Night Runner (4 page)

“I have to go now,” she said. Then she asked me again if I was all right. I'm not sure if I answered. I probably didn't, because she put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, just like she had earlier in the dining room. Sometimes you had to do that to get my attention. And it didn't always work.

I often got quiet. It seemed to upset everyone, but I didn't think it was that big a deal. I just had a lot on my mind, that's all. And I didn't always want to talk to other people about it. We all need downtime now and again. I was no different, except that for me it sometimes lasted a while, a few days even. It was one of the reasons everybody told me I needed counselling and psychiatric evaluations and anger management and group therapy and all that other stuff. But I never thought so. I was fine. Just as long as people didn't act like it was the end of the world when I wanted a few moments to myself. And that's how it was just then.

Nurse Ophelia must have known, because she walked over to the window, closed the blinds and pulled the curtain shut. She might have said something to me, but I wasn't listening. I was thinking about my father. He had been a professor of archaeology. I'm guessing he was good at it because he got invited to do lectures all over the world, and digs in places like Egypt and Libya and Turkey. But mostly I remember that he held me lots and read me stories about Jim Hawkins and Captain Ahab and Hawkeye, and he always smelled good and had just enough stubble on his chin that when I got too close it tickled my face.

I missed him. I missed my mother, too. That might sound strange because she died when I was two, and so I didn't really know her, but I somehow missed her anyway. Nurse Ophelia once said it was because I missed the idea of having a mother. I don't really know about that. But I do know that I should have said something to Nurse
Ophelia before she left. Something like “Thank you for dinner” or “I just need to think for a minute” or even just “Goodbye.” I should have, but I didn't. I just lay there and stared at the ceiling. And so I missed my last chance to say goodbye. After that night, no one at the ward ever saw her again.

I
woke up the next day when I heard the doorknob rattle. I checked my clock radio. It was almost four in the afternoon. Since no one was supposed to bother me when the sun was up, I guessed right away that something was wrong.

My guess was off. It was my best friend, Charlie.

Charlie was my only regular visitor. Dr. Shepherd used to visit me once a week, but that didn't last very long. He wasn't a real doctor, by the way, he was a shrink. Since none of the doctors knew what was really wrong with me or how to fix it, they brought in the brain mechanic to see what he could do. He said my problems were all psychosomatic, which is another way of saying that they were all in my head. Well, if being allergic to most foods and losing half my red blood cells every few months was in my head, Dr. Shepherd was a genius and ought to have won a Nobel Prize. When he gave us his assessment, Nurse Ophelia went off like a car bomb. So he never came back.

Charlie was one of the few outsiders Nurse Ophelia really liked. I think it was because he treated me like I was normal. Ever since we were little, we'd liked the same things. Just like our dads. They were best friends too, so I guess our friendship sort of ran in the family. He was a year older than me, sixteen, but when he let his stubble go he looked about twenty, which meant he could sometimes get into the beer store without being asked for ID. I didn't have any facial hair, so I figured I wouldn't even get into the beer store parking lot.

We often talked about how cool it would be if his family adopted me, but his parents were divorced, and Nurse Ophelia told me that they wouldn't be able to look after me properly, which was probably true. His mother drank more than most hockey teams, and with all my problems, I probably wouldn't have lasted a week with her. And Charlie's dad was a naval officer. He lived in Halifax and was out at sea a lot. He also moved every few years. I didn't think I'd like that. Charlie said he changed schools so much as a kid that he got held back a grade, but I think that was only part of the reason.

I was still a big groggy when he opened the door and burst in.

“Rise and shine, chowderhead!”

Sunlight flooded in and bounced off the floor. I jammed my eyes shut.

“Close the door. Close the door,” I told him. I didn't open my eyes until I heard the knob click.

“I love what you've done in the lobby,” Charlie said. “It really opens the place up.”

He moved over to the window and peeked under the blind. He was more careful this time and didn't let too much light in.

