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Zeke had planned to spend the winter someplace warm, but in Daytona the woman who managed the motor court told him that two men had been asking questions about him and Casey, and when they passed the dark blue Crown Vic heading towards the motor court, Zeke knew it had been close, too close. Zeke drove for twelve hours straight after that, while Casey sat motionless in the passenger seat, not even asking for cigarettes, knowing something was wrong. They were outside of Baltimore when Zeke finally stopped, and maybe he was just getting more paranoid, but he thought that staying anyplace warm in the winter was just too obvious. So Zeke kept going north, carrying in his mind a half-realized postcard image of New England, under a secretive blanket of white.
_____
The sign at the town line welcomed them to the “City” of Buxford, Maine, but Zeke didn’t see much about it that was worthy of the name. Downtown Buxford was a Main Street where the storefronts still had the slightly grand look of the days when Main Street had meant something, but the businesses that now occupied them—a consignment shop, a billiards hall, a tattoo parlor—spoke clearly of what had happened to good old Main Street in places like Buxford. At the end of Main Street, the dead hulk of the old textile mill straddled the river, with most of its windows punched out and weeds breaking through the parking lot. There were still three Catholic churches in Buxford, however, and a Catholic men’s center with a French name, and Zeke figured that if you weren’t interested in pawning something, shooting stick or getting tattooed, then the only thing left to do in Buxford was pray.
Zeke picked up Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner, but when they got to the motel Casey didn’t want to eat, and fell asleep, curled up tightly on the bed with his sneakers still on and his hands under his arms. That was fine with Zeke; Casey had barely said a word all day, and had warily picked at his lunch, and Zeke hoped he would sleep off whatever impenetrable mood he was in this time.
Zeke let him sleep for an hour but thought the food would be too cold if he waited longer than that. He bent over Casey and shook him lightly.
“Hey, wake up. Dinnertime.”
Casey didn’t respond at first, but then woke up with a jolt and a sharp intake of breath.
“You okay?” Zeke asked. Casey flinched and stared up at Zeke wildly. It was a look that Zeke had seen before. He took his hand away from Casey’s arm.
“Casey,” he said. “It’s me, okay? It’s Zeke.”
Casey’s face twitched. “Zeke’s in jail.”
“No, I’m right here. You hungry?”
Casey didn’t answer and Zeke went for the bag and started taking out the food. From the corner of his eye, he saw Casey sit up and scoot backwards on the bed until he was against the headboard, his knees drawn up tightly against his chest.
Zeke kept talking as he put the chicken on a paper plate. “I got you all dark meat this time, because last time you said I didn’t get enough. Remember?” He turned and held the plate out to Casey. “Come on, Case.”
The television muttered in the background, Alex Trebek quizzing someone on Jeopardy. Casey stared at him. His arms around his knees trembled lightly.
“I’m not eating that,” Casey whispered rapidly.
“It’s just chicken. Hey, you can’t resist the Colonel’s Recipe, can you?” He took a step towards Casey with the plate.
Casey smacked the plate from Zeke’s hand. Chicken and gravy-soaked mashed potatoes thudded to the floor.
Zeke bent down slowly and started picking up the chicken. “Okay, Casey. You don’t have to. It’s all right. It’s…Casey!”
Casey had leapt off the bed and run for the door. Zeke barely had time to register this when he realized that Casey already had the chain off. He lunged at Casey and wrapped his arms around his waist, pulling him away from the door. Casey twisted in Zeke’s grip, kicking backwards and clawing at Zeke’s arms.
“Casey, it’s just me. It’s Zeke.”
“Fuck you!” Casey snarled. “Zeke’s in jail!”
“No, I’m not. It’s me. It’s Zeke and you’re safe. Settle down.”
“Fuck off!” Casey shrieked.
Zeke tightened his arms around Casey. “Casey, settle down. Settle down and I’ll let you go,” he said firmly. “Okay?”
Casey stopped writhing and kicking and hung limply in Zeke’s arms.
“Casey?” he asked cautiously.
“Yeah?”
“Who am I?”
“Zeke,” Casey answered.
“Am I going to hurt you?”
“No.”
