TW for mentions of violence, injury
The plan had come to Skye almost fully formed once Ward had left the library yesterday afternoon. She wasn't sure if it was his ominous threats that gave her the spark she needed, or the smiling faces of the doctors on her computer screen, or if it was simply something that had been planted deep within her years ago finally coming to bloom, but she understood what she had to do. The only way to stop being a burden to the people around her was to find the people who would never be burdened by her, and in order to do that, she had to get her hands on those hospital records.
Finding directions to Ames' Memorial had been easy enough, thanks to a quick google search. She had found a map of bus routes after that and plotted her course to Sheboygan – one that would only require changing buses once and that should get her there in less than 45 minutes. She'd checked the bus fare rates ($1.50 one way for anyone under 12, and she was sure she could convince any bus driver that she was) and done the math to make sure that she could be there and back before anyone even noticed that she was gone. If she left once Phil had dropped her off at school, she would have plenty of time to spend at the hospital until catching the 1:15 bus back to Manitowoc and returning to school just in time for Flex Time.
Skye printed out her directions and folded them into as small a square as she could before shoving them deep into her pocket. She didn't want anyone finding out or trying to stop her.
The afternoon had been tricky. As excited as she was about her brilliant plan, the things that Ward had sneered in her ear were still ringing around in her brain, and she couldn't seem to shake them. She had tried to find out if Natasha had been behind it, but her brain was so jumbled she just kept rambling about all the times the nuns had made her go to confession. If she wasn't careful, she was going to slip up and make a confession of her own, but she managed to keep her plan under wraps.
It had been a relief to know that Natasha was still trustworthy, even if the Raina piece only made her brain feel even more scrambled than before. She hadn't planned on talking to Bobbi about the whole thing, but for some reason, it was easier to talk to her than anyone else in the house. Bobbi thought she should talk to Jemma, and Skye wanted to, desperately. She told Jemma everything, ran her best schemes by the girl who had always stood by her side, always believed her, always loved her, but something was jammed in her heart, damming up her feelings, keeping her from drowning Jemma in her churning waters of emotions and bad ideas.
The hardest part had been lying in bed that night, staring up at the stars that Jemma's lamp cast onto the wall, knowing that Jemma was lying there awake, too, worried and wondering what to say. Skye hated to make Jemma worry, but she knew that worrying about her bad mood was a much better option for Jemma than worrying about Grant Ward coming after them and ruining their lives, so she kept it all to herself, even when Jemma's small voice had invited her to talk under the cover of darkness.
"Skye, why won't you talk to me? What's wrong?"
"It's nothing, I'm fine."
"I know that's not true. Did something happen? Did… did I do something wrong?" Jemma's voice was fragile, like crystal fragments lying shattered on the floor. Guilt surged up in Skye.
"No, of course not," she said. She propped herself up on one elbow. "Jemma, I could never be mad at you."
"Well then what is it? If something's wrong, we can figure it out." Jemma the problem-solver. Jemma the cautious optimist. Skye didn't want to take that away from her. She didn't want Ward to take it away from her, either.
"There's nothing to figure out," Skye said, after a moment. "I… I have it under control. I have a plan."
"A plan that I can't know about? Come on, Skye, what's really going on?"
"I'll tell you later, I promise. But, please, don't worry too much, okay? It was just a bad day, and tomorrow's going to be better."
"I suppose tomorrows usually are."
Skye tried her best to act natural the next morning, but it was harder than she'd expected. Every time she tried to make conversation, the only thing that came to mind were the details of her plan that she was playing on repeat in her brain, so she decided to be on the safe side and not say much at all. Her folded up directions and the money she'd borrowed from Bobbi were shoved into her jeans pocket, and she couldn't help but check that they were both still there every few minutes or so. The last thing she wanted was either piece falling out or getting picked up by someone else.
She had also woken up early and crafted an excuse note that was waiting to be delivered to Miss Hill, which was currently burning a hole in her other pocket. She knew from experience that if kids just didn't show up to school, foster parents got called almost immediately, but she also knew that there was nothing like a doctor's note to get you out with no questions asked.
It had taken her several tries to get the note right – her first attempts were in cursive, but she had never been good with the curly, mashed-together letters, so the handwriting came out looking loopy and childish. Once she switched to print, she tried her best to make it look like Phil had written it instead of a badly behaved eighth grader, and after crumpling up about 6 tries in the wastebasket, she had finally gotten one that seemed close enough.
