Chapter Thirty-Four
The next morning, Christian entered the hospital just as visiting hours began, a bag of Egg McMuffins and hash browns in one hand, and a tray of cappuccinos in the other, "gifts" to the new parents. He rode the elevator up to the maternity ward, amazingly the only passenger in the elevator. As the door opened onto his floor, though, he came face-to-face with Nurse Hannah, standing just across the hall behind her medicine cart. The moment she saw him, her eyes flew open wide and she stared at him as hard as she could, nearly screaming silently and shaking her head ever-so-slightly. Christian stopped himself before stepping through the elevator door, wisely keeping his own mouth shut, and knitted his brows in confusion at her.
Seeing he understood the warning, she darted just her eyes swiftly to her right. Christian edged forward, catching the door as it began to close and holding it open with a foot, stuck his head out a bare inch to look – and ducked quickly back inside as he caught sight of the backs of two uniformed police officers, talking to Doctor Peters. His own eyes widened in surprise, and he mouthed "Letty?" to Hannah.
The nurse gave a quick, jerky nod, then, glancing again to her right to make sure she was unobserved, she swiftly brought her two wrists together for an instant before dropping her hands again, miming handcuffs. Shit, thought Christian. His mind raced into overdrive, and he shook his head at her, pointed towards the police, and mimed stroking a beard on his chin while mouthing "Diego!"
Hannah's eyes cleared, and she briefly cocked her head to one side, mouthing cheekily, "Who?" Christian grinned. Then she glanced at the police again to make sure they were still turned away, nodded the all clear to Christian, and dipped her head forward to look down at her tray – so she could truthfully say later that she had not seen him enter the ward.
Christian edged out of the elevator and scooted to his right, his back to the wall, the few feet till he reached the intersection of the x-shaped ward. Thank goodness Letty's room was at the far end of this branch – he had no need to try to cross the open hallway, or walk directly away from them while in view. He walked as quickly as he silently could down the hall and through her door, finding Javier and Letty sitting together on her bed, cradling their newborn daughter. Both looked up at him with wide smiles – he liked to think it was for him and not the non-hospital food he brought – but then he brushed that thought away. "Thank god you're both here!" he said in a near panic. "Letty, there's two police down the hall talking to the doctor – I think they're here to arrest you!"
"WHAT?" both parents reacted, Javier adding a beat later, "Why?"
Letty looked daggers at him. "Why do you think?" she nearly hissed. He got the point immediately: the two deaths at the house he had bought for her.
"Oh, hell no!" He had not come this far to have her snatched away from him. He had been holding the baby, now he stood rapidly with her and, reaching for a baby blanket to wrap her in, laid her down on it at the foot of the bed. "Letty, put your clothes on. We're getting out of here!"
Letty nodded, not arguing for once. She threw the covers back and swung her feet out, directing Christian to put down the food and help her for god's sake by getting the clothes she'd come in the day before out of the drawer by her bedside – and then grabbing all the diapers and pads from the same chest and cramming as many as he could into the hospital bag she'd brought. Javier, finishing with the baby, looked around briefly. How could they delay the cops, for even a second? He grabbed the food bag and coffee tray and put them into the rolling bassinet – they had enough to carry and could buy more – and pushed the bassinet into the private bathroom, turning on the light and fan, and opening the tap in the sink for water noise, then locking the door and closing it. It would appear the baby was back in the nursery, while Letty was in the bathroom.
"Ready?" he asked the others, and they nodded, Letty just slipping on her shoes.
"Which way?" Christian asked quickly. Javier merely pointed to the side wall of the room – away from the center hall – and said, "There's a stairway right next to us. Just get to it and down. Help Letty." Javier picked up the baby again – thank goodness she was sound asleep – while Christian put the bag on his shoulder and took Letty's arm, and they quickly crept to the door. Inching it open, Javier saw Hannah rolling her cart towards them, but the hallway was still clear behind her. He waved his hand at her, shaking his head – and she got the message in return. She stopped her cart a few doors away and turned around, facing the other way.
Just then, the door to the patient room beside her opened and another nurse rolled her cart out. Hannah grabbed her arm and practically spun her away, saying a bit too loud, "Annie, give me a hand with this chart, I don't understand it?" Annie gave Hannah a mystified look, and – seeing movement out of the corner of her eye – began to look behind them towards Javier, but Hannah grabbed her arm again and hissed, "You don't see anything."
