John Gone (35 page)

His bed was enclosed by four, light blue
curtains that hung from horizontal poles, each helping to privatize
his small space in what was presumably a hospital ward. He turned
onto his side and searched for anything marked with lettering,
trying to place a language that might help reveal his location.
Finding nothing, he laid back flat onto the bed. He coughed as his
head dropped.

“John?” Kala’s voice buzzed from his
watch.

“Kala?” John asked groggily, slowly lifting
his left arm up to his chest.

“I can’t believe it,” Kala said, enthused.
“Still alive.”

“Yeah,” John replied. “One hand down, though.
And one mom. And many, many others.”

“But we won, John!” Kala replied. “We won!
It’s over now.”

“It’s not over,” John said. “I have no idea
where I am. And that thing with the knife?”

“I increased the Diaspora’s power
collection,” Kala explained. “Think about what happened to Virgil,
but with more energy and a secondary conductor.”

“Diaspora?” John asked.

“Yes,” Kala replied more quietly. “That’s the
true name of it. The watch, I mean.”

John looked at the hands beneath Kala’s
hologram. It was 8:45 P.M. “Why did I jump when I wasn’t supposed
to?”

“Too much energy? Something about Mouse’s
internal circuitry?” Kala sighed. “I don’t honestly know. Man
always learns to harness something before understanding the true
nature of it. It’s no different for quantum biology. That’s
something the company never grasped.”

“But ... ”

Kala’s hologram shrugged in reply.

“Well, you’re a lot of help today,” John
said.

“Even a man such as I has his limitations,”
Kala answered.

“We need to figure out where we are.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I know--”

A melodic voice interrupted him from behind
the curtain. “John?” the voice called. Kala fizzled his hologram
instantaneously.

The curtain in front of John’s bed pulled
open from the left and an older woman stood on the other side. Her
hair was bobbed and her clothes seemed to be from the 1950s. John
wondered for a moment if he’d travelled through time and if this
woman was going to ask him about his Calvin Cline underwear.

“Thank goodness you’re awake! I was so
worried,” the woman said, walking briskly to the side of his bed.
“I brought you here the moment I found you. That hand ... ” She
looked down at his arm, resting in the sling.

“Thank you,” John said. “I’m sorry, do we
know each other?”

The lady smiled. “Dorothy,” she said. “We
never officially met; I can understand why you might not remember.
I just have a thing for faces. Mary is always saying, ‘Dorothy, you
have a thing for faces!’” She laughed.

“Where do you know me from?” John asked.

“America Offline. I use the switchboard in
the search department,” she answered sweetly.

“Right,” John said, remembering. “Wait! Does
that mean we’re on Longboard?”

“Of course, silly! Where else would we be? I
found you in the bathroom at the office passed out and,” she looked
to her left and right before whispering “bleeding” like a dirty
word. “This is one of The Four. It was the closest hospital to the
warehouse, so when I panicked, I just brought you here.”

There were six hospitals on the small island
of Longboard Key, and four of them were exclusive to veterans.

“They weren’t very happy letting you in, but
since it seemed like such an emergency ... ” Dorothy explained.

“That’s fine, I mean, great, actually. I’m
just happy to be here,” John said, slowly sitting up.

“Honey,” Dorothy said, sitting on the side of
his bed, “what happened to you? Was it that awful motorbike that
Virgil had you on? I heard he had you on an awful motorbike.”

“Yes,” John said immediately, jumping on the
lie. “It was a bad accident with a car. A hit and run. I’m sure
they were from the mainland.”

“I’m sure,” Dorothy repeated, nodding in
agreement. “Where’s Mom?” she asked. “Can I call her?”

John almost said “no,” lying to cover his
situation, but then remembered that telling her “no” would actually
be truth. John lost his excitement for being home.

“No,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be
fine now. Thank you so much. I have to go.” John leaned forward to
dismount the bed.

