The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (12 page)

Then came the sound of bones breaking, or what Mason thought were bones breaking, since he’d never heard such a sound in real life.

“Fuck!” Dalton shouted, shaking his hand out.

Mason looked on dispassionately. Then something slammed into the back of his head. It didn’t hurt, but it surprised him and diverted his attention.

He turned, and another fist, moving much faster, was approaching him.

It slammed into his face, and all he could think was,
Everyone has a plan till they get sucker punched in the face
.

Then he was falling to the ground. He tried to focus again on that feeling, to calm himself, but a kick to the balls put an end to that.

The last thing he saw, was the men who had left the bar, and who had approached so very slowly, pulling others away from him. Sera shouting as she knelt beside him. Then he closed his eyes, and became aware of how cold the concrete beneath him was.

The bouncers were pulling them away as Sera knelt by Mason’s side. She was relieved he was still breathing. She had rarely seen a fight like that. Never so many on one. She’d seen many one on ones, but this was different.

He is different
, she thought. His face was on the street. She wanted to roll him over, so he didn’t get an infection. Blood oozed from his mouth and onto the dirty concrete.

“What the fuck is your problem!” she shouted at the ones who’d done this.

The bouncers were still holding them. “Hey, you saw. He started it.”

“What I saw was five on one.”

“He was asking for it, ma’am. You saw.”

“What I saw was five on one.” She repeated. “That isn’t right.”

“It ain’t right what he did, not at all. That’s not even talking about what he said.”

She ignored him, and tried to figure out what to do now.

“He’ll be fine,” the one who had been talking to her called back as he and his friends were pulled away. “I’ve been knocked out plenty, I’m no worse for wear.”

“I doubt that,” she mumbled.

“Dalton here, well his hand is broke. Though I suppose that’s fair. Seeing how he broke it on a guy’s face.”

“I’m telling you,” Dalton whined, “it was like punching a wall.”

“Come on,” one of the men herding them back into the bar grunted as he pushed Dalton.

“Ow,” Dalton said. “I’m going.”

“Hey,” Sera whispered to Mason. He looked bad. “Hey, stay with me.” She wanted him to cross over, not die.

She looked around. The bouncer who’d carded them was standing over them, looking down, shaking his head.

She looked at Mason’s car. She could take him to a hospital, drive him there, that way she could stay with him. Or maybe an ambulance would be better.

Seeing her look at the car, the bouncer asked, “Does he need an ambulance?”

“What do you think!”

The bouncer put his hands up. “I’ll call the police too.”

“You do that. Make yourself useful.”

He went inside.

Then they were the only ones there. “Shit,” she muttered. The cops would definitely come here.

If someone really was after him, having the cops show up wouldn’t be good, despite what Mason thought. She couldn’t risk him being wrong.

She shook his arm. “Hey. Hey, can you walk?” She stood. “Come on, let’s go.”

He didn’t move.

She got down on his level again, whispered, “Eila needs you.”

Nothing.

She looked around. His car was
still
right there.

She’d have to move him. He didn’t have any spine damage. Probably.
What about brain damage?
she wondered.

She’d have to risk it.

She managed to get him up, but he was dead weight, and it was hard going. As she walked to the car, she was very aware she was gambling with the rest of his life.

But based on what Martin had told her, it was worth the risk. She thought even Mason would agree with that if he understood what was at stake. If they lobotomized Martin, if they spiked him like they did to everyone… There would be no one who knew the truth. No one who could do anything about it, in any case.

She got the car door opened, and had gotten him in the passenger seat, when someone came out of the bar and shouted. It was the same bouncer.

She quickly went to the driver’s side.

“Hey!” he shouted again. “What are you doing? You can’t leave.”

“Do you want him to die? I can’t wait for an ambulance.”

“I just called them. They’ll—”

“Look.” She faced him, imbued her voice with sadness, anger, contempt. “They are coming from the hospital. They’ll have to go there and back. At this time of night, there isn’t anyone on the street. I can get there before they can get here and back.”

