Chapter Nine
The few visitors that came to Green Hills usually came on the weekend. The staff tried to ensure that all patients were presentable and on their best behavior if possible and well out of the way if not, and the presence of one or two strangers in the lounge seemed to turn the whole place into a comparative hive of activity. On Mondays the clinic seemed even more somnolent than usual by contrast, both staff and patients needing a rest after all the excitement.
It was Karen's turn to look after String for the early shift on the following Monday. She had been more wary of him since making her complaint to Anne Marie. Somehow Tommy Vine didn't seem like such an easy victim as he had even a few days ago. Now she tried to maintain a cool, impersonal attitude toward him. He didn't say a word to her all day, but whenever she looked at him she found he was watching her. She felt surprisingly flustered, and that made her resentful. The man's stuck in a wheelchair and he doesn't even know his own name. He's got no right to look so damned intimidating. She was glad when two thirty arrived. Now she just had to get him into bed and she'd be done with him.
For once he was cooperative. She got him ready for his afternoon rest and wheeled his chair next to the bed. She put one hand under his right elbow and the other around his back to help him out of the chair, just as she normally did, but something seemed to go wrong; instead of maneuvering onto the bed, String seemed to lose his balance and fall forward, dragging her down with him. He was clinging to her and she couldn't get free of him.
He hit her hard, twice. Her eyes rolled up and she went limp. He grabbed her ring of keys and pushed himself out from underneath her. He dragged himself back into the chair and rolled over to the closet, retrieving the one jacket he seemed to possess, along with a couple of shirts. He pulled on the jacket and slipped the keys into one of the pockets, then used one of the shirts to gag Karen and the other to tie her hands behind her. He had to tip himself back onto the floor to do it, then get back into the chair. Breathing hard, he was finally ready.
Pulling the door open wasn't easy, but he'd done it before with Elena. There was no one in the hallway, no one at the nursing station at the end. He could hear a TV set through an open door behind the desk, but whoever was watching it was out of sight.
At this hour all the patients were supposed to be safely in their rooms, and all the staff put their feet up. It was the best opportunity he was ever going to have.
He locked his own door, then as quietly as possible, rolled down the hallway away from the nursing station. There was a door at the far end, with a red glowing Exit sign above it. The door was locked, but another of Karen's keys opened it. It was heavy, and for a moment he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to get out, but after a determined struggle he made it through.
On the other side was a door with a crashbar. A door to the outside. He was almost there. But between himself and that last door lay exactly six steps down.
He needed the chair outside, because although he might not get very far in it, he sure as hell wouldn't get anywhere without it. He had to get it down the steps, without making so much noise he attracted attention. Without hesitation he pushed himself over the edge of the top step, keeping a grip on the handrail for as long as possible.
In the end it turned into something like a controlled crash. He finished up at the bottom, scraped and banged, with the chair more or less on top of him; but now he was only a couple of feet from that last door. Breathing harshly through an open mouth, he righted the chair and clawed his way back into it. Then he heaved against the door with his right shoulder, hooking the fingers of his left hand in the doorframe and struggling to pull himself through as the door gradually opened.
Finally he was outside. Even though the day was overcast, the light seemed blinding.
Outside, but not free yet. He was at the edge of a parking lot, with forest beyond that; but between them was a tall chainlink fence. It was electrified, but that didn't make any difference; he couldn't have gotten over it anyway. He rolled through the parking lot as quickly as possible, following around the side of the building.
His luck was still holding. When he got around to the front, he could see there was a gate across the driveway, but it stood wide open, presumably because it was the middle of the day. Pretty sloppy security, he thought; you could lose prisoners that way. He aimed the chair through the gate and set out down the driveway, which wound its way through the woods in a route that would be pretty when the trees were in leaf.
God, it was cold. The temperature was well below freezing, and he had only a light jacket and no gloves. And he had absolutely no idea where he was headed for. All he knew was that he had to keep going.
The drive ran downhill for a while, which helped, but the snow was deep. Muscles no longer used to real work soon began to complain. He stopped when the drive crossed a large culvert and began to wind uphill again. He slid out of the wheelchair and pushed it over the edge into the icebound creek below, then began to drag himself through the snow and undergrowth on his belly. He had only covered about a hundred feet before he had to stop, strength, determination and reason all waning at the same time. After a few minutes' gasping open-mouthed rest he tried to resume his struggle, but this time didn't even make it half that distance before everything gave out.
He knew now he wasn't going to survive, and he didn't care. The ones who had put him here, they weren't going to win either, not when he was dead.
