No journalists are prowling around on day eight, probably busy writing their theories and rumors into huge clickbait articles. When I’m discharged on day ten, I’m strong enough to wheel myself to the van without getting dizzy. I put on a surgical mask and one of DJ’s floppy sun hats that Griffin brings from home in case any journalists are hoping to snap pictures of my body, dead or alive. My arm is in a sling, and my hand is bandaged so much that I can almost pretend I still have fingers under there.
I’m feeling okay at the beginning of the ride back to the house, but my stomach doesn’t cooperate for long. The three hours pass in a blur of rest stops and me throwing up ginger ale on the side of the road.
Bob is waiting as soon as Griffin opens the door.
I start crying the second I see him. Full body sobs that hurt my tender throat on the way up. Bob runs to the edge of the wheelchair, not letting his cast slow him down, wiggling and whining because he can’t get to me.
I push myself out of the chair and onto the ground, holding my arm out to scoop him onto my lap. He braces one paw on each of my shoulders and licks all over my face, his cone scratching my chin, and we sit there in the entryway, both of us trembling because it’s just him and me again. People beat us and tried to kill us, but we’re still here. I love him more than anything in the world.
“He barely ate while you were gone,” Griffin says. “He wouldn’t come out of your room. Benji fed him strips of chicken by hand.”
“I taught him how to spin, and he does it seventy-five percent of the time,” Benji says, stepping through the living room door. “Mental stimulation is good for relieving symptoms of anxiety.”
I’m surprised Benji got him to spin that quickly. Bob didn’t know any tricks when I rescued him, but I managed to teach him ‘sit’ and ‘lie down.’ We’re still working on ‘paw.’ Bob doesn’t like me touching his feet.
Griffin helps me back into my chair, and I lift Bob up onto my lap.
“I’m going to make us lunch,” Griffin says. “Hope you’re in the mood for mediocre grilled cheese and canned tomato soup. Genius Boy insisted I buy the fancy cheese.”
“It’s aged gruyère,” Benji protests. “The aging process creates flavor compounds that enhance the melting profile. You know how to cook. You should know this.”
Griffin claps Benji on the shoulder as he passes. “I’m more of a government cheese guy myself.”
Bob chows down on a big bowl of kibble as I eat my grilled cheese. I give him pieces of the crust when he’s done.
I set up camp on the couch because going upstairs to my room feels like climbing a mountain. Griffin brings me a change of clothes and a bag of my toiletries, and even goes out to buy me wet wipes I can use to clean up. I’m too woozy to even think about making it through a shower, especially one-handed.
Griffin sleeps in the armchair. The living room is pitch dark, but there’s a light on in Donny’s apartment outside. His windows are yellow squares in the night. I never went up there, but I can picture him in his green tartan robe and slippers, sitting with a cup of tea. Imagining it makes my chest all tight and achy. I wonder if Dad has said thank you to Donny for protecting his girl.
In the morning, Griffin helps me clean my stump.
“I’m kind of an expert on this, not to flex.” Griffin pulls back the gauze and I openly stare at the wound, examining every black stitch jutting out of my bruised flesh. “Once this baby is healed, I’m going to make you a rad prosthetic.”
I’m so glad to be alive that I don’t even care that I’m down a hand. I can still give as many thumbs-up as I want.
Zoey appears in the doorway with her laptop tucked under one arm.
“I found seven possible locations,” she says without preamble, dropping onto the armrest of the couch. “Four abandoned hospitals. Two asylums. One psychiatric facility that closed in the nineties. All within an hour’s drive of the gas station you called from.”
Three thousand seven hundred and eighty-four seconds comes out to roughly an hour. It sure felt longer.
I sit up on the couch, pausingHairspray. “Do you have pictures?”
“Of some of them.”
She angles her laptop screen. The first image shows a sprawling brick building with boarded-up windows and graffiti covering the lower floors. The windows are wrong. There are too many of them.
She clicks through the images, and each one makes my pulse spike before I realize it’s not the place. By the time we finish going through the pictures, my hands are shaking.
“I couldn’t find interior shots of these four,” Zoey says. “Or good exteriors, honestly.”
“So, we go check them out in person,” I say.
I hear Griffin make a sound from down the hall that’s somewhere between a cough and a laugh.
“Fat chance,” he says, appearing in the doorway with a dish towel slung over his shoulder. “You can barely make it to the bathroom on your own.”
“Good thing I won’t be on my own then,” I say. “You guys can wear body cams, and I’ll watch from the van.”
