Night Runner (3 page)

Officer Philips was about to answer when Nurse Ophelia cut in.

“No,” she said quickly. “No one is after you, Zachary. You're perfectly safe here.” Then she stepped aside so Officer Philips could leave.

I watched the two officers to see if they had anything to say about that subject, but apparently they didn't. I wasn't finished, though.

“How did he do it?” I asked.

Officer Philips looked confused. Her forehead wrinkled up. “What do you mean?”

“How did that man do all those things? He should have been a splat on the wall after that crash. Then he picked up the motorcycle and threw it. And he got up after being shot. He was supposed to be dead.”

Officer Cummings was still waiting in the hallway. He perked up when he heard my question.

“Do you know what PCP is?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Angel Dust?”

I didn't know that one either.

“Well, he was probably on drugs. I once arrested a guy who was so cranked up on speed, even with a bullet in his shoulder he just wouldn't quit. He had this cleaver—”

Officer Philips put her hand on his arm.

“Yeah. Well, the point is,” he continued, “that old guy was probably on something potent. It's not hard to find if you know where to look. Makes you do all kinds of weird stuff. I wouldn't worry too much about it. He won't bother you again. Not with us here.”

“So what was he warning me about?” I asked.

The officers looked at each other. They clearly didn't know. Nurse Ophelia answered for them.

“Nothing, Zachary. It was nothing.”

O
nce the officers were gone, Nurse Ophelia stepped into the hall and got the laundry hamper for my bloodied clothes. I still hadn't moved from the bed. She said something to me, but I wasn't really listening, not until she gave my shoulder a squeeze.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?” she asked.

I nodded and said yes.

“You aren't even listening,” she said. Then she smiled. “You're going to be fine. I know you better than anyone, Zachary. There's nothing for you to worry about.”

It was difficult to disagree with Nurse Ophelia when she smiled at you. And she
did
know me better than anyone. Unlike the other staff, she worked the night shift all the time. She looked out for me. Whenever a therapy session went bad, or if I got irritable with the other nurses, which sometimes happened if I got hungry before mealtime, she always smoothed things over.

“Would you like to go back to the fitness room and finish your run?” she asked.

I didn't know what to say. Running was usually a sure bet with me. And, like she said, she knew me better than anyone. But I knew her, too. And there was something she wasn't telling me.

“
Is
someone after me?” I asked.

Nurse Ophelia sighed. Her eyes suddenly looked very tired. I was hoping she might say something like, “No, of course no one is after you. Who would want to harm you? You're the greatest kid on earth.
Blah
,
blah
,
blah
,” but she didn't. Instead, she put her hand over her forehead like I was giving her a headache.

“I should get back to the desk,” she said. “The cleanup crew will be here shortly. As soon as this mess is cleared away, I'll check in with you at dinner. We can talk then, okay?”

I nodded and watched while she backed out the door, pulling the hamper with my dirty scrubs behind her. I waited until the squeak of the wheels had faded down the hall, then I flicked on my reading light and picked up my copy of
The Hobbit
.

Of all the books ever written,
The Hobbit
is king. I've read it seven times. Captures, escapes, riddles, battles, magic swords and a magic ring, death and deception, goblins and elves and trolls and dragons, men who turn into bears, and giant eagles and wolves. It pretty much has it all. I think that's why I've always been a bit jealous of the main character, Bilbo. At the start, his life is pretty much the same thing, day after day, just like mine, until Gandalf the wizard knocks at his door. Then, in a snap, he's off on an adventure so grand it can hardly be packed between two book covers.

Well, that was exactly what I needed—a knock at the door and an adventure of my own. But I guess wizards were in short supply. Instead of Gandalf, I got a crazy old man on a stolen motorcycle who smelled like he'd had enough wine to drown a horse. And all he did was trash the lobby.

I opened the book and started reading. After a few minutes, I realized I was still staring at the same page. I started again, but the same thing kept happening. Instead of seeing Gandalf and Bilbo, I kept seeing the old man on the motorcycle. “
I've found you
,” he'd said. Like he'd recognized me. But from where? Nurse Ophelia took me bowling sometimes, and to movies. And, of course, window shopping at Christmas. But I couldn't remember ever seeing him before. How could he know me?

I read slowly for about another hour, my thoughts drifting from the book to the strange incident with the old man. Then I had to get up. I was starting to get hungry.

I'm sure you've had that hole-in-the-stomach feeling that everyone gets when they've missed a meal. For me, it was a lot worse. I'd get pain behind my eyeballs like someone was pinching them really hard, and my throat would get itchy. It might have been because I couldn't eat most foods, and so it was hard for my body to get all of the nutrients it needed. It might also have been related to my blood. I had a degenerative blood disease, so I needed to get transfusions a few times every year. Those were the worst. For days afterwards I felt like I'd been drinking gasoline. If I could have found the right foods or the right medications, my problems probably would have gone away, but that never happened. So I got hungry often. And it always made me irritable. I remember this one time when I was ten years old, the nurse on duty forgot to bring me my dinner. When she showed up just before sunrise to make sure I was safe in my room, I was so angry I tried to bite her. After that, Nurse Ophelia delivered all my meals. She was more dependable.

In the common room, a couple of guys in grey uniforms were sweeping up the glass. They both looked at me as I walked past them, like the mess was somehow my fault. Two policemen were leaning on the reception counter. They were chatting with Nurse Roberta. She was young, and I think most people found her quite attractive. I
can't really separate how a person looks from how they treat me, so to me, she wasn't all that pretty. More like cranky and disappointed. I'm not saying she was a bad person, but once she yelled at me for not making my bed, and I was still sleeping in it.

As soon as I got closer to the counter, the two officers stopped talking. They both looked a bit embarrassed, as though they should have been hard at work doing something useful and not chatting up the hospital staff.