"Okay," Annie murmured, going along with the crazy person and turning away, picking up the "offending" chart. Hannah reached her other hand behind her back and waved the trio down the hall. Javier sent Christian and Letty first, before taking up the rear. Just as he was about to go through the stairway door, he turned again and sent a whispered, "Thanks!" down the hall to the two nurses. Annie had caught on by that time, and was intently – if a little nonsensically – pointing things out on the chart. Hannah reached behind her back again, crossing her fingers to Javier for luck. He grinned and slipped through the door, closing it silently behind him.
Letty and Christian hadn't started down yet – it looked like Letty was going to have trouble navigating the stairs, only eighteen hours out of childbirth. Javier took charge, handing the baby to Christian. "Here. You take this little lady, and I'll take this one!" he said, picking Letty swiftly up and holding her close, while her arms wrapped around his neck. "Go!" Down they went, Christian in front.
"You're supposed to carry me over the threshold of our new house," Letty told her husband dryly.
"I will!" he replied, wounded outrage. "Is there anything that says I can't carry you before then?"
"No."
"Then shut up and let me concentrate."
Starting on the fifth floor, they flew down three flights before Javier told Christian to get out of the stairwell. "This is the first place they'll search." Just outside the door, they found a clutch of wheelchairs under the window at the end of another long hallway of private rooms, and Javier set Letty down in one, had Christian hand her the baby, then picked up a blanket from another and tucked it in around them both. "Hold her down low in your lap." With the blanket loosely folded above the baby, at a glance she would be invisible – as long as she didn't wake up and start crying.
Javier turned to Christian. "Think. What side of the building are we on, and where is the Emergency room from here?" The older man wasn't sure, but thought it was a quarter turn to the left. "Good. The loading docks are just around the corner from the Emergency entrance to the left. Go get the car and bring it to the docks. We'll meet you there. Don't run!" he added as Christian took off at a fast pace.
"Who's running?" he called back, not slowing.
Javier stepped behind Letty and took the handles of the wheelchair, and began pushing her down the hallway towards the middle of the hospital, not too fast, not too slow. Letty suddenly began giggling. Javier leaned over to whisper in her ear with an amused air, "What in the world are you laughing at?" covering the fact that he'd rather hear her giggles than any other sound in the world just then.
"This reminds me of that scene in that Star Trek movie, where they're escaping from the hospital – you know, the one with the whales?" she prompted him over her shoulder.
He gave her a completely uncomprehending look. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." That just made her laugh harder.
Javier, thinking fast, did not take the central elevators down the other two floors, as those were the same ones that reached the maternity ward. Instead, he went down another hall to the far wing, and found another set. Magnificently, this one let them out steps away from the back corridors leading to the labs, where patients weren't really supposed to be – but he just kept going, on the principle that people rarely stopped you if you simply looked like you knew where you were going. He was right – none of the several busy hospital employees they passed did more than glance at the couple.
Miraculously, the loading docks were completely deserted, no deliveries at the moment – and there was Christian, just pulling up. They got mother and baby transferred into the car in record time (she took the blanket with her into the back seat), and Javier hid the wheelchair behind a low wall from sheer unthinking habit, minimizing the chances of physical evidence being discovered. A few seconds later, and the four were calmly exiting the hospital parking lot and turning right. No police in sight.
"Where to?" Christian asked with a grin.
"Back to my car in the parking garage," Javier told him. "I moved it last night; it's down on the second floor. We've got to get out of town as soon as we can." Christian nodded, making a left turn at the corner to put a couple of blocks between them and the hospital before he began detouring back – they were on the far side of the hospital from the garage.
"I don't suppose there's any way we could go back to the hotel room for all the rest of my stuff," Letty moaned. "It's only clothes, I know, but I hate abandoning it after leaving behind all the stuff in Florida."
Christian looked at her solemnly in the rearview mirror, holding up his hand to forestall Javier's reply. "There's no need," he said quietly. "I cleaned out the hotel this morning. It's all crammed into the trunk."
"Why?" she asked, as Javier said over her, "Did you know the cops were coming?"
"No," Christian answered the other man. He started to say something, then let his breath out in a puff. Looking back at Letty in the mirror, he began again. "I'm sorry, my friend, but now that he's here, this really is goodbye. We're going in different directions from here. I'm headed back down south this morning, back to Panama City."
"But..." began Javier. He'd been watching the weather news, too. "There's nothing left down there, old buddy. And they're not letting anyone back into the disaster area anyway."
Christian shook his head. "They're letting first responders in, and that's what I'll be – as soon as I hook up with the Red Cross, anyway." He held up a hand again to stop their objections. "I found out last night that they never evacuated the inmates from the prison where I teach. Nearly two hundred men. They just left them there."
