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But she’s gone.
A blast of Arctic air hits me when I push my way out the building’s main doors.
I carry my coat. I hold it in my hand, clutching it, because I can’t be bothered to slow down and put it on. That would take time, precious seconds that I don’t know that I have. I rush out the door, gasping, momentarily dazed by the shock of cold air that greets me as my eyes sweep the street.
I may have lost her already. It might already be too late.
My arms aren’t bare—I wear a boxy, cropped cardigan over my scrubs—though the winter air slips easily through the weave, the plackets of the cardigan blowing open as I sprint down the parking lot ramp and toward Wellington, scanning the adjacent sidewalk and street for the woman’s jacket. It’s just after rush hour, but the streets are still overrun with buses and cars that back up at busy intersections where pedestrians cross, stopping the flow of traffic. There are people everywhere. It’s hard to know where to look first.
The sky is dark. The sun set hours ago, though the buildings and streetlights are aglow, and every car that drives past gives off a glaring halo of light that only makes it harder to see. From behind, everyone looks almost the same in winter coats and jackets and hats, and it’s not lost on me how the woman who came into the hospital was short and petite, meaning that anyone taller or more wide would block my view of her.
I move down Wellington, and only now, a block from the hospital, do I stab my frozen arms into my coat, my fingers numb as I struggle to grab a hold of the zipper and pull it up. My eyes water from the cold. My nose runs. I wipe it on a sleeve.
It gets somehow even colder the further I go from the hospital. The wind picks up, whipping around the edges of buildings so that I can hear the howl of it like a coyote at night. The taller buildings provide protection from the wind, but the minute I step past them, into the openness of a street, the air sucks me in like a vacuum and it takes effort to hold my ground, to not succumb to the wind.
Somewhere close by, from the front porch of a two or three flat, comes the melancholic knell of a wind chime getting battered to death by the wind.
I head east toward Halsted, though I have no way of knowing which way the woman went. She could just have easily gone west to Sheffield. I take my best guess and, as it turns out, I’m right, because in the small huddle of people waiting for the light to turn green at Halsted and Wellington, I make out the army surplus jacket.
The light turns green, and I worry it will turn red again before I get there, or that the flow of cars turning right onto Halsted will stop me from crossing. Pedestrians have the right of way, but that doesn’t mean cars, especially impatient rush hour drivers anxious to get home, always oblige. I break into a jog, feeling relieved when I enter the intersection. The woman walks fast. She has her hands in the pockets of the coat, the hood thrust over her head, and her head down. I watch from behind, refusing to lose sight of her. As I watch, the hood of her coat blows off, revealing the near-black hair. She gropes for the hood with a bare hand, yanking it back on again, but it’s no use; the wind tears it immediately off. We’re walking into the wind now, sloped forward, leaning into it for leverage, but still it’s a slog.
“Excuse me,” I call out, but my words misfire. The wind pilfers them and carries them somewhere behind me, back toward the intersection at Wellington and Halsted. I try again, louder this time, practically shouting, but it’s no use. There are at least six people between this woman and me, and I have to shove my way through them to try and catch up.
I’m breathing hard from exertion though I close the gap. When I’m close enough, I reach out for the woman’s arm, but she’s walking faster than me and so I just barely manage to pinch the back fabric of her jacket. It’s enough to get her attention, enough that she slows and turns from the sensation of being touched.
At first, I think, she’s under the impression that someone touched her by accident, but then her eyes take me in and they widen with recognition and surprise.
She comes to a full stop on the sidewalk and turns to face me. “You’re that nurse, right?” she says. I nod as she crosses her arms, the wind blowing her hair from behind so that it wraps around her face now like octopus tentacles. “What are you doing? Are you following me?” she asks, incredulous, as we stand, two boulders in a raging river, dividing the water’s flow as people move around and past us, no one too seemingly inconvenienced.
“No,” I say, embarrassed by the accusation.
“Then what are you doing?” she asks brusquely.
I search for words. “You left so fast. I didn’t get a chance to ask you—”
“So you are following me.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.” I feel stupid. “I should have said yes, that I am following you, but not in the way you think.”
“What do you want?”
“Who are you,” I ask, letting my voice soften, “and how do you know Caitlin?”
“What are you,” she asks, “the fucking police?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m just a nurse.”
“I didn’t know nurses asked so many questions.” She regards me for a minute, and I don’t think she’s going to answer. I think she’s going to blow me off, turn and walk away.
But then she says, “She was living with me.”
“Caitlin was?”
“No,” she says, “Princess Kate,” which leaves me feeling obtuse. She’s mocking me. “Of course Caitlin.”
“You were roommates?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I placed an ad online looking for a roommate and she found me.”
