Gregg Hurwitz - You're Next

Shep stepped back, and security and nurses spilled into the room, rushing toward Annabel. Two guards moved to grab Shep, but Dr Cha was shouting, ‘No, no, he’s okay!’

Shep shoved through and across the threshold. Dodge’s wake told the story of his flight – a knocked-over patient tangled in his gown and IV pole, then a bleeding orderly picking herself out of an upended gurney, then a kneecapped security guard moaning and clutching either side of his leg as if to keep it from exploding. Finally, at the end of the hall, the stairwell door swinging closed, wiping from view the sliver of blackness beyond.

Dr Cha sat in the stillness of Annabel’s room, restitching the cut on Shep’s forearm. A drape of blood hung from the slit, dripping off his elbow. Her fingers moved nimbly, a blur of hook and Prolene. Two security guards were posted outside. The silence, long delayed, was welcome.

‘Stitching a nick like this twice,’ she said, ‘is not the best use of a trauma surgeon’s time.’

Shep said, ‘Sorry I wasn’t injured worse.’

‘So am I.’ She smirked, then repositioned his arm like a slab of meat on a grill.

They’d recounted the official version endlessly. Dr Cha had explained to the responding cops, as she and Shep had rehearsed, that she’d permitted him to go back to the room to pick up his good-luck pendant that he’d forgotten there. What fortunate timing that he’d been inside when the intruder had burst in.

On the bed Annabel stirred, her face drawing tight in a grimace. Progress.

Dr Cha went on alert, her hands pausing, then slowly resuming their work. She finished and wiped the blood from Shep’s arm with some wet gauze.

Shep looped the thin silver chain back through his pendant and, ducking his head, secured it around his neck. His lowered gaze snagged on a small length of electrical wire partially hidden behind one of the medical cart’s wheels. He retrieved it, held it to the light. He realized she was watching closely.

‘A signal wire,’ he explained. ‘For a digital transmitter – a bug.’

‘Why?’

‘So they’d know when Mike came to visit. It’s the one place they think he’ll show up. Where they can trap him within four walls.’

Dr Cha cracked her knuckles, shook out a neck cramp. Her choppy black hair framed a swan’s neck. She was quiet a moment. Then she said, ‘This hospital isn’t safe as long as she’s here.’

‘No,’ Shep said.

‘I spoke to Annabel’s father this evening after he landed. The health-care-proxy hearing, I gather, is first thing’ – a bleary glance at her Breitling despite the wall clock overhead showing a quarter past four – ‘this morning. Proxies are very rarely reassigned, not without drawn-out legal battles, but I have seen the rights suspended.’

Shep stared at her patiently.

She continued, ‘If Mike Wingate wants to make a request to transfer his wife, he needs to get me something signed in the next six hours.’

‘I thought she can’t be moved,’ Shep said.

Dr Cha’s smirk, this time, held an element of cunning. ‘She can’t.’

The Batphone, charging on the nightstand, rattled Mike awake, harmonizing with the throbbing in his head. His eyelids felt gummy, his mouth filled with sand. He pried his eyes open, uncoiled himself from Kat’s side. Slowly, his surroundings trickled into his brain. A motel. Somewhere in Glendale.

He answered, his voice hangover-rough.

Shep said, ‘Dodge tried to get to Annabel.’

Mike felt a sudden temperature drop, an arctic wind blowing through the shoddy room. ‘And?’

‘He didn’t get to her.’

‘He was going to…’

‘Maybe. He dropped an electrical wire. Maybe he was gonna plant a bug so they could ambush you if you visited. Either way they’re watching her.’

Mike sat up sharply, Kat sliding off his arm, deadweight. Snowball II peeked out from under her shoulder, its bulging eyes a portrait of alarm. ‘Is she okay?’

‘Yes. I mean, for being unconscious.’

‘So they want to use her to catch me when I surface?’ Mike asked. ‘You think that means they won’t kill her?’

Shep said, ‘They could always hope you surface at her funeral.’

The line hummed for a bit.

‘There’s a hearing on your health-care thing this morning,’ Shep said. ‘We’ve gotta get her moved before then, while you still have authority. You need to send a fax to Dr Cha demanding that Annabel be moved. Get a pen. Write down this phrasing.’

Mike stumbled around, tripping over his shoes, found a pencil and a torn grocery bag to write on, and took dictation. ‘Okay, but how am I going to find a place to transfer-’

‘I’ll handle it. Just get me the fax. Now.’

Mike did his best to rouse Kat, but she was out cold. He shook her gently, tugged at her arms, even lifted her eyelids with his thumbs. Finally, juggling their bags, the rucksack, and a page torn from the phone book, he carried her out to the Honda and laid her in the backseat. A few blocks from FedEx Kinko’s, she woke irritably.

‘What day is it?’

Early-morning gray. Few cars on the road. People smoking at bus stops. Drivers slurping from Starbucks cups.

‘Friday,’ Mike said. ‘I think it’s Friday.’

‘Where are we?’

‘I have to send a fax.’

‘ Then where are we going?’

Mike blinked hard, fighting off an image of his own father behind a different steering wheel, giving indistinct answers and nervous glances at the rearview. A fresh hostility spiked in his chest. In three decades he’d traveled only the distance from the backseat to the front.

Kat was asking something else. ‘When do we get to go home?’

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was half strangled, defeated.

She slumped against the window and blew out a sigh of despair. It struck him with renewed urgency that they couldn’t keep up the nomadic routine for much longer. That they’d run out of time. Out of patience. Out of luck.

At Kinko’s he prepared the fax on a rented computer. Kat spun in the chair next to him, her head tilted back so she could watch the ceiling spin. Before printing he let the cursor linger over the Explorer button. Hesitating, he looked at Kat, twirling, mumbling. Something in his chest cracked open, and he glanced away quickly so she wouldn’t see his eyes watering.

Through the American Airlines Web site, he booked a oneway ticket for Kat to St. Louis, departing at 5:30 P.M. Annabel’s brother, whom Mike had always liked best of her family, had just gotten married and bought a house in the suburbs. A companion-ticket option popped up, and it took all he could muster to click No . He used Annabel’s PayPal account to complete the purchase. Then he bought another ticket on the same route for Kat on the 11:45 red-eye and printed both boarding passes.

He gave the fax to the lady at the desk – “ I, Michael Wingate, do hereby request that my wife, Annabel Wingate, be released for transfer to a specialist management team which I have selected based on their ability to provide a higher level of care ” – and split.

Nosing the Honda onto the nearest freeway entrance, he put the pedal down, hard, wanting as much distance between him and the Kinko’s phone, the number of which would be tattooed across the transfer request when they pulled it warm from the fax machine at the Los Robles Medical Center.

‘Mom takes me to get ice cream every Friday after school,’ Kat said.

Mike sliced between two semis, hit the fast lane on a slide. Around the bend they were greeted by a wall of brake lights. The front edge of rush hour. Mike jerked onto the shoulder, gauging the distance to the next exit.