Lost

I look at my watch. It's 5:00 a.m. That's when predators do their hunting and police come knocking. Human beings are more vulnerable at that hour. They wake and wonder, pulling the covers close around them.

Aleksei mentioned a ransom. He and Keebal both knew about the diamonds. I must have been there—on the ransom drop. I wouldn't have gone ahead without proof of life. I must have been sure.

Against the quietness comes commotion—people running and shouting. I can hear a fire alarm.

Maggie appears in the door. “There's been a gas leak. We're evacuating the hospital. I'll get a wheelchair—I don't know how many are left.”

“I can walk.”

She nods approval. “We're taking the sickest patients first. Wait for me. I'll come back.”

In the same breath she has gone. Police and fire sirens wail against the glass. The sound is soon masked by gurneys rattling down the corridors and people shouting instructions.

After twenty minutes the noise level abates and the minutes stretch out. Maybe they've forgotten me. I once got left behind on a school field trip to Morecambe Bay. Someone decided to dare me to walk the eight miles across the mudflats from Arnside to Kents Bank. People drown out there all the time, getting lost in the fog and trapped by the incoming tides.

Of course, I wasn't foolish enough to take up the dare. I spent the afternoon in a café eating scones and clotted cream, while the rest of the class studied waders and wildfowl. I convinced everyone that I'd made it. I was fourteen at the time and it almost got me expelled from Cottesloe Park but for the rest of my school days I was famous.

My aluminum crutches are beside the door. Swinging my legs out of bed, I hop sideways until my fingers close around the handles and my upper arms slip into the plastic cuffs.

Leaving the room, I look down a long straight corridor to a set of doors and through the glass panels I see another corridor reaching deeper into the building. There is a faint smell of gas.

Following the exit signs I start walking toward the stairs, glancing into empty rooms with messed-up bedclothes. I pass an abandoned cleaner's cart. Mops and brooms sprout from inside like seventies rock stars.

The stairs are in darkness. I look over the handrail, half expecting to see Maggie on her way up. Turning back I catch sight of something moving at the far end of the corridor, the way I've come. Maybe they're looking for me.

Retracing my steps, I push open closed doors with a raised crutch.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

Behind green-tinted Perspex I find a surgery with a bloodstained paper sheet crumpled on the operating table.

The nursing station is deserted. Files are open on the counter. A mug of coffee is growing cold.

I hear a low moan coming from behind a partition. Maggie is lying motionless on the floor with one leg twisted under her. Blood covers her mouth and nose, dripping onto the floor beneath her head.

A muffled voice makes me turn. “Hey, man, what you still doing here?”

A fireman in a full face mask appears in the doorway. The breathing apparatus makes him look almost alien but he's holding a spray can in his hand.

“She's hurt. Quick. Do something.”

He crouches next to Maggie, pressing his fingers against her neck. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. I found her like this.”

I can just see his eyes behind the glass but he's looking at me warily. “You shouldn't be here.”

“They left me behind.”

Glancing above my head, he stands suddenly and pushes past me. “I'll get you a wheelchair.”

“I can walk.”

He doesn't seem to hear me. Less than a minute later he reappears through a set of swinging doors.

“What about Maggie?”

“I'll come back for her.”

“But she's hurt—”

“She'll be fine.”

Nursing the aluminum crutches across my lap, I lower myself into the chair. He sets off at a jog down the corridor, turning right and then left toward the main lifts.

His overalls are freshly laundered and his heavy rubber boots slap on the hard polished floor. For some reason I can't hear the flow of oxygen into his mask.

“I can't smell gas anymore,” I say.

He doesn't respond.

We turn into the main corridor. There are three lifts at the far end. The middle one is propped open by a yellow maintenance sign. He picks up the pace and the wheelchair rattles and jumps over the linoleum.

“I didn't think it would be safe to use the lifts.”

He doesn't answer or slow down.

“Maybe we should take the stairs,” I repeat.

He accelerates, pushing me at a sprinter's pace toward the open doors. The blackness of the shaft yawns like an open throat.

At the last possible moment I raise the aluminum crutches. They brace across the doors and I slam into them. Air is forced out of my lungs and I feel my ribs bend. Bouncing backward, I twist sideways and roll away from the chair.

The fireman is doubled over where the handle of the wheelchair has punched into his groin. I scramble up and pull his arm through the wheel of the chair. Spinning it a half turn, I jam his wrist against the frame. Another quarter turn will snap it like a pencil.