Neither Phil nor May seemed to suspect that anything was out of the ordinary, and they both told her and Jemma to have a great day with their usual smiles. It felt so nice to be looked at the way they looked at her, like she had weight, like she mattered, like she was worth the effort of kindness. Skye prayed that her plan would work, so that she wouldn't have to live in a world where May and Phil couldn't find it in themselves to look at her like that. If everything went the way it was supposed to, no one would ever find out about her playing hooky, and she would find her parents and go live with them before May and Phil had a chance to realize that Skye didn't deserve their smiles.
She walked across the blacktop with Jemma as normal, settling at the melted table and greeting Fitz. He was excited to talk about some new ideas he had for their plan to wind up Ward, but Skye found it hard to listen. Even just thinking about Ward made her feel queasy and anxious and angry.
When the first bell rang, signaling the time to start heading into the building, Skye didn't join Jemma and Fitz as they stood up to go inside.
"Aren't you coming, Skye?"
Skye winced. She had hoped that her friends would be too engrossed in their conversation to notice that she wasn't right behind them. It wouldn't have been the first time something like that had happened, but of course she wasn't that lucky.
"I… uh," Skye faltered. She hadn't intended to fill anyone in on her plan. She didn't want to ask Jemma to keep a secret like that.
"Is this about your plan?" Jemma asked suspiciously.
"Plan? What plan? A different plan than the plan we already have?" Fitz interjected. For as wary as Jemma looked, Fitz looked positively elated.
Caught, Skye let out a sigh of surrender. "Yes, okay, it's about my plan. But it's something I'm doing by myself, so you don't have to worry about it."
"You're really not going to tell us?" Fitz was crestfallen. "But we make such good plans…"
"This one's already made, and nothing you say is going to stop me," Skye said defiantly. She saw how Jemma's eyes were narrowed. She knew Jemma could tell she was up to something unsavory. This was one of the reasons why she didn't want to tell Jemma about the mission until it had been successfully completed.
"Should we be trying to stop you?" asked Jemma quietly. "Skye, you told me you weren't going to get into trouble anymore."
"And I'm not!" Skye protested. "Or, I won't. I'm not going to get caught this time."
"What is it you're exactly planning on doing?" Jemma wanted to know.
"Jemma, I… I can't tell you." Skye felt horrible as the words came out of her mouth, but they were the truth. "I don't want you to get mixed up in it. I don't want you to have to lie if somebody asks you where I am."
"Where you… Are you leaving?" The growing disapproval on Jemma's face turned immediately to a stricken expression that was like a dagger to Skye's heart. "Skye, you're… running away? You're leaving me here and you weren't even going to tell me?"
"No!" The assurance flew out of Skye's mouth, and she felt a lump gathering in her throat. This was all wrong. This wasn't how the plan was supposed to go. "No, Jemma, of course not. I would never leave you if I didn't have to. You mean more to me than anyone in the world." Skye took Jemma's trembling hand and gave it a squeeze. "You have to know that. You matter the most to me. You'll always matter the most. And I'm not running away, I'm just going somewhere for the day. I'll be back before school is over. No one will even know I'm gone."
"Where are you going?" Fitz asked.
Skye shifted uncomfortably. They were approaching details, which Skye knew was where the danger lay. "If I don't tell you, then you won't have to lie for me."
"But if you do tell us, we might be able to help," Fitz countered. "We could cover for you, or give you pointers on your plan. I'm excellent at giving constructive feedback." Skye raked her gaze across the blacktop. Most of the kids had already gone in. She was wasting time, and if she didn't hurry, Fitz and Jemma would be late for homeroom.
"Skye, I don't want to be worried about you all day," Jemma said softly. "I… I won't tell. I won't say a word. Just tell us where you're going, so I can know you'll be safe."
"Okay," Skye said after a moment. Knowing that she was going to be telling Jemma and Fitz the truth, she suddenly felt calmer and lighter than she had since yesterday afternoon. Maybe Bobbi had been right – she did need to talk to Jemma. "So, May hasn't found anything about my parents yet, and I haven't found anything either, but part of that is because the hospital where I think I was born won't let you look at any of their records unless you ask in person—"
"You're going to Sheboygan?" Jemma's jaw fell open. "Skye, that's miles away."
"How are you getting there?" Fitz's nose was scrunched in confusion.
"I'm taking the bus."
Jemma's eyes were swimming with fear. "You can't take the bus to Sheboygan all by yourself. It's too dangerous. And what if you don't make it back in time?"
"I will," Skye said stubbornly. "I have it all planned out. And I can so take the bus to Sheboygan by myself. I've taken the bus before, it's not hard."
"Not to Sheboygan, though," Jemma pointed out.
