Deadlocked

Chapter 45

"Son of a bitch!" Walt blurted. "That damn tornado isn't more than a few miles away and it's headed right for us. We've got seventy-five basket cases to get into the basement!"

As if to make the point, tornado sirens began to wail, mixing with the machine-gun splatter of rain and hail and wind that roared like a freight train.

"Where are the doctors and nurses?" Mason asked.

Walt snorted a laugh. "You got to be kidding, mister. There ain't no doctors on weekends and there's only one nurse on each floor and they gonna need our help."

"How can you run a hospital with one nurse on each floor?" Mason asked.

"Keep the patients doped up, that's how," he said. Walt bolted out of his chair faster than Mason would have thought him able. "You take the top floor, I'll take this one. Get everybody out of their rooms and downstairs to the basement."

The wind screeched and rattled the hospital like it was made of tinker toys as a cataclysmic bolt of lightning arced across the sky, the blinding light feeling close enough to vaporize them, the trailing blast of thunder launching them toward the patients' rooms.

Mason swiped his key card over the sensor, yanking open the door to the hall. Walt shoved past him, banging on doors as he ran the length of the corridor. Mason took the stairs two at a time, bursting onto the second floor as people began to pour out of their rooms.

The stairs opened out into a sitting area in the center of the floor. The wall of windows that normally afforded a calming view of the pastoral grounds vibrated furiously with the beat of the storm.

A woman dressed in white pants and a white shirt stood in the middle of the room calling patients by name, motioning them toward her. She was middle-age, stout, had close cropped black hair, and was the closest thing to a nurse Mason could see in the growing crowd.

"Who are you?" she yelled at Mason.

"Maintenance," he said. "How can I help?"

"Get them out of their rooms. If we can get them under control, we'll take them downstairs. If we can't manage that, we'll have to put them in the halls away from any windows so they don't get hit by broken glass."

The lights began to flicker, adding a strobe effect to the keening and wailing of the frightened patients. A few ran toward him, hands extended like beggars, grabbing at his sleeves. Others pressed their backs against the windows, sliding down onto the floor, toppling over and curling into a ball. Down the halls, doors slammed as some patients retreated to their rooms, barricading themselves.

Two patients had latched on to him, one on either side. They were both older women, their faces slack, their eyes wide. They wore nightgowns even though it was the middle of the day. He led them to a sofa, easing them down. He gathered other patients, placing some in chairs, the rest in a circle on the carpeted floor.

As soon as he had them organized, they started to peel apart. The woman in white kept calling names. It took Mason a moment to realize that she kept repeating the same names and that no one was paying her any attention. The patients wandered past her as if she was one of them. Mason finally realized that she was when she extended her arms and began twirling slowly down onto the floor.

Crazy or not, she had the right idea. There was no way he could get the patients downstairs to the basement, so he had to get them into the hallway away from the glass. He had no idea how to get the holdouts to leave their rooms.

He grabbed two patients sitting on the couch, a man and a woman, and began leading them to the west wing. Hearing footsteps as he passed the stairs, he paused long enough to see Adrienne make the turn at the landing. She was soaked through, her tank top clinging to her in way that almost made him forget the storm.

"What the hell!" she said.

Mason shrugged. "You made the padded room sound irresistible. Welcome to the party."

She joined him, looking around the room where twenty people in pajamas were out of control, some crying, and some jabbering, some silently pressing their faces against the glass.

"Oh my God!" she said, drawing each word out like it was a separate paragraph. "We've got to get these people to the basement."

"There isn't time," Mason said. "This isn't all of them anyway. Some of them have gone back to their rooms. If they locked their doors, I don't know how we'll get them out. Our best bet is to put everyone in one of the hallways and ride this thing out."

Adrienne reached into her jeans and pulled out a key card. "Master card," she said. "Priceless. You get everyone into the west wing. I'll check the rooms on the east wing. Then I'll come back to help you."

The next few minutes were a blur, Mason shuttling patients into the west wing hallway. He couldn't separate the effects of their psychiatric condition, their fear, and their medication. All he knew was that any explanation he gave them could just as well have been in Chinese.

Adrienne led three patients from the east wing into his hall, then began checking each room. Satisfied that they had accounted for everyone, she stood at the entrance to the lobby, blocking anyone who thought about leaving while Mason patrolled the hall, reassuring the terrified patients that everything was okay.

There was an exit at the far end of the hall. Mason opened the door, making certain no one was hiding on the stairs. Satisfied, he noticed one patient, a woman sitting against the wall near the door, her knees pulled to her chest, her head pressed against her arms, hiding her face. She was small and had dark hair streaked with gray and was one of the few patients wearing normal clothes instead of pajamas. She was so silent Mason wasn't certain whether she was breathing. He knelt down, touching her shoulder gently.

"Ma'am," he said softly. "Are you all right?"

The woman stirred at the sound of his voice, raising her head. She blinked her eyes and then wiped them. "It's you," Mary Kowalczyk said.

Before Mason could answer, the building shook as if it had been ripped from its foundation and upended. The glass walls in the lobby exploded and tornado-driven winds screamed into their corridor, hurtling Adrienne over the bowed heads of the patients like she was a rag doll.

Mason flattened his body over Mary while the building continued to shake, not certain whether it would collapse around them. The wind howled down the hall like the devil giving chase, escaping with a painful groaning screech as the roof peeled off the hospital, tons of steel and concrete disappearing in the blackness.

Just as quickly, it was over, the winds dying, the rain easing to a mist, then stopping, the air chilled but clean. Sirens filled the afternoon, the sky lightening but still too dark for a late summer afternoon.

Mason lifted himself off of Mary. "Are you okay?" he asked her. He squeezed her shoulders when she nodded her head. "I'll be right back," he told her.

He found Adrienne sprawled on her back twenty feet from the doorway to the lobby. Blood oozed from a slice in her scalp and her arms were tattooed by a constellation of pinprick cuts caused by flying glass. He knelt next to her, glad that her eyes were open and not fixed.

"What hurts?" he asked her.

"What doesn't?" she said. "I can move everything and nothing feels broken. Help me sit up."

Mason motioned to two patients to move aside and make room for her. He was surprised at how calm the patients were. Either they were in shock or they were cured, Mason decided. He eased Adrienne into a sitting position and pulled off his denim shirt, giving it to her to press against the cut on her head.

"Easy," he told her. "You may have a concussion."

"I thought the person you wanted to visit was at Lakewood Gardens," she said as she took a deep breath.

"I took a wrong turn on my way over there," he said. "Good thing I did. Why did you come here instead of staying at the visitor's center?"

"I knew we were short-handed today. The nurse that's supposed to cover this floor called in sick. When the sirens went off, I knew my dad would need help."

"Your dad?" Mason asked. "Was he the guy on the desk downstairs?"

"That's him. Walt. Boy is he going to be in a bad mood. He was really looking forward to that football game."

More sirens signaled the arrival of rescue crews. The first firefighters made it to the second floor lobby. Mason signaled them.

"The cavalry has arrived," he told Adrienne. "They'll take good care of you."

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"No place. I was never here. Remember?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding and pressing his shirt to her scalp. "Sure I don't. Never saw you after you left the Visitor's Center. How's that for a concussion?"

"Perfect."

He kissed her cheek as a firefighter reached them, while others attended to the rest of the patients. Mason stepped out of the way, returning to Mary who was standing at the end of the hall beneath the exit sign.

"You okay?" Mason asked her.

"At least I'm not crazy," she said.