Читать книгу Day Zero - Chris Jayne - Страница 8

Louise

Monday

11 AM Mountain Time

Lewiston, Montana

Nervously, Louise Hale checked the large clock on the wall in the ER cubicle. Exactly two minutes had passed since the last time she checked. Actually, she was doing better; the prior time she’d checked, only a minute had passed. Sandy Kaplan, Louise’s friend, sat next to her on a wheeled stool, chin resting on her folded arms as she stared at her dozing child.

At least the sedatives they’d given poor little Marie had finally taken affect. She was looking pale, on the table in the cubicle, but quiet now. Her arm was wrapped in a splint.

The emergency room physician had reviewed the x-ray and told Sandy and Louise that the fracture looked very small, what they called a hairline fracture. Ironically, he told them, when fractures were less serious, children often felt more pain, simply because the injury was not especially critical. Sandy had shared with the doctor the fact that the family had been scheduled to fly to Chicago the next day, and he had reassured her that nothing he was seeing on the x-ray would prevent that, though he still wanted a radiologist to do a final review.

As was typical with these fractures, the ER physician had explained, they didn’t put a cast on it right away. In this case, they could wait until they arrived in Chicago and have the case reviewed by a pediatric orthopedic specialist. The ER doctor could make no promises, but to his eye, Marie might not need a cast at all.

Now, they were only waiting for the final review by the radiologist who - hopefully - would concur with the emergency room physician’s recommendations.

Louise hated hospitals. It’s why she’d become a home birth midwife. Looking for anything to pass the time, Louise dug her phone out of her purse. “I’m going to call Roger,” she said quietly. “Let him know where we stand.” Sandy nodded without answering, never taking her eyes off her daughter.

Louise’s call, however, only resulted in a busy signal. Her heart sank. Had the phone gotten knocked off the table again? Surely not. But then she remembered that when they signed up for the phone plan, in order to save money, they had declined every single “extra” feature, including call waiting. Maybe Roger was just on the phone. But who would he be talking to, except for maybe Lori?

Louise’s heart sank. She hadn’t considered a serious problem: what if Roger spilled the beans about Deacon? Louise just hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Lori that Deacon was in Montana. It was the ultimate procrastination decision, but they were just going to have to cross that bridge once Lori arrived.

She pushed the thoughts away. Lori had never called during the day, except for this morning, and she’d told Louise then they’d be to Moccasin by two. Why would she call again? Louise told herself to stop being so paranoid. The phone’s busy signal could be anything, including, she realized exactly what had happened the previous night: one of the kids knocked it off the hook. She had to move it off that end table when she got home.

Away from the house, sitting in this modern hospital, with nothing else to think about, it was inevitable to wonder if some of Lori’s worries were dramatic overstatement. Being chased by bad guys? That was something that happened in the movies, not to real people. Yet, Louise reminded herself, six men with guns had shown up at her own house just last week when they were doing nothing but moving out. Still, running across halfway across the country because it was too dangerous to talk to the FBI? That seemed like very extreme drama.

She looked at the clock again. At least this hospital trip was going fast. Actually, she couldn’t believe how quickly they were seen. As soon as the intake nurse had seen how much pain Beth was in, they had allowed Louise to go with Marie to radiology even while Sandy filled out paperwork. There was no way they would not be home before Lori arrived, even if they had to stop at the pharmacy and pick up some medication.

Now, however, another concern occurred to Louise, a very practical one. Sandy had planned on leaving this morning. If she didn’t leave, where would everyone sleep? She hated to bring it up, but had no choice. “Sandy? I need to know whether you think you are still going to go into Billings tonight,” she asked softly.

Sandy’s face fell. “I haven’t even thought about that,” she answered, her voice terribly discouraged. “I guess I need to. If we cancel the flights for tomorrow, there’ll be a penalty.”

“I don’t think you should cancel. Nothing the doctor said makes me think she can’t fly.” Louise tamped down her feelings of guilt, because if she were being honest with herself, she knew she was encouraging this at least in part because she wanted Sandy gone by the time Lori got there. Stop it, she told herself sternly. Nothing she was saying was not actually in Sandy’s best interests. “Plus, if you drive now, while she’s still knocked out, it will probably be easier in the morning. Particularly if you have,” Louise cleared her throat, “a bad night.”

