Loree Lough - Out Of The Shadows

“Lord,” he whispered, “let that guy be okay….”

Not much chance God would listen to someone like him—especially considering…. Still, Wade repeated his prayer, just in case.

“The engineer told me he saw a guy on the tracks,” he heard a cop say to a firefighter. “Said he braked for all he was worth, but couldn’t stop in time.”

Wade squeezed his eyes shut, admitting the obvious. What the engineer had mistaken for a homeless man was nothing but an assemblage of items Buddy had ordered the guys to bring to the cemetery—an old shirt, tattered trousers, beaten-up boots—stuffed with week-old newspapers and topped by a jack-o’-lantern head, and a ragtag fedora.

Swallowing, he stepped out from behind the shrubs and walked up to the nearest emergency vehicle. Assuming his best curious-kid expression, he said, “Hey, mister, what’s goin’ on?”

The paramedic looked up from his gear and frowned. “What’re you doin’ out this time of night, son?”

Wade shrugged. “I live right over there. So what happened?”

The paramedic went back to stuffing equipment into the side of his ambulance. “Engineer had himself one doozy of a heart attack.”

Heart attack.

Wade’s heart thudded wildly. Slapping a palm over his eyes, he groaned.

“Aw, don’t get your britches in a knot over it,” the paramedic said. “Stuff like that happens hundreds of times a day.” He shrugged. “Hard as we try to save ’em, there’s nothing we can do about it sometimes.”

Maybe so, Wade thought as guilt swirled in his gut. But sometimes, they did save people. “Y’think he’ll be okay?”

“Hard to say.” He slammed the compartment door. “Doesn’t look too good, though.”

Wade swallowed. “So where will they take him?”

The paramedic slid behind the steering wheel. “University Hospital.” He fired up the truck, then met Wade’s eyes. “Now go home and get to bed. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

Nodding, Wade dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “Yessir.”

And the instant the man was out of sight, Wade stuck out his thumb, intent on hitching a ride into Baltimore with the first driver headed for the city.

Wade waved his thanks to the truck driver who’d dropped him off at the hospital, and shoved through the emergency room doors.

The silence was almost eerie, and the reception area was illuminated only by the dim, flickering fluorescent lights above the nurses’ station. In the waiting area, a man flapped the pages of his raggedy newspaper, and directly across from him, a young girl sat on the edge of her chair, hands clasped tightly on her knees and eyes glued to the doors that read No Admittance: Staff Only.

Wade walked up to the nurses’ station. A nurse met his eyes. “Can I help you?”

“I, uh, I’m here to see how that guy is doing…the one they just brought in on the helicopter?”

She raised one eyebrow. “You a relative of Mr. Delaney?”

Wade gulped. So the engineer had a name: Mr. Delaney. “N-no, I’m a—”

“Friend of the family?”

Hardly, Wade thought, but he nodded, anyway.

“Wait over there,” the nurse said, using her chin as a pointer. “Lemme see what I can find out.”

Wade slumped into a chair, two down from the young girl. He leaned forward, scrubbed both hands over his face and shook his head.

“Who are you waiting for?” the girl asked.

From between his fingers, Wade looked over at her. She appeared to be ten or twelve years old, wearing a faded pink sweat suit and fuzzy bunny slippers. “Just some guy.” Elbows on knees, he laced his fingers together. “You?”

“My little brother, Timmy.” Her big eyes fixed on the No Admittance doors. “He’s been in there forever.”

Wade sat back, propped an ankle on a knee. “What’s wrong with him?”

She sighed, kicked one foot until the bunny ears flopped. “He was born with this weird heart condition. We have to bring him in here two or three times a month, usually in the middle of the night.” Another sigh. “I’ll bet he’s slept here a couple hundred times.”

“That stinks.” Wade didn’t think he’d ever seen a sadder face. He wished he had enough change in his pocket to buy her a soda, maybe a package of chips or a candy bar. “You always wait out here alone when your folks bring him in?”

She nodded. “It doesn’t usually take this long, though.” She glanced at the big double doors again. “Something’s wrong.”

He noticed that one of her bunnies had just one eye, the other was missing an ear. “What makes you say that?”

Tears welled in her big, dark eyes, and her lower lip trembled. “Usually, somebody comes to tell me something by now.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’ve been here nearly three hours and—”

Wade leaped to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

He knocked on the nurses’ station desk. “Um, excuse me…I hate to bother you, but that little girl over there,” he said, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder, “has been waiting three hours to hear about her brother. Do you have any idea what’s going on back there?”

The lady he’d talked to earlier leaned to the right and peered around him. “Poor li’l thing,” she said, clucking her tongue.

“She’s getting to be a regular fixture around this place,” the woman said. She looked at Wade. “Let me see what I can find out.” Then, “Say, Marsha, why don’t you see if you can scare up an o.j. or something for these kids.” She winked at Wade and hurried into the ER.

Marsha rooted around in a small refrigerator. “Here y’go,” she said, handing him two tiny cartons of chocolate milk. “Need straws?”

Wade accepted the milk. “I don’t,” he said, glancing toward the waiting room, “but she might like one.”

“You’re a nice boy,” Marsha said when he took it from her.

Nice. Yeah, right, he thought, remembering what had happened to the engineer. But “Thanks” is what he said.

Sitting beside the girl, Wade peeled back the spout of one carton and slid a straw into its opening. “You want me to see if I can get ’em to cough up some doughnuts or something?”

She sent him a hint of a smile. “No, I’m not hungry.” After taking a tiny sip, she looked straight into his eyes and said, “You’re very nice. Thank you.”

Wade nearly choked on his chocolate milk. All his life, he’d been hearing what a loser he was, and twice in as many minutes, two people had told him the exact opposite. What a joke, he thought, because if they knew him…if they’d seen him earlier tonight, at the cemetery, they wouldn’t think he was so nice!

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Wade,” he said, nervously opening and closing the milk carton. “Yours?”

“Patrice McKenzie.” She tilted her head slightly. “Do you live near the hospital?”

He shook his head. “Ellicott City. How ’bout you?”

“I live in Freeland, on a farm.”

“A farm? With cows and pigs and horses and stuff?” He grinned. “No kiddin’.”

That made her laugh—just a little—but it made Wade feel good to have brightened her mood, even slightly.

The ER doors swooshed open, interrupting his thoughts. “Patrice?” a woman wailed. “Patrice, baby, where are you?”

The girl jumped up so fast, she nearly spilled her chocolate milk down the front of her pink sweatshirt. “Right here, Mom.”

Wade figured the man and woman who bundled her into a group hug must be her parents. From the looks of them, the news about her brother wasn’t good. Then Patrice started to cry. The misery seemed to start deep in the core of her, ebbing out one dry, hacking sob at a time and racking her tiny body.