“Are you going to run if I let you go?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Zeke loosened his hold on Casey’s waist and even as he did so, he felt Casey’s muscles tense, readying for a lunge. Zeke tightened his arms again and lifted Casey’s feet off the floor. Casey started screaming.
Zeke wrestled Casey to the floor, then wrapped his arms and legs around him, something that had worked in the past.
“I can sit here all night, Casey, okay? All night.”
Casey beat and scratched at Zeke’s arms and kicked at Zeke’s legs. He slammed his head backwards, trying to make contact with Zeke’s jaw, but Zeke only held him tighter.
“All night, Casey,” Zeke said as calmly as he could.
Zeke sat on the floor with Casey for half an hour. Casey fought and struggled and cursed for most of that time, but at last he stilled. Zeke could feel Casey’s pulse slow beneath his arms. He held onto Casey for another fifteen minutes before asking, “How’re you doing, buddy?”
“Okay.”
“You want something to eat?”
“No,” Casey answered sleepily. “Lie down.”
“All right. Okay,” Zeke said and unwrapped himself from around Casey.
Casey shot forward like a horse out of the starting gate. Zeke managed to grab the back of his shirt and Casey lurched, pinwheeling his arms for balance. Zeke pulled Casey toward himself, and Casey spun halfway around, his arms flailing. Casey’s thrashing elbow slammed into Zeke’s eye, and a fountain of stars burst upon his vision. He lost his grip on Casey’s shirt.
“Shit!” he shouted, and when he opened his eyes only a second later, the door was wide open and Casey was gone.
Zeke scrambled to his feet and ran out. He could see Casey, already halfway across the motel parking lot, running towards the road. Casey had lost a sneaker and one white-socked foot flashed like a strobe in the darkness.
Casey was fast, but Zeke’s longer legs covered the distance between them quickly, and Casey had never been any match for Zeke’s weight or strength. He threw himself at Casey, pinning his arms to his sides and bearing him to his knees. Casey arched his back and howled.
Zeke lifted Casey and began dragging him back to the motel. Casey dropped to the ground, trying to make his weight unmanageable.
By the time they got back to the motel room, Zeke couldn’t tell if Casey was screaming or crying. Zeke’s eye throbbed mercilessly, and he was sweating from dragging Casey’s dead weight, scared stiff that someone might have called the cops and half sick from having to treat Casey so roughly.
Zeke pivoted to shut the door and Casey wrapped his fingers around it, trying to hold it open, to pull himself out of Zeke’s grip.
“Let it go, Casey, let it go now!”
Casey hissed and held on even more tightly. Zeke crushed Casey against himself and finally managed to peel Casey’s fingers from the door and kick it closed. Just before the door slammed shut, Casey shot his arm out in one last desperate attempt and got his fingers between the door and the jamb. Zeke heard Casey’s fingers break. They sounded like pretzel sticks snapping.
Casey was so far gone that he didn’t seem to notice, and Zeke found that even worse than the broken fingers. Zeke hauled Casey away from the door and dragged him across the room, through the congealing mess of mashed potatoes and gravy on the carpet, to where Zeke had left his bag. Still holding onto Casey, he dumped the bag’s contents onto the floor.
Casey thrashed wildly as Zeke grabbed at the blister pack of sleeping pills. It was over-the-counter shit, Zeke hadn’t been able to make a good pharmaceutical connection in weeks and this was all he had. The box had said, Extra Strength! Fast Acting! and Zeke damn well hoped they were.
Zeke managed to get Casey onto his back. He straddled him at the waist and fought off Casey’s fists and clawing nails with one hand as he opened the blister pack against his leg with the other. He was sure the proper dosage was two pills, but Casey in this state was like someone on PCP, and two pills would barely take the edge off. Casey would go all night like this until they both wound up in intensive care, or worse. He popped six tablets out onto the carpet and collected them in his palm.
Zeke caught Casey by the jaw and held his mouth open. He got the pills in and clamped his hand over Casey’s mouth before Casey could spit them out or bite him. Beneath Zeke’s hand, Casey shrieked in muffled wrath and terror, turning red in the face and beating on Zeke’s arms, even with his broken hand. His feet drummed on the threadbare carpet as he tried to buck Zeke off of him.
