“There you are!” Ntethelelo shouted down the passage. “We were so worried about you. I almost had a heart attack.” She raced up to me. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” I said, even though I was anything but.
I looked over her shoulder at the group of people who had gathered at the nurses’ station. I recognized all of them: Dr. Cohen, Dr. Maluka and Detective Ndaba.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause such a scene,” I said to Ntethelelo.
“Well, you did! We thought you might have jumped out the window. We didn’t know where you were.” She took me by the arm and guided me towards the crowd. Everyone was now looking at me. If you could call it looking. It was more scrutinizing. Studying. I felt nervous, and glanced behind to see if Noah was still there. He was, and I didn’t want him to leave.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Maluka came up to me and gave me the once-over.
“Yes,” I said, now feeling really terrible that I’d caused such a huge international incident. “I’m sorry I left without telling anyone.”
Dr. Cohen looked at me and raised her brows. “We were very concerned. We didn’t know what to think, especially because there were signs of a struggle.”
“Struggle?”
“Yes, in your room.” It was the detective who spoke this time. “The window was left open and a table had been knocked over.”
“No struggle. Just an argument with a former friend.” I looked down at my feet and drew a half-moon across the linoleum floor with my toes.
“I think we can take it from here, Detective,” I heard Dr. Cohen say, but I didn’t look up. I continued to draw patterns on the floor with my toes as she thanked him for coming. I was just about to add a frown to the face I’d drawn when I stopped.
“Wait!” I called after the detective. “Do you know who I am yet?”
“Not yet. But we’re working on it.”
“Isn’t someone looking for me, though?”
I saw Noah and the two doctors exchange glances and I wanted to know what they were thinking.
“A missing adult is more complicated than a missing child. People often don’t realize the adult is even missing for a while. If they live alone, for example, and if they don’t show up to work, people might just assume they’re sick. We usually only accept an adult is missing if they’ve been gone for more than forty-eight hours. In your case, it’s been seventy-two hours, but it’s still not unusual that a missing person report hasn’t been filed. And also, we don’t know where you live. A missing person report might have been filed in Cape Town. That’s why running your prints is the most effective way. But that can take a bit of time. This is South Africa, it’s not the US. We don’t have the FBI here, so things take a little longer.”
“But you will find me, right?” I asked.
He nodded. It was small. I would have hoped for a bigger nod. “We will!” I watched him walk away, filled with a mixture of emotions that was hard to describe.
“Shall we all go and have a chat in your room?” Dr. Cohen said, placing a hand on my arm. Her sudden easy-going tone made me very nervous. It was as if she was deliberately trying to hide something under it. But I followed them into my old hospital room. I turned to see if Noah was coming. He wasn’t.
“Can Noah come?” I asked.
“Sure,” Dr. Cohen replied. “If Noah is okay with that?”
“Yes, fine,” he said, coming into the room.
But as soon as I was inside, I felt that same dark feeling pulling at me. That same anxiety and fear that had made me escape in the first place.
“I think I spent a lot of time in a hospital once,” I blurted out, without even thinking. As if that thought had snuck up on me so quickly I wasn’t even conscious of it until it came tumbling out of my mouth.
Dr. Cohen nodded. “I concur. The previous surgeries you had would suggest that.”
“Surgeries?” Noah stepped forward, looking concerned.
“Yes, but I can’t really disclose that information to you—”
“No. Of course you can’t, Doctor.” Noah held his hand up apologetically. “Sorry, I didn’t know.” He looked at me with slight relief in his eyes now, as if my escape finally made some sort of sense to him.Maybe he no longer thought I was a crazed stalker.
“And that’s why I can’t stay in this hospital. I get this terrible feeling when I’m here, I just can’t stay here.”
