Escape From Norriswood

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

At the hospital, Rosalyn watched Deidra sit in the waiting room and fold and unfold her arms against her stomach, her index finger tap tap tapping against her cheekbone. The TV was lit with the broadcast of a horse race, and Rosalyn found herself darting her eye back to these LED-powered images.

She felt like she needed to talk to Deidra alone, ask her what she thought they should say if someone asked where they were from, what they were doing in Norriswood. Her anxiety uncoiled thoughts around her head: what if the mill workers came back here tonight to finish the job on Phil? What if they had somebody on the inside here?

A nurse came around the corner to the waiting area, and called Deidra's name. Rosalyn followed her to the nurse, and then the trio walked down a hallway, and stopped outside a set of double-doors that the nurse buzzed their way through by pressing a plastic, red button.

The nurse led them to the room Phil was in. From outside the door, Rosalyn could hear a low muddle of human voices.

"You have thirty minutes, and then he needs to sleep," the nurse said. Deidra laid her hand on her shoulder, and then stepped toward the open doorway. Rosalyn followed.

Rosalyn passed a bed with a woman whose face had turned grey, camouflaged in with the pale paint colour on the walls. Wires ran into her nose, from a tank beside the bed. A man sat on the stool beside her, and their eyes turned to Rosalyn's as she walked passed. She nodded toward them, and then tucked her eyes downward.

They passed a second bed that had its curtains drawn, and Rosalyn could hear people behind the veil muttering something to each other. Family, she guessed, into visit a grandparent. The sound of a small boy's laughter floated out from behind the curtain, his voice rattling against the buzz of the overhead lights, the beeps of the monitors, tanks propped beside the beds.

They reached the third bed in the aisle, veiled, too, like the one before it in curtain. Deidra pulled the curtain back an inch on its wire hanging, and Rosalyn followed her inside.

It took Rosalyn several moments to recognize Phil. Ice cubes were wrapped in paper towel, and clear plastic and taped to his left eyebrow, and another junk of ice was taped beneath his right eye. His right cheek sprouted a thin line of stitches, the cut glistening with Vaseline in the yellow, fluorescent light above his bed. Cotton swabs were placed inside each of his nostrils. His left ear was swollen and re-shaped, protruding outwards like a clam.

Rosalyn looked down and saw his hands. The deep cut lines in the skin where the rope had been, the hands bruised, each finger and knuckle a darker shade of blue, purple, black.

Deidra had taken the stool beside the bed, and was rubbing her hand up and down his arm. Rosalyn couldn't tell if Phil could see her, his eyeballs sunk back beneath the damaged, taped skin.

He croaked, coughed. "Shush shush shush," Deidra said into his chest. "It's going to be OK. Don't worry, Phillip, it's going to get better."

Rosalyn heard the people beside the bed next-door hush into quiet. Then, a voice apologizing, and boot steps outside Phil's bed.

A head poked in through the curtain, dark hair, eyes, and moustache. "Excuse me Mrs. Newell," he said. "I'm Sergeant House, may I have a word with you?"

Deidra rose from the stool. Rosalyn watched her hand give Phil's arm a squeeze, before walking away from the bed. Rosalyn heard the way the people around the bed next to them spoke to each other in short, staccato sentences. Like they were aware someone was listening to them, and wanted to convince this person that they weren't eavesdropping by talking, when really they were.

Rosalyn stared at Phil for a second, and then walked over to the bed. Her ear was cocked to the rapid mutterings outside the curtain, the officer's voice low and steady, but too low to hear what words he was saying. Then came the sound of footsteps marching away from the bed, out of the room.

Deidra stepped inside the curtain and flicked her wrist for Rosalyn to step outside with her. Rosalyn left Phil, the cotton swabs dangling from his nose steeped now in maroon.

"I need to get out of here in a minute," Deidra said, her voice a whisper. Rosalyn squeezed her hand, and shuffled to the left, leaned against the wall.

"That man that was just here. He says he was just at the house of a woman who looked identical to me. The woman was married to a man named Phillip Newell, who was shot and killed tonight by police officers after he shot another man point-blank.

"But the way he looked at me, Rosalyn, when he said it," Deidra's gaze turned to the ceiling tiles, her eyelashes fluttering in still air of the hospital room.

"It was like he suspected you of something," Rosalyn said. Deidra returned her eyes to Rosalyn's face, and nodded.

"It's hard to know who to trust in this town – you know yourself how small Norriswood is," Deidra said, and Rosalyn laughed.

"Perhaps too small for more than one Norriswood's worth of people," Rosalyn said. "Do the nurses or the officers know that your husband has the same ID as the man who was killed tonight?" she said, and then stared at the ceramic floor for a moment, waiting for Deidra to correct her. She could hear her mouth ex-husband, only it didn't come. Instead, she felt Deidra sift passed her into the curtained-off bedside.

Rosalyn watched her search for Phil's clothes, but nothing was there. No wallet, or watch, nothing on the chairs around the bed, nor on the bedside table.

"Someone must have taken his wallet," Deidra said.

Rosalyn tried to gauge whether the people next door had heard her, the boy's voice bouncing off the walls now, past his bedtime. Sweat trickled down her forearm, onto her wrist.

"Deidra," she said, "I'll give you a moment with Phil, and then we should get out of here. I'll find a place for you that's safe. And then I'll track down Tara."

"Are you sure that's what you want?" Deidra said.

"Yes," Rosalyn said, and took a final look her friend's father lying before her on the hospital bed.

When Deidra joined her outside the curtain, the two began to walk out of the rectangular room. A nurse met them at the door. "You still have another 15 minutes, you know," she said.

Rosalyn watched the way the nurse kept eye contact with Deidra, and wondered how fast word had spread through the hospital.

"My husband is very tired," Deidra said. "I think it would be better to let him rest." She took Rosalyn's hand in hers, and began to walk down the hallway toward the exit. Rosalyn swiveled her head around, saw that the nurse still stood there, one foot in the patient's room, watching them. "Miss," she said, when she saw Rosalyn's face turn back. "I didn't catch your name."

Rosalyn turned the corner, struck her wrist against the red button to unlock the double doors.

"You know what they say about Norriswood," Deidra said. "All the men work at the mill, all the women work at the hospital."

"And everyone skates for the same team," Rosalyn said.