“You can’t go now, sweetie,” she said,
placing a halting hand on his shoulder. “They’re going to need to
get your information, insurance, etcetera. They’ve also told me
that you’re going need emergency reconstructive surgery. Without
it, you’d likely never be able to use that hand again. You’re lucky
I found you when I did. Surgery is scheduled for a few hours from
now; that’s the fastest they can fly in a specialist.

“The doctor also told me that an officer
would be needed once you woke to take your statement. I guess they
get a little worried when someone finds an unconscious minor with
such ... damage.” She smiled. “Now, you just sit back and I’ll get
the doctor.”

“Perfect,” John said, smiling sweetly. “I’ll
wait here.”

As soon as Dorothy disappeared behind the
curtain, John eased himself up from the bed and stood to his
feet.

“Not to be the one constantly highlighting
bad news, but you do realize you can’t remain here for this
surgery, correct?” Kala asked softly.

“I know.”

John looked to the IV leading into his arm,
attaching him to a nearby drip-bag. Since the needle was sticking
into his left arm, he had no hand with which to remove it. He
leaned his face close to the inside of his forearm and clamped onto
the IV’s tubing with his teeth. Slowly, and not without a little
pain, John dislodged the needle from his vein.

He ducked beneath one of the blue curtains
surrounding him and found himself in a large room with multiple
beds. Some were covered with curtains but most were open, leaving
their patients exposed to the room and each other. As John made his
way toward the exit, one of them yelled out to him.

“Nurse! Nurse!” the patient called.

A second patient that John couldn’t see
yelled back at the first man’s cry.

“I’ve been waiting longer!” he yelled.
“Nurse! I’m first!”

“I’m not a nurse,” John argued back
hopelessly.

“Nurse! Nurse!” they both yelled. The
repetitive calls of the two men soon prompted two more to the
chant. Whether the cacophony grew from old-fashioned competitive
spirit or simply the need to register petty complaints and
requests, John couldn’t be sure, but soon the entire ward became
flooded by the sound of fifty old men shouting for his
attention.

“Nurse!” they all cried over one another.
“Nurse! Here! I’m first!”

The volume of this kafuffle soon caused a
small army of actual nurses to hustle in through the large double
doors at the north end of the room, ready to address the
wide-spread and ambiguous calls of the ward’s patients. John spied
Dorothy and a short police officer holding a clipboard amongst
them, attempting to make their way through the mayhem to find the
small blue-curtained box that they assumed still held a helpless
teen with only one working hand.

John quietly continued his trek to the room’s
back exit and slipped through. The rest of John’s escape, two empty
hallways and a lobby, was much easier than he’d anticipated. As he
exited through the main doors of the hospital, he smiled.

“I’m so used to the Advocates chasing me that
I forgot how easy it is to get away from normal people,” he said
down to his watch.

“Especially when those people are a doting
old lady and an apathetic policeman,” Kala replied.

“So, what now?” John asked.

“I assume you want to see the girl one and
inform her that you’re still breathing?” Kala said.

“Yeah, but how do I get there?”

“You’re the master of escape John, not me,”
Kala said wryly. “As evidenced by each of our current
situations.”

“We both know how this day ends,” John
answered back. “We’ll see if you’re still saying that to me
tomorrow morning.”

“Point taken,” Kala replied.

Kala’s visage reappeared on top of the watch
and met John’s eyes. “It’s the right decision, John,” he said.

“I know.”

“But I am sorry, all the same.”

John thought for a moment, then asked a
question he hadn’t thought to ask before. “What’s your first
name?”

“It’s Felix,” the doctor answered.

“Can I call you that?” John asked.

“If you like.”

“We’re walking,” John said. “It might take
awhile, but I’m not going home for my mom’s car, don’t have money
for a cab, and have no idea how to steal a car.”

“It’s up to you,” Felix said. “We have
time.”

John started walking down the hospital
sidewalk in the direction of the bridge that would take him back to
the mainland. The way to Ronika’s apartment was simple, but long by
foot.

