Transcontinental (31 page)

He’d seen which way the ambulance went, but the sirens faded quickly. For all he knew, Ant could be headed a hundred miles away to a specialized doctor. After what that cop had done to him, there was a good chance he’d need one. The thought made Leroy queasy. What would he do if they couldn’t regroup? He didn’t want to think about it. Finding Ant was his new priority, and he was grateful for a way to occupy himself.

Leroy lumbered along the main road, gathering confused, pitying, and downright aggressive glances from passers-by. He discovered that only the white people wore formal clothing. The people of color wore vendor logos, mechanic jumpsuits, construction vests, sanitation uniforms, even the tattered clothing of the homeless. It bothered him, even in his perturbed state, to behold the racial disparity. He’d learned in school about the unrest and inequality during the civil rights era, but that was decades ago. Weren’t things supposed to be better now?

The sidewalk eventually gave way to a series of crosswalks, forming a grid throughout the mess of uninspired corporate offices in downtown Topeka. He noticed how flat the land was compared to the other cities he’d seen, but the analysis held his attention for little more than a moment. A deep sense of apathy pervaded his thoughts and his being. He wished he could just lay down and fall asleep, forget about everything, but he forced himself to keep walking, if his awkward hobble qualified as such. He owed Ant his help.

Block after block, Leroy kept along SW 10
th
street, and block after block, the city grew denser. As he traveled further into the city, the demographics flipped, and white people became the minority, yet they still donned the finer clothing. Society baffled him.

It was an interesting predicament to be in a hurry with a foot injury, and not in a good way. It wasn’t long, though, before he came to a brick building that read Stormont-Vail Healthcare in bulky gold letters. It worried him that the ambulances parked near the emergency room were dissimilar to the one that’d whisked Ant away, but he had to at least check.

He ambled to the glass doors, and they automatically slid open, engulfing him in a slightly off-putting sterile atmosphere that contrasted starkly with the thick summer heat. At least it was cool.

This hospital was much busier than the one in Folsom; he could hardly walk forward without bumping into a nurse pushing a wheelchair or a doctor scurrying around with his gloved hands above his head, but Leroy did his damnedest, and found his way to the service desk.

The young, light-skinned black woman glanced up at him, taking her eyes off what she was writing, but never moving her face. “How can I help you?” Her voice, mild yet piercing, easily dominated the commotion of the room.

“Looking for a patient. Antoine… Uh, B something. Bilacqua?”

She set down her pen, and pursed her lips as she eyed him. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume you aren’t the patient’s family.”

He briefly considered lying, but he didn’t need to draw attention to himself, just in case things went awry. “No, but I’m the only—”

“I’m sorry,” she said, seemingly genuinely, “we have strict patient confidentiality guidelines. If you’re not family, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Can’t even tell me if he’s here?”

Her lips drew up to one side as shook her head, regret softening her honey brown eyes. Even if she wanted to, Leroy knew she couldn’t help.

After a moment, he gave her a polite nod. He briefly considered sneaking off and searching for Ant, but reasons not to flooded his thoughts. The hospital was enormous. It’d take hours to check every floor. Even if he tried, he’d likely be caught long before then. He forced himself through the automatic door and into the sun.

Leroy plopped onto one of the unoccupied benches in front of the building, cursing medical confidentiality laws. The first thing he needed to do now was recall Ant’s last name. He couldn’t ask the front desk, but maybe he could try calling them and asking for him by his full, real name. The only way he could think of to verify his last name was checking his wallet, which would require going through his bag, which Leroy had no desire to do for various reasons. Although if it were to go toward Ant’s benefit…

Leroy unzipped an outside pocket. Nothing. He checked the adjacent pocket, which was also empty. With a sigh, he grasped the zipper for the main section, then opened it, relieved to find Ant’s wallet in a compartment right inside the bag. Inside was a California driver’s license. Antoine Bevilacqua. He’d been close. On the right side was a professor’s ID for University of California, Davis. He stared hard at the thumbnail photo, that persistent smile eternally entrenched on Ant’s face, albeit clean shaven, bespectacled, and years younger. It was like a punch in the gut; for a moment, Leroy felt as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. His breath came back, but the sorrow remained.

