They continued into the next room. Sean was right about the place being overcrowded: There were burn victims everywhere she looked. In the halls. Crammed three to a room. There was even a bed in one of the waiting areas.
“Is this legal?” Hanna asked, nearly tripping over someone’s monitor stand.
Kelly shrugged. “Until the new wing is finished, we don’t have anywhere to put everyone.”
Then Kelly pantomimed inhaling and exhaling an invisible cigarette and said she’d be back. Hanna turned back for the supply room to grab a clean bedpan. Something behind her caught her eye. The nurse’s station was empty. Every single chair was unoccupied.
She tiptoed around the desk and peered at the computer console. A program showed a list of patients in the clinic and their corresponding room numbers. Score. She dragged the pointer down the page. GRAHAM PRATT. According to the files, he was in room 142, which was just down the hall.
She stepped away from the desk just as Kelly swept around the corner, smelling like a Newport. “Okay, honey, time for mopping!”
Hanna added soap to the bucket and started down a hall. She gazed at the room numbers as she passed: 132 . . . 134 . . . 138 . . . and there it was, room 142. It wasn’t a room, per se—more like a small partition in a corner separated by a curtain.
She held her breath and peeked in. There, on a bed, lay a boy with a big bandage on his head and neck. His eyes were shut tight, and tubes snaked into his hands and mouth. Several machines beeped. A frisson went through Hanna’s body. This was what A was capable of. Hanna must have made a strange noise, because Kelly placed her hand on her shoulder. “That’s your friend? I heard you talking about him to Sean.”
Hanna stared at the blinking lights on Graham’s monitors. “Y-yeah,” she said, feeling a little bad for lying. “How is he?”
Kelly’s mouth made an upside-down U. “He’s in and out.”
“Has he said anything?”
Kelly shrugged. “No. Why?”
For a split second, she was looking at Hanna kind of suspiciously. “Can you do me a favor?” she asked in an innocent voice. “If he starts to wake up and I’m not here, can you call my house? I want to tell him something important. Something I should have told him before all this.”
Kelly’s eyes softened. “He really meant something to you, huh?” She gave Hanna’s hand a squeeze. “You got it.”
Then Kelly disappeared back into the hall. Hanna remained where she was, staring at the figure on the bed. Graham’s monitors beeped steadily. His chest rose up and down. Then, his eyelids fluttered and his lips parted.
Hanna leaned over his bed. “Graham?” she whispered. “Are you there?” Did you see A? she asked silently.
A puff of air escaped between Graham’s lips. His eyelashes fluttered once more, and then he went motionless on the pillow. Hanna pulled away from the bed, her heart still pounding hard. Graham was going to wake up soon. She could feel it.
A high-pitched giggle came from the vents. Hanna stiffened and looked down the hall. Patients lay motionless. Mop water gleamed on the floor. Everything was so still and quiet that for a second Hanna felt like she was dead.
She shuddered. If she and the others didn’t find Ali and her helper soon, she might be.
11
Family Bonding Time
As soon as Emily stepped into Saks Fifth Avenue at the King James Mall, a pin-thin girl appeared with a flower-shaped glass atomizer. “Want to try the new Flowerbomb?”
“Absolutely,” Iris insisted, pushing Emily out of the way and holding out her impossibly skinny, blue-veined wrist. “Now you, Emily.”
Emily shrugged and complied. After the perfume girl sprayed the fruity liquid on her wrist, Iris glanced at someone behind them. “You should try it, too, Mrs. Fields!”
Emily whirled around. Her mom stood in the entrance, peeling her plastic, see-through rain hat from her head. “M-mom?” Emily stammered. “What are you doing here?”
Mrs. Fields stuffed the hat into her quilted purse. “Iris invited me. And since it was on my way home from CVS, I figured, why not?” Then she stuck out her wrist for some Flowerbomb and gave Iris a warm smile.
This whole Iris thing was freaking Emily out more every second. For one thing, Emily kept waiting for The Preserve to call up and say, Um, have you stolen our patient? For another, she hated, hated, hated that Iris had to stay at her house—sometimes without Emily supervising. After Emily had returned from the panic room yesterday, she hadn’t known what to expect. What if Iris had decided to tell her parents everything? What if Iris had flipped out and gone after them with a kitchen knife?