He tried to curl himself into a ball. He was shivering all over; even his legs were jerking. After a few minutes he stopped shivering and didn't move at all.
------------------
It was Luisa who sounded the alarm, finding Karen after arriving to start her evening shift. The building was ransacked in search of the missing patient, and it was nearly dark by the time it was decided that he must somehow or other have gotten outside. Even though the fact that Karen's set of keys was missing had been discovered almost right away, no one had seriously thought that a patient confined to a wheelchair could have gotten out of the building, especially without anyone noticing. Although it was nearly dark by then, it was easy enough to follow the wheelchair tracks through the snow. A little over two hours after he had made his bid for freedom, Tommy Vine was brought back to the clinic.
-----------------
When he woke up again he found himself swaddled in thick blankets, lying in bed in a room he didn't recognize. There was no window, and aside from the bed the only furniture was a small bedside stand which was bolted to the floor. Through an open doorway he could see a tiny bathroom. The ceiling lights were recessed and carefully covered with mesh; there was more mesh in the little window in the door. Twisting his head, he saw a closed circuit TV camera high up on the wall above him. The place wasn't quite a padded cell, but it was far closer than he ever wanted to come.
He tried to move, and found that his arms were immobilized by heavy padded restraints.
Hell.
So he had survived after all. On balance, he decided he preferred the idea of being dead. Better to freeze to death out in the open than be reduced to a mindless idiot in this place. But it didn't look like he was going to get the option.
The sound of the door opening seemed incredibly loud in the silence. String found himself facing two men: a husky male nurse carrying a tray of food, followed by an even huskier orderly.
"Good morning, Mr. Vine," said the nurse. "How are we feeling this morning?"
String glared at him. "I know how I'm feeling. I don't give a damn how we are feeling."
"I'll take that to mean that you're feeling better," said the man briskly. "Now I just need to take your vital signs. Then I assume you'd like some breakfast."
String stared at the ceiling without bothering to reply. The nurse took his temperature and pulse and listened to his chest with a stethoscope. "Very healthy, Mr. Vine. You seem to have recovered quite well. We were quite worried about you, you know. But it looks like we found you before severe hypothermia set in."
String stayed mute. The nurse unfastened his right hand just long enough for him to eat breakfast ‒ toast and a banana, along with a cup of orange juice: nothing that required cutlery. Then they brought him a bedpan, which he only consented to use because the alternatives were even more humiliating.
"Hey!" he said, as the two were leaving. "How long do I have to stay here for?"
"Until Dr. Fairling gets back," the nurse answered. "I'm afraid you haven't been very trustworthy, Mr. Vine. What you did to Karen wasn't nice at all. And rushing off into all that snow and cold was very, very silly. We can't have you doing that again."
"I want to see Elena," he yelled as the door was closing.
"I'm afraid you won't be seeing Elena for a while."
"Hey! You can't just leave me here!"
The door shut and locked.
String thumped both fists on the mattress in frustration. After a minute of fuming, he became aware of another sensation, so unfamiliar it took a moment to identify it.
His legs were cramping.
Very slowly, with intense concentration, he found he was able to move each foot sufficiently to massage the opposite calf and ease the spasms. Then his legs started jerking under the covers, moving of their own volition. He was as entranced by the discomfort as a kid with a new Christmas toy. He stretched out one leg, then the other, over and over again, grinning like an idiot as he felt the muscles respond to his will.
But after a while even that novelty palled. He let his head flop back on the pillow and glared up at the ceiling again, wondering how soon it would be before he'd memorized the number of white acoustic tiles.
Assuming he hadn't been out of it for longer than overnight that would have been Tuesday's breakfast he'd just eaten. And the doctor was supposed to be back sometime late this week, which could be, depending on how you defined it, anywhere from Wednesday to Sunday. Which meant, any way you looked at it, he was going to be stuck here for a hell of a long time.
He was going to be on a first-name basis with every single one of those ceiling tiles.
-----------------
Elena pleaded to be allowed to see him, and was curtly refused. "Forget it, Elena. The man's dangerous. Karen spent six hours in emergency last night. Only the guys are allowed in his room, and even then there have to be two of them."
"But couldn't I go in with ‒ "
"No way. He's going to stay in that room by himself and mind his p's and q's until Dr. Fairling gets back, and I just hope that she can do something with him. Personally I hope she decides to move him someplace else with better security. The man's caused enough disruption as it is. Most of them ‒ " the nurse waved a hand in the direction of the patients' rooms " ‒ know somebody got out last night, and it's made them all antsy. Which reminds me, the old guy in 103 needs a sponge bath, so could you get started on that, please?"