He shut the wallet and returned it, then closed Ant’s bag. He’d gotten what he needed. Any more rummaging, and he’d be intruding.

Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance’s siren sang.

* * *

“Hello,” Leroy said into the pay phone outside the hospital, affecting a deeper voice to sound older, “I’d like to speak to a patient, please.”

“Okay, just for future reference I must inform you that the proper way to reach a patient is to dial the hospital, then the room number as an extension. Do you know the patient’s room number?”

The voice, mild yet piercing, brought to mind a pair of honey brown eyes, and Leroy knew this wouldn’t work. “No, but I know the name.”

“I do apologize, sir, but due to our confidentiality guidelines I cannot release a patient’s room number over the phone. If you are related to the patient, you may come into the hospital and provide photo identification, then we will direct you to his or her room.”

Leroy had zoned out after she apologized. “Thanks,” he croaked.

“Have a nice day, sir.”

He waited for her to hang up, then placed the phone on the hook. An unintentional sigh blew through Leroy, then his eyes fixed on a phone book, encased in plastic and hanging from a chain. He couldn’t give up yet. He had to try at least one more.

Thumbing through the H pages, he found hospitals. There were six. His heart sank. Ant could be at any of them. If the rest of them had the same confidentiality rules that Stormont-Vail did…

Leroy was tired. Every cell in his body was fatigued.

He wondered what Ant had said to Noah. Whatever it was, it had seemed to set him off. A twinge of rage rippled up Leroy’s spine. He couldn’t believe Ant would do this to him, leave him on his own. Just like everybody else, just like mom, dad, and Baron, Ant had left him on his own. Leroy had to go through all this unnecessary work just to figure out where Ant was because he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut.

He realized he’d been clenching his fists, then relaxed them and took a deep breath, ashamed of his thoughts. Of course Ant hadn’t done it on purpose. Ant had been
protecting
him. His guilt provided a new source of motivation. If he just called every hospital, he was bound to find Ant. He could do this.

He dialed the collect call extension he’d seen a million commercials for, then the top hospital on the list. A few rings later, a hispanic man’s leathery voice answered. “Saint Francis Health Center. How may I assist you today?”

“Can you connect me to Antoine Bevilacqua’s room, please?”

“Just a moment.”

Leroy heard a click, and then a smooth jazz song as he was put on hold. His heart pounded. He couldn’t believe it—a simple rephrasing of the question and he’d gotten through. After all, he hadn’t asked for the room number. He gripped the phone.

The jazz cut off.

“Hello?”

Leroy’s voice was caught in his throat.

“Sir?”

It was the hospital worker.

“Yeah, sorry.”

“I apologize, but we don’t have a patient by that name.”

It took a moment for that to set in.

“Uh… okay. Thanks.”

Four calls later, he’d been denied an answer twice, and the other two didn’t have Ant, either. That was all of the hospitals; there were private practices and specialists, but Leroy doubted Ant was in need of a dentist or a chiropractor.

He leaned against the back of the pay phone and slid down into a sitting position. Short of sneaking into each hospital in the city, he had no idea how he could find Ant. He’d hit a brick wall.

Leroy’s head lolled to the right, and the top of a stately building a couple blocks down the road caught his eye. It was a bronze dome, oxidized from years sunlight and humidity, that’d taken on a greenish-blue hue. He stood and hobbled toward it, as if drawn magnetically.