"I don't have a lot of time to stand around discussing it," Skye grumbled.
"Skye, I really don't think you should do this. May said she was working on it. Can't you just be patient?"
"No!" Skye burst. She took a deep breath to calm herself down. She had no reason to be upset with Jemma. "I can't be patient. I can't wait anymore. I'm too close, and after everything that Ward said—"
"Ward? When did you talk to Ward?" Fitz asked as Jemma's face paled beside him. Skye scolded herself internally. She hadn't meant to say that.
"Yesterday, in the library. That's not important right now—"
"Yes, it is." Jemma was deadly serious. "If whatever Ward said is making you skip school and go all the way to Sheboygan, then it is important. And why didn't you tell us he bothered you yesterday? Why are you keeping so many secrets from me?" Tears were collecting in Jemma's eyes, and she was tapping hard against her hip. It wasn't a quick, anxious tap, or a gentle soothing one. It was an angry tap that Skye had never seen before.
"I was going to tell you later, honest. I didn't mean to keep things from you, I just… I didn't want to worry you, and I thought if I waited until I'd taken care of it, then it wouldn't be so bad."
"You didn't think I could handle it, did you?" Jemma asked quietly. She sounded so sad that Skye suddenly felt like she was about two inches tall.
"I didn't mean it like that. I know you can handle stuff. You've handled more than you should ever have to. I just… I was trying to look out for you."
"Did you ever think that I could look out for you, too? If Ward's been bothering you, then you should have let us help you… you should have let me help you."
"Jemma, I know you can look out for me. I know you do look out for me. Sometimes I'm pretty sure you're the only one who does." Skye felt her neck grow warm at the admission, but she forced herself to keep going. She owed Jemma a true apology. "I messed up. I shouldn't have tried to keep things from you. I shouldn't have underestimated you. Ward got in my head, and I made a mistake, and I… I'm really, really sorry."
"It's okay, I… I understand," Jemma told her. "What exactly did he say to you?"
The warning bell rang out, and Skye realized that they were the only ones left on the blacktop. She was really running out of time, now. "I don't have time to tell you now, but I promise I'll tell you everything when I get back."
"Wait, you're not still going are you? Stay here, we can figure something else out—"
"I have to," Skye said. "I have to look. I have to try."
"They'll notice you're gone," Fitz told her. He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and Skye knew he was probably anxious to get inside. Fitz hated missing classes. "They call your parents if you cut class."
"I made an excuse note," Skye said, pulling it out of her pocket. "I don't know if I'm going to have time to drop it off and catch my bus now, though."
"I'll take it," Jemma said suddenly. Everyone looked stunned at her volunteering, including Jemma herself. "I'll give it to Miss Hill. But Skye, you have to promise that you're going to be safe, and that you're going to be back in time."
"Jemma, I—"
"I know this is important to you," Jemma nodded. "So if being a part of your… bad girl shenanigans means I can help you, then… I'll do it." Skye wrapped Jemma into the tightest hug she could muster, blinking back tears.
"Thank you."
"Come home safe, Skye. I mean it."
Skye handed over the note, then took off across the blacktop and back out towards the street before any of them lost their nerve. Things might not have been going according to plan, but so far, they were working out okay.
The optimism fueling Skye after parting way with Jemma and Fitz carried her to the bus stop and most of the way through the first leg of her journey. Not even the overcast sky above her could dampen her mood. The driver hadn't questioned her when she got on, and hadn't objected to her paying the 12 and under fare, which Skye took as good signs. She pulled her directions out of her pocket and watched as they passed the street signs listed on her route.
Things started to go downhill when she had to switch buses. The first bus had been a few minutes behind schedule, which meant that Skye was late for the next one. She was about fifty feet down the sidewalk from the stop she was supposed to wait at when bus number two pulled up, paused briefly, and then took off again before she'd even had a chance to chase after it. The crisp breeze that she had found bracing earlier in the day was starting to grow colder, and she was painfully bored and shivering slightly when the next bus arrived almost forty minutes later.
The next bump in the plan came when she realized she was going to have to pay the bus fare on this bus, too. She hadn't thought about having to pay for her transfer, and had only brought enough money for one ticket each way. Still, finding the money to get home would be future Skye's problem, she reasoned. She was too far now to turn around, anyway.