The man’s mouth opened to object, but she put up a hand to silence him.

“I’m going.” She pointed at the bar. “They know who he is.” With that, she got in the car, and wished she hadn’t said that. Mason’s “friends” were drunk, and maybe they wouldn’t have thought to mention it again once the police got involved, but now that bouncer almost certainly would.

She took off out of the lot and skidded into the street.
Calm down
, she thought, and accelerated toward the hospital.

Mason was conscious by the time she got there.

But judging by his speech patterns, she’d made the right choice taking him here. And judging by his waving of his arms, she hadn’t crippled him in the process.

Even if she had, she thought, where he needed to go, he wouldn’t require his body. The question was, would he ever realize that? Could he ever accept it?

The hospital was busier than Sera expected it would be.

She didn’t bother with parking, instead pulling into where the ambulances would normally be, and where none were now. She had heard sirens on their way here, but she couldn’t tell if they were from police or an ambulance. She found it odd they would use sirens at all at this time of night.

Car still running, she jumped out and went around to the passenger side and unbuckled Mason. Then she leaned back, took in his current state and thought better of it. She ran inside instead.

She switched to walking once through the automatic doors and calmly approached someone she assumed to be a doctor. “I need some help getting someone out of my car.”

The doctor had been standing, using a computer. She stopped typing and turned to look at Sera. The doctor was a woman slightly shorter than Sera, which wasn’t exactly short.

Seeing her look, Sera added, “He’s quite hurt.”

“He can’t walk?”

“He is in and out of consciousness.”

“Oh.” The doctor looked around, waved at what looked like a nurse.

The doctor and two nurses got a neck brace on Mason, then got him out and onto a gurney.

On the way back inside, through the emergency room, they passed a nurse who stared at them—Mason, mainly—in apparent shock. She then picked up a phone.

Sera remembered that Mason had left a certain hospital without permission. Was this the same one? Maybe he didn’t have insurance, and hadn’t paid.

That was a problem for later. She could pay if it came to that.

And at least here he’d be safe. As long as she could continue getting him Crumble it wouldn’t matter where he was—a hospital was as good a place as any other she could come up with. It had the benefit of her knowing where he was and him not getting beat up again—assuming he didn’t escape again. Which was a conundrum, given that she needed him to escape at some point to bring Martin back.

A hand fell on her shoulder, halting her progress as the stretcher with Mason continued on. “You have to wait here.”

She quelled the instinct to object. “Of course. Where should I wait?”

The man smiled, perhaps unused to someone so reasonable when their loved one faced death. He flicked his head. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Thirty-two minutes later, by the clock in the break room she’d been led to, a doctor came looking for her. “Sara?”

“Yes.” She was the only one here. An untouched can of Coke sat sweating on the table in front of her. She’d gotten it after going back outside to park Mason’s car, after a security guard had come asking if it was hers, and if should would move it. She’d moved it, and when she had gotten back, he’d had a can of Coke for her. Like some kind of reward for being such a good little hospital visitor.

“Your, uh…” He trailed off, looking expectantly at her.

She just smiled. No need to state her relation to Mason. She didn’t know what it was anyway. Friend? Maybe. Maybe not.

After a moment, he continued, “Um, he’s awake, he’s asking to see you.”

“Is he okay?”

The doctor pressed his lips together. “We can’t figure out what happened. It looks like he was here earlier for a car accident, but the records…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Now he’s saying he fell, but the contusions he suffered fit with a fight.”

She waited for the inevitable, ‘We’re calling the police.’

The doctor sighed. “Right. Well, his ‘fall’ was bad, but he should recover. I had to redo his stitches. It’s going to scar.” The doctor shook his head again. “He refused anesthesia. Vehemently. He seems otherwise lucid.”

She stood. “Very good. Will you show me to him?”

The doctor gave a final minute shake of his head, then motioned for her to follow.

Mason had a room to himself, the other bed made and the curtain pulled back.

She went to his side, grasped his hand. “Hey.”

He looked up at her with a bewildered expression. “Hi.”

