Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [52]
When the guard came back and approached the cell, Dave bent his head, looked directly at the officer, and swallowed hard. “I need a doctor,” he said.
The guard looked annoyed. “Sorry to hear it.”
Dave clamped his teeth, pressed one hand to his chest, started to roll over, and screamed as if in sudden pain. “Bad heart.”
“Yeah? You sure?” The guard retrieved the dish and cup.
“Please.” Dave didn’t have to try hard to look as if he was seriously hurting. “I’m having a heart attack.” He was gasping for breath.
The jailer delivered a string of epithets. “I’ll be back in a minute, Dryden,” he said. He went out and returned with the sheriff.
The sheriff looked annoyed. Better things to do. “What’s the matter, Dryden?” he asked. “Something bothering you?”
“Heart,” Dave said, clamping down on the word as if saying it was sheer agony. “Stroke. Last year.”
The sheriff’s features softened. “Okay. Hang on a minute. We’ll get you some help.”
CHAPTER 14
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomat tox. So it was last week in Selma. . . .
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
SHEL came out of the jail onto the street and approached the first policeman he saw. “Pardon me, Officer,” he said, “but my uncle Bob was picked up drunk last night. They tell me he got sick and they took him to the hospital. Which hospital would that have been?”
Armed with the information, he flagged down a taxi, rode across the Pettis Bridge, asked the driver to wait, and retrieved his converter from the bushes along the Alabama. The cab then took him to the Selma post office.
He used the converter to return to Saturday morning, and walked inside the building. “My name’s Shelborne,” he told the clerk. “You have a package for me.”
With both units now in his possession, he returned to Sunday afternoon and caught another taxi to the hospital. He still had at least a half hour before Dave was likely to arrive.
Time travelers wait for nobody. He thought about moving forward, say two minutes at a time, rather than hang around. But he wasn’t sure how many jumps the power pack would support before the red warning lamp came on. So he simply went inside to wait. The reception area was crowded. Not, apparently, by victims of the attack on the marchers, though. Everybody was white, and no one seemed to be bleeding. Shel went back out and began strolling around the hospital sidewalks.
An ambulance showed up, but they were carrying a woman. And, a few minutes later, another one, with what appeared to be an injured child.
Then, finally, Dave.
Two ambulance attendants hauled him out of the rear of the vehicle on a stretcher and transferred him to a gurney. A cop climbed out afterward, and they all went inside.
Shel followed.
They wheeled Dave into the reception area and through a pair of swinging doors into a side room. The cop took station beside the swinging doors. Shel sat down where he had some vision into the side room and picked up a battered copy of Sports Illustrated. After about twenty minutes, one of the doors opened, and a doctor spoke to the cop. The cop nodded and followed him back into the room. The door swung shut.
Still holding the magazine, Shel got up, strolled over, and pushed the door ajar. They were taking Dave out another exit. He was connected to a monitoring device and he looked unconscious. A nurse noticed him and frowned. He smiled back, trying to appear casual, and retreated. When she turned away, he hurried through the swinging doors, crossed the room, and went out the other side.
Dave was still on his gurney. Two attendants were moving him down a passageway, while the cop trailed.
They turned off into a connecting corridor, walked past the cafeteria, and stopped in front of a bank of elevators. The attendant pressed the UP button.
The police officer looked his way while