She was running so fast that tears dried on her cheeks, faster than she was crying them. Her backpack, which contained a half-eaten PBJ sandwich tucked into a brown paper bag, two pencils, half of a gold crayon, and an extra soft white sweater, flopped loosely on her back, creating the start of a bruise.
Her breath came in raspy pants – heaves of breath, great gasping gulps. She was past the point where a body starts to ache for the running, and at the point where she felt nothing– she ran out of a mechanical need to run.
As she rounded the corner on 90th st, her hair escaped its ponytail completely, and her tousled blonde curls slipped free. The hair-tie dropped to the ground, the sparkles in sharp contrast to the snowy ground.
Lucy's feet pounded the sidewalk so hard that she couldn't feel her ankles or the balls of her feet. They seemed to pound out a rhythm – "go-oh, go-oh, go-oh."
She heaved a sob amidst the panting, and increased her pace.
The sights from the museum seemed to bounce around the inside of her head with the steps. People frozen in place, animals killed mid-roar. Who had loved the polar bear cubs? Had the great whale's mother cried when he was taken? Lucy pictured animal mommies and daddies and babies crying, longing for their frozen-in-time relatives. She heard her classmate Jacob Kaplan's words reverberate in her head, "They're not really dead … they're just stuck between being alive and dead." And then he'd laughed, and pointed to the monkey hanging from a tree branch.
That was when Lucy had run, when she'd shoved one of the other first graders out of her way and shot off toward the exit, tired of all the not-quite-fully-dead beings that surrounded her.
She glanced up at a street sign – 97th. Almost there.
Her little pink flats sped up so much that she was almost flying down the street – or so it felt. Her backpack barely touched her as she raced into the hospital complex.
She'd been here so many times throughout her life – although only on select holidays and weekends, and never alone. She was surprised to find that, even in her panic, she knew exactly which building to race into.
It was somewhat of a surprise that nobody noticed her. There were so many people milling around the street that nobody seemed to mind that a five and a half year old had slipped into a hospital building.
She entered the hospital building at precisely the correct time – a baby had erupted into screams only moments before, and all eyes were on the mother, who reacted with frightening anger.
Lucy flew past the security, her shoes barely making a sound. She rounded the corner and slowed – for the first time in almost 20 blocks. She stopped before the elevator button and tapped it with one tiny finger.
The elevator bell sounded gently, and the doors slid open with a whoosh. Lucy stepped inside and pressed the button for the correct floor, and laid back against the back of the elevator.
Her breathing seemed to finally catch up with her, and pain gripped her sides with a force so violent that she bent over in pain. She coughed – a babyish sound, just a little bark – and hugged herself around the stomach.
When Danny got the call, his heart was racing so fast that he couldn't even feel it anymore – it was just a constant pain and blur in his chest that ached so much that it tore up his entire chest. Tears were gathering in his eyes – they'd been there since he'd first heard that she was missing, and was ready to react to the phone with relief.
When he heard that it was a hospital, he staggered back against a brick wall, unable to support himself any longer. The tears that had been forming halted in his throat, because if Lucy was hurt or … then he wasn't going to cry, because he wouldn't be anything anymore if she didn't exist in his world.
When he heard the familiar nurse explaining the story, though, he did cry, though, because of something that he didn't have a name for.
He arrived at the hospital alone. Lindsay had gone downtown to their apartment, just in case Lucy came home. He'd called her not two minutes ago, and told her where to take a cab.
"Mr. Messer?" the nurse asked.
"Yeah?" Danny said, looking up at the man standing before him.
"Come this way," Nurse Young said, gesturing to Danny. He turned and flashed a grin. "I recognized her right away – knew you must be worried – what with your little girl all alone in here," he said lightly.
Danny nodded distractedly, and jammed his hands into his pockets. He always got nervous along this hallway. He could see flashes of prone bodies on beds – snippets of lives on hold. He couldn't help but be reminded of Sid's autopsy room – except these bodies were still breathing, if only because of machines.
"Here they are," Nurse Young whispered, and pointed to the last room at the end of the hall.
Danny worriedly smiled his thanks, and stepped into the room.
The artificial, overly white light that streamed from the fluorescent light in the room was shaded by the white sheets of Louie's bed. Machines hummed. Every so often, beeps and clicks joined the chorus of the robotic deadness of the room.
Danny swallowed harshly, his hands clenching angrily. He unclenched, took a breath, and moved closer to the bed.
He gently moved the curtain, and suddenly found himself looking down at his brother, and his daughter.
Lucy's plaid school dress sharply contrasted with the overall whiteness of Louie – his white, white sheets, his pale face, and his near translucent tubes. Lucy's pink flats were tucked into Louie's side, her tiny arms curled around his meaty one.
