I don’t want to die here. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.
My right leg twitches and I will it to keep functioning. For now, it’s gotten the message. We round the corner and there are the stairs.
For some reason, I turn back for a final sweep of the hall, and when I do, I see Glory has left the nurses’ station. Clipboard in hand, she’s heading for her rounds. In fifteen minutes tops, she’ll pull into our room for a temperature/blood pressure/pulse rate check and all hell will break loose. I’d hoped for a longer head start. Shit.
“What’s the matter?” Gonz asks.
“We need to move,” I say, pushing into the stairwell for the long climb down.
* * *
When the hydraulic front doors of St. Jude’s release us into the world, the sky is the blue-going-to-purple of late sunset. Above the praying-mantis-style lights of the parking lot, bashful stars flutter like they’re not sure whether it’s okay to show their full light just yet. The air is warm and sweet. I breathe in as much of it as my lungs will hold. It hurts in a good way, like my insides are holding a deep stretch.
“Ah shit. Taste that air, man. So good.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now what?” Gonzo asks, looking left and right like a wanted man.
“We need to get out of here. Got your cell?”
He pats his bag. “Yeah.”
“Great. Call for a cab.”
“What’s the number?”
“I don’t know. Call Information.”
“That’s, like, a dollar seventy-five. My mom will kill me.”
“Gonzo, she’s gonna kill you for breaking out of the hospital and going on an unscheduled road trip with me. Calling Information’s kind of incidental, don’t you think?”
“I knew this was a bad idea,” Gonzo grumbles, but he punches in the three digits anyway, and ten minutes later, a battered cab picks us up on Eldorado Street, two blocks from the hospital.
“Where to?” the guy asks, flipping on the meter.
“Good question.” Gonzo glares at me.
This would be a good time for Dulcie to show herself, give us a little divine intervention, put her money where her “there are no accidents, my friend” mouth is.
The meter goes up another fifteen cents and we haven’t even moved. I’m waiting for a sign. This is what it’s come to: I’m now believing in supernatural visions of punk-rock angels and last-ditch missions to save the universe/my life and random signs to point the way forward. Right. I’m just about to say, “Okay, you got me—game’s over. Let’s go back to the hospital and laugh it up about this over a nice cafeteria tray of gelatinized mystery meat” when I see something glinting over the rooftops. It’s a sign, all right. A large, peeling billboard advertising the Roadrunner bus depot. The smiling roadrunner is in a full run, going so fast that one of his feathers flies loose behind him. JUST FOLLOW THE FEATHER TO BIFROST ROAD, the sign says.
Follow the feather.
It’s not trumpets or thunderclaps, but it’s the best we’ve got right now.
“Bus station,” I say at last, hoping the prions in my brain are right.
The bus depot has been carved out of dirty tile, ancient plastic benches, half-empty candy machines, and overflowing trash cans. It’s run by people who were offered a chance at a job in hell or the bus depot and lost the coin toss. Also, it smells like piss.
Some grizzled man in a janitor’s uniform is swishing dirty water around on the floor with an even filthier mop. An empty information board hangs from the low ceiling, taking up most of the middle of the mostly deserted room. No buses. No info. Nothing to go on.
“What now?” Gonzo asks.
The clerk at the ticket counter doesn’t even move his little partition when we get up there.
“Hi,” I say. “Um, there’s nothing on the information board.”
“A-yup.” He flips the page in his comic book without looking up.
“Great. Thanks for that,” Gonzo mutters.
“When’s the next bus?” I ask.
“Not till seven-o-five tomorrow mornin’. But y’all cain’t stay here. Ten minutes till closin’. Won’t open up again till six a.m.”
“Okay, thanks.” I leave the window and sink onto a bench.
“I told you this was wack.” Gonzo sucks down a mouthful of asthma medicine.
Signs, signs. Dulcie said to look for the “seemingly random.” How do you look for the random? Doesn’t the random generally find you and that’s what makes it random?
