The Select

  She shook herself. This had to stop. Everything was going to be fine, everything was going to be all—

  Why did you leave me, Tim? Why did you make me care about you and then run off like that? Why?

  She bit back a sob.

  "I'm okay," she said softly. "Really. I'm okay."

  She groaned as she entered Science. The entry vestibule and the lobby were festooned with Christmas ornaments. There wasn't going to be any getting away from The Season To Be Jolly.

  Nobody was at the security desk. One of the male guards was holding a ladder while Charlene stood on the top step and taped a strand of golden garland to the wall. They recognized Quinn and waved her through.

  Fifth was no better. Santa faces, Merry Christmas greetings, plastic mistletoe, fake holly, and tinsel garland hung all over the place.

  Quinn kept her eyes straight ahead, glancing left only briefly when she passed the newly decorated Ward C window, trimmed with tiny Christmas bulbs, blinking chaotically.

  She stopped as a thought struck her: Here I am in the dumps about my Christmas...what about theirs? Her gaze roamed the ward, coming to rest on the patient against the far wall. He appeared male, and his body was long and slim.

  Like Tim's, Quinn thought with a pang.

  He was lying on his right side, facing her. She couldn't make out his eyes between the folds of gauze wrapped around his head, but he seemed to be looking at her.

  *

  Quinn!

  Jesus, it was Quinn. And she was staring directly at him. If only he could reach up and yank the gauze off his face, or screech her name, or just wave and attract her attention. Anything but to lie here like a goddam asparagus and watch her walk away again.

  His hand...his left hand...if he could get it to move now...now, when he needed it...to signal her...something definitive...something that wouldn't look like some sort of random muscle twitch...if only he knew sign language...

  And then Tim realized that he did know a sign language of sorts.

  *

  Quinn stared at the bandaged-covered face, trying to read something there. She had a feeling he was staring back at her, trying to tell her something. His body looked slack, utterly relaxed, yet she sensed a bridled intensity about him.

  Movement caught her eye. His left hand was twitching where it lay on his left hip. The fingers were curling into a fist. No, not all of them. Just the middle three. The thumb and pinky finger remained extended.

  And then, ever so slightly, the hand wagged back and forth.

  Quinn felt a smile begin to pull on her lips. Why, it almost looked like—

  As she cried out, her knees buckled and she fell against the window with a dull thunk that echoed down the hall.

  Tim's Hawaiian hang-loose sign...the patient on the far side of Ward C was looking her way and doing a crude version of the shake-a-shake-a signal Tim had used in the casino.

  Suddenly hands were gripping her upper arm, supporting her.

  "Are you all right?"

  Quinn looked up and saw a nurse holding her arm, steadying her as Quinn straightened and leaned against the window frame.

  "I..." Her throat locked, refusing to let another syllable pass.

  "You look terrible," the nurse said. "You're white as a ghost."

  I've just seen a ghost, she thought.

  She was shaking, dripping with perspiration. Bile surged against the back of her throat but she forced it back down.

  "What's wrong?" the nurse was saying, looking at her closely. "Are you a diabetic or hypoglycemic?"

  I probably look like I'm having an insulin reaction, Quinn thought. I almost wish I were.

  She shook her head and started to say something, to ask about that patient at the far end of Ward C, then bit back the words.

  It couldn't be Tim. Not in Ward C with the burn patients. Anywhere but Ward C.

  If she said anything about it, they'd think she was losing it. Hallucinating. Breaking with reality. Word had already spread around The Ingraham about Tim having a breakdown and running off—pulling a Prosser. The administration would think she was cracking too. They'd send her home. Maybe for good. One breakdown per class was more than they wanted to deal with.

  "My period," she said, improvising. "I always get bad cramps the first day."

  The nurse's face relaxed. "I get some whoppers myself. Come on over here. I'll give you a couple of Anaprox."