“I’m sorry, Casey, I’m sorry,” Zeke said, and waited for Casey to swallow. He caught Casey’s right wrist and pinned it down before he could do more damage to himself. Casey’s eyes watered from the bitterness of the pills dissolving in his mouth, and in reflex he swallowed hard, three times.
Zeke could feel the fight going out of Casey as the medication kicked in, he could see the rage leaving Casey’s eyes. He took his hand from Casey’s mouth. Casey gasped and coughed, the lower half of his face smeared with sweat and spit and a crimson stain of blood from where his lip had split open against his teeth. Zeke wiped his hand on his leg and stroked Casey’s hair and face.
“It’s all right, Casey. It’s all right. I’m sorry,” he said, and waited.
When Casey was still, Zeke climbed off of him and leaned against the bed. He watched in dull amazement as Casey rolled over and tried to get up.
“They must’ve loved you in that hospital, Casey,” Zeke muttered and then wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t anything to joke about, Casey in that place, not ever.
Casey’s body wasn’t taking orders from his head anymore, and he was only able to drag himself about a foot towards the door before he collapsed. Even then, his legs twitched as if he were still running in his mind. Zeke put his head back against the mattress and closed his eyes; the one that Casey had blackened pounded in time with his heartbeat. The sudden stillness in the room was dizzying.
Zeke didn’t know how long he sat there with his eyes closed, but when he opened them Casey had become completely still. He crawled to Casey and turned him over, then lifted him up and carried him to the bed. He wet a washcloth at the bathroom sink and washed Casey’s face. Besides the split lip, a bruise the size and shape of Zeke’s hand was bluing up around Casey’s mouth. Great, he thought. He examined Casey’s right hand. The first three fingers were swelling from tip to knuckle.
“Fuck,” he muttered. Maybe it’s just a sprain, he thought, even though he knew better. He went out to the ice machine and filled the plastic bucket that had been in the room. He wrapped the ice up in two skimpy hand towels, then sandwiched Casey’s hand between them as gently as he could. Casey didn’t stir.
Zeke picked Casey’s dinner off the floor. He paused and looked over his shoulder at Casey, so scrawny on the bed with his bruised face, his swollen fingers sticking out between the towels and the bottom of his sock black from running across the parking lot. Zeke couldn’t even hear him breathing. He wondered if he still remembered how to make those Boy Scout splints. He wondered what the hell he would do if Casey didn’t wake up the next morning. He resisted a sudden urge to wake Casey and make him throw up the pills.
Zeke pulled off Casey’s one sneaker and then rolled him over onto his stomach, figuring Casey would be too out of it to turn over on his own if he did have to throw up. He crouched beside the bed, his hand on Casey’s back.
What am I doing? he wondered bleakly. What the fuck am I doing?
_____
Zeke woke up with his blackened eye and head pounding, his body aching from tension and lack of sleep. He’d stayed awake most of the night, checking on Casey’s breathing, his pulse, changing the ice packs on his hand.
He looked blearily around the room, at the mess he’d made after his one thwarted phone call for help. The phone ripped from the wall, the cheap motel chair in splinters on the floor. The cut on his hand throbbed. Beside him Casey twitched, still in a heavy, sedated sleep.
Agent Mulder is missing, he thought, and again he felt the loss of that one, thin hope, and knew that it was lost because of him.
Ahh, I fucked up, Casey. Didn’t I fuck things up good?
In the tired, gray morning, there was none of last night’s fury, only a desperate weariness. He curled himself around Casey, buried his face in Casey’s hair, and fell into a doze that swam with dim, troubling dreams.
_____
Zeke woke later feeling not refreshed, but alert. The clock beside the bed showed 8:40.
“Time to get up, buddy,” Zeke said, shaking Casey’s shoulder. “Time to hit the road.”
It took Zeke five minutes to rouse Casey, and when Casey finally got up to go to the bathroom, he was weaving so badly that he went halfway across the room in the wrong direction. Casey was in there so long that Zeke checked on him and found him asleep on the floor. Casey swore painfully when Zeke picked him up around the waist; he lifted Casey’s t-shirt and found that his ribs and stomach were dark with bruises from the night before.
