And then what happened?
We’d be screwed if we took one step into the hospital. With Cyrus out of commission, we didn’t have a ton of options. I had no experience running from the police or kidnappers. I didn’t even like most action movies because I found them to create anxiety. Sure, the good guy survived, but what about all the costars? I had no way to guarantee both Cyrus and I survived the afternoon or the next day. I wouldn’t put our safety in anyone else’s hands. Not anymore.
Next to the hospital was a medium-size park with only a small alley separating the hospital parking lot from the green space. I shuffled to my feet, getting Cyrus heading in that direction and let him rest his body against mine. I held up most of his weight on the walk. Tall trees with big green leaves provided shade and grassy spaces in the park, so he’d draw less attention there.
“Come on, Cyrus, you can do it. Just a few more feet,” I coaxed him as we hit the grass. He stumbled down beside me, but I ended up getting him next to a tree and propping him up against the tough bark, hoping he’d be okay alone. At least he was in the shade.
I kneeled down beside him, staring into his eyes, trying to read his condition. It wasn’t good.
“I’ll be okay,” Cyrus tried to say, but it came out a series of grunts more than anything else.
I placed my hand on his other shoulder and squeezed, adjusting the towel over the cut. “You are. I’m going to make sure of it.”
Someone needed to disinfect the wound and stitch it up. “Cyrus, are you allergic to penicillin?” I asked, shaking his shoulders a bit when his eyes closed.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Drink?”
“I’ll go in and get something. I’ll be right back. Stay here?” It wasn’t like I expected him to get up and walk back on his own, but as I turned and left him, the ache in my chest grew.
What if something happened to Cyrus? I’d be all alone in the world.
Hospitals were good at one thing. Well, actually quite a few things, but mostly they tried to instilling employees and patients with a sense of security. Sadly, it was also the thing they sucked the most at. Hospitals had people in and out of them all day. Nurses and doctors looked like everyone else when they weren’t wearing their special uniforms, and that made it hard to police everyone, especially when you knew their weak points like I did.
It’s why it was ridiculously easy for me to slip into the hospital and prepare to commit my crime. I walked through the front doors acting as if I was there to visit someone, but then used my knowledge of hospital layouts—they were all similar—to find a break room on the first floor. The door was unlocked, and I glided in, nodding to someone sitting at one of the large round tables.
“Forgot my jacket,” I said to the woman, smiling as if everything was fine as I plucked a white lab coat from a hook on the wall.
Doctors were the worst about leaving their things lying around. They were the most absent-minded people. You could always find a spare lab coat and sometimes, if you were lucky, an ID. I slipped the lab coat over my horrible bikini shirt and frowned at the lack of ID clipped to the pocket. But maybe that meant the doctor wouldn’t notice it missing for a while.
The woman at the table laughed as I slipped back out to the door and followed the signs to supplies. This part would be trickier.
Gaining admittance to a hospital was quite easy, pretending to be a doctor rather breezy, getting supplies from an under-funded facility extremely difficult. Those doors they kept locked. I walked past the row of rooms and grabbed a clipboard from one of the outside holders, pretending to study it diligently as I walked to the supply cabinet.
The door would absolutely be locked and wouldn’t have any of the good meds, but enough to get us by for stitches. I stopped beside the door and waited with my head down so as not look suspicious. Less than a minute later, the door swung open and I breathed a sigh of relief as a nurse in bright blue scrubs pushed a cart out of the space.
“It’s a freaking disaster in there,” she said, pointing back to the room as if she was personally appalled by the condition.
I shook my head, agreeing with her, and tapped my finger on the clipboard. “It always is. Right?”
She tsked as if truer words were never spoken because they were a disaster. The main supply rooms were always a jumbled mess because no one was actually responsible for them. No one had time for more job duties.
I held the door open for her, pretending to be a helpful employee as she pushed the cart down the hallway and I slipped into the room behind her.
Wow, she didn’t lie. Boxes were everywhere, the different labels half coming off. Nothing was organized by use and they had a pile of empty boxes thrown into the corner of the room.
I walked through the steps of what I needed for Cyrus and then grabbed each item. A bottle of Celine water, a needle and thread kit for stitches, and four antiseptic wipes.
It wasn’t everything I wanted, and there was no way to get penicillin if they locked their stock in the pharmacy. But it was enough to get started, at least until I found a better solution.
I slipped out of the room, shoving supplies in my lab coat pockets. A doctor approached from down the hallway, so I reached for my clipboard and swore when I realized I’d left it back in the storage room. Fingers crossed he didn’t pay attention to anyone but himself. I flipped the antiseptic white package back and forth in my hand as if studying the directions hard enough to pass a first-year medical school test, and the doctor passed by me without lifting his head in my direction.
I held my breath until I finished walked right out the front door of the hospital with my head held high. Looking as if I did this every day, and it was absolutely normal. Confidence was everything if you needed to make a quick escape.
I didn’t take a full breath again until I stripped out of the lab coat and stepped over into the grassy area, finding Cyrus leaning up against the trunk of the tree.
We had no time to waste, but I took a moment to congratulate myself on my newfound criminal enterprise. I mean, I’d done nothing bad in my life. Never even smoked a cigarette, but look at me now.
When all the other girls in my grade were stealing Chapstick from the drugstore, I said no. I never took anything that didn’t belong to me, not once. Now I snuck into a hospital, impersonated a doctor, and stole medical supplies—all offenses I’d get jail time for if they caught me.
