“Sir, you can’t—”
Oh, but he could.
And he did.
My father grabbed a handful of meat and eggs before I rolled his ass into the elevator and the doors shut. He stuffed his face like a feral animal, egg tumbling down his bare chest and onto his lap. “Five-second rule.”
I smoothed his hair down in the back beneath the bandage. “We could have just gone to the Pancake House.”
After finishing his sausage, he wiped his hand on his pants. “Where’s peckerhead?”
“I have no idea, and I can’t leave here without him.”
“If he has your keys, call a cab.”
“That’s not it,” I said, watching the numbers slowly drift down to the first floor. “We can’t separate.”
The doors opened on the second floor, and I turned around to face front. An elderly man entered the elevator and stared at the buttons before reaching in his pocket for a tissue.
Just as the doors closed, I glimpsed someone pushing Christian across my line of vision.
When we reached the lobby, I wheeled my father out and parked him by a large column in the atrium. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
He started picking at the bandage on his head before I darted to the elevators and took a short ride up.
When I reached the second floor, I nonchalantly walked down a hallway as if I knew where I was going.
“Hello? Can I help you?” a woman called out.
I slowly turned. “Yeah, I’m just here to see my brother.”
“Visiting hours aren’t for another three hours. What’s the patient’s name?”
I panicked and looked around. “Oh, sorry. Wrong floor. I get lost in these places. Where’s your bathroom?”
She gestured to a room three doors down. “The waiting room’s across the hall if you want to sit in there.”
On my way to the bathroom, I noticed a cardiology sign. The blue-and-white checkered floors stretched to a dead end and off to the right. I locked myself inside the bathroom and decided to wash the blood off my hands.
Without drying them, I took out my phone and sent a text to Christian.
Alarms sounded, and I poked my head out to see what the commotion was. Several medical personnel jogged in the opposite direction down a hall. I flashed past the waiting room in the direction Christian had gone. When I opened a door and saw an elderly man sleeping, I quickly shut it and kept moving.
“Fuck, fuckity fuck.”
One room after another yielded nothing aside from surprised and sleeping patients. Then I spotted Christian’s wheelchair by a wooden door. When I stepped inside, I found him hovering over a hospital worker on an examining table.
No, not hovering.
Drinking.
I rolled the wheelchair into the room before prying him off the human. “What’s gotten into you?”
“He kidnapped me and pilfered my phone,” Christian replied, as if that was reason enough. He was inebriated on blood and behaving like any drunk.
“I thought I told you to stay by the elevators.”
Christian wobbled as he turned toward me, his lips and teeth stained red. “Arseface asked me where my bracelet was. One of those medical tags. I told him I had a bad ticker, so the next thing I know, he’s rolling me upstairs.” Christian enfolded me in his arms. “Worry not. I charmed him. Why do you smell like sausage?”