  Keeping one hand on the wall to steady herself, Quinn followed her to the nursing station where she sat, blotted the beaded perspiration from her face with a paper towel, and choked down the two blue tablets.

  After a few minutes, she felt strong enough to move on. She thanked the nurse and made it down the hall to Dr. Emerson's lab where she told Alice that she didn't feel well enough to work today.

  Alice took one look at her and bounded out of her seat.

  "I should say you don't! You look awful! You might have the flu. Dr. Emerson won't be in until tonight, so you get right out of here and over to the infirmary right this minute. As a matter of fact, I'll take you there myself."

  "That's all right. I'll be okay. Just tell Dr. Emerson I'll be in tomorrow."

  Alice shooed her out and Quinn stood outside the lab, looking down the hallway. The elevators were on the far side of Ward C. She was going to have to pass the window to get to them.

  She wasn't sure she could handle that.

  But she didn't feel strong enough for the stairs right now, so what choice did she have?

  None.

  Taking a deep, tremulous breath, Quinn straightened her spine and marched back down the hall. The nurses station was empty as she passed it, and she intended to keep walking past Ward C, but when she reached the window she had to stop. No way she could breeze by without one more look.

  Both nurses were in there now, standing around the patient who'd signaled her. Marguerite was just removing a syringe from his IV line. Was something wrong?

  Quinn pressed closer to the glass. The blinking lights bordering the window made it difficult to see, but she still could make out the patient's left hand, the one that had been stretched into the hang-loose sign—it now hung limp and lifeless. As she watched, the nurses gently rolled him to his left and repositioned him on his back. Everything so normal. Just another day of routine patient care on Ward C.

  The nurse who had helped Quinn a few moments ago looked up and smiled at her. Quinn gave her a friendly wave, then forced herself to walk on.

  Half dazed, still weak and shaky, feeling as if she were in a dream, Quinn found the elevator control slot and slipped her card into it.

  What had just happened here? What was real? What was not? The questions whirled about her in a maelstrom of confusion. Nausea rippled through her stomach and inched up toward her throat. She feared she might get sick right here in the hall.

  She had to get out of here, back to the dorm. Back to her room where she could lock the door, crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head and think.

  Maybe Mom and Matt had been right. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to stay down here the extra week.

  When she got outside, the snow was falling heavily. Everything was covered with a thin coat of white. At any other time she might have stopped to appreciate the silent beauty of the scene. But now she broke into a careful run for the dorm.

  *

  Tim stared at the ceiling.

  What was wrong with Quinn? She'd been looking right at him as he'd given her the hang-loose signal. She'd even reacted as if she'd seen it, looked like she'd been about to faint, but she'd done nothing.

  Nothing!

  Maybe she hadn't really seen it, or maybe she didn't believe she'd seen it. It didn't matter which. He'd never get a chance like that again. It was over. Might as well pack in the hope and forget about ever getting out of here.

  Still staring helplessly at the ceiling's mottled whiteness, Tim felt himself tumbling into a black hole of despair.

  TWENTY-TWO

&
nbsp; This isn't a highway, Matt thought. This is a parking lot.

  The New Jersey Turnpike wasn't exactly stopped dead, but for an hour now it had been moving too slowly for the speedometer to register. As far ahead as the he could see, the three southbound lanes were a stagnant river of glowing brake lights fading into the falling snow.

  Not falling, exactly. Racing horizontally was more like it. And lots of it. The windows on the passenger side of Matt's Cherokee were caked with an inch or better of white. It was piling up on the road and the shoulders.

  Matt banged impatiently on the steering wheel and glanced at the dashboard clock. Nine o'clock. He should have been there by now. Instead he was just south of Exit 7A, only halfway through Jersey. And the longer he stayed here, the worse it was going to get. He'd played all his CDs twice, and the radio had nothing but traffic reports about the snarl-ups all over the East Coast and weather reports about how much worse it was going to get during the next few hours.

  This little jaunt was turning into an ordeal.

