“You’re gonna go in there and you’re gonna overreact, aren’t you?”
I wrench the steering wheel round, swinging the Camaro into the hospital parking lot. The place is buzzing. The news vans haven’t moved—they’re parked as close as they can possibly get to the glass frontage of St. Peter’s, and two different reporters are standing in front of the building, each talking into microphones as cameramen shoot them. Charlie’s Aston Martin is still parked by the emergency entrance, too. The sky’s darkened significantly since we left the warehouse, and it’s just starting to rain. I may not have stuck around in high school for long, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t read. I read everything from Plato to Sun Tzu, all the way through to Vonnegut. Right now the weather smacks of a pathetic fallacy that perfectly matches my black mood. Lacey grabs hold of my wrist from the backseat before I can get out of the car. “You haven’t answered me,” she says. “Are you planning on overreacting?”
With a steely expression directed into the rearview mirror, I fix her in my glare. “Lacey, I never overreact. If I can’t get in there, I will react accordingly. I. Will. Fuck. Shit. Up.” She starts to object, but it’s too late; I’ve already climbed out of the Camaro.
I assess the situation as quickly as possible. The entrance to St. Peter’s is closed, and two cops are standing outside; besides them and the news crews, there are few people waiting in the parking lot. A handful of concerned bystanders wait in the cold, presumably for their loved ones inside. It looks as though the rest of Seattle has taken the threat of chemical poisoning on board and have stayed the hell away. Smart fuckers.
Lacey gets out of the car, grimacing as a gust of frigid wind buffets us, hair flying around her face. “You won’t leave me, will you?” she asks.
“No, I won’t leave you, Lace.” I wish I could. I wish she would stay in the fucking car if I told her to, but I know even saying the words is a complete waste of breath. The last time I told her to wait in the car, she walked in on me shooting Frankie, her ex-fuck buddy, in the face. “You don’t need to worry. We’re gonna do this nice and quiet. I don’t feel like reacquainting myself with the penal system. There, does that make you feel any better?”
She shakes her head, shrugging her shoulders up around her ears against the cold. “Not really.”
“Great. Then let’s go.”
It takes all of two hours for the police to come looking for me. Two hours, where I numbly treat patients and go through the motions, just waiting and holding my breath. My first instinct was to contact Zeth, to let him know what’s happened, but without my cell that’s physically impossible. I really should have memorized his number. That way I could have snuck into one of the quieter areas of the hospital and used one of the landlines at a nurses’ station, but it never occurred to me that I might need to do something like that. And now all of that is irrelevant, because my name is being called over the PA system and I’m being summoned to the Chief’s office on level three.
“Here, Dr. Romera, I can finish this for you,” Grace offers, holding out her hand to take the suture needle from me. I’ve been stitching a nasty gash on an elderly woman’s arm; Grace takes my seat and continues with the job, giving me a warm smile. Despite the unique turn of events today has taken, she’s been totally normal with me; I’m beginning to think she wasn’t instantly suspicious when she discovered me coming out of the blood bank with those units for Zeth.
“Thanks, Gracie.” I take my time finding the way to the elevators. I’m in no rush to be questioned by the cops, especially because I haven’t been able to figure out what the hell I’m going to tell them. Basically, I can’t tell them anything. Or certainly not the truth, anyway.
When I reach her office, the Chief is sitting on the edge of her desk, talking to a woman in her early thirties. The woman’s clearly law enforcement; she’s wearing a dark navy pantsuit and a crisp white shirt instead of a uniform, but she holds herself in that same way all authority figures do.