Rabbit Run!
Everything looked familiar. Nothing had changed. Down the empty hallway he could see the door to the Men’s Wing and, at the very end, the Wall of Time, where he and Brad had crashed.
The wheels on the gurney go round and round …
The song flitted through his head. He turned and looked up the sloping hallway and saw the Women’s Wing and the Room of Lost Memories. At least that’s how he thought of it. THERAPY is all the sign on the door said.
Some therapy! he thought.
The hall was empty. So the diversion had worked. He imagined Nurse Peters and her minions out front waiting for the firefighters and their trucks to deliver the missing patient. Hah! He wasn’t missing, he was AWOL, escaped, gone, baby, gone.
Before they caught onto his little ruse, he wrapped the soot-smeared blanket tight around his shoulders and hustled down the hallway to the Men’s Wing and snuck quietly through the swinging doors into the cool antiseptic smell he had called home for the past … the past … how long had it been?
Seemed like an eternity. Like a sentence to hell. But now he was out, and even though he had no idea where “out” was or what being “out” would bring, he didn’t want to get caught and locked up again.
He opened the door to his room. Former room, he reminded himself. An extra wide door so they can wheel the gurneys in and out, he thought, and then slipped into that song again.
The wheels on the gurney go in and out
In and out, in and out …
No no no, wheels don’t go in and out, he thought. Patients do. They wheel them in from “therapy” and back out to “therapy.” Eventually, if you get enough “therapy,” they wheel you out for good.
What a misery to die in this place, he thought.
His room looked familiar, even welcoming, though he had no mind to stay any longer than he had to. Grab the cards, he told himself. Remember the cards.
He pulled the case off the pillow and held it upside down: the cards spilled out.
Glorious, glorious cards. Baseball cards. APBA cards. Blue on the back with red and black numbers in three neat columns on the front. And the names in red. A litany of names. A song of names, their syllables seared in his brain, permanently planted where old age and dementia and even “therapy” couldn’t reach them. Safe and secure and singing to him:
A veritable vocabulary of venerables. An alphabet of appelations. A designation of denominations. A stylish set of sobriquets. A numerancy of names.
And there were more:
Avila …
That was just the A’s. His mind danced with the possibilities. The names sounded across the synapses of his brain, over the hills and dales of his gray matter, in and out of every fold and wrinkle until a cacophany of cognomen, the music of monikers, made him smile and chortle aloud.
Too loud. He heard footsteps.
Gathering up the cards, stuffing them back in the pillow case along with a clean pair of sweat pants and his shoes, he stuck his head into the hallway. No one in sight. The footsteps were getting closer. He looked back at the room’s one window—no escape there, it was barred on the outside. All of them were.
Make a run for it, he thought, and he would have, but out of the corner of his eye he spotted something on his bed stand—a black rectangle of molded plastic with a silver metal trim.
The cell phone!
As he reached back into the room for it, he remembered the call he’d made on that phone, the last trade he’d ever negotiated. He’d fooled the fools in the Front Office, hadn’t he? Fooled the hospital staff too. Fooled everyone. Pulled off a big trade after they tried to bury him on the Funny Farm.
Look who’s laughing now, suckers!
The footsteps grew louder. He slipped into the hallway and made a run for the door to the courtyard, or what passed for “a run” when you’re a 63 year old mental patient.
“Heh! Stop! You there!”
He realized that if the orderly followed him into the courtyard, there’d be no place to hide, so instead of turning toward the outside doors, he hustled his aching legs down the hall into the Great Room of the Men’s Ward, hoping the orderly wouldn’t follow him.
“You again!” a voice shouted.
“Hide me!” the old man asked the one who’d shouted.
“That’s what you did last time you were here. Are you in a perpetual state of hiding?”
“Please,” the old man pleaded.
“Here,” another patient said and pointed to an empty bed. “Get in.”
The old man slid between the sheets while the two patients pulled the covers and pillows off the adjacent beds and piled them on top of him. He felt like he was being buried in a cotton casket. He wanted to laugh but he heard the door to the Men’s Ward bang open and someone step inside.
“Did a patient just come through here?” the old man heard the orderly ask.
“Nope,” one of the patients answered.
“Jist us chickens!” another piped up.
The door slammed open and shut again and then the blankets and pillows were being pulled off the old man.
“Thanks,” he said to the two ward residents who helped him climb out of the bed. He rewrapped his sooty blanket around him.
“You want a clean blanket instead of that dirty one?” the taller of the two Men’s Ward residents asked.
The old man shook his head. “I’m gonna need this one.”
“If you say so,” the taller resident said, but he clearly didn’t believe the old man.
