[D3] Episode 9

I still didn’t entirely trust the hospital — those thugs who shot Jason up might be watching the emergency rooms. I decided to go with Jason to make sure he was safe.

It wasn’t too hard to make my excuses to my police officer contact, and so in short order I found myself in the back of an ambulance speeding off towards the hospital. A few times the EMT tried to make small talk, but quickly realized I wasn’t in the mood. I found myself lost in thought, and just kept staring at Jason — who was lying between us with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. His eyes were closed, but I wasn’t sure if he’d passed out again or if he was just resting. Either way I felt a rising sense of weariness mixed with pure panic. I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight, and if something bad did go down — I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to deal with it.

In short order, we arrived at the hospital. They wheeled Jason into surgery and I had to stay and fill out some paperwork. By the time I was done, it was almost 6am and I was left standing in the lobby holding only a plastic bag filled with Jason’s posessions.

I found a payphone, fished Denise’s number out of the bag, and rang Denise. There was no answer, which struck me as odd, but I left a message on her machine letting her know that something bad happened and that I’d call her back as soon as I could with more information.

Then I wearily wended my way up to Jason’s room. I knocked lightly and opened the door. Jason had the whole room to himself, and there was (conveniently enough) an empty bed nearby just for me. I was about to close the door, when a man walked in and almost plowed me right over. He stopped for a moment and we stared at each other blankly. He was dressed in a long tattered brown trench coat and was carrying a pathetic little bouquet of flowers. The knees of his pants were well worn, each proudly sporting a patch, and he wore dark gray tennis shoes (which also showed definite signs of wear). He also wore a pair of iron-rimmed spectacles on his nose, through which he peered at me with a great deal of confusion.

“M’sorry”, he mumbled, “Wrong room.”

And then he turned on his heel and hurried away. I couldn’t tell from the brief exposure, but something about his face seemed very familiar to me, and that fact scared the hell out of me in our current situation.

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Note:With crunch time descending upon me (at least for a little while) I’m going to need to post some short episodes for a bit. . I’m thinking about doing them twice a week and having them just be a few paragraphs long. Please let me know if you’re interested in voting twice a week or not. Given that there’s only about 5 people voting at the moment, if I hear from everyone by then I’ll post an update Thursday, as well. Otherwise it’ll just be short episodes on Monday only.

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