“How you feeling?”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” the doctor interjected.

Sera turned and smiled at him, then returned her attention to Mason.

“Shut the door,” Mason whispered when the doctor was gone.

She did. “What’s going on?”

“Like I tried to tell you in the car, this is the same hospital!”

“Shh.” She sat on his bed. “That makes sense.”

“Of course it makes sense! That doesn’t make it all better though.”

“You’re worried the police will come looking for you again.”

“Not the police, those FBI or whoever.” He looked her dead in the eye.

She shifted slightly on the bed. “You’re not involved in anything you shouldn’t be, are you?”

“You asked me before if I’ve done impossible things?” His eyes bored into her. “I saw them. Sera, I saw them before they got there. In a dream.”

She wanted to say that wasn’t possible, that he couldn’t possibly see things like that, or have any effect on things from this realm. That, when she’d said it would change him, she hadn’t meant he could do things like that. Impossible things.

But she vividly remembered the fist slamming into his face, his lack of reaction to this, the fist breaking when it should have been the face to do so, the sound it made.

“You believe they will come looking for you again.”

“Yes! Of course they will. I ran out of here. I’m surprised something hasn’t happened already. There was a nurse, she saw the whole thing.” He paused, looking away. “I wonder if she’s all right.”

Sera frowned. It could be nothing, but her mind was making the connection for a reason: the nurse who had been shocked upon seeing Sera and Mason come in, how she had immediately picked up the phone to notify the doctor—or someone else.

She stood. “Where are your clothes?”

“What?”

She found them in a cabinet, tossed the covers aside then dumped them onto the bed.

“Hey!” Mason grasped at his gown.

“Get changed.” She went to the door to lock it, but there was no lock, not from this side. She looked around, spotted a chair, and slid it in place.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“That’s not going to hold.”

“Just lock it.”

She gave the chair one last firm shove, then turned. “There is no lock. Get dressed.”

“But…”

“Mr Grey, you can either get dressed, or stay here and wait to see if anyone comes looking. If they take you, I won’t be able to help.”

“Won’t be able to use me.” Mason grunted. “Don’t look.” Then he turned to face the window.

Sera rolled her eyes and looked around the room for an escape as he changed.

“Oh my God!”

“What? She went around to him. “Jesus.” His pants were on, but he was still shirtless.

“Yes.” He looked up from his chest at her. “That’s going to scar.”

She nodded. “Worry about it later.” She swallowed. “Now, we need to go.”

“Not that I’m disagreeing, but what’s suddenly gotten you so motivated?”

“The nurse.”

“What?”

“You are going to have to get us out of here.”

“Me?”

“Yes you, Mr Grey.”

“Would you stop calling me—”

She held up her hand. “You need to get us out of here now.”

“Okay.”

“You need to make us a door.”

He looked to the bathroom door. “I can try.”

In the bathroom, he stared really hard at the window, trying to get a door to appear.

“What are you doing?”

“Last time, a door appeared there.” He went and shut and locked the bathroom door. “It’s too bad this isn’t the same room.” He looked around. “And there’s no gnome. If we wait till they get here, maybe that will happen again.”

“Gnomes?”

“The agents.”

“What gnomes? And I’d rather not get arrested.” Or worse, she thought.

“Would you forget about the gnomes! Let me think.” Mason continued to stare at the window.

She walked over to it, pushed. It didn’t budge. She ran her hand along the top of the window, found something, then did something. She pushed again, and it slid open, skittering and making noise as it did.

“Oh,” Mason said. “I didn’t think of that.”

She climbed out, then waved for him to follow.

Mason was putting his foot on the sill, when he looked out and down. Vertigo overtook him and he fell backward. Regaining himself, he leaned his head out, looked left, then right. There Sera was, on a ledge that was thinner than Mason wanted to think about.

“Come on.”

“Are you nuts?” He looked around. “Are you a ninja?” he asked more quietly.

“The roof is right there.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Well, there it is. Impossible or not, that doesn’t change fact.”