“Last time you was here,” the shorter said, “you had a card, ‘member? Well, I found me a card jist like yours. See?”
The short man held up a card. The old man reached out to examine it, but the short man withdrew it quickly.
“Oh no ya don’t, you’ll keep it.”
“I just want—”
“You kin look,” the little man said, holding the card up again.
The old man leaned toward the card. An APBA baseball card with the name Luke Easter on it.
Mathews, Mark, Luke, John, he recited to himself and fingered the Eddie Mathews card still in his shorts pocket. This could be the second of the four cards he was searching for.
“Whadda you want for it?” he asked.
The little man snapped the card back. “Nothin’ you got.”
“I got a bag full,” the old man said, and opened the pillowcase so the shorter man could see all the cards inside.
“I’ll take ‘em all,” he said and his tiny fist grabbed the bottom of the pillowcase.
“Hardly,” said the old man and lifted the pillowcase up, higher and higher, until the little man had to let go his grip. “But I’ll make you a deal.”
The old man took a peak into the hallway. No sight of the orderly. No sight of anyone. The hospital was like a ghost town.
“I’ll give you a dozen of these cards,” he said, swinging the pillowcase full of cards above the little man’s head, “for that one card.”
The little man looked up at the pillowcase, then down at the card in his hand. “Must be a purty important card, you wantin’ it so bad and all.”
“It will help me complete a set,” the old man lied.
“Then you oughta be willin’ to pay a mighty purty price for it, huh?”
The old man studied the little man with a newfound respect. “How about the dozen cards and …” He paused to try to read the little man’s face, to see if he could see what this guy really wanted.
The two men stared at each other.
Negotiations, the old man thought, how I love it! How I miss it, he thought, which reminded him of what he was supposed to be doing.
“Look,” he said to the little man, “I gotta go but I’ll give you a dozen of these cards right now and a ticket to a ball game as soon as I can get my hands on one. You have my word.”
The little man laughed. “Word of a crazy man! Someone what’s had so many therapy sessions he won’t ‘member we even spoke come tomorrow. No way.”
“I’ll put it in writing if you want.”
“Where you gonna get a baseball ticket anyways?”
“I know people.” The shorter man looked skeptical. “Used to be in the business. I can get you a ticket if you want one.”
The short man considered it. The old man could see in his face how much he wanted it.
The short man nodded, then said, “I getta pick the dozen.”
“Just be quick about it,” the old man said and laid the pillowcase of baseball cards on top of the blankets that had covered him moments before. He kept hold of the Eddie Mathews card in his shorts pocket and peeked out into the hallway while the shorter man made his choices.
A minute passed. The old man checked the hallway again. As empty as ever.
“Okay,” the little man said, “I got Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron—”
“Don’t tell me! I don’t wanna know.”
“Okay okay, jist thought you’d wanna know what you was givin’ up for this pathetic Luke Easter card.” He handed it to the old man, who double checked the name on the card before sliding it into his pocket where it joined Eddie Mathews.
“It’s like a whole all-star team you’re givin’ up for that washed up Easter fella.”
The old man didn’t respond.
“And a ticket to a game. Don’chu forgit that! So … how come?”
The old man stuffed the remaining cards into his pillowcase and headed for the back door to the Men’s Ward.
“How come?” the little man shouted after him. “Do’n make no sense.”
The old man considered explaining it all to the shorter man—after all, the guy had just provided him with the second card he needed—but then realized the orderly could pop back into the ward any time, so he continued on his way down the length of the narrow ward toward the rear door, which let out onto the quad. If I can only get across the quad, he thought, I can disappear into the brush on the other side of the road.
“Yer crazy, ya know!” the little man called after him. “A genuine loony!”
The old man tucked his dirty blanket under his arms and pushed his way out the exit and into the sunlight on the south quad.
Oops, he realized the moment he stepped outside.
“Shit,” he said aloud.
Staff and patients both still lingered on the quad from the early morning fire and evacuation. He figured the quad would be empty. It was always empty. Except … except for fire drills, he suddenly remembered. Damn, he thought, I’m screwed three ways to Sunday.
He was about to give up when he realized no one was paying any attention to him. The orderlies and nurses were helping patients back to their rooms; other patients were wandering about, some no doubt enjoying their first afternoon outside since they were committed.
The old man put his head down and walked slowly across the quad, winding his way through the groups of patients and steering clear of the nurses and orderlies.
He was half way across the grassy quad when a voice shouted out, “Heh! Where you been? Nurses looking for you everywhere.”
The old man stopped. He looked at the face of the patient speaking to him. Just another old man, he thought, trapped in this hospital, hobbling about on his cane.
But he knew that face, a friend once perhaps, a name he ought to remember.
