Lost Souls

chapter 38

Patient Brian Murdock, in Room 108, saw something he wasn’t supposed to see or overheard something he wasn’t supposed to hear. Nobody knew what alarmed him. He was sufficiently frightened to change out of his pajamas into the street clothes he’d been wearing upon admission, and to try to leave the hospital without drawing attention to himself.

Nurse Ginger Newbury encountered Murdock, recognized him, and told him that it was against the rules for him to self-release. He shoved her aside and ran, and she shouted for security.

Ordinarily, security didn’t cover every exit from the hospital, and in the past, Cory Webber, a maintenance man, served no security function. This was a new day, however, and a new Cory Webber. He was dressed in his janitorial uniform, and he had a mop and a bucket and a rack of supplies on wheels, as usual. Secreted among his supplies, however, were a can of Mace and a nightstick. Although he pretended to be intent on his cleaning chores, his only responsibility was to prevent any unauthorized exits along the personnel-only hallway that served the staff lunchroom and the nurses’ lounge and led to the door to the employee parking lot.

When Brian Murdock burst into that corridor, running, with an orderly named Vaughn Nordlinger in pursuit, Cory Webber dropped his mop and snatched the can of Mace from his supply rack.

Murdock carried a weapon in each hand, heavy casters that he somehow removed from his hospital bed, and he threw them, surprising Cory. The first hit the janitor in the chest, the second in the face, and he stumbled backward against the wall.

At the end of the corridor, Murdock slammed through the door, which wasn’t locked because it was the primary door by which various members of the Community came and went during this momentous day. He was out, free, but not for long, as both Vaughn and Cory were close on his heels.

From behind, Vaughn snared the escapee’s jacket and yanked hard, pulling him off his feet. Murdock hit the pavement with bone-breaking force. But he was a strong young man. He rolled onto his hands and knees and launched himself at the orderly.

Cory stepped in, swung the nightstick at the back of Murdock’s head. He struck him across the shoulders instead, but the blow was enough to make the escapee lose his grip on Vaughn and drop onto his back on the blacktop.

Murdock started to shout for help, and Cory responded in the most efficient fashion, hammering at his throat with the nightstick. The escapee tried to protect his throat with his hands, but Cory was an irresistible force, intent upon putting an end to the cries, and the man fell silent almost at once.

Suddenly, others of the Community were gathered around Murdock, and some of them were restraining Cory, though there was no need for them to do so. Someone asked for his nightstick, and of course he relinquished it.

Only then did he realize that Murdock was dead and that not only his throat but also his face had been shattered. Cory Webber had no memory of striking the escapee in the face.

Waiting for Mr. Walker to return, worrying that he might not see the old man again or that if the old man returned he wouldn’t be himself anymore, Travis Ahern restlessly roamed the hospital room. From time to time he tried the telephone, which remained out of service, and checked the hallway, which remained deserted.

He was at one of the windows when the man came running out of the hospital with two guys chasing him. The first man wore street clothes, but one of the pursuers was dressed in medical whites and the other in the gray uniform of a hospital janitor.

The two from the hospital attacked the first man. The janitor had some kind of club. He knocked the man down with it and then hit him, hit him, hit him.

Travis didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t look away. Nobody could be clubbed that hard, that often, and still be alive. Travis had never seen a man killed before, and even from a distance, it was so terrible that he had to lean against the windowsill to keep his trembling legs from failing him.

Nurses, a security guard, and other hospital workers rushed into the parking lot. They took the club away from the janitor, and they gathered around the beaten man as though they were concerned about him, but they were really just blocking him from the sight of anyone who, like Travis, might be at a window.

Already, an orderly and a doctor had appeared with a gurney. The physician was Kevin Flynn. Travis’s doctor. Flynn and the orderly, with the help of the security guard, began to lift the dead man onto the gurney.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in the janitor. They were not restraining him for the police.

Anyone just now looking out a window might think someone had collapsed of a heart attack and was fortunate to be so close to the aid he needed. The chase and the beating had lasted no more than a minute, most likely less. Perhaps no one but Travis had seen it.

One of the nurses turned toward the hospital and looked up, as if searching the windows for witnesses.

Hoping he had moved before her gaze could travel to his room, Travis stepped away from the glass. He backed into the armchair, almost fell over it, but instead fell into it.

He couldn’t think of anywhere to hide.

He waited for hurried footsteps in the hall, Dr. Flynn in his lab coat, the security guard, the janitor with the club in his hand once more.

But the second floor remained quiet.

From the chair, through the window, he could see only the gray sky. The clouds were as flat as an ironed sheet.

Travis thought of his mother and tried to picture her at work in the big kitchen at Meriwether Lewis Elementary. He couldn’t make that picture form in his mind.

He strove to imagine her in her car, the seven-year-old Honda with the slightly damaged fender, on her way to the hospital to visit him. His imagination failed him again.

Closing his eyes, covering his face with his hands, he struggled to raise the memory of her face, and he succeeded. When she was there in his mind’s eye, he wanted desperately to see her smiling, but her face remained without expression. Her eyes were as flat as the ironed clouds beyond the window.