The rest of the bus ride was uneventful, filled with flat land and passing scenery comprised mostly of twisty trees that had nearly shed all their leaves. The grey sky was getting darker the further south they went, but Skye decided not to worry too much about the weather. Her attention would be much better spent focusing on getting to the hospital. Her directions that she'd printed out turned out to be a little outdated, so she was having trouble keeping track of which streets she'd passed already, and she nearly missed the stop outside of Ames' Memorial entirely because she had been so focused on trying to figure out if she'd crossed over Mayflower, Main, or Martin Avenue. Fortunately, she looked up just in time to yank on the yellow cord to signal to the driver to stop, and scrambled out before anyone could ask her why a kid was taking a bus to the hospital by herself.
Despite it being the only real hospital in the area, Skye had never actually been to Ames' Memorial before, with the possible exception of her birth. She was surprised to see that it didn't look much like the hospitals she'd seen on TV, looking more like a squat, brick office building than a towering hub of glass windows and sleek architecture. Off to one side, there was a covered driveway with a sign that had the word "Emergency" stenciled on it in red, and to the other direction was a plainer-looking entrance that had its own sign – one that she had a little trouble reading because of the font choice, but that she eventually deciphered as saying "Wilfred M. Ames' Memorial Hospital – Est. 1904." Well, at least she was in the right place.
The inside of the hospital looked much more like what Skye had anticipated, with stark white lights, walls, and floors. Up at the front of the room was a reception desk, and the rest was set up like a waiting room. Uncomfortable-looking chairs covered in an ugly off-green vinyl lined the walls, and a dusty TV in the corner played a news channel on mute. One of the chairs was occupied by a snoring man who looked around Phil's age, and another pair were filled by a young woman and a small toddler, who was squirming around to be let down.
Drawing herself up to her full height in an effort to make herself look older, Skye marched up to the reception desk and tried to send off an aura of confidence and self-assurance. She had learned from one of her former foster mothers, a woman who somehow always managed to get discounts at restaurants and convince cashiers to take her expired coupons, that half the battle of getting what you wanted was acting like you had a right to it. Normally, Skye would be put off by that kind of entitled behavior, but today she needed to channel her inner-Mrs. Marshall.
"Can I help you, sweetie?" asked the woman behind the desk as Skye approached. There was something distrustful and disdainful in the woman's voice, and Skye knew immediately that she didn't like this woman one bit. "Are you lost? Looking for someone?"
"I'm here to see about some records," Skye told her, making full eye contact. Her own voice didn't come out sounding quite as bold as she had wanted it to, but the woman had set her off-kilter.
"Our records are private, sweetie," the woman said slowly, like she was explaining something to the toddler writhing around in his mother's lap instead of to Skye. The 'sweetie' was dripping with condescension that set Skye's teeth on edge.
"I'm looking for something in particular," Skye tried to explain. "Records of myself. The website said that records requests were done in person, so I'm here to request my records."
"Hon, you're what, twelve?"
"Thirteen," Skye corrected her through gritted teeth.
"Either way, you're still a minor. You're not authorized to see any records."
"But they're about me—"
"It doesn't matter, sweetie. Maybe you should think about heading home. Or, for that matter, shouldn't you be in school right about now?"
Fuming, Skye turned on her heel and stalked out of the waiting room before the woman could ask her anymore questions about why she wasn't in school. She plopped down on the curb outside of the hospital and propped her chin on her fists. She needed a new plan. She had come too far to give up because of one obstinate receptionist.
The beginnings of a misty drizzle began to sprinkle onto Skye's face and shoulders, and she looked around to see if there was somewhere she could go to get away from the impending rain. She thought about ducking under the covered driveway of the Emergency entrance, but the screeching arrival of an ambulance seconds later deterred her. She didn't want to get in the way if someone was coming in for help.
As the EMTs hopped out of the cab and started bustling around in the back of the ambulance, Skye felt a nervous twinge in the pit of her stomach. She really didn't want to see somebody who might be sick or hurt badly enough that they needed an ambulance. She turned her head away and tried to ignore the sounds of medical terminology being called out and the wheels of a gurney hitting the pavement, but she was having a hard time blocking it out.
"Are you all right?" A man's voice interrupted Skye's thoughts, and she jumped. She hadn't realized anyone was there.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he apologized. He was a white man with a shaggy mop of brown hair, and he looked to be around Phil's age. He was wearing a baggy brown suit, and his tie was crooked, just like his sympathetic smile.
"It's fine," Skye said. She didn't say anything more – she knew better than to talk to strangers, especially when she was doing something she shouldn't have been.
"Any particular reason you're sitting out here in the rain?" he asked. So he was a snoopy grownup, Skye thought. The best strategy for a grownup fishing for answers was to make it as difficult as you could, in her opinion. If you put up enough resistance, eventually a nosy grownup would decide you weren't worth their time or energy.
"I could ask you the same thing," Skye retorted. To her surprise, the man laughed.