“Jesus frigging Christ,” Zeke muttered, taking an inventory of Casey’s injuries. His face was black and blue, his lip split open. His midsection and his arms were bruised, especially his wrists. He was pallid and hollow-eyed from the sleeping pills. And his right hand…his right hand pretty much looked like one of those cartoons where Daffy Duck slams his hand with a hammer and it swells to three times its normal size. It was a lot funnier in the cartoons.
“What did you do to my hand?” Casey said, sitting on the edge of the bed while Zeke tied his sneakers. “Fuckin’ hurts.”
Zeke ignored the first part and answered, “I know. I know it hurts.” I’ve got to do something. I can’t let him walk around like that.
Zeke knew guys who were able to provide select medical services for people who couldn’t go the traditional route. They were the guys who could dig out bullets, or jolt someone from an overdose or just get some premium-grade, DEA-regulated narcotics. They’d probably know how to fix broken bones, too, or at least pretend to know. But Zeke didn’t know when he’d be able to hook up with one of those guys; they didn’t exactly keep office hours, and they tended to charge hefty rates for their services—cash, upfront. And while Zeke wouldn’t have thought twice about seeing one of those guys for himself, his stomach turned over at the thought of Casey sitting in the filthy kitchen of some apartment or trailer while the local drug dealer/carjacker/pimp/doctor attempted to set his bones.
“Fuckin’ hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” Casey said, and laid his head on Zeke’s shoulder.
“I know,” Zeke said again, putting his arms around Casey. “We’ll take care of that, okay? Okay, buddy?”
Casey nodded and Zeke held him, and thought.
_____
The Buxford Free Clinic turned Zeke away; it wasn’t equipped to treat broken bones. The nurse gave Zeke photocopied directions to the local hospital and told him to take Casey right to Emergency.
“Listen,” Zeke said, leaning close to her. “Listen, we’re just passing through and I…I don’t have any insurance…” He lowered his voice. “I can’t pay for this.” He felt himself unwillingly turning red as a hot flush of lingering middle-class pride swept over him. He’d been on the run with Casey for over a year, but this was the first time those words had come out of his mouth.
“It’s okay,” she said sympathetically. “A lot of people around here don’t.”
He thanked her and as he turned to go, she said, “You’re his legal guardian, right?”
“Um…yeah,” Zeke said. “Yeah, I’m his brother.”
_____
It took Zeke half an hour to talk Casey into getting out of the car, another fifteen minutes to talk him through the sliding doors. By the time the nurse called their names, Casey had fallen into a terrified, frozen silence.
The nurse led them back to an area where other emergency patients were being assessed. She asked Casey to sit on an empty gurney behind a green curtain, and he perched nervously on the edge of it, his head down.
“Let’s see what we have here,” she said, gently taking Casey’s hand. She spoke to him slowly and patiently—Zeke had already told her the autism story.
“Well, that must hurt an awful lot,” she said. “Doesn’t it, Casey?”
He shook his head, not looking up.
“He’s scared,” Zeke said.
She turned his hand over and Casey sucked in a breath and pulled his hand away.
“Casey, let her look at it, okay? Just a minute,” Zeke said.
Casey gave Zeke a miserable look and put his hand back out.
The nurse examined Casey’s hand, the fingers and palm. She pushed his sleeve up to look at his wrist and Zeke saw her eyes linger for a moment on the bruises there, the long scar. Her eyes slid up to Casey’s face, then Zeke’s.
“Were both of you in some sort of accident?” she asked.
“No,” Zeke said. “He sometimes…acts out a little. He can hurt himself, or anyone who’s around.”
The nurse gave him a tight smile, her gentle friendliness of a moment before somehow diminished.
She turned her attention back to Casey, and wrote some notes on her clipboard.
“How old are you, Casey?”
“He’s eighteen,” Zeke said.
“Thank you, but I asked Casey,” she said. “Casey? How old are you?”
“Si…sixteen,” Casey mumbled.
Her eyes flicked to Zeke, one eyebrow arched.
“He never remembers,” Zeke said.
“Mr. Lewis, did you say you were Casey’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“Then your parents are…”
“They’re gone. I’ve been taking care of Casey since then.”
