Frank didn’t hesitate. They were in Elaine’s Subaru Outback, and he bounced it over the curb and onto the lawn, which was empty (at least so far) save for the statue of St. Theresa that had graced the lobby of the old hospital, and the flagpole, where the Stars and Stripes flew above the state flag, with its two miners flanking what looked like a gravestone.
Under any other conditions, Elaine would have given him the rough side of her tongue, which could be rough indeed: What are you doing? Are you crazy? This car isn’t paid off! Today she said nothing. She was cradling Nana in her arms, rocking her as she had when Nana was a baby, feverish with teething. The gunk covering their daughter’s face trailed down to her tee-shirt (her favorite, the one she wore when she was feeling a little blue, the one Frank had stretched eons ago, that morning) like the strands of some skeevy old prospector’s beard. It was hideous. All Frank wanted in the world was to rip it away, but the memory of Kinswoman Brightleaf restrained him. When Elaine tried to touch it on their gallop across town, he had snapped “Don’t!” and she had yanked her hand back. Twice he had asked if Nana was breathing. Elaine said she was, she could see that awful white stuff going in and out like a bellows, but that wasn’t good enough for Frank. He had to reach out his right hand and put it on Nana’s chest and make sure for himself.
He brought the Outback to a grass-spraying halt and raced around to the passenger side. He hoisted Nana and they started toward Urgent Care, Elaine running ahead. Frank felt a momentary pang as he saw the side-zipper of her slacks was open, revealing a glimpse of her pink underwear. Elaine, who under ordinary circumstances was so perfectly put together—tucked and plucked, smoothed down, mixed and matched to a fare-thee-well.
She stopped so abruptly he almost ran into her. A large crowd was milling in front of the Urgent Care doors. She uttered a strange, horse-like whinny that was part frustration and part anger. “We’ll never get in!”
Frank could see the Urgent Care lobby was already filled to capacity. A mad image flashed through his mind: shoppers racing into Walmart on Black Friday.
“Main lobby, El. It’s bigger. We can get in there.”
Elaine wheeled in that direction at once, almost bowling him over. Frank chugged after her, panting a little now. He was in good shape, but Nana seemed to weigh more than the eighty pounds she had registered at her last physical. They couldn’t get into the main lobby, either. There was no crowd in front of the doors, and Frank had a moment of hope, but the lobby itself was packed. The foyer was as deep as they could penetrate.
“Let us through!” Elaine yelled, pounding the shoulder of a husky woman in a pink housedress. “It’s our daughter! Our daughter has got a growth!”
The woman in the pink dress seemed to do no more than flex one of those linebacker shoulders, but that was enough to send El staggering backward. “You ain’t the only one, sister,” she said, and Frank glimpsed the stroller in front of the husky woman. He couldn’t see the face of the child inside, and didn’t need to. The limply splayed legs and one small, trailing foot—clad in a pink sock with Hello Kitty on it—were enough.
Somewhere ahead, beyond the milling people, a man’s voice bellowed, “If you are here because you read Internet reports of an antidote or a vaccine, go home! Those reports are false! There is no antidote and no vaccine at this time! Let me repeat, THERE IS NO ANTIDOTE OR VACCINE AT THIS TIME!”
Cries of dismay greeted this, but no one left. More people were already crowding in behind them, rapidly filling the foyer.
Elaine turned, her face sweaty, her eyes wide and frantic and sheened with tears. “The Women’s Center! We can take her there!”
She pushed her way through the scrum, head down, arms out and flailing at the people in her way. Frank followed with Nana in his arms. One of her feet lightly bumped against a man holding a teenager with long blond hair and no visible face.
“Watch it, buddy,” the man said. “We’re all in this together.”
“Watch it yourself,” Frank snarled, and forced his way back into the open air, his mind once more flashing like a computer with a defective circuit.
m y k i d??m y k i d??m y k i d
Because right now, nothing mattered but Nana. Nothing on God’s green earth. He would do what he needed to do to make her better. He would dedicate his life to making her better. If that was crazy, he didn’t want to be sane.
Elaine was already crossing the lawn. There was a woman sitting with her back against the flagpole now, holding a baby to her breasts and keening. This was a noise Frank was familiar with; it was the sound a dog made with its foot caught and broken in a trap. She held the baby out to Frank as he passed, and he could see white filaments trailing from the back of its covered head. “Help us!” she cried. “Please, mister, help us!”
Frank made no reply. His eyes were fixed on Elaine’s back. She was heading for one of the buildings on the far side of Hospital Drive. WOMEN’S CENTER, read the white-on-blue sign in front. OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY, DRS. ERIN EISENBERG, JOLIE SURATT, GEORGIA PEEKINS. There were a few people with cocooned family members sitting in front of the doors, but only a few. This was a good idea. Elaine actually had them pretty often when she took time off from her busy schedule of busting his ass—only why were they sitting? That was odd.
“Hurry!” she said. “Hurry up, Frank!”
“I’m hurrying . . . as fast as . . . I can.” Panting hard now.
She was looking past him. “Some of them saw us! We have to stay ahead!”
Frank looked over his shoulder. A ragged scrum was charging across the lawn, past the beached Outback. The ones who only had babies or small children were in the lead.
Gasping for breath, he staggered up the walk behind Elaine. The caul over Nana’s face fluttered in the breeze.
“Won’t do you no good,” said a woman leaning against the side of the building. She looked and sounded exhausted. Her legs were spread so she could hold her own little girl, one about Nana’s age, against her.
“What?” Elaine asked. “What are you talking about?”
Frank read the sign posted on the inside of the door: CLOSED DUE TO AURORA EMERGENCY.
Stupid chick doctors, he thought as Elaine grabbed the doorhandle and yanked. Stupid selfish chick doctors. You should be open due to the Aurora emergency.
“They probably got kids of their own,” said the woman holding the little girl. There were dark brown circles beneath her eyes. “Can’t blame them, I guess.”
I blame them, Frank thought. I blame the shit out of them.
Elaine turned to him. “What do we do now? Where can we go?”
Before he could reply, the mob from Urgent Care arrived. A geezer with a kid slung over his shoulder grainsack-style—a granddaughter, maybe—thrust Elaine roughly away from the door so he could try it himself.
What happened next had a kind of speedy inevitability. The man reached beneath his untucked shirt, pulled a pistol from his belt, aimed it at the door, and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening, even in the open air. Glass blew inward.