Vagabonds

Chapter Forty-Four: The Whole Story

Eliza felt like a caged animal as she paced back and forth in the waiting room, her eyes occasionally flickering to the armed guards standing at the door.

"Would you sit down?" Tori hissed as Eliza made yet another loop around the molded plastic chairs designed for anything but comfort.

But Eliza couldn't. She felt electrified with worry, terror gnawing at her stomach as if she'd eaten something rotten. What was Amile doing to the Vagabonds right now? Was Ian Eckelson already dead? How soon until the police dragged them in for questioning? How long did Joe have left?

Eliza glanced over her shoulder. Joe met her gaze with his own dazed, heavy-lidded eyes, his face still limp from whatever drugs were in the darts he'd pulled out of his chest. Every time a gurney crashed through the main doors of the emergency room or the receptionist lifted her voice beyond a whisper, Joe winced. He looked like a drowning man, struggling to breathe through the flood of information cramming into his brain.

Eliza wanted to throw something. She wanted to punch, scream, fight.

She wanted to curl up and cry.

How the hell was she going to make this right?

Suddenly, the massive double doors leading into the main corridor of the hospital swung open and a young doctor strode through them, her surgical mask pulled down around her neck, her scrubs a pristine baby blue.

"He's ready to see you," she said, jerking her head impatiently.

Eliza was at Joe's side in a flash, helping him rise onto unsteady feet as Tori scrambled upright on her other side. With one last glance at the guards — watching the three teenagers with expressions of sympathetic suspicion — Eliza, Tori, and Joe followed the doctor into the intestines of Scottstown Medical.

It was a chaos of white light, sterile walls, shouting voices, beeping machines. Eliza felt like she didn't have enough eyes to take it all in. There were nurses rushing by, arms overflowing with things Eliza couldn't name. Doctors with charts disappearing behind curtains. Techs and receptionists trotting from room to room, wheeling computers and portable tables full of needles and bandages and frightening tools. And over it all, the steady thrum of frenetic energy fueled by all the urgent needs of humanity swirling around them.

If Eliza was overwhelmed, she couldn't even begin to imagine how Joe felt.

"Come on," she whispered, tugging on his elbow as he stumbled to a halt, his half-conscious eyes as big as eggs.

Even Tori looked uncomfortable as the young doctor led them through another set of double doors and into a quieter corridor lined with frosted windows.

"He's in here," she said, jerking her thumb into a dimly lit room. "I'm sorry, I have to get back to the O.R, but if you need anything, press the button for nurse assistance."

"Got it," Eliza said, but the doctor was already gone, shoving through another set of doors and plunging deeper into the strange hospital maze they'd all stumbled into.

The three of them hesitated at the room's entrance for a moment, squinting into the murky darkness where Ian Eckelson lay tucked into a high bed, IV lines and wires sprouting around him like roots. The man who had only hours ago been looming, intimidating, strong, now looked tiny. Shriveled in the big white bed, sunken and weak and desperately pale.

It took Eliza a minute to realize she was holding her breath as she watched his chest rise and fall, as if she could lend her oxygen to him.

Suddenly, the old man opened one eye.