“So you’re his legal guardian?” she asked, and Zeke remembered the nurse at the free clinic had mentioned the same thing. A faint thread of worry wove through him.
“I was…when he was still a minor,” Zeke said smoothly.
“Of course,” she said. “Casey,” she said, her voice softening, “Can you tell me how you hurt your hand?”
Casey looked up at Zeke, then at the nurse, then at Zeke again. “Zeke…” he pleaded.
“It’s okay, Casey,” Zeke said, putting a reassuring hand on Casey’s back. “He won’t remember,” he said to the nurse.
The nurse nodded and looked at Casey, and asked, “Casey, do you remember how you hurt your hand? Do you remember anything at all?”
Zeke knew Casey well enough by now to see that he was on the edge of panic. “I don’t think you should…” he began, and then Casey lost it.
With a shriek, Casey threw himself at the nurse, hard enough to knock her over. Before Zeke could grab him, he was running blindly through Emergency.
Zeke was right on his heels. “Casey!” he shouted, as Casey disappeared around a bend. Zeke heard Casey scream, and when he turned the corner, Casey was doubled over in an orderly’s grasp, clawing frantically at the man’s arms, even with his broken fingers.
How can he do that, it must be killing him, Zeke thought for a split second, before he reached Casey and pulled him out of the orderly’s arms.
Casey grabbed the front of Zeke’s coat and stared up at him, wide-eyed with panic. “We have to go, we have to leave, please, Zeke, please, let’s go, please…”
“We can’t,” Zeke said. “Casey, we’re just going to fix your hand and then leave, okay?”
Casey shook his head violently. “No, no, no, we have to go, now!”
The nurse appeared at Zeke’s elbow, slightly out of breath. “Mr. Lewis, we can’t treat Casey if he’s this agitated. Mr. Lewis?”
The nurse in one ear, Casey begging in the other. “What?” he said to the nurse.
“Mr. Lewis, I’d recommend giving Casey a mild sedative so that we can treat him.”
“Zeke, no…” Casey said, and twisted in Zeke’s arms.
Zeke sighed, feeling ready for a sedative himself. “Fine. All right.”
When Casey felt the needle, he clenched his teeth and screamed. Zeke closed his eyes, held Casey even tighter.
“It’s okay, Casey, it’s okay,” he whispered.
“You son of a bitch,” Casey sobbed, despair in his voice and eyes. “You fucker. You fucker.”
“Don’t worry, Casey,” Zeke said, feeling horrible, traitorous. “Don’t worry.”
Casey grew quiet, blinking slowly against Zeke’s shoulder. Zeke lifted him onto a gurney and they brought him back to the examination room.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” the nurse said, and Zeke nodded without looking at her.
This is bullshit, Zeke thought, shaken, wanting to pick Casey up and get the hell out of there. This was wrong. Things were going wrong.
He almost did it, almost took Casey and left. The sight of Casey’s painfully swollen fingers made him stay. He climbed up on the gurney and laid Casey against him.
“Don’t be scared, Casey,” he said, taking Casey’s good hand in his own. “It’ll be all right.”
_____
The nurse returned, but not alone. A neat, white-haired woman was with her, in a tweed skirt and red blazer. Her hospital ID said she was Joyce Nadeau, LCSW. Zeke didn’t know what the acronym meant.
“Mr. Lewis, my name is Joyce Nadeau, I’m a social worker with the hospital.”
Zeke nodded, said nothing.
“Mr. Lewis, we’d like to speak with Casey, ask him a couple of questions.”
“Fine,” Zeke said.
“We’d like to speak with Casey alone.”
A warning bell went off in Zeke’s mind. “No,” he said. “You can’t.”
The social worker smiled, and launched into what was obviously a practiced speech, often used. “Mr. Lewis, this is standard hospital procedure. I can assure you that we will not upset Casey or harm him in any way, and you only need to leave him with us for a few minutes.”
“This is standard procedure for broken fingers?”
“For any minor who presents at this hospital with multiple injuries. You…”
“He isn’t a minor.”
“Can you prove that?”