  A sign on the right with logos for Roy Rogers, Big Boy's, and Sunoco told him that the "Richard Stockton Service Area" was two miles ahead. Matt glanced at his gas gauge and saw it edging onto "E". At his present pace, those two miles could take an hour, maybe more. Running out of fuel now would be the icing on the cake.

  He edged the Cherokee to the right and began riding along the shoulder at around twenty miles per hour. It wasn't legal, but at least he was moving. He just had to hope he didn't run into a cop. A ticket would be the candle on the icing on the cake.

  He slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt as a beat-up, twenty-year-old Cadillac DeVille with New York plates pulled out in front of him and stopped. Matt flashed his high beams and honked, but the Caddy didn't budge. He had two choices: sit here behind the guy, or try to slip past him on the right, but that meant risking the snowy slope that dropped away from the shoulder at a good forty-five-degree angle.

  He got out and walked up to the Caddy. The driver window rolled down as he approached and a bearded face glared at him.

  "Don't fuck with me, man."

  "How about letting me by," Matt said. "I'm trying to get to the service area."

  "You wait like the rest of us."

  "I'm going to run out of gas."

  "Tough shit."

  Matt stared at him a moment. Everyone was fed up, but this guy was looking for a fight. Matt was tempted to help him find it, but for all he knew there could be three others like him in that car. He looked at the big heavy caddy, at the snowy slope beyond it, and had a better idea.

  Without a word, he returned to the Cherokee. He put her in four-wheel drive and slowly eased to the right. The Cadillac responded, moving right to block him. Matt edged further onto the slope, and the Cadillac mimicked him, matching Matt's every rightward move.

  When he was sure all four of the Caddy's tires were on the slope, Matt pulled sharply to his left, darting back uphill. The heavier car tried to respond but its rear wheels spun uselessly on the snow. It began to fishtail as it slipped further down the slope, swerving ninety degrees until it was sliding back-end first, its rear wheels spinning madly. It stopped with a jolt in the gully at the bottom, its headlights pointing skyward.

  Back on the shoulder again, Matt gave two quick toots on his horn and drove away.

  "All I wanted to do was get by," Matt said softly.

  No one bothered him the rest of the way to the service area.

  "What's the problem up ahead?" he asked as the attendant filled the Cherokee's tank. He had stringy blond hair and was maybe nineteen. "It can't be just snow."

  "It ain't. Scanner says a tractor trailer jack-knifed coming down the Exit 6 on-ramp."

  "Six? That's where I get off. Damn, I'll be here forever."

  "Maybe longer. We heard that four cars piled into the truck. There was a fire and everything. A real mess. If I was you I'd find a parking spot, get a comfortable seat in Roy's or Big Boy's, and figure on spending the rest of the night there."

  Uh-uh, Matt thought. He saw a set of headlights glide across the overpass just south of the service area.

  "Will that road take me to the Pennsylvania Turnpike?"

  The attendant followed Matt's pointing arm and nodded.

  "Yeah. Eventually. If you could get on it. But there's no off-ramp to that road. Like the man says: You can't get there from here."

  "Suppose I make my own ramp?"

  The attendant looked at the Cherokee, then back at Matt.

  "There's a corn field back of the service area here. With four-wheel drive you just might be home free."

  "I'm not heading home, but at least I'll be free of the Turnpike."

  "Hope it's real important to get where you're goin'. You bust an axle or blow a tire out in that field you'll have a lotta explaining to do in the morning."

  "I've got a friend in need," Matt said.

  The attendant grinned. "And you're the friend indeed, right?"

  "You might say that."

  "I got my break in a couple of minutes. I'll show you a way out the back."

  Matt shoved a twenty into his hand.

  "Show me now."

  *

  Quinn sat cross-legged on the bed in her darkened room and watched the snowflakes tumble through the bright cones from the dorm's exterior floodlights. She wished she could glide out the window like one of the kids in Peter Pan and get lost in the storm.