"Well aren't you a spitfire?" he chortled. Something about his laugh made Skye feel like ants were crawling up her arms and legs. His laugh wasn't warm or comforting like Phil's at all. "I live around here. Sometimes, at least. I wanted to make sure my… friend made it to the hospital okay." He inclined his head over to the unloading ambulance. Skye felt the blood drain out of her face.
"That's your friend? I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I hope they'll be okay."
"Oh, I think so," the man mused, tilting his head to one side. "He only has a few minor stab wounds to the torso. Flesh wounds, really. He'll be patched up in no time." Something sickly and sour was bubbling up in Skye's throat at the idea of someone bleeding only a few feet from her. The man didn't seem especially bothered by the fact that his friend had been stabbed, either, which Skye found deeply unsettling. She stood up, suddenly, filled with an overwhelming need to get away from him.
"I guess I should go back inside. I'm… supposed to meet my mom," she lied quickly, moving towards the front door.
"You know, you remind me of someone I used to know," the man told her, his pale brown eyes boring into her face. "What's your name?"
"I really should go," Skye said. "My mom's waiting."
"Of course, of course," agreed the man, shooing her away. "I'd hate to keep a girl from her mother."
"I hope your friend feels better," Skye called over her shoulder, before ducking back inside the waiting room and out of the odd man's sight.
The receptionist raised an eyebrow at Skye when she came back in, but thankfully didn't say a word. She was distracted by the toddler, who was howling to be put down. He thrashed around in his mother's arms, until he managed to slip from her grasp and take off like a shot across the waiting room.
The boy's mother and the receptionist both leaped up, trying to corral the whirlwind that was the little boy. He raced around the room, ripping pages out of the outdated magazines and knocking over the potted plants that populated the nooks and crannies of the waiting room. His mother was apologizing profusely as she chased after him, and the receptionist kept calling for him to behave.
In the midst of the chaos, Skye was struck with a brilliant idea, and she slowly inched her way back to the door behind the receptionist's desk that she assumed led to the rest of the hospital. She double-checked that the two women were still preoccupied with the toddler, who was shrieking with glee at his own antics, then eased the door open and slipped behind it before anyone could spot her.
Beyond the door, Skye found herself in a labyrinth of corridors. The hallways were generally quiet, aside from a few drifting voices of people she assumed were doctors and nurses, and the occasional announcement over the intercom system calling for "Dr. So-and-So to the OR." Skye knew better than to linger where the receptionist could spot her if she checked behind the door, so she quickly picked a direction and took off. She wove her way down a hall that seemed to house patient rooms, since all of the doors were shut and had numbers and a bunch of ID markers on the walls outside of them. Skye didn't linger here – she wasn't interested in stumbling across a patient, or worse, an employee of the hospital.
Eventually she found some signs on the wall that gave her a sense of where she was. There were arrows pointing to the ICU, Labor and Delivery, Radiology, and a host of other "-ologies" that Skye couldn't read. At the very bottom of the sign, however, was a word she could read – one that released a swarm of butterflies in her chest: Records.
Skye took off in the direction of the Records arrow, and managed to avoid being stopped by anyone. One nurse who passed her by gave her an odd look, but Skye just kept walking and tried to look like she belonged there. The trick seemed to work, and soon Skye was standing outside of a plain white door with a sign reading "Records" affixed to the wall right beside it. Something told Skye that she shouldn't just go barging into a room behind a closed door, especially since she probably wasn't supposed to be there in the first place, so instead, she reached out a hand and knocked.
After a moment, the surprised face of a middle-aged woman with soft features and gentle lines creasing around her eyes and mouth poked out from behind the door.
"Can I help you, honey? Are you lost?" Despite the question being remarkably similar to the one the receptionist in the waiting room had asked, this woman's tone was much kinder, and Skye felt like she might actually want to help, instead of just shooing Skye out of the way.
"No, I'm not lost," Skye said. "I'm here to ask about some records."
"Oh." The woman's face fell slightly. "I don't usually get visitors over here. Usually it's only staff who come to access records. Are you sure—"
"The woman out front said I could," Skye lied quickly. "She sent me back here to find you, actually."
"Oh," the woman repeated. "Well, I guess if Francine sent you… Come on in, then." The woman pushed the door open the rest of the way and gestured for Skye to follow her. "I'm Nora," she told Skye with a shy smile. "What's your name?"
"Skye."
"How pretty," Nora smiled more broadly. "If I ever had a daughter, I would have loved to have given her a name as nice as yours. I just love names, don't you? That's one of my favorite things about working in records, you know, getting to see all the nice names that come through." She was rambling slightly, and Skye got the impression that Nora often didn't have many people to talk to during the day.