Zeke shifted Casey in his arms and reached for his wallet. He took out Casey’s fake ID, a non-driver identification card from the state of Florida. He handed it over to the social worker, and she looked at it for a minute before giving it back to him.
“Mr. Lewis, this really is standard procedure.”
“Look, he’s been through enough today. If you have any questions, you can ask them with me here.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lewis, but we do need to speak to Casey alone.”
“Okay, then we’ll leave.” Zeke reached for Casey’s jacket.
“Mr. Lewis,” the social worker said briskly. “Your brother is obviously in pain, and any delay in his treatment will increase that, and possibly lead to complications. I can’t allow you to remove him from this hospital without treatment, and what I’m asking for is standard procedure at every hospital in this state, and many others. You won’t fare differently somewhere else, you’ll only do further harm to your brother. Please, let us help him.”
Worn out and frustrated, Zeke ran his hand over his face. He looked at the skin stretched taut over Casey’s broken fingers.
“Listen, just…don’t scare him, okay?”
“He’ll be fine, Mr. Lewis. You have my word.”
Casey was sedated enough that he only mumbled a groggy, “Zeke…no…” when Zeke slid out from behind him.
“It’s okay, buddy, I’m just going to the bathroom, okay? I’ll be right back. Promise.”
Casey blinked sluggishly at him, then nodded. “’Kay.”
Zeke allowed the nurse to take him to a private room, where he paced tensely, staring at the clock on the wall. Five minutes. Ten minutes. At fifteen minutes, he got up to go back to Casey. Whatever they wanted to ask, they should damn well be finished.
The social worker entered the room just as he was reaching for the doorknob.
“Mr. Lewis, I’d like a word with you, please.”
“No, I’m going to Casey.”
“Casey is fine. He’s sleeping, and one of our nurses is with him. He’ll be going to x-ray soon.”
“All right,” he said impatiently. “What do you want?”
“Mr. Lewis,” she said. “If you have any information about Casey’s parents or legal guardian, now would be the time to offer it.”
“I told the nurse, I am…was his legal guardian…”
“Do you have any papers to prove that? Can you call someone who can send those papers?”
“No, I can’t. Casey isn’t a minor, anyway, so why are you even asking?”
“Casey told us he’s sixteen.”
“I know, but…” He fumbled his wallet out. “Look, here’s his ID…”
“Yes, Mr. Lewis, I’ve seen that, but right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got it out of a vending machine.”
Zeke felt a sharp rush of alarm. He looked away for a second, struggling to keep his composure. I should have left. I should have fucking left, godDAMNIT…
“Mr. Lewis, I don’t know what your relationship is to Casey, but I’ve been doing this for a long time and frankly, nothing about your story feels right to me. Even if Casey is over eighteen, his mental condition requires him to be under the care of a parent or legal guardian, which you can’t prove that you are. We’ve examined Casey and in addition to his broken fingers, he’s covered in bruises that do not appear to be self-inflicted. He seems to have been heavily sedated recently, but blood tests will confirm that. He’s visibly underweight. And he’s obviously attempted suicide at least once. Can you tell us anything about all of that, Mr. Lewis?”
“He’s autistic, he hurts himself sometimes…don’t you…”
“Mr. Lewis, I have every reason to believe that Casey is a victim of abuse, or at best, prolonged neglect.”
“No…listen…”
She ignored him. “Casey will be admitted for treatment of his injuries and for protective custody until his parents or legal guardian can be found. I’ve also notified the police and I’m sure they’ll want to speak with you, but I’m obligated to inform you that the hospital cannot keep you here against your will before the police arrive.”
Zeke suddenly knew what it must feel like to drown. The water closing over one’s head, the surface receding farther away. For several heartbeats, he could not think at all, except for two words that rang in his mind like a hollow bell: police and Casey.
“I want to see him,” he finally said, in as even a voice as he could summon.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible right now, Mr. Lewis.”
“Look, you have to…” Zeke checked his voice. “Please let me see him.”
“I can assure you that Casey is comfortable and being well taken care of. After he’s been treated and the police have a chance to speak with you, you’ll be able to see him then. Until then, you can have a seat in the waiting room.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Zeke said.
“When it comes to the welfare of our patients, we prefer to err on the side of caution, Mr. Lewis.”