“You're looking awful pasty, Zack,” he told me. “What're they feeding you around this place, Elmer's Glue?”

If you ever had a teacher who said that there was no such thing as a stupid question, they'd obviously never had Charlie as a student.
Like chaos, stupid questions were one of his specialties. I turned and sat on the edge of the bed.

“You still wearing that necklace?” Charlie asked.

That might not sound like a stupid question, but my necklace was dangling right out in the open. It was a disc fashioned out of silver, etched and polished so that it made a perfect map of the moon. It even had the Lunar Seas on it. I tucked it back under my shirt. I never took it off, not even when I was sleeping, and so if I rolled onto my stomach it left a perfect circle on my chest. It was a gift from my dad. The last thing he gave me before he died. He told me there was another piece to it and that they fit together, but the other part belonged to my mother. She must have had it when she died, because I'd never seen it.

Charlie handed me the rest of my dinner. Nurse Ophelia had left it on the night table by my bed. I drank until the straw made sucking noises on the bottom of the cup.

Charlie shook his head. “I don't know how you can stomach that stuff. Just the sight of it makes me want to puke. What is it, a lung milkshake?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Strawberry, I think.”

“It doesn't smell like strawberries.”

I shrugged.

“So, what happened?” Charlie asked. “You still upset about the whipping I gave you in our ping-pong fight? Looks like you tore the place apart.”

“You mean in the lobby?”

“No, in the ladies' room, you dweeb. Of course in the lobby.”

I told him about the old man and the motorcycle, how he annihilated the television, and how he'd gone on and on about me being in danger because someone was after me.

“Get out!” Charlie said. “You? In danger? In danger of dying from boredom, maybe. Why didn't you follow the guy's advice and jump on the motorcycle?”

“I wouldn't have gotten too far. It was mangled.”

Charlie pulled out the chair and sat down. “We need to find him,” he said.

I didn't think it would be so easy, with the police on his trail. Unless he was hiding under my bed, I wasn't likely to run into him anytime soon.

“Did Ophelia flip?” Charlie asked.

“No.”

Charlie seemed surprised by this. No wonder. Weekends in the summertime, this place was a magnet for weirdos, especially after hours. Once, a bunch of high school kids showed up drunk at about four in the morning and tried to get into the building. Nurse Ophelia went out into the parking lot and politely asked them to leave. She was always like that. Polite. No matter what. But you had to be careful, because when she used her polite tone of voice, she expected you to do whatever she told you. Even if she asked you to grab a fistful of bees and jam them up your nose, I'm telling you, if you heard that polite tone, you'd better get on it. Well, one of the kids told her off. He used the
B
word. I almost felt sorry for him. She walked over to the boy, smiled, then picked him up by the scruff of his neck, carried him over to the Dumpster and tossed him in with the trash.
Whoosh.
Like he weighed as much as an empty pop can.

“She didn't toss the old geezer out on his butt?” Charlie asked.

“He was too fast. He ran right over a police car.”

“Did they shoot him?”

“About twenty times.”

“Wow. There must have been blood everywhere.”

“Yup,” I said. “It was all over me.”

He shook his head like he couldn't believe my luck. “Well,” he said, “if someone is after you, I guess we'd better get you outta here. We'll have to plan a breakout.”

I laughed.

“I'm serious,” he said.

He
was
serious. That's why it was so funny.

“I don't need to break out. I can go for a walk or a run whenever I feel like it.”

“So maybe you should go for a long walk? Does three days sound good?”

I shook my head. With nowhere safe to hide from the sun and no way to feed myself, I wasn't going to last that long. But I sensed what he was getting at.

“Have you been up to the cottage yet?” I asked.

Charlie's father had a place on Stoney Lake. He spent most of his summers there, unless he was on a naval mission someplace. Now that school was out, I figured Charlie would be going to visit him there.

“I got a call from the Yacht Club this morning,” he answered. “I got the job. There's a meeting early tomorrow, so I'm heading up tonight.”