The records room was small and somewhat cramped, although Nora had worked hard to make it cozy, it seemed. The pens on the desk were all different colors, and there were some crayon drawings tacked up on the wall. Her desk had framed photographs of a dog and a cat, plus one of a teenage boy grinning as he held up a big fish on a pole.
"That's Bootsy and Muffin, and my Jeremy," Nora said, noticing Skye's gaze on the photos. "He's a good boy, just started college this year."
"He looks nice," Skye nodded. So far Nora seemed nice, too, and Skye was more than happy to stay in the woman's good graces.
"So, what can I help you with, Skye?" Nora asked, taking her seat at the desk. She shuffled some of the loose papers that were scattered across the top and tucked them into a manila folder labeled "To Be Filed."
"Well, I'm working on this project for school," Skye began. Being honest had not gotten her very far with the receptionist before, and although Nora seemed much more likely to help, Skye got the sense from her timid demeanor that she was probably a rule-follower, which meant she likely wouldn't just hand over everything she had on file. "It's for my math class. We're doing statistics, and we each got assigned a different real-world example to show us how we can use math in our real life." She was spinning quite a web, and she wasn't exactly sure where the lie was coming from, but Skye wasn't about to turn down the story that had popped into her head.
"Oh, we used to ask that all the time," Nora chuckled. "I had this teacher in high school, Mr. Gerber, I think, and his face would turn into a real prune when we asked him if the math we were learning would matter in real life. I don't use it much anymore, I'm afraid, but my Jeremy, he's going to be an engineer. He does all sorts of things with those numbers."
"You have to be really smart to be an engineer," Skye agreed. She didn't want to interrupt Nora, but she was anxious about getting too far off topic.
"I'm sorry, I got distracted. Tell me about this project of yours."
"So, I got assigned birth rates," Skye plowed ahead. Her cover story was coming together, much to her delight. "And my teacher gave me a specific time frame to look at, and I'm supposed to find all this stuff on how many babies were born here, and if they were boys or girls, and who their parents were and all that. I tried to ask about it out front, but the lady up there said she couldn't help me, so I came back here to find you."
"Well," Nora said, looking thoughtful. "Some of our more personal information is kind of restricted, and I'd have to get my boss's permission to show you all of that. You know, family and patient details and things like that. But I don't see why I couldn't show you the birth records that we keep on file for the county. That should have the kind of information you're looking for without giving too much away." It wasn't exactly what Skye had been hoping to hear, but it was at least a start.
"That would be great," Skye smiled. She told Nora the dates she was looking for, and the woman disappeared behind a row of filing cabinets. A few minutes later, she returned, bearing a thick folder.
"Here's what I have from May, June, and July," she said happily. She plunked the folder down on her desk. "You're welcome to stay in here and look them over. I have an extra chair." Skye spied a spindly folding chair off in the corner. She had missed the first time around, since it was buried under a mountain of file folders.
"Well, I'll have an extra chair in just a minute," Nora said sheepishly. She hurriedly shoved the folders to the floor and under the chair. "I do most of my permanent filing on Fridays," she explained, "so they kind of build up over the week."
Skye thanked her for the chair and took the folder with a delicate touch. She had to work hard to keep her hands from shaking, and for a minute, she almost forgot to breathe. She had never been closer.
The files inside the folder were some of the most complicated-looking documents Skye had ever encountered in her life. There were strings of numbers and shorthand codes in lots of little boxes that she assumed meant plenty to the hospital staff, but meant absolutely nothing to her. She swung her eyes down to the bottom of the first page, and managed to find something that at least read like plain English to her.
"McBride. Twin girls. ID LDB M129 and ID LDB M130. May 1, 12:01 am and 12:13 am."
Something hitched in Skye's chest. If this was the kind of thing that was on every page in the folder, she was about to have one more piece of information that she had never had before. The files didn't seem to record the babies' names, unfortunately, only their ID numbers, but the last name, at least, was there in black and white. She cocked her head at the word "twins," and realized she had never considered the possibility of having a long-lost twin sister in addition to her missing parents. Something flopped around in her belly, and she wasn't sure if the idea filled her with elation or apprehension. It would be amazing to find a twin sister along with some parents, but she wasn't sure how she would feel if her parents had kept her twin, but not her.