Both of his listeners were in shock. "They just... left them there to drown?" Letty got out.
Christian nodded. "The warden and a few of his guards stayed, I know that. The storm surge through there was ten feet high – but the prison was on slightly higher ground, and it's three stories tall. Hopefully they at least let the prisoners out of their cells and up to the upper levels to ride it out. But they're going to need food, water..." He shook his head. "I'm going to stop at a grocery store and cram this piece of junk car with as much stuff that doesn't need cooking as I can find, then head south and look for a boat." He gave a self-deprecating shrug.
"You're a good man, Christian," Javier told him seriously. "That's... amazingly brave and generous."
Christian shrugged. "Some of those men were my students. I can't just turn my back on them, like the rest of society has," he said quietly. They had turned into the garage. "Which one is yours?"
The spot next to it was empty, and the next five minutes was controlled chaos, as Christian showed Javier how to buckle the baby's car seat in properly, and Letty went through the bags in the trunk to pull hers out – Christian had made sure to keep their things segregated. Letty then ducked her head into Javier's car to make sure for herself that the baby was properly buckled in – and still sleeping soundly. As she backed out and turned around, she found Christian holding out a long, round bundle – the rolled-up painting of the Wanderer.
"I was just thinking you ought to keep him," she demurred. "You need him more than I do, now." She didn't gesture to Javier; she didn't need to.
Christian glanced down at the roll. "I'd like to get him back some day, but for now, where I'm headed – you have a better chance of keeping him safe."
"But how will I get him back to you?"
"You both have my cell phone number!"
"But we can't contact you – at least we shouldn't, not if the authorities are after Letty – and me, if they find out. They'll likely be watching you for a while after the dust settles." Javier told him, taking the painting out of his hands and stashing it in the trunk of his car before closing the lid.
Christian absorbed that. "Should I delete your numbers out of my phone?"
Javier shook his head. "No, don't worry about it. We won't have these numbers – or probably these phones – much longer. They won't be able to track us that way."
Letty looked desperately at her husband. "I can't just... there's got to be some way we can keep in touch." She thought a moment, before coming up with an idea, her specialty. "Why don't we use Twitter? If we're always careful – set up some silly, innocuous little hashtag that nobody would ever stumble on. Don't ever use our real names, as our usernames or in tweets, don't say anything plainly. Just ordinary little tweets that don't have any hidden meanings, just to let each other know we're okay. We could even use anonymizers to log in. We could do that, couldn't we?" she was practically begging.
Javier smiled at his wife, unable to refuse her anything she wanted that badly. He didn't want to lose track of Christian, either. "Okay, as long as you can stick to those rules, and not run the risk of exposing us or where we're going. Give me a hashtag."
"I've got one," Christian said with a wry grin. "One that nobody would ever guess." He paused, then pronounced it carefully, watching both of them for their reactions. "CocktailsInTheSprinter."
He wasn't disappointed. Both of them goggled, then cracked up.
"Seriously, though," Javier finally managed to get himself under control. "Don't use any names, ever. Set up a different Twitter account just for this purpose, and don't ever log into it on any of your own devices – always use a public computer, at a library or store. And don't try to be cute and use a code – if it is being read, they'll figure it out faster than we will."
"I got it, don't worry. I'm not that old," Christian grinned at him, then turned serious. "But I'm going to break your rules just once. I'm setting up one single code, right now, one name. If I ever tweet anything about Rhonda, that means I've found out that the cops are on to you, they know you're not dead, and they're looking for you." He held up a hand. "If I don't use it, that doesn't mean they haven't, it just means I haven't discovered it."
"Okay," Javier returned, just as serious. Letty shot him a puzzled glance for acquiescing immediately to his rules being broken, but his next words cleared it up. "And then I'm going to add another one." He started to speak, then turned to Letty. "Does he know what her name is?" he asked, pointing to the baby. She shook her head no, and he grinned and gestured, go ahead.
"Angelina," she said quietly, and Christian grinned.
"I like it."
"So, if the cops – any cops – start to close in on you, and you are about to be arrested and charged, with anything... tweet something about Angelina, anything at all, just use the name. And I will come find you, and get you out of there. We won't tweet every day, but we'll check it every day, just in case."
"That's one hell of a promise," Christian commented, taken aback.
Javier spluttered a moment, looked away, then tried again. "Christian... my whole life, since I was sixteen, I have had literally a handful of people that I could consider a friend. You are one of them. Even though we've barely spent any time together. Even if it's only because of what you've done for Letty. Still, you are a friend. And I am not going to sit back and let you take the fall for me. That is not going to happen. Ever. It's already happened, once too often. It's not going to happen again. So if they start closing in, send that tweet, and I will come find you."
