The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [63]
“Believe me, you don’t want to go there, brother,” said Jed, grabbing me by the shirt neck and hauling me back in line without missing a step.
Finally the boots stopped at a double-wide door. With another hand scan, it slid open, and our host bowed with his right arm gesturing grandly, “After you, ladies and germs.”
Jed took my hand firmly as we entered. The lights weren’t as bright and harsh here, and blue carpet softened the floor. The first thing I noticed was a pot of daffodils in the center of a large wooden table with fancy upholstered chairs around it like somebody’s dining room. To our right was a nurses’ station with nobody behind it. On the far side of the daffodil table, pastel striped curtains dangled from steel runners in the ceiling. Some curtains were pulled across to make rooms like in the hospital where we had visited Grum when she broke her wrists. Other curtains were tied back, showing empty beds.
“My old room,” Jed said, pointing to a bed with steel posts that rose up at the four corners supporting a box-shaped frame overhead. From the steel frame dangled all sorts of pulleys and ropes and a metal triangle like a super-sized coat hanger.
A woman pulling a white medical jacket on over green hospital clothes came yawning out of a doorway behind the nurses’ station. Her light brown hair was bedraggled, and her cheek had a deep sleep crease. As the door slowly closed behind her, I noticed a tousled bed. Maybe she lived here all the time, like Jed. How many other people did ORC have tucked away living secret lives?
“Good evening, Dr. Mills. Sorry for the short notice,” said Boots Odum. The woman wiped her eyes and yawned, “S’all right.” After the yawn finished, she said, carefully pronouncing every sound, “I am here to serve, Mr. Odum.”
“Thank you nevertheless, doctor,” he said. “How is our newest patient?”
Dr. Mills frowned and glanced toward the closed curtains. “Life signs are stable for now.”
Boots Odum nodded. I felt Jed’s hand fall lower. His shoulders had slumped. What had deflated him?
“Hello, Jed,” said the doctor with a big smile in her voice. Water sounds splashed behind the tall counter as she washed her hands. “Good to see you looking spry.”
“Thanks, doc.” Jed tipped his head to her. “Wouldn’t be here without you.” He turned to Ma. “Dr. Mills is the one who saved my life and fixed my pretzels so I could walk on them.”
The doctor and Boots Odum exchanged worried glances. “Pretzels!” He chuckled, giving Jed a fond pat on the shoulder. “Your colorful expressions always entertain me, son, but you don’t want to give your family the wrong idea, do you? Pretzels.” He chuckled some more.
“He doesn’t want Jed to give us the right idea,” Barbie whispered in my ear.
The doctor looked me up and down as she came around the counter, snapping purple gloves onto her hands. “You say the boy is already infected?”
Boots Odum quit chuckling and nodded. “Ingested. And I want the girl scanned, too. Then Mrs. Daniels.”
The boy. The girl. You’d think he’d figure out our names if he was going to kidnap and scan us and maybe make us disappear from the face of the earth like Jed did for all those months he was being held in secret quarantine.
“My name is Barbara,” the Shish said. “You can call me Barb. Only my family is allowed to call me Barbie. And this is Sebastian. Everyone calls him Sebby.”
“Say cheese,” I said, waving toward the ceiling where a video camera pointed straight at us. Then it moved on in a slow circle, capturing the whole room.
“Pleased to meet you both,” said the doctor, seeming to mean it. She looked really nice when she smiled even though she’d looked like a plain grumpy person when she’d walked out of her sleeping room. “And Mrs. Daniels.” She reached out to shake Ma’s hand. Ma reluctantly brushed fingers with her.
“Sit down, Claire, and make yourself comfortable,” Boots Odum said with a nod toward the daffodils. “I’ll