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I replace the pillow and lie back down. I then unclench my fist and examine the cigarette lighter I snatched after it fell from Jeannette’s cardigan pocket while she cleaned me.
It’s made of cheap plastic. The kind you can pick up at a gas station for a dollar. Jeannette probably has two more sitting in her purse.
She won’t miss this one.
51
I toss the blanket aside and slide my legs over the side of the bed, even though it hurts to move, hurts to breathe. Three sets of stitches pull at the skin of my abdomen.
Before placing my feet on the floor, I pause.
I’m not sure standing’s a good idea. Even if it is, I’m not sure I can. I am, for lack of a better word, in shambles. My legs tingle from disuse. The back of my hand is bleeding from when I plucked out the IV. Removing the catheter was even worse. Soreness pulses through my core, a counterpoint to the pain roaring along my stomach.
Yet I attempt to stand anyway, sucking in air to steel myself against the pain before pushing off the bed. Then I’m up, somehow standing on these weak, wobbling legs.
I take a step.
Then another.
And another.
Soon I’m staggering across the room, the floor seeming to rock back and forth like a ship’s deck on a stormy sea. I sway with it, lurching from one side to the other, trying to stay upright. When the floor doesn’t stop moving, I grip the wall for support.
But I keep walking, my joints crackling, as if I’m a freshly hatched chick, now shedding eggshell. The sound follows me all the way to the door, where I try the handle and discover it is indeed locked.
So it’s back to the side of the bed, where I grab the photograph ofmy family. I press it against my chest with one hand while gripping Jeannette’s cigarette lighter in the other.
With a flick of my thumb, there’s a flame, which I touch against the fitted sheet in the center of the bed. It ignites in an instant—a fire-ringed hole that grows exponentially. The flames soon reach the top sheet, and that, too, starts to burn. It’s the same with the mattress. Expanding circles of fire spreading into each other and then outward, all the way to the pillows, which pop into flame.
I watch, squinting against the smoke, as the entire bed is engulfed. A rectangle of fire.
Then, just as I had hoped, the fire alarm starts to blare.
52
It’s Dr. Wagner who enters the room first, drawn by the fire alarm’s literal siren’s call. Jeannette follows right behind him. They unlock the door and burst inside. Jeannette screams when she sees the flames on the bed now threatening to make the leap to the walls and ceiling.
Because they’re too focused on the fire, neither of them sees me standing just behind the recently opened door.
Nor do they see me slip out of the room.
By the time they turn around to notice me, it’s too late.
I’m already closing the door behind me and, with a quick turn of my wrist, locking them inside.
53
I walk as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast at all. Pain hobbles me—a fierce, stabbing ache that keeps me gasping. Still, slow walking is better than not being able to walk at all.
Behind me, Dr. Wagner and Jeannette pound on the door from inside my room. In between their frantic knocks I hear the sounds of Dr. Wagner coughing and Jeannette shrieking.
To my left is a darkened doorway. Inside I see Mr. Leonard, dead to the world despite the racket coming from the room next door. Surrounding him is all manner of monitoring equipment, their lights disconcertingly festive. Like a strand of Christmas bulbs.
I make my way to the nurses’ station, where I allow myself to pause for just a second to catch my breath. Just beyond it is another hospital room and the short corridor I took the first time I left this place. The corridor ends at a door that leads directly into Nick’s apartment. From there, I need to make it down the twelfth-floor hallway to the elevator. In my condition, taking the stairs isn’t an option.
I push off the nurses’ station and am on my way to the corridor when the door at its end starts to open. I duck into the room to my left and press myself against the wall by the open doorway, hoping I haven’t been spotted.
Outside, I hear the rapid click of heels.