"But I ‒ "
"Elena, if you want to continue picking up your paycheck here, I suggest you do as you're told and just get on with your job."
------------------
There were exactly one hundred and nine tiles in the ceiling, plus thirty partial tiles where they'd been cut to fit the walls or ceiling fixtures, and he'd counted them all three times before the nurse brought him lunch on his first day of incarceration. As usual with tiles like these there was a bad stain in one corner; he spent a while trying to determine whether it was water or something more noxious, and how it got there, and then decided to put that analysis on hold until he felt truly desperate.
By suppertime he was that desperate.
By the time the tag team of nurse and orderly ‒ different staff, but both still male, and still husky ‒ arrived to do a night check, he wanted out of there so badly that he was shaking. The nurse looked at him, went away and came back with a syringe, and gave him an armful of sedative. String slept.
At some point he had a dream. It was the old vision of the lake and the mountains; he saw the eagle sail past overhead and heard the breeze soughing in the trees. He could feel the sun's warmth on his back as he climbed the wooden steps from the dock to the cabin.
The door stood open, and this time, he went inside.
------------------
Two nights later, in a villa on a small island near Antigua, the phone rang. Ann Strete was sprawled on a recliner by the open French doors that gave onto a patio and then to the palm-fringed beach. Although the telephone was only on the other side of the room, she left it to one of the servants to answer it and then bring the instrument over to her.
"Yes?"
She'd known who it was going to be. "Good evening, daughter."
"Good evening, father," she answered with a sigh. He'd left her in peace for several months; now he'd obviously decided it was time to check up on her again.
"I haven't spoken to you for a while. Have you been well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Did you enjoy yourself in Aspen?"
"It was too cold."
"I see. Hence the Caribbean."
"That's right."
"Have you been anywhere else lately?" he asked casually.
She thought quickly, and decided to admit to a half-truth. "I spent a few days in New York in January. I felt like shopping."
"And how was New York?"
"Cold. Rainy."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I hope your ‒ shopping ‒ expedition was successful."
"So-so."
"Hmm. Well, my dear, I'm going to be returning to the States tomorrow, and I'd like you to do me a favor."
"Of course."
"I'd like you to meet me. In New Hampshire."
Ann felt as if a bucket of ice cubes had just been dumped down her back. "New Hampshire? What for?"
"I have an old friend staying there. He's not very well, and I'd like you to meet him. It might do him some good."
"Do I know him?" she asked, trying to sound puzzled.
"Oh, I think you might have met him once or twice. I've already arranged for you to be escorted to where he's staying, and I'll meet you there sometime tomorrow morning. The plane will pick you up in an hour." The phone went dead.
Ann stared at the receiver in her hand, then gave it back to the impassive servant. She went to her room, but instead of starting to pack, stood staring out the window at the moonlit beach.
This sort of summons from John Bradford Horn wasn't unusual, but this time she had a very bad feeling that he knew all about what she'd really been doing at the beginning of January. What he wanted her for now she had no idea. If Hawke had managed to regain any of his reason, he certainly wasn't going to want anything to do with her. The seductress act would never wash with him a second time.
Whatever her ersatz father wanted, it likely would be neither healthy nor enjoyable, for herself or Hawke. If he hadn't succeeded in getting out of that clinic yet, he still wasn't going to be any help to her in dealing with Horn.
Maybe it was finally time to call in the cavalry.
She picked up the phone extension, hoping that none of the servants would listen in; she knew damned well that Horn wasn't above having her spied on.
"Hello, operator? I need to make a call to the States, please." She looked at her watch; it would be just after six in the evening in Los Angeles. She just hoped that they were working late.
-----------------
The phone started to ring just as Dominic Santini was locking up the hangar for the night. Caitlin had left a few minutes earlier.
Eight months ago, he would have ignored it. He was bone tired and didn't feel like dealing with someone who probably just wanted to know how much a flying lesson cost. If it was important, they'd leave a message. But this wasn't eight months ago, and there was just a chance ‒ there was always a chance ‒ this call could be about String. He went back inside and picked up the phone.
"Santini Air," he said gruffly.
A woman's voice said, "If you're still looking for Stringfellow Hawke, he's at the Green Hills Nursing Home and Clinic near Plymouth, New Hampshire. Come as quickly as you can. Bring Airwolf. You'll need it." There was a click, then nothing but the dial tone.