Prodigal Blues

"What do I do after the exit?" called Christopher over his shoulder.

"Turn left—that's Dupont Road.  The hospital'll be about a half-mile down."

"How's she doing, Mark?"

"Not good.  Can you make this thing go any faster?"

Christopher laughed.  Once.  Very softly.  "Just watch."

I would never have believed something as old and cumbersome as a VW Microbus could come close to breaking the sound barrier, but that's how it seemed during the next two minutes; the road out there didn't exist; the other cars and trucks were an optical illusion; we were invisible to the police and Highway Patrol; the road bowed before us, bested, apologetic, humbled.  The exit sign appeared in the headlight beams.

"You need to slow down now," I said.

"Fuck you, Pretty Boy!"

Now it was my turn to scream.  "IF YOU DON'T SLOW DOWN WE'LL NEVER MAKE THE GODDAMN TURN IN ONE PIECE!  I DON'T FEEL LIKE DYING TODAY!  ALL IN FAVOR?"

Arnold and I raised our hands.  I raised Rebecca's, which was technically cheating but right now I didn't care.

Christopher shifted gears and eased us back to something resembling mortal speeds.  We made the exit and didn't jackknife on the turn, and you never heard three people sigh so loudly in unison as we did when the "Dupont Hospital" sign loomed as high and bright as the Star of Bethlehem.

"There," I said, pointing.  "There's the emergency room entrance."

"Where?"

"On the left."

"The left?"

"Right."

"Go right?"

"The left—right there!"

"Right?"

"LEFT!"

This was not the time for an Abbott & Costello routine.

Christopher started to go right, corrected himself, and just made the left-side entrance toward the emergency room.  We pulled up a few yards outside the ambulance bay.  Arnold had the side doors thrown open before the bus came to a complete stop.  I started to pick up Rebecca and was surprised at how much she weighed; this girl had some muscle on her.

"What type of diabetes does she have?"

Christopher stared at me.  "There are different types?"

"Oh, fuck me…"

"Her bracelet," said Arnold.

"What?"

"It's on her bracelet, the one she wears around her ankle."

All three of us lunged for her legs at the same time; Christopher knocked me sideways into Arnold, who fell forward onto Christopher, pulling him the rest of the way over the seat, causing me to drop Rebecca, who flopped down onto the floor and Arnold was so busy trying to avoid stepping on her that he accidentally kneed me in the nuts and about two seconds later we'd switched from Abbott & Costello to the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera because we were suddenly this mass of groaning, cursing, flailing bodies trying to untangle ourselves from one another, but untangle ourselves we did, pulling back both of Rebecca's pants legs—to discover no medical bracelet on either ankle.

"This isn't happening," I muttered.

"You bet your ass it ain't," said Arnold, snatching something off the floor near my foot.  "Here it is.  Must've fell off during the orgy."

I took it from him, picked up Rebecca again, jumped out onto the sidewalk, hit the pavement ru

Two nurses and an orderly fell on us like a curse from Heaven; it took them about two seconds to see that this was serious, then the orderly vanished into thin air, re-appearing almost instantaneously with a gurney which the nurses gently placed Rebecca on (when had they taken her from my arms?  I didn't remember their having done that) and the next thing I knew one of them was asking me what happened and I said something about her having missed her insulin shots and then another nurse or maybe it was the same one asked did I think it was only one or could she have missed more, as well, and I said I wasn't sure, it had been a long trip and she was usually pretty good at keeping track of her medicine, and the nurse said that was all right, calm down, can you give me any information about her type of diabetes, and I said sure, it's here on her bracelet, but that was silly because the nurse already had it in her hand (when had she taken it from me?  I didn't remember her having done that) and was shouting instructions to another nurse, and then someone was on the P.A. paging doctor something-or-other to the ER stat and then Rebecca was gone and so was the orderly and so was the security guard and so were the nurses…

…and I just stood there like the biggest, dumbest, crap-for-crap useless dick this side of a Homestar Ru

Except for an older couple sitting over near the wall-mounted television, I was alone in the waiting area.  I took a couple of steps and looked at the television.  Nick at Nite.  I Love Lucy.  Ricky was grabbing his hair and screaming that Lucy Esmeralda MacGillicuddy Ricardo had some serious splainin' to do.

"I know this episode," I said to the older couple.  "This is the one where Lucy does something silly and she and Ethel try to hide it from Ricky and Fred, right?"

They looked at me as if I'd just hawked up a live kitten.  So I went back to standing there, quiet, polite, without a clue; portrait of a doofus in action.

Then the overweight security guard came back from behind the automatic doors and asked, "Is she your daughter?"

"No," I answered without thinking.

"Can I have your name, sir?"

Ahem…

Have you ever had one of those moments where a simple piece of information like, oh, say, your phone number or shoe size or wedding a

At least there were options available here; I could:  1) Shriek like a little girl with the cooties and run like hell; 2) Ask the couple by the television if they knew what my name was; or, 3) Look at my I.D.  I opted for #3, and was just reading the word "Mark" when the security guard took a step back and said "Wow," with such genuine awe I thought Michael Jordan had just walked in; then the synapses started firing again and I saw the glint and realized that I still had my I.D. in the same wallet with the U.S. Marshal badge—but of course by then it was too late.

"Oh, sir, look, I didn't realize that you were—hey," he stepped closer to me, lowering his voice.  "Is that girl part of a case you're working on?"

His face said everything; that this was the most exciting thing to happen to him in a long time, that he really wanted to be of assistance, and who knew?—maybe his helping out a U.S. Marshal would impress the nurse he'd been trying to flirt with into finally going out with him.

"Yes," I said, then cleared my throat and spoke with more confidence.  "Yes, she is."  I closed the wallet and slipped it back into my pocket.  "She's"—I led him away from the older couple, who suddenly weren't so interested in seeing how Lucy was going to get out of this one—"a material witness in a kidnapping case we've been working on for a while, Officer"—I checked his name tag—"Ransom.  If you could—"