“You still think The Bird was a better pitcher than Marquard?” the man with the cane said.
“Ryne Sandberg,” the old man said.
“What about Ryno?” the man with the cane said. “You find my card?”
“Your name is Ryne Sandberg. I remembered!”
“Hardly,” the man with the cane said. “Sandberg’s the card I lost when you spilled everything and Nurse Peters confiscated our cards. You get yours back?” He pointed to the pillow case the old man was carrying.
“None a’ your business.”
“That’s where you keep your cards, right? In a pillow case? As if the orderlies don’t know that trick!” he scoffed.
“Gotta go, I’m late.”
“There’s nowhere to go. Take advantage of the sunshine. Not often we get to just sit outside and bask in it. They’re just going to lock you up and give you more therapy when they find you.”
“No one’s finding me!” the old man hissed and thrust a finger in the other man’s chest. “And don’t you be telling ‘em, Sandberg.”
“Tell them what? That I saw a ghost with a pillowcase full of baseball cards? They’ll never believe me.”
The old man turned and started to head across the quad, but the handle of the other man’s cane caught his ankle and he went down on the grass.
“Before you go,” the man with the cane said, “I want to know something. How you doing on your quest to find Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Huh? Found any of them?” The younger old man looked down at the older old man and smirked. “I thought not.”
“Luke Easter!” the old man bellowed, stopping the other man in his tracks.
“What?” the one with the cane said, turning back to look at the older man where he lay sprawled on the ground holding up a single baseball card. It was too far away for him to read, so he hobbled a step or two closer, leaned on his cane, and read the name on the card.
Luscious Luke
“Luke”
EASTER
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “But ‘Luscious’? You think his parents really named him ‘Luscious’? Hard to believe. But, heh, you got one. Good job. Guess I better get to work …”
The old man smiled at his victory.
“… or you might catch up with me!” the one with the cane bragged over his shoulder as he headed toward the hospital dining room.
The old man slumped back down, defeated again. Has Sandburg really found more than one of the cards? he wondered. Nah, he’s just taunting me.
The idea comforted him, but the doubt haunted him.
But then he realized, I have a pair now. Half way home. Good thing I didn’t show him Mathews too. He slid Luscious Luke’s card back into his shorts next to Mathews. He felt lucky. Lucky Luscious Luke, he thought and smiled.
When he tried to get up from the lawn, he couldn’t. He simply wasn’t strong enough to stand without something to lean on. “Goddamn old age!” he said aloud, then wished he hadn’t. He looked around, but no one seemed to have heard him.
Too risky to ask for help. Just have to do this step by step. Like when you fall out of bed, he told himself. Then he remembered: when he fell out of bed, he pulled the cord in his room and one of the orderlies helped him up and back into bed.
Well, he thought as he knelt on all fours in the grass, no more of that. Be a man!
He leaned forward on his hands and knees, tucked one knee up to his chest and tried to stand. But he wasn’t strong enough any more. Holy Hammerin’ Hank, he thought, how did I get so old and so feeble I can’t stand up by myself?
He tried again, and his thigh throbbed with pain.
He rocked back on his heels into a catcher’s crouch. Then, placing a hand on each knee, with his legs and arms he pushed himself into a semi-erect position, standing, but bent over and breathing hard. He rocked there, unsteadily, while he caught his breath.
And I was going to run across the quad into the field, he thought. What a deluded old bonehead I am!
After a few moments, he started walking again, a little slower now that he was winded, toward the gate in the courtyard wall opposite the hospital building. The gate was usually left unlocked, so the hospital shifts could come and go from the south parking lot. The old man was banking on it for an easy exit from the quad. If it were locked …
No reason to think about that, he thought. Be positive. Plan what you’re going to do once you’re outside.
Outside. A simple word, a common word, with no special connotations, until now. After months and months (he really had no idea how many—had a year passed?) inside the hospital, the thought of being outside was like a drug, an hallucination, a dream come true. He really had no plans, other than getting out.
With his cards.
And his phone, he remembered.
He pulled it from the pocket of his shorts. Who could he call? Who would come get him? Who … who even remembered him?
Then it hit him like a ton of bricks, like a wall of water, like a semi-truck, like a tired old cliché and an idea out of the blue.
The Front Office remembered him.
Oh yeah, his former staff in Yuma, them and their new boss—whoever had been hired to replace him—they remembered him, damn right. They thought they’d “solved” him, or their problem with him, and it came to him then and there how he should use the phone in his hands.
One call, he thought, just one call. And I’m back in the game!
“Heh you!” a voice called across the quad.
That damn orderly!
“Wait right there!”
Like hell, the old man thought, I ain’t quitting now. Let ‘em catch me.
And he began to run.