He was feeling strange, evenly split between
despair for his mother and the elation of his narrow escape from
the prison.
Just a bit longer
, he thought.
Just let the
happy stay a bit longer. You’ll have years to grieve, and soon, the
privacy.
He forced a smile.

“Felix,” John said, kicking his left foot
against the rough concrete of the sidewalk’s top.

“Yes?”

“Nothing. I was just saying the name out
loud. I always wanted to know Dr. Claw’s first name.” John
laughed.

“I don’t understand.”

“Inspector Gadget,” he answered. “I brought
it up to you when we first met.”

“I have no idea who that is,” Felix
answered.

“Just a cartoon show from after your time,”
John said, seeing if he could avoid the next five cracks in the
sidewalk while he walked.

“Well, that’s a depressing way to say
it.”

“So, what’s your story, really?”

“I don’t want to go into it.”

“Who’s Karen?”

“None of your business.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Are you going to see her when you get
out?”

“I don’t know.”

“What
are
you going to do when you get
out?”

Felix paused before answering. “I’m going to
find the men responsible for all of this, and I am going to ruin
them in every way that men can be ruined.”

“How are you going to do that?” John
asked.

Felix remained silent. John waited for a boxy
blue car to snail past before crossing the road to the other side
of the street. While he walked, he could see past the tops of two
short houses all the way to the dim lights of the mainland behind
them. John wondered if one of those lights was Ronika’s
apartment.

Thinking of her reminded him of the way she
must be feeling at home while he was happily ambling down the
pavement. He imagined the situation reversed, and how he would feel
if he was the one thinking she was dead or captured. He felt the
pain of losing her in his gut, her pain from losing him. She was
alone in that apartment, and oddly, he suddenly wished he could
teleport somewhere. He raised his pace to a brisk jog and continued
toward her with newfound purpose.

John pounded his fist across Ronika’s front
door, banging and yelling for her, anxious to tell her that
everything was alright, at least, that it would be for the next few
hours. There was no answer. He pressed his ear against the wood of
the door and listened for sound. Nothing. He’d seen the scooter in
the lot not a minute prior. She had to be home.

Why isn’t she answering?

Worried, John ran around to the backside of
Ronika’s apartment, catching his jeans in a square-trimmed bush
along the way. Clumsily shaking his pant leg free of the bramble,
he ran up to a low-mounted window in the wall and cupped his eyes
against its glass, looking past it into her bedroom. The heavy
exhalations from his nose caused two quick circles of fog to spread
across the glass, obscuring his vision. He quickly wiped them away
with the bandages on his damaged arm and peered around the inside
of the room. He saw no one inside.

John looked left, right, and forward again in
a panic. Without much thought, he lifted his left arm, turned the
Diaspora’s face toward the glass, and struck through, breaking the
window open. Thin shards of glass cascaded beyond its frame. A
sudden scream came from the inside, just below the window.

A moment later, John watched a girl’s face
appear where the window’s glass had been. Her eyes were wide and
fearful. Her cheeks were wet and as red as the hair circling her
face. It was Ronika, in shock, and wearing no ears but her own. She
stared stiffly at John.

“You scared me,” she whimpered without
blinking.

“I’m sorry; you weren’t coming to the door,
and I didn’t see you past the window,” he answered.

“I’m not talking about the window,” she said,
shooting her arms through the sharp-edged hole toward John. She
curled her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled his head
to her shoulder. She rested the side of her head on top of his and
squeezed him close against her body. John lifted his undamaged arm
and rested it across her back between her shoulders. She cried.

“It’s alright,” he said calmly. “Everything
is fine now.” He rubbed his hand lightly across her back.

“I thought you were--”

“I’m not,” he answered.

“Come inside,” she sniffled.

Ronika released him, and John circled back to
the front door of the apartment. Ronika was already standing there
on her welcome mat by the time he arrived, somehow having found the
time to don her fox ears before meeting him. She spied his damaged
arm immediately and swallowed a gasp.

“I know. It looks worse than--” John said,
approaching her.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” John lied.

Ronika slowly lifted his arm and inspected
it. “Does it work?”