Sandy looked at Louise, her face stricken. “I just don’t know what to do,” she said, her voice absolutely devastated.

For just a fraction of a second, Louise felt impatience, then she reminded herself that the husband of the woman sitting in front of her had died in the past six months, and in all probability been murdered, leaving her a widow with three young children. She deserved a little bit of latitude. The chair Louise was sitting on had wheels and she slid herself to Sandy’s side, took her arm. “You don’t have to leave. I didn’t mean it like that. But I really do believe that it will be better to drive today, while she still has pain meds on board, and before you’re up half the night with her. And what I didn’t tell you is that my sister is coming to us because there was some sort of,” Louise chose her words with care, “problem in Florida.”

Sandy raised her chin off of her arms. “What sort of problem?” she asked slowly.

“I don’t want to say too much, but she’s involved in some sort of situation where someone is, well, someone is after her.”

“After her?” Sandy blinked. “You mean chasing her?”

Louise shrugged. “That’s what it sounds like.” She paused. “Well, what it really sounds like is a terrible mess. And since once she gets here, it may be family drama and a lot of kids.” And Deacon, she added to herself, which was going to add an entirely different flavor to this whole scene. Louise couldn't even think about that.

Lori was going to kill her.

The curtain slid wide on its smooth metal rings, and in walked the young emergency room physician’s assistant. She pulled the curtain shut behind her and glanced down at her notes. “Mrs. Kaplan?” Sandy nodded. “Dr. Tang is with another patient, but he wanted me to talk to you. We got the report from the radiologist. You’re free to go, Marie is released to fly. We’ll give you some pain meds, and we’ll give you a copy of everything to take to an orthopedic doctor when you get to Chicago. We’re just bringing you a few forms to sign and…”

In one moment, every light in the ER shut down. Then, in the next instant the constant background hum of the HVAC wound down and then disappeared. For one second there was a complete hush as if the world had for an instant just stopped turning, and then around them voices started rising.

“Wow.”

“What was that?”

“What the hell?”

The cubicle in which Sandy and Louise sat, located towards the rear of the ER, was in almost total darkness. Louise could see only the shape of the PA, outlined against the curtain. “Just a second here,” she laughed. “The generators will kick on.”

Louise waited, as voices from outside the curtain started getting a bit louder. “Any second now,” the PA said, her voice falsely cheerful. After a few more moments, she muttered, “Hold on,” and went out through the curtain.

“That’s so strange,” Sandy said to Louise quietly. “Wonder what happened. There’s no storm or anything.”

“Yeah. And the generators didn’t kick on.” Not only was it odd, it was very worrisome. Louise had worked in multiple hospitals, and at the least electrical flicker, backup generators were supposed to take over immediately, to protect the patients on ventilators and monitors.

When the PA had come in the door, Louise had set her phone down on the end of the exam table. She picked it up now, intending to try Roger again while they waiting. The screen of her smart phone was black. For a second she felt complete disorientation. Since the cell phone didn’t work at her house, she often let it go dead, but it had been on the car charger for the entire way to Lewiston, and she’d looked at it when they had arrived at the hospital. It had been at over 40%. Absolutely no way was it dead.

“Sandy,” she said, uncertain. “Look at your phone.”

“What?”

“Look at your phone.”

In the darkness, Louise could hear Sandy fumbling for her purse. There was a pause, then, “It’s dead. But, it can’t be. I know I charged it last night.”

“Mine’s dead too,” Louise said.

“Maybe the power outage affected the phone networks,” Sandy suggested.

“No,” Louise said. “No. It doesn’t work like that. Even if the networks were out and we didn’t have a signal, our phones, the screens,” she clarified, “should still work.”

“You’re right,” Sandy agreed tentatively. “So what’s going on?”

The two women sat in silence, listening to the voices around them. Without warning, the curtain to their cubicle separated wide. Silhouetted against a small amount of light coming in through the emergency room outer doors was a man. “Do your phones work?” he asked.

Louise had no idea who the man was, but he didn’t seem like a staff member. “No,” she said. “Neither of ours do. Do you know what’s going on?”

“No,” the man snapped, and threw the curtain closed again.