“Do you know where Nurse Ophelia is?” I asked.

Nurse Roberta pointed over her shoulder with a pen. “In the kitchen.”

I found Nurse Ophelia making my dinner. I sat on one of the metal stools and watched her. She turned and slapped gently at my leg to get me to move out of the way. That was the closest she ever came to showing affection, when she hit people. I slid my stool over and she reached into the refrigerator behind me. She took out a small bag that was full of red syrup. I think it was strawberry.

“Stop scratching your throat,” she said.

“I can't help it. It's itchy.”

She squeezed the gooey flavouring into the blender with the rest of my dinner and fired it up. Once it was good and frothy, she poured it into a tall cup and stuck in a straw. I always drank my meals. Solid foods just didn't agree with me, so twice a day, it was bottoms up. My friend Charlie called these “brain cocktails.” He said they looked like they could bring a zombie back to life. They were the only thing I ever ate. I think they must have had the same thing in them that coffee has, because I got a real jolt from them. And they were filling, too. Nurse Ophelia never made more than two in a night for me. Any more than that and I would have exploded.

My “brain cocktails” also had my meds in them. I wasn't sure exactly what I was taking, but I remember when I was younger having to swallow a lot of different stuff—pills and syrups—and
I got plenty of needles too, and lotions to put on my skin. They all had names that made them sound like they were made on the planet Mongo. Most of them made me sick. That might have been why the doctors kept changing their minds about what was wrong with me. Nothing really worked, and so they had to keep switching drugs all the time. After a while I stopped paying attention. It was too hard to keep track. To make things easier, Nurse Ophelia decided one day just to dump it all into my dinner. It was a pretty simple arrangement for me. She did all the work and I did all the drinking.

The two of us sat in the dining room with the lights dimmed. Nurse Ophelia was very quiet. There was something in her manner that was sort of off. She seemed irritated one minute and sad the next. Her eyes didn't seem comfortable unless they were fixed on the floor.

“What is it?” I asked. I was feeling a lot better with food in my stomach.

“You're looking more like Robert every day,” she said.

Robert Douglas Thomson was my father. Just like me, he'd used his middle name, so everyone called him Doug, or Doc, or Dougal or Dr. Thomson. And some of his students used to call him Dr. T. But Nurse Ophelia was the only one who used his first name, Robert. I always wondered if she was right. Did I really look like him, or was she seeing a resemblance that wasn't really there? Since she was the only one on the ward who had known him before he died, I never got a second opinion. I sometimes thought she must have been in love with him, because whenever she mentioned his name, her tone of voice would soften just a bit and the words would come out a little slower, like they were heavy or something. And she would smile differently, too. Like it was nice to think about him, but it was sad at the same time. I guess that's why we rarely talked about him. I don't even know how they met. The most she ever told me was that he'd gotten her out of some trouble when I was just a baby, but I never got the details.

Tonight, she was wearing the same sad smile she always did when she talked about him. Her finger traced a little circle just in front of my mouth. “The nose and chin especially,” she said. “Anyone who knew him would recognize you in an instant.”

I smiled. As much as I missed my father, I liked it when Nurse Ophelia talked about him. But then she added something strange.

“You look just like him. That's one of our problems . . .” She took a deep breath and shook her head.

So I looked just like my father. She'd told me that before. Big whoop. Didn't most kids look like their parents?

“That must be how that man recognized you,” she said. “He must have known your dad.” She spoke slowly, as though she was trying to convince herself. Her eyes were staring past me into space.

“I don't understand what the problem is,” I said.

Nurse Ophelia put her elbows on the armrests of her chair and started massaging her temples. “So many bizarre things have happened tonight. I just need a minute to clear my head and think things through, okay?”

After a few moments she looked up at me and continued talking.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I'm okay,” I said.

“Are you getting better?”

“I feel fine. I feel
strong
. I
am
strong.”

This was true. When you're alone most of the time, you need to have ways to keep your mind busy. Exercise is great for this. And reading, too. I never felt lonely when I was moving, or buried in a good book.

“I know you're strong. But do you think you're getting any better?”

I didn't know what she was getting at, so I just shrugged.

“How did things go with Charlie?” she asked.

“Fine,” I answered. “He's always happy when the school year's over.”

She smiled, but her eyes still had a far away look.

“What is it?” I asked her again.

She sat up in her chair and focused her eyes on me. I was surprised to see how tired she looked. Not haggard. Just deflated. And sad. She took a deep breath, as though she was gearing up to say something important, but before she could get started she was cut off by a quiet hum and a beep. She reached down to her waist and unclipped her pager.

“What now?” she muttered. She'd barely had a second to read the message when the phone beside us rang. It was the house phone, so the call was coming from somewhere inside the ward.

“That will be Roberta,” she said, nodding towards the phone. She clipped the pager back to her belt. “I have to make a call. And I need to get back to work.”

The disappointment on my face must have been pretty obvious because Nurse Ophelia reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. Then she gave it a gentle squeeze and got up to leave the room. When she reached the doorway she turned around.

“I'll check in with you as soon as I have a minute,” she said. “We can talk then, and if not, I'll come in early tomorrow night. Okay?” She pressed her lips together in a flat smile. I did my best to smile back. Then she slipped into the hall.

I sat there by myself for a few minutes, just looking around the room at all the empty tables. It was strange to imagine that in a few hours everyone would be awake. The room would be packed, and full of the sounds of people eating and talking together. I stood up and started back to my room. It bothered me to be there, all of a sudden. I couldn't say why.

Just before dawn Nurse Ophelia knocked at my door. Four quick raps. She opened it a crack, and light from the hall made a yellow line
across the floor. She slipped in quietly and set the rest of my brain cocktail on my desk. I must have left it behind.