The finer details of the structure came into view as he closed in on it: the Kansas Capitol building. Soon he stood on the long entry walkway, taking it all in. Grand columns loomed like sandstone guardians at the landing of the steps, protecting the entrance to a wide five story base, checkered with windows and topped with a octagonal tower that culminated in the dome. Antiquated, perhaps, but Leroy was impressed by the design. The lines of the building naturally drove his eyes upward, where the features grew softer and more rounded. There was a comforting balance, and a commanding sense of pomp that would’ve delighted him, were it not for his situation.

And just like that, everything rushed back to him.

* * *

Leroy found himself back on the bench next to the capitol building’s fountain, two hours after he’d left it, with nothing to show but a slightly increased knowledge of the city’s layout. Along the way, he’d encountered a surprising number of homeless people, and realized with a sinking feeling that he, too, was technically homeless.

His appetite hadn’t been ravenous, especially considering what he’d recently witnessed, but he stopped at McDonald’s for lunch anyway. They were offering walk-in job interviews. Maybe he could just flip burgers for a living. Even he couldn’t mess that up.

Jets of water shot straight up, splaying into translucent bouquets before arcing down into the glistening pool below. He knew how the water felt, caught in a slow motion descent before inevitably rejoining what was left behind.

It was starting to hit him that he might not find Ant, which turned his blood to a cold sludge that scraped through his veins. He bounced his foot and wrung his hands vigorously. His thoughts constantly drifted, scattered, only to remind him anew that something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

He couldn’t imagine how bad it must be for Ant. He felt guilty for being depressed, which made him depressed further, inviting more guilt.

Leroy held his head in his hands. He just wanted the day to end.

Unfortunately, the sun stared down menacingly from above. Couldn’t be later than three o’clock, he estimated. Time didn’t really matter, anyway. Ant could be released right at that moment, twenty miles away, and Leroy would never know.
 

Or, he could be dead.

The thought splashed up from his subconscious and scorched a hole in his thoughts, leaving him feeling weak, mentally, physically, emotionally. Drained. Lethargic. Devoid of any clue how to proceed, and any motivation to discover one. He slumped on the bench.

Then, a compulsion that outweighed his depression clutched him. Whether or not he found Ant, he needed a plan. What better time to hatch one? He had nothing else to do. He slipped the U.S. map out of his backpack and unfolded it on the stone bench. It was almost twice as big as the California map, so he had to kneel on the ground to make enough space.

He peered at the tiny details of the map until he found Topeka, then pulled out a pen. Carefully, he set the ball-point on the dot, then traced Interstate 70, rapt by the erratic curves. With unwavering focus and a steady hand he hadn’t known he was capable of, Leroy matched every millimeter of the road he’d have to travel to restart his journey.

Eyes inches from the map, he stopped at St. Louis, Missouri, then purely on instinct, directed the pen south, along Interstate 55. For the first time in hours, his head was clear, his dread lessened. All that mattered was the line.

The trail of ink swooped down through Memphis, then Mississippi and Louisiana almost to New Orleans. Leroy didn’t know what was guiding his hand, but he didn’t dare question it. From Louisiana, he followed Interstate 12 east, which turned into 10, until it hit 75 halfway across the Florida panhandle, which shot straight down to Tampa.

Leroy pulled his face away from the map and regarded the route he’d drawn. It occurred to him that the roads he’d marked were just that—roads. He didn’t feel much like riding trains. But maybe it was time to loosen his self-imposed restrictions, take what he can get.

The route looked pretty inefficient; he wondered why the interstate system wasn’t more uniform, why he couldn’t just take one road from Topeka to Tampa, but now wasn’t the time to ponder the philosophy of American highway network. That time had passed with Ant’s departure.

With that thought, the guilt and depression came swarming back. It didn’t matter whose fault it was, though Leroy still squarely blamed himself. How could he trust himself, his judgement? Even if one day he and Ant had some sort of grand, improbable reunion, Leroy knew he would go to his grave with the knowledge that his poor decisions led to the incident. No matter what came next, he couldn’t change what had happened. That was the worst part. That was what ate him up inside.