God, I hope she’s still asleep,I think.
No one is coming, so I leave the safety of my room, my feet padding down the hallway quietly. Hospitals are always noisy, I think as I walk. The beeping, the talking, the elevators, the carts with the rickety squeaking wheels, the arguing, the crying, the paper shuffling, the tapping of keyboards. The list is endless.
I can’t wait to get back to Carrie. Can’t wait to take her back to my apartment where everything is the same, a constant in an inconstant world. Where I know what to expect, and I don’t wake up in a hospital covered in my own blood with no sneakers.
Where the whore upstairs fucks all night and I hear thethump, thump, thumpon my ceiling. Where the walls bleed tears and the doors scream terror. Where the paint is peeling and the televisions are too loud. Where my soup is in my cupboards, and my bleach is under the sink, and I know where my money is so I can go and get some new sneakers.
AndChrist, Carrie, why is everything always so complicated when you’re in my life?
I stand in the elevator, my back against the far wall. I am on level eight. I watch the little light blink on each level until it reaches the ground floor and it lights up the bigG. The elevator pings and the doors slide open. A police officer is there. He looks at me, his blue eyes searching my face thoughtfully before he steps inside. He doesn’t see I have no shoes on.
“Evening,” he says.
I brush past him as I step out, trying not to swallow down the fear too loudly. “Evening,” I reply.
I step away from the elevator, waiting for his hand to land on my shoulder at any second. But it never does, and the doors shut behind me. So I move to the exit, my chin to my chest, my eyes to the floor, and my hands in my pockets.
And then I am outside. And it is raining again.
But more than that, it’s nighttime.
And I have no sneakers so my feet are already getting wet and my toes are already cold.
I have no idea where I am, and it’s raining and it’s nighttime. AndFuck!I think.Fuck, fuck, fuck!
It’s nighttime and I’ve been gone long enough that Carrie must have already woken up and I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t fucking there.
And she’s scared.
My Carrie is scared.