Skye spent the next hour combing through nearly 300 pages of births. She set aside all of the pages from after the 4th of July, and she didn't linger on the pages that listed baby boys, which narrowed her search considerably, but still left her with more names to sift through than she had imagined. As exciting as it was to know that one of the names she was holding in her hands might be the last name of her mother and father, might be her last name, she couldn't help but feel the murky swellings of dismay that she had no real idea of how to determine which one was hers.
Faced with a tough call, Skye decided to rule out any of the files with mentions of twins, and the one that listed triplets. She didn't have any real reason to make the decision, except that something in her gut told her it was the right one. Maybe it was just the part of her that desperately wanted to believe that her parents hadn't decided to keep only one of their children and that she had been the unlucky one. That got her down to just under 70 pages.
Heart racing, Skye twisted around and started rummaging around in her backpack, which she had set on the floor beside once she'd sat down to look at the files. She pulled out a notebook and a stub of a pencil and began to scribble down the names on those 70 pages as fast as she could. Holiday, Moss, Huang, Beacham, Johnson, Reyes, Clark, Nadir… the list went on. She made it through about 20 before she realized, with a sinking in the pit of her stomach, just how many names she was going to have to write down. Her hand ached and her handwriting grew worse and worse as she rushed to copy out each of the potential surnames before Nora could realize what she was doing. Skye had no idea if she was allowed to write down the names like that, but she wasn't planning on getting spotted before she had what she needed, just in case.
After what felt like an eternity, Skye finished writing the last name on her list (Wexler), and Nora looked up from her own work and glanced over to check on her.
"Finding what you need, honey?"
"I guess so," Skye shrugged, massaging her hand. "Unless you have anything else I can look at? Anything with more information about some of these people that I'm including in my… project."
"I can ask my boss, but I'm pretty sure he'll say no," Nora said apologetically. "Those are the kinds of records that people have to check out, grownups, you know. And they have to be the people in question, usually. Mr. Malick is very protective of our patients' personal information."
"I understand." Skye hoped she had masked her disappointment well, but suspected by the pitying look on Nora's face that she had not.
"I'm sorry, Skye. I hope there was enough information in the files I could give you for you to do your project."
"No, it's okay," Skye said quickly. "This was great. I think I can… I mean, my teacher will be happy, I think."
"Wonderful." Nora stood up then, and Skye copied her, shoving her notebook back into her backpack and collecting her things up. "Well, Skye, I think I'm going to take my lunch break now. Can I walk you back out to the front? Is someone waiting for you out there?"
"Oh, my mom's going to pick me up," Skye fibbed, not missing a beat. Nora nodded.
"Okay, great. Well, it was really nice to meet you, Skye."
"It was nice to meet you, too," Skye smiled. "Thanks again for all your help."
"My pleasure." Nora opened the door, and the two of them stepped back out into the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital hallway. Skye had to blink a few times to get her eyes to adjust. She waved goodbye to Nora, then set off back down the hallway she had originally come from, hoping that she would be able to retrace her steps without too much trouble.
She had made it about half of the way back when a voice rang out and stopped her cold in her tracks.
"Hey! You there! You're not supposed to be back here!" Skye wheeled around and, to her horror, found herself face to face with the grouchy receptionist from earlier. If she had looked exasperated with Skye the first time they had met, she looked positively livid now. "I thought I told you to leave hours ago."
Skye opened her mouth to try and explain, to find some way to talk herself out of the mess she had just stumbled into, but the receptionist wasn't interested. She took one look at Skye, then noticed the direction she was coming from, and her expression soured.
"You better not be doing what I think you're doing," the woman glowered. She closed the distance between them with just a few, terse steps, and wrapped Skye's upper arm up in a tight grasp. Her fingernails dug into Skye's arm just a little too much, and Skye let out an involuntary whimper. It was a position she had been in before, and painful memories of being yanked around, pinched, and prodded by short-tempered foster mothers flooded her mind before she had a chance to push them back.
"I'm not falling for the waterworks, kid." The receptionist began pulling Skye down the hallway and towards the door that led back out to the waiting room. "You need to leave, now, and if I catch you back in here, I'm calling the cops, got it?" Skye squirmed against the woman's grip, but it was too tight, and the woman was walking too quickly for Skye to have a chance to plant her feet and put up any kind of resistance.
The receptionist marched her back out through the waiting room and sent her stumbling through the front door and out to the sidewalk.
"I mean it," she warned. "Next time I see you, I'm hitting speed dial."
It took Skye a minute to get her bearings once the door to the hospital had been slammed behind her. The sky overhead was still ominous and dark, so she couldn't tell how much time had passed from the position of the sun. A growl of thunder rolled like a wave across the world, making the hairs on the back of Skye's neck stand up. The misty drizzle that she had been sitting in earlier had turned into light sprinkling, but Skye figured that wouldn't hold for long. The clouds overhead were almost black they were so heavy with looming rain.