Charlie was a sailing guru. He usually spent his summers racing. I'd forgotten he was hoping to instruct this summer instead. He was saving up for a car. I guess that meant no more ping-pong fights for a while.

“Do you have to go tonight?”

He nodded. I guess that explained why he was here during the day. He didn't usually interrupt my sleep unless it was important. And I think he liked to come at night because Nurse Ophelia was always working. He sort of had a thing for her.

“I'm going to be up at the cottage for the next month or so,” Charlie said. “They told me they had work for me in July, at least. August is a maybe. That's why I'm here. I wanted to see if you could come up for a while. My dad's still overseas, so we could pretty much do whatever we wanted until he gets back. It's a perfect getaway place if you're on the run. What do you think?”

Charlie was smiling. I knew exactly why. With his father gone, he was free to stay up as late as he wanted, free to sleep all weekend, free to eat Captain Crunch cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and free to grow his stubble and try his luck at the beer store. Well, that sounded perfect to me. Unfortunately, leaving the Nicholls Ward for so long was probably out of the question. Especially after last night.

“I doubt I'll be allowed,” I told him. “Especially if your dad's not there.”

“Well, Dan will be up with his kids. He's stuffy enough to count as an adult.”

Dan was one of Charlie's older brothers. Or half-brothers. He was from an earlier marriage. I think Charlie's father was working on number three right now.

“We'll pull some strings,” Charlie said. “Even a weekend or a Saturday night would be better than nothing. Would you rather sit here all summer watching the paint peel?”

I shook my head.

“What about my allergies?” I asked. It wasn't easy to find food I could eat.

“Can't you take Lactaid or something?”

“What's that?”

Charlie looked at me with a weird expression, like even the dead frogs on Highway Seven knew what Lactaid was.

“It lets you drink milk and dairy products. How else do you get through dinner?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't you even bother to ask?” he said.

“Not any more. I just take what they give me.”

“Well, is it working? Are you getting any better?”

I shrugged. “I feel fine.”

“When was your last transfusion?”

“Three months ago,” I said. That meant I'd have another in a few
weeks. I wasn't looking forward to it. Days of nausea. But there was no helping it. It was that or keel over.

“Let me see your scars,” Charlie said.

I pulled up the right pant leg of my hospital scrubs, and revealed the two circles of scar tissue. It looked as if someone with red paint on their finger had daubed me twice just above the ankle.

“They look better,” Charlie said.

“They get fainter every year.”

Charlie seemed pleased with this. He'd heard the story of my scars long ago. I'd got them the day my father died. He was on a dig in Libya. Not everyone knows it, but there are a lot of ruins there. It was once part of the Roman Empire. Anyway, my father was working, and late in the day a temple he was examining collapsed on him. He was crushed instantly.

Thinking back, I suppose it was good that he didn't suffer, but at the time I wasn't thinking about that. I just wanted to find him. Since no one could show me his body, I didn't believe he was really gone. And so I took off from camp by myself. I shouldn't have, but it's not every day you become an orphan.

I never found him. I found an angry dog instead. It was hiding in the shadows of a building. Nurse Ophelia once told me that animals will do that when they know they're going to die. They crawl off by themselves and look for a dark hiding place. Well, that dog must have had more diseases than a vet hospital because when it bit me, it made me so sick no one even yelled at me for running away. Apparently I fell into a coma afterwards and stayed like that for a few weeks. I had a high fever too, and a bunch of convulsions.

Because all of my problems started the day my father died, Dr. Shepherd thought the trouble was all in my head. He thought it was just about sadness and loss. But what does a shrink know about Libyan dogs? Five-eighths of sweet diddly, as far as I could tell.

Charlie stayed for another half hour or so. He was a reader, like
me, so we talked about books, and that led to movies, and that led to which actors we would want to play us in our life stories. Charlie picked Christian Bale because he was a good Batman. I picked Leonardo DiCaprio, but not because he looked like me, just because he was very good at playing complex characters. Not that I'd have been all that hard to play. I slept all day.