Welfare, Zeke thought with helpless fury. What the fuck do you know about Casey’s welfare? He stared at the social worker and wondered how hard he would have to hit her to knock her out. How long it would be before someone found her unconscious. If that would be enough time to get Casey out. He curled his right hand into a fist, ready to swing.
“Do you need to be escorted to the waiting room, Mr. Lewis?” she asked and her eyes flicked briefly to the glass. His own eyes followed hers, long enough to see a hospital security guard standing outside the door. He forced his fingers to relax.
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Then I think we’re through here. If you decide to stay, the police will be here to speak with you in a little while.” She turned and left.
The security guard held the door open for Zeke. He walked out slowly, the guard following him, and sat down in the waiting room. His mind unspooled a slow-motion, silent movie: the social worker calling the police. The police arriving. Questions being asked. Reports being filed. How long would it take them to find out that two young men matching Zeke and Casey’s descriptions were in custody in Maine, one in the hospital and helpless, one in the police station and defenseless? How long would it take them to get there? Afternoon? Evening? Would they take Casey first, or himself? And then what? Dead by the end of the day? Or worse? Worse? What was worse? He thought about parasites moving under people’s skin. About the men who’d come to see him in prison, with their flat eyes and smooth offers. About Casey, broken beyond repair. So many things were worse.
He thought of these things, but he saw only two things, the nurse at the admissions desk, and the security guard, standing between the desk and the entrance to Emergency. The whole room telescoped to those points in space.
Two minutes, he thought, and forced himself to breathe evenly. I need two minutes. Two minutes for you to bullshit with the nurse, or take a leak, or go out for a cigarette. Two minutes for her to look away. That’s all. Two minutes.
Had they admitted Casey yet? Were the police coming? Who was coming with them?
Two minutes, Zeke thought. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, the security guard was gone. The admissions nurse had her back to the room, bent over her desk.
Zeke stood up and walked right past the admissions desk. Casey was not in the curtained area where Zeke had left him.
He eyes grazed over patients, but no Casey. Where was he? If he’d been admitted, where would they have taken him?
Help me, he thought, with no idea of whom he was praying to.
A hallway crossed his path. Right or left? Zeke went left. How much time? How much time now?
He reached the end of the hall, turned around, went back the way he had come, kept going.
He looked through the blinded windows on either side. An old woman in one room, staring at the wall, a burly man in another, sleeping with his mouth open. In another room, a curtain had been drawn around the bed, where someone was lying on his side. Zeke saw the soles of his feet, in white socks, one clean, one dirty. Casey.
Zeke let himself in cautiously, but Casey was alone in the room. He was wearing a green hospital gown, and had a cotton ball and bandage taped over the inside of his elbow. His injured hand was resting on a pillow.
He lifted Casey to a sitting position and Casey’s head rolled backwards.
“Casey,” he said, “Casey, wake up.”
He shook him and Casey made a guttural sound, but did not open his eyes.
“Casey, come on. Come on, please. Wake up.”
He shook him again, harder than before. Casey’s eyes slid open halfway and he looked drunkenly around the room.
“Wh…where’s Mom?” he slurred.
Something tightened in Zeke’s chest, but there was no time to notice it. “Mom’s home, okay? She’s waiting for us. Let’s go.”
Casey’s clothes were in a plastic bag at the foot of the bed. Zeke pulled off the hospital gown and dressed him hurriedly. Casey moaned when Zeke pulled his injured hand through the sleeve of his sweater, and he opened his eyes again and looked at Zeke.
“Lemme lie down…” he said thickly, and started to fall sideways.
“Casey, no, Casey, we have to go.”
“N..uuuh.”
Zeke grabbed Casey’s head in his hands, and gave him a brisk shake. Casey’s eyes snapped open.
“Casey, I can’t carry you out of here. I need you to walk, okay, just a little bit? I need you to get up and walk.”
Casey groaned and closed his eyes.
“Casey,” Zeke said sharply. He shook Casey’s head again, and Casey looked at him in groggy irritation. “They’re coming, do you understand me?”
Casey’s eyes opened wider, struggled to focus.