She was awake, but her nose was pressed into his shoulder, and she lay so still, that Danny would have thought she was sleeping were it not for her open, dewy eyes.
Suddenly, the silence in the room was broken by Lucy's abruptly human sniffle. She whimpered and drew closer into the body of her comatose uncle.
"Luce," Danny whispered.
"I can't leave," she cracked, her voice dissolving into an open sob.
"Lucy," Danny's voice grew sharp, all the panic of the afternoon funneling into anger, "Get up. We're going home."
Lucy shook her head and snuggled further into Louie's body. She lifted his arm and drew it weakly around her, cuddling with him.
Danny blinked and took a step back. It was a scene so familial, so unbearably human – would this have been natural had Louie never been beat up? Would he have been the kind of uncle who cuddled his niece?
Danny shuddered, shaking the would-have-been's from his head, the pain too much to handle.
"Get out of the bed now," Danny snarled.
"NO!" Lucy yelled, her hands grasping at the sheets that covered Louie's body. "I won't let you stuff him! You'll send him to the museum!" She broke into a stream of sobs and clutched at the body of her uncle in an attempt to hide him from her father.
Danny ran a hand through his hair. "What?" he barked.
Lucy buried her head in Louie's shoulder, tucking her head under his chin.
Danny dropped down into the chair by Louie's bed. He let his head rest on his upturned hands and closed his eyes. He took several deep breaths. Finally, sitting up, he scooted the chair closer to the hospital bed and reached out. He gently rested his hand on one of Lucy's feet, rubbing her ankle with his thumb.
"Lucy …" he asked gently, "Why did you run away from your field trip?"
Lucy's breath hitched, and her sobbing eased. She turned her tearstained face to look at her father.
He gave her a little encouraging nod, and she rubbed one little hand over her wet face.
"I wanted to protect Uncle Louie," she said weakly, propping herself up with one hand, "In case the museum tried to put him in a nexibid."
"A what?" Danny inquired. He paused for a moment, reflected on her statement, and asked, "An exhibit? Is that what you mean?"
Lucy shrugged one shoulder and explained, "It's when they take an animal or a person and put fake stuffing inside of them and then put them into a glass box with paper plants."
Danny nodded pensively, as if he were mentally recording the testimony of a witness to a crime. He folded his hands and rested them under his chin, nodding slightly.
"And … you thought that they were going to take Uncle Louie and do that to him?" Danny asked.
Lucy nodded, her blonde curls bobbing. "We're the only people he knows anymore," she said in a hoarse, tight voice, one strained by a day of crying and running, "So I had to protect him."
Danny made a slight sound – perhaps it was a thinking sound, or perhaps it was something a little bit deeper – something from a place within him that knew his daughter spoke some sense of truth, even if from a place of childhood surrealism. He stood up and reached out his arms for Lucy. She dropped into them – secure in that, since she'd explained herself to Danny, he would understand.
Danny lifted her up and moved one arm underneath her butt to support her.
"Luce," he said carefully, "Nobody's going to do that to Uncle Louie."
Lucy frowned thoughtfully, "Nobody wants to put him in a nexibid?"
Danny shook his head. "It doesn't work like that, kiddo. Louie's a person, and we care about him. We're here to make sure that nothing bad happens – that's why he's in a hospital, OK? It's because we love him and want him to get better."
"But he doesn't get any different," Lucy said, tilting her head to the side in confusion.
Danny shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. He couldn't help but feel a little deader once she'd said that – and he wasn't angry with her for it, simply just a bit more tired, a little sadder.
"Daddy?" Lucy piped, but Danny barely heard her voice.
He took a breath, and suddenly his entire being was overwhelmed by a memory of a Sunday afternoon with Louie when he was 9 or 10 – taste of cotton candy, splinter in his hand from a 2 by 4 he was using as a bat for baseball, the feel of the soft ACDC t-shirt he'd borrowed from his older brother, the older brother with the sad eyes who had a remarkably distinct way of tousling Danny's head of hair that no one had ever managed to match -
"It's OK, Daddy," Lucy whispered, hugging him tightly, "I'll take care of Uncle Louie." As her legs circled his torso, and her arms his neck, Danny staggered into the chair by the bed, and cradled his daughter as he reached for the limp hand of his older brother.
Danny squeezed Louie's hand and took a deep breath. "Did I ever tell you about when your Uncle and I were kids?" he asked his daughter.
Lucy shook her head, and cuddled into her father. She stuck her thumb in her mouth – an old reassuring habit – and waited for him to begin.