging pink ski suit; a man with graying temples in casual vacation wear; a young guy, maybe just out of his teens, with shaggy hair, who just stared at the ground; and a woman who looked to be about Lucy’s age, in an entire wet suit complete with flippers, a diving mask resting on the desk.

Lucy was baffled by the assortment of people, each of whom whipped their heads up and stared at her as she entered the room.
Either I’m in the psych ward portion of the hospital or I’m at a casting call for a church or an antidepressant commercial
, she thought.

“Is this SD1118?” Lucy hesitantly asked, in response to which the camo guy, flipper girl, and bike guy nodded their heads.

“Are you here to check out?” Lucy ventured again.

“I’m fine, and I just want to fill out whatever paperwork and go home,” the flipper girl said adamantly. “The staff around here is not helpful, and they just told me to come to this room.”

Lucy nodded in response. “Me, too,” she said, and felt compelled to take the open desk next to the girl.

“How long have you been waiting?” Lucy asked.

“Not long, a couple of minutes,” flipper girl said, shaking her head. “But I just want to get back to my vacation and call my boyfriend. We have things scheduled and planned today, you know? I can’t be sitting around here all day waiting to find out if I can leave. I
would
just leave if I knew the way out. I haven’t seen one exit sign! That’s a fire code violation, you know. I’m going to report them.”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied. “Is it morning, do you know? I can’t figure out how long I’ve been here.”

“Me, too. I have no idea,” flipper girl said. “I just woke up in a room full of other people. I didn’t know there were such weird hospitals in the Bahamas. They don’t even have nurses here!”