What You See...
Chapter Six
Fun Outings
The administrator of the hospital alternated between staring at the report, and at the bored man before him.
Gray was bored for two reasons. The first was that he was tired; this was far off his shift. The second was that he simply didn't care.
"Is this what you feel or are you just being coerced into odd ideals again?"
The insinuation was there, but Gray still didn't care; he was spineless and he could admit it freely. His boss and his job were the two things that no longer intimidated him. He shrugged, causing him to sink a little further into the most comfortable chair he could have ever imagined existed.
Gray gave a slight wave at the personality-sufferer standing over him, for whatever reason he was there….
The administrator was on a rant, and the present patient was adding his own off-target ideals, and Gray snoozed through the majority of it. Until, like all mindless rants of the administrator's sort, it ended abruptly.
Gray, sleep deprived as he was, was woken up hours later in the covered parking lot by the highly amused Robert. Robert, for his part, kindly waited for the one-sided joviality of the moment to pass before relating the administrator's directions that Gray had slept through.
"But… that's crazy!" not that Gray was in prime thinking mode, but all operating logic functionality lead to the same conclusion… it is!
"Well, you know Elliott," Robert chuckled, "He's just as bad as the patients."
---
The park was beautiful; which made Gray hate it even more. The sun was shining, burning his poor eyes; the birds were singing an annoying tune; children were playing, and getting far too close; Aki was… missing. Again.
Just because of the administrator's cunning plan.
See if she's sane enough for an outing, he'd apparently said. Gray was wondering if it had been worth the nap.
"Hey, there she is!" the exclamation was lost on its intended targets, who he found, as he looked around himself, seemed to have bugged off without telling him. The little annoyance became worse, as Aki was already causing trouble. But it was okay – he could handle it himself.
Yep… all on my own…. So the thought became mantra as he approached the burly, yet elderly fellow that Aki had disturbed. She protectively curled around the thermos, as its rightful owner demanded it back. Gray stood off to the side, smiling moronically at the sight while he tried desperately to think of something, anything clever that could have helped the situation.
"Um, excuse me," seemed to be the best start, and the pouting Mr. Thermos turned to him. His resolve faltered, and he considered running away, neither for the first nor the last time.
"You see… she's uh… 'n escaped mental patient," usually true, it was a tactic that usually worked anyway. Usually, but this time it seemed to need something… else, "And she's…" what? Think! Delusional, helpless, schizophrenic, "She's sexually attracted to thermoses."
Well, it was something, "And you can't have your thermos back," Gray grabbed a hold of the woman, who still clutched the said possession, "but if you come to the Ironwood Asylum later, we'll reimburse you."
With that he followed his instinct and ran away, but at least he had Aki… albeit over his shoulder and with a stolen thermos.
Now he had to find the others, and they could have been anywhere.
---
Neil sulked over the steering wheel, forlorn to tracing the little wallet-confined photograph of a life that seemed so far away. Really, it had only been about two and a half weeks, but time was getting longer, and he was getting all the more depressed.
A door snapped open, startling him from the reverie. The wallet fell onto the dashboard as he jumped and twisted to see Gray was on the unhappy return.
"I wouldn-" the hastily attempted warning was a little late; as Gray tried to shove Aki in the backseat of the car… which had been occupied. Jane blinked awake just in time to avoid being clipped in the head by a flailing foot. She recoiled to the other side of the pew, glaring and mumbling what might have sounded something nasty had it not been impeded by a drawn-out yawn, "Never mind. Have fun?"
"Not really," Gray grimaced, climbing in beside Aki so she couldn't run again; and wondering all the while why they were allowed the most cramped vehicles ever, "Can we go back now?"
"Well… no; where is everyone?"
"I don't know; and I don't care! There's a really angry picnicker after me!" Beside him, Aki started to fuss.
"What, the old guy?" Jane asked, narrow-eyed in the direction of Mr. Thermos, who was slowly making his ambling way over to them. The moment she had spoken, Gray ducked below the line of sight with a wimpy affirmation.
"Don't worry," she snorted, "I'll deal with him, okay?" Without confirmation, she set to the task, and had soon led Mr. Thermos away.
Back in the car, long seconds ticked by in silence.
"We're leaving already?"
Ryan made his appearance stealthily, managing to bring an encore of jumpiness to the group. With him was the quiet young scientist, Demitri, who had been brought along as a kind of counsel to ensure Aki's saneness.
Not fair, but so it went.
Once Jane returned – giddy, wholly ready to be gone in a rush, yet refusing to answer why – they finally did the long awaited leaving.
The ride back to the hospital quickly became equal to the trip up to that point… and not just because there were five seats to six people.
Neil's wallet slid off the dashboard after one too many quick turns. Unfortunately, it slid right into Demitri's lap. With a natural curiosity worse than most stereotyped women his age, he absolutely had to peek inside casually…
…and stared in horror. Of course, it could have been a joke, made less funny by the sudden attention that was fixed solely on him. And Neil's sudden, nervous grin in his direction that convinced him all the more that it was not a joke.
"Could I have that back? Please?" There was little room for demand, since Neil was already trying to navigate the narrow streets back to the hospital; his negotiations for his property had to be much nicer. Not that he wouldn't have been, but he did want to avoid certain difficulties. Which arose anyway, a couple of the backseat passengers caught on to the predicament, and Demitri found himself with a gun callously aimed in his direction and a verily pissed off shout that he couldn't discern words from.
Not to be confused with any tough guy, fool, or hero, the scientist emitted quite the high-pitched scream.
Gray, totally lost as he tried to figure out what was going on from under the momentarily sanest of them all, just stared as the weirdest thing in his normally boring existence unfolded.
The vehicle stopped abruptly, causing all to fall roughly under the power of inertia.
"Okay, look, we talked about this…" Neil snapped, holding his hand over his shoulder, "Give."
"No," Jane growled, confirming the suspicion he didn't really have to prove.
"Yes; my car, remember?"
The short argument was just long enough for Demitri to escape and run for his fearful life. It ended when Neil abruptly snatched the offending weapon and threw it out the window.
… And Gray realized the odd fact that had been nagging – that none of the asylum employees, not even the security force, were allowed firearms. If they really, really needed to subdue patients, a doctor was brought in with a sedative.
And they sure as hell never identified themselves as… Wait… FBI? Gray sunk as far under Aki as possible, seeking to escape into the pushiness of the cushion beneath him.