"I appreciate that," Christian said sincerely. "I'm not turning you down, but I may not be able to wait for you." He thought a moment, then grinned. "You remember where that Holiday Inn Express was, where we all stayed?"
Javier shrugged, but Letty knew. She supplied the name of the town, and Christian nodded.
"If I need to bug out, that's where I'll wait for you. You see that tweet, you check there first."
Javier nodded. "Good enough." He held out a hand, and the two men shook on it.
Letty wasn't settling for no handshake. She threw her arms around her old friend's neck and hugged him tight. "I hate saying goodbye," she whispered. "And I can never, ever thank you enough, for everything you've done."
Pulling away slightly, he smiled mistily at her. "Do you think that was a one-way street? You helped me, too, you know," he said softly.
"How?" She was thoroughly confused.
"By helping me find myself again. I didn't like myself very much when I was with Rhonda. I didn't like what she made me into. Oh, it wasn't all her fault – that damn job had left me depressed and feeling worthless – but she sure didn't help. It turned me into a whipped puppy. But helping you... helped me find myself – and my backbone. Made me remember that I have a voice, that I am a good person, that I can help others." He gave her a squeeze. "Thank you." Considering a moment, he nodded again. "And now I'm going to use all that, now that I've found a purpose."
Speechless, all she could do was squeeze him back and kiss his cheek. When she tried to let go, though, he held her tight. "Take care of yourself, okay?" he whispered again. "And take good care of that little angel, and that broken man over there. They both need you, so much."
"I will," she whispered in return, then backed away, wiping tears. Javier stepped forward then, surprising Christian by giving him a hug, as well.
"I admire you, what you're planning to do. I wish I could help. Do you need some money for the supplies?" he asked, but the other man shook his head.
"I've plenty of money for this, but thanks. What you can do, is take care of our two little girls. Okay?"
"You bet. You take care too – I mean it, be careful. Watch out for snakes... and gators... and prisoners." Startled, Christian stared, and Javier smiled grimly. "They may be your students, some of them, but they're in there for a reason, after all. Just because you're trying to help, doesn't mean none of them will turn on you. Watch your back."
"Well, the good news is that it's only a medium-security prison. No really violent criminals. But I take your point – especially after what they must be going through right now. I'll be careful."
"Do you have a gun?"
"No, and I won't get one," he said firmly.
"Okay, but please... find someone who does have one – a sheriff or just a good old boy, and take him with you to watch your back. Please? For Letty?"
If he hadn't put her name on it, Christian might have ignored him, but instead he nodded. "Okay. That's a good idea."
All had been said, and the two Perez's climbed into the front seat of their car. Christian poked his head in the back to give the baby a final kiss. "Goodbye, little angel. Hopefully I'll see you again some day, all grown up."
Javier was about to start the car when Letty cried out to stop. "I can't believe I'm saying this," she began, "but I hate just leaving without saying goodbye to Richard – or Sandy!" Taking a deep breath, she looked seriously at Christian standing beside her door. "In a couple of weeks, when the dust is settled, would you call each of them and tell them I said goodbye, and thank you for everything they've each done? And tell Richard I'm sorry for ducking out on the job – he was going to give me a promotion!"
Christian nodded back. "I will." Then his mouth quirked. "I can't believe you're saying that, either."
"I know! What's gotten into me?" She was about half serious.
"Maybe you've finally grown up, and stopped faking it," he told her, completely serious. "You're actually a responsible adult now."
"Oh, heaven forbid!" The old sarcastic Letty was back. "The world will never be the same!" She gave him one last, fond look. "Love you, Christian."
"Love you, Letty." He leaned over to look through the car. "You too, Clyde." He poured as much heavy sarcasm as he could onto the name Rhonda had called Javier.
So it was that they were all laughing as at last the new family backed out, turned, and drove away.
Christian watched them go until they turned the corner out of sight, then sighed, and walked slowly around his car, making sure the trunk and all the doors were closed. He climbed heavily behind the wheel, closed the driver's door – and sat there a few minutes, letting the tears come, the tears he would never allow Letty to see.
Then he lifted his head again, wiping his face with his hands. "Enough of this," he sniffed. "Time to go." So he started his car, backed out, and drove south into history – the quiet, unassuming, but doggedly tenacious hero who would single-handedly save the lives of one hundred and seventy-three inmates, and their eleven guards.