  Then she wouldn't have to think about that patient in Ward C, and the hand signal he'd made for her.

  It was Tim.

  As crazy as it sounded, it had to be Tim. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became.

  He was Tim's height, had Tim's build, and he'd given her the signal, the Hawaiian hang loose that only Tim would have known to give.

  Quinn's first impulse had been to run to the police, to call Deputy Southworth and demand that he charge into Ward C and save Tim from whoever had imprisoned him there for whatever reason.

  She'd made it as far as her door before having second thoughts. And third thoughts.

  She imagined the conversation with the sheriff's department:

  "Who do you think kidnapped your boyfriend and imprisoned him in the burn ward, Miss Cleary?"

  "Dr. Alston, I guess. He's in charge of Ward C."

  "Why would The Ingraham's Dean of Medical Education want to do something like that?"

  "I don't know. Maybe because Tim discovered the place was bugged."

  "But his own father brought in an expert who couldn't find a shred of evidence of electronic surveillance."

  "He's there in Ward C. I know he's there."

  "How do you know that, Miss Cleary?"

  "I was watching one of the Ward C patients when he gave me a secret hand signal Tim and I used in Atlantic City."

  "A secret hand signal. I see. Did you get close to him? Did you see his face?"

  'No, but—"

  "Why were you watching this particular patient?"

  "He's built like Tim. He reminded me of Tim."

  "You really miss your buyfriend, don't you. You really wish he was back."

  "Yes, but—"

  "We understand, Miss Cleary. We'll be sure to look into this matter very soon. But don't call us. We'll call you when we find something. Good night."

  So now Quinn was back on her bed, staring into the swirling wilderness and racking her brain for a way to convince the police that Tim was in Ward C.

  If indeed he was in Ward C.

  Sometimes you see what you want to see.

  What if she did manage to convince Deputy Southworth to barge into the Science Center and they found out the new Ward C patient was a farm boy from West Virginia who'd been riding a tractor when the fuel tank exploded under him? What would happen then?

  The Ingraham would probably kick her out.

  And then where would she be? She'd still be without Tim, but she'd be without a medical education as well.

  Q
uinn could come up with only one solution: She had to be able to go to the sheriff's office and say she had looked into the patient's face and it was Timothy Brown.

  And that was just what she was going to do. Tonight. After the change of shift.

  It was the only way.

  She shivered. It wasn't cold in the room. She was terrified.

  *

  Matt rubbed his burning eyes. His arms were leaden, his fingers cramped from gripping the steering wheel, and his right leg throbbed from incessant switching between the gas and brake pedals. He glanced at the dashboard clock.

  I don't believe this, he thought. After midnight and I haven't hit Gettysburg yet. And it's still snowing like crazy.

  After getting lost twice in the rural backroads of western New Jersey, he'd finally made it to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. That, too, had been slow going, with accidents eastbound and westbound, but it least it had been moving—a big improvement over the Jersey Pike.

  But he'd made his big mistake around Harrisburg when he got off the Pennsy Pike and headed south toward Maryland. He'd had three choices: Route 83, Route 81, or Route 15. The first two were major roads, but 83 would swing him too far back east, and 81 would take him too far west; Route 15 ran right between the other two and offered to bring him closest to The Ingraham in the fewest miles.

  But Route 15 was only two lanes, lined with dark, sleeping houses and snow-coated trees bending their laden branches low over the road. Matt had been crawling for miles, with hours more to go, most likely.

  This is crazy, he thought.

  The best thing to do would be find a motel and spend the night. Forget about The Ingraham for tonight and get some sleep. The roads would be clearer in the morning.

  He pulled onto the shoulder and yanked the cellular phone from its cradle between the bucket seats. He fished out a slip of paper with Quinn's number and punched it in.

  If he wasn't getting there till tomorrow, he wanted to make sure she didn't zip off to Baltimore or the like for the day.

  The signal was shaky but he recognized her hello.