Suddenly, they heard shouting. “We have a staff emergency, we have a staff emergency,” a voice called out.

“What the…?” Decisively, Louise stood and turned to Sandy. “Wait here.” Pulling back the curtain she walked out into the dark ER. Only two or three of the other eight cubicles had been occupied, so it was not particularly crowded.

The physician’s assistant who had come into talk to them ran by. Louise caught her arm. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure,” the woman said in a rush, her face frightened. “The generators didn’t kick on. There’s a couple people on ventilators in the surgical suite who need to be bagged manually and…”

“The little girl with the broken arm?” Louise explained. “We were just leaving, but we didn’t get our script.”

The woman threw her hands up and looked distractedly away, as the shouting at the door that connected the ER with the rest of the hospital increased in volume. Even in the dim light, Louise could see her uncertainty. “You can wait,” she offered. “But unless the power comes on, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t even give you a prescription unless we can enter it into the computer first.” She took a step away, then turned back and lowered her voice. “I probably shouldn’t say this but if it were me, I’d just go ahead and leave. She’s not hurt that badly. No point in sitting here. What they gave her will keep her knocked out for at least a couple of hours. By then, the power will surely be back on and we can call in the prescription.”

Just then, behind them, the double doors to the ambulance bay banged wide open with a crash. There was enough light for Louise to see it was a police officer. “I need a doctor,” he shouted. “We got problems out here, people, big problems.” His voice was desperately out of breath, as if he had run a long way. “All the cars stopped working at once. We got at least a couple people hurt bad on Main. Car rolled right on to the sidewalk, ran over a woman with two little kids.”

“Oh my God,” the PA gasped and ran off towards the officer. Louise, shaken, went back into the cubicle.

“Did I hear someone say someone got run over?” Sandy asked, her voice now holding a note of real fear. “What is this, Lou?”

“I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.” She looked around the cubicle. “Do you have a water bottle?”

“A what?”

“A water bottle.”

Hesitantly, Sandy handed a half empty plastic bottle to Louise, who rushed to the cubicle’s small sink. The water appeared to be still flowing, at least for now. She filled Sandy’s bottle. Her eyes were getting accustomed to the dim light, and squinting, she realized there was an empty plastic bottle in the trash. She grabbed it out, and filled it too.

“What are you doing?” Sandy asked, shocked. “You don’t know whose that was.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Louise snapped. “We’re going.”

“But we don’t have the prescription.”

Louise caught her friend’s arm. “I don’t think we’re going to get it,” she said. “We need to go.”

Sandy looked horrified. “But she can’t walk. And we can’t leave without the doctor saying it’s okay.”

Louise rushed out of the cubicle, frantically scanning the ER. The PA to whom she’d spoken just minutes earlier had gone out the door with the police officer, Louise assumed. Other than one other man who stood, looking confused in the opening of his cubicle, wearing nothing but his boxers, the place seemed empty.

All hospitals are the same, Louise reminded herself, and she rushed to the door where she was hopeful she would find… Yes! Tucked away in an alcove were multiple wheelchairs. Snapping one open, she scooted it back to where Sandy waited.

“Where did you get that?” she asked. “Did they give it to you?”

“I borrowed it,” Louise said. “Come on.”

“I don’t think we should move her, Louise. Really.”

“Come on!” Ignoring Sandy, she went and gently started lifting Marie off of the table.

“What are you doing?” Sandy grabbed Louise’s arm. “Louise, you can’t take her!”

As quickly and gently as possible, Louise lay Marie back down and grabbed Sandy by the shoulders. “Something happened, Sandy. Something bad. You need to listen and trust me. We need to get out of here, now.”

Something in Louise’s tone got through to Sandy. In the dim light, Louise saw her friend’s face collapse with emotion. She glanced around the dark cubicle and finally, it seemed like the eeriness of the silent Emergency Room was registering. “Okay,” she whispered, and helped Louise gently ease the nine year old into the wheelchair. Frantically, Louise opened cabinets, and found a stack of blankets. She grabbed every one of them and stuffed them into the chair next to Marie.

No one said a word as Sandy pushed the wheelchair containing her daughter, Louise walking ahead, out of the emergency room’s double doors into the parking lot, out into a world that had just changed forever.