She fished her paper with the directions to get home out of her pocket and tried to orient herself. She knew that she had to find a different bus stop than the one she had gotten off at, since she needed to be going in the opposite direction. The letters and lines on the map were starting to swim in front of her eyes, jumbling around until they didn't make a lick of sense. Skye tried to take a deep breath. Now was not the time for her stupid brain to stop working. She squeezed her eyes shut until she adjusted to the darkness behind them, then reopened them in an attempt to reboot herself. Fortunately, the letters stopped dancing quite so forcefully, and she was able to pick out the name of the street where her new stop was.
It took her a little while to find the right street, but once she located it, it was easy to spot the bus stop sign. There wasn't a bench or a covering at this stop like there was at the one outside the hospital, so Skye settled for sitting on the curb. While she waited, she took the opportunity to pull her notebook back out of her backpack and study the lengthy list of surnames that she had collected from the records. There were so many names, and none of them meant anything to her. She stared at the page, hoping that one would jump out, would hit her like a bolt of lightning when she recognized it as her own, but nothing of the sort happened. After all that, she still knew next to nothing about who she was.
Tears of frustration pricked in the corners of her eyes. This wasn't how the plan was supposed to have gone. The brief excitement she had once felt in reading the names on the files had drained away completely, replaced instead by a bitter seed of anger and a thousand roaring questions. Why was it so hard to find them? Why was every turn a dead end? Why did she even have to look in the first place? Why didn't they want her?
Another clap of thunder shook the sky, and the rain began falling faster, fat drops plunking down around her and staining the sidewalk as their water seeped out into the cracks of the pavement. Skye hastily shoved the notebook back into her backpack. As futile as the list felt, she still didn't want it getting ruined in the rain.
A momentary glimmer of hope perked up inside of her when she caught the rumbling sound of an approaching bus, but it was almost immediately strangled by the horrible realization that she didn't have any more money to pay for her ticket home. She had foolishly considered the matter of money to be future Skye's problem, but now that future Skye was present Skye, she was incredibly angry with past Skye for being so careless. The bus pulled up at the stop and swung its doors open with a rubbery thwap, but Skye didn't move.
"Getting on, kid?" the driver called. Skye hesitated, wondering if she could convince the driver to let her ride for free, then shook her head. The driver shrugged and closed the doors in her face.
"Stay dry, okay?" he called as the doors sealed themselves. Then, just like that, the bus pulled away with a hiss, and Skye was all alone again.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and tucked her quivering chin in between them. It was raining harder now, and the chill of the rain was starting to set in her bones. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't go back to the hospital to wait out the rain or use the phone, because the lady in the waiting room had said she would call the police on her. She couldn't go home because she had no money. For a moment, she considered walking around the streets of Sheboygan until she managed to find her way back to St. Agnes, but the dread that erupted in her stomach at the thought of showing up on the nuns' doorstep like a bedraggled puppy with its tail between its legs rid her of that notion just as soon as it had come.
This had been such a stupid plan, she realized. She never should have tried to do something as reckless as this. Jemma had told her so. Jemma had been right. Skye's heart clenched at the thought of Jemma, sitting in a dry and warm classroom, waiting and waiting for Skye to return, without a clue why Skye hadn't come back. She had let Jemma down, had made her an accomplice in her ridiculous plan, and for what? A useless couple of pages of notebook paper filled with 70 random last names that meant nothing? Skye started to cry for real, then, the weight of her situation fully hitting her, starting to crush her slowly from the inside out. Tears streamed down her face, swirling around with the rivulets of rainwater that were tracking across her cheeks and dripping off her chin. Her teeth chattered from the cold. She might as well just curl up here on the pavement and let the torrential rain just sweep her away.
She wasn't sure if she had been sitting there crying for three minutes or thirty when the sudden flash of headlights interrupted Skye's spiraling thoughts. She squinted into the brightness. Maybe it was someone who could help. Maybe she could hitchhike, or ask for money for the bus. The car slowed to a stop in front of her, and Skye realized that she recognized it. The window rolled down, revealing the gut-wrenchingly unreadable and stony face of Melinda May behind the wheel.
"Skye, get in the car, please. We're going home."
I know this isn't a three-chapter burst, but I felt so bad for inflicting that terrible cliff-hanger on you all last time that I figured it might be nice to go ahead and post the next chapter once I'd finished it :) As always, a tremendous thank you to everyone for reading! See you all soon!