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MINKA
My hour is up, and my patience has officially worn out. Grabbing the crutches Doctor Cleary so kindly—with a snide side-eye check-up, no doubt on Archer’s orders—placed by my chair, I push up to stand, and grunt as the pain in my hips and leg pulse through my body like tiny electrical waves.
My knee is locked up, and my hips are stiff and unwilling to move smoothly. My heart races faster from standing up alone, but I get the crutch under my arm and swallow down the ache that tries to convince me to sit down.
It’s time to go. It’s time for the next step.
I wasn’t measured for the crutches. Not even an up-down look to gauge a guess, as far as I saw. But the height of the handgrips is perfect as I place the cushions under my arms and take a single step forward.
The hospital continues to race around me. Patients come in; some to die, and some to fix an injury that probably resulted from being stupid. Long-term patients watch the same wall they long ago memorized, and in another wing, babies are born, and most of them celebrated.
I hobble my way toward the door and justify my movements in my mind.Someone else with a more serious issue will need this room far more than I do.
Stopping in the doorway and peeking into the hall, I look left and then right. I see no one except the on-duty nurses as they file their paperwork and go about their day.
I don’t have a bag to carry—thankfully, Aubree took it away for me—and no keys to attempt to hold on to while I crutch along the hall. I have my phone in one pocket, and one last dose of dynazanmapalin in the other.
Why do I have it?
I don’t know.
Why didn’t I give it to Archer or Doctor Cleary or literally anyone else once Miranda had been rolled into the ED?
I don’t know that either.
But I hold on to it now, despite knowing that, even if O’Dey gets another victim, the needle in my pocket is useless unless it’s administered within seconds. And even then, I’d probably need two doses.
If Ethan jabs me or Archer or Aubree or any of my friends, the chance of us surviving with one dose is miniscule.
And still, I leave it in my pocket and feel better knowing I have it.
I move slowly along the hall and pass the nurses’ station as the phones ring and doctors move from room to room. Everyone knows I’m here on Archer’s orders, and not because I need actual medical care. Which means as I leave, even as I meet the glances of hospital staff, they let me continue toward the elevator and inside when the doors open.
They’re all too busy to harass a woman with a bumped knee.
Hitting the button for the ground floor, which everyone knows is synonymous with the emergency room, I lean back against the wall and rest on the bar that most use to hold on to with their hands. Placing my weight on the steel and releasing my grip on the crutches, I close my eyes and breathe, because the forty feet I’ve walked has already left me breathless. My heart racing. My lungs panting.
I’m not as fit as I would like to think I am.
Only ten seconds after the doors close, they open again and reveal a bustling lobby and an emergency department buzzing with activity. Doctors in disposable gowns race past the doors, and patients—in beds, or in wheelchairs—are rolled along the hall and into another space. The noise is constant, and the shouted commands are enough to make my stomach tug.
I went to medical school, too. I have a similar education to these people. Sure, we parted ways and continued our education with different specialties, but that doesn’t negate the fact we shared textbooks and professors and study halls for a few years first.
Standing tall once more and placing my bad leg down so both feet touch the floor, I fix the crutches under my arms and start forward with a sigh.
“Oh!” With a skid on the laminate flooring, Aubree backs up and falls into step on my right. “I was just coming up to see you.” She doesn’t grab me. She doesn’t take my weight. And she’s smart enough to not grab the wheelchair we pass. “Doctors have let you out?”
“Yup. Did you drive here?”
“Uh huh.”
She moves slowly. Slower than her hyped self is used to moving, but she does it for me and keeps my pace as we pass the mouth of the ED and I stop to wait for Cleary’s eyes.
She works with a patient who appears to have a broken leg. She studies him behind plastic glasses and a faceshield, but like she can feel my stare, she stops and glances up.
Our gazes meet.
I lean on my crutches and show her a thumbs-up.
