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41 - Springfield

41 –  Springfield

 

Luke Waters

 

 “Psst. Hey. Wake up.”

 I wasn’t sleeping much to begin with, so when a familiar whisper cut through the air of the room I was brought back quickly to alertness.

 “Leo?”

 It was dark; a bump resounded through the floor, followed by a muttered “Fuck.” Then I saw a blur of white next to my bed, moving around way too much for my liking.

 “Luke! Are you awake?”

 “I’m awake,” I mumbled, now aware that Leo was, technically, not supposed to be in my room. “Aren’t visiting hours over?”

 “You’re hilarious,” he informed me in a dry voice. “It’s three in the morning. Of course they’re over. I’m not visiting you.”

 “Of course you are.”

 There was a second of silence.

 “Okay, maybe I am. But look, I sneaked in!”

 He flicked on the lamp next to my bed and I saw that he was wearing a pair of white patient scrubs and a plain white strip of paper stuck around his right wrist. I rolled my eyes.

 “Really? That’s very convincing.”

 “It worked!” he protested. “I walked around and looked sick and nobody said anything to me. So now I can visit you whenever without those darned nurses getting all up in my ass about visiting hours.”

 “They’re just doing their job,” I reminded him, feeling a slight headache start to set in. “And I know you think the blonde one is cute. What’s her name? Tara? Maxine?”

 He scowled at me, sitting down on the stool by my bed. “Bridget. But shut up about the nurses, I have important news for you.”

 “I’m hoping you do, because it’s three in the morning and if you don’t have something noteworthy to tell me I will kill you.”

 “Says the man with three broken limbs.”

 “This is an exhausting conversation to have at three am. Get to the point.”

 He arranged himself in a comfortable way on the stool and then fixed me with a look.

 “It’s about your photographs.”

 I stared at him.

 “Uh huh. I have something to tell you about that too.”

 “You go first,” he said quickly.

 It frustrated me that I couldn’t remember the vivid details of my encounters with…with her, but I remembered enough.

 “Her name’s Maya. Maya Sumedh.”

 Leo stared at me for a few seconds and then his expression turned into something which was a cross between a wide grin and absolute shock.

 “Yes! Yes it is! But how do you know?”

 “She told me,” I said.

 He puffed out a breath.

 “Oh my God. That’s amazing. That’s…that’s really something.”

 “Uh huh,” I mumbled, looking down at my hands. “I don’t know anything else though.”

 “That’s what I’m here to tell you about,” Leo said quickly. “All you need is pictures of her.”