Lucidity

Chapter 3 - Lightning Strikes

Grace ignored the elevators and jogged down the steps from the third floor Pediatrics Unit. Not because elevators were one of her phobias--they weren’t. It was because Grace knew hospital elevators intimately, the ones at Angels of Mercy in particular. They were all slow, often stopping at every floor, and smelled of urine, vomit and the dried sweat of fear.

Angels of Mercy Medical Center had changed since Grace was last here. The new research tower was finished, all gleaming glass and chrome, a tribute to modern science.

The faces were new as well. The only familiar face she’d seen was Helman’s and he had no reason to recognize an Emergency Medicine resident from four years ago, especially after all the changes she’d been through. Now she had a different name, a different face, was a different person.

The old Grace had wiled away boring nights on call practicing her climbing holds on the metal railings that encircled these stairs. She craned her head up toward the flights above and sighed.

The new Grace only wanted to get home and crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head and imagine Jimmy there beside her, counting down the breaths until she could rejoin him forever.

A wave of vertigo hit. She leaned against the wall of the stairwell, clutching her plastic bag of possessions. If she had a seizure now, here on the concrete steps, she could do some serious damage.

She imagined her body tumbling, bouncing down the steps, landing in a crumbled heap at the bottom.

The thought didn’t frighten her the way it should.

It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad way to go. If she could guarantee the results. She moved over to the railing, looking down two and a half flights to the bottom. Soaring, flying over the edge, down, down, that would be a better death than her brain imploding under pressure from the tumor. Poetic even.

She shook her head and the wave of vertigo subsided. No seizure, no drop attack followed. Probably just good old-fashioned hunger.

Besides, she didn’t want to die here surrounded by sterile walls and strangers. She wanted to die at home, with Jimmy.

She continued down, her steps clattering and echoing throughout the stairwell. Home, she needed to get home.

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Kat and Alex rounded the corner in time to see the stairwell door swing shut.

“Shit,” Kat said, ignoring Alex’s frown of disapproval. He hated it when she swore, so Kat made a point of doing it loudly and often. Whenever any adults were around, she’d go off on jags of scatological tirades, shake the electrodes planted deep within her brain, then grin at them like the madwoman of Challot.

Most of them ran away after that, leaving her and Alex in peace. Kat had a million ways to get rid of prying adults—from volunteers to nurses to her own parents. After a dozen hospitalizations, each longer than the last, she was a pro.

She jabbed the elevator button and was rewarded when the doors opened immediately.

“Hold it,” she told Alex, pushing him inside where he could reach the controls. While he held the door, she sped to the stairwell, listening for footsteps. She hopped back on board the elevator.

“Down,” she said breathlessly. “Definitely going down.”

“There’s nothing on Two but radiology.” Alex debated, his finger hovering over the buttons. “I say One—the main lobby, cafeteria, pharmacy, ER.” Kat nodded her agreement, and he pushed the button for the first floor.