“No…” he said, shaking his head. “No…”
“Yes, Casey. They’re coming, and if you don’t get up, they will find us. They will find us and send you back to that place. Do you understand? Now you have to get up and you have to walk.”
Casey closed his eyes and grimaced. With effort, he pushed himself off the edge of the bed, but his knees buckled as soon as his feet hit the floor. Zeke held him up.
“That’s it. Not far. Not far, Casey, I promise. I swear.”
Casey nodded and leaned heavily against Zeke. Zeke wrapped an arm around him, supported him as best as he could, and headed for the door.
It was a weekday afternoon, and Emergency was quiet; he didn’t risk taking Casey back out through the waiting room, but took him around to the side where he had seen the ambulance bay. Two EMTs were outside smoking, but their backs were turned to the hospital, their eyes on the gray snowclouds that had just begun to spit flurries.
“Zeke…” Casey said desperately. His legs were giving out, his sneakers dragging on the pavement.
“Hang on, buddy,” Zeke whispered. He gave a quick look around and then hauled Casey onto his shoulder.
He got to the car and loaded Casey into the back seat. Zeke was sweating from fear and exertion, but Casey’s teeth were chattering, snowflakes clinging to his hair. Zeke got behind the wheel and turned the ignition, taking a second to flip the heat on full-blast.
Zeke made it out of the parking lot and turned onto Medical Center Drive. He would go west, because he thought they would expect him to go south, to hit New Hampshire and the state line as soon as possible. At the end of the drive, where it intersected with Route 111, was a traffic light, red. He stopped.
He saw them in the rear view mirror. A black-and-white Buxford police car, coming from the direction of town, pulling into the hospital parking lot. Behind that, a dark blue sedan. A Crown Vic? Didn’t matter. He could make out two men in the front seat. He looked ahead, at the interminable red light. Traffic flowed lightly but steadily on Route 111.
Run the light, something whispered fiercely in his head. Run it, they’re too close, they’re right behind you.
For a second, he almost did. He was a good driver, he could have dodged the oncoming traffic. Then another voice spoke up, icily calm, strangely like his mother’s.
If you run that light, it’s all over. They haven’t seen you, but you run that light and you might as well have a neon sign on the roof of this car. So you go ahead and run that light, Zeke. Run that light and you and Casey will be in body bags by tonight. If you’re lucky.
Zeke took a deep, shaky breath and held it. His foot shuddered on the brake. His knuckles whitened on the wheel.
The light turned green. Zeke eased his foot off the brake, and turned, slowly and reasonably, onto Route 111, going west.
_____
West, on county roads and U.S. routes, from small towns to smaller towns, past neat New England farmhouses and dilapidated trailers half-hidden by pine trees, through woods and past fields and over bridges, while the snow fell. West, keeping to the speed limit, putting his low-beams on to be courteous to other drivers, listening for Casey to wake up. An hour out, and Zeke realized the heat was still blasting away and he lowered it. Two hours out and they crossed the state line at Freedom, New Hampshire.
_____
In Vermont, Zeke finally had to stop for gas. He filled up, then pulled the car around to the side of the gas station to check on Casey, who had not made a sound since Zeke had thrown him into the car.
He climbed into the back seat and sat down on the manifold hump. Casey looked awful. The social worker’s voice echoed in Zeke’s head: covered in bruises. Visibly underweight. Prolonged neglect.
I’m killing him, Zeke thought. I’m fucking killing him.
Zeke put his forehead in his hands and closed his eyes, listening to the snow on the car windows and the metallic pinging of the tired engine.
He sighed and put a hand on Casey’s shoulder.
“Casey,” he said softly. “Hey, Casey. Wake up for a second, buddy.”
Casey opened his eyes after a moment and looked at Zeke.
“Are they here?”
Zeke shook his head. “No…we got away, man. We did it.”
Casey turned his eyes up to the window. “Where are we?”
“Vermont,” Zeke said. “I’m gonna keep on going, though. I think you should eat something.”
Casey shook his head and closed his eyes.
“How’s your hand?” Zeke asked, and Casey responded with a grimace and went back to sleep.
Zeke put a pillow under Casey’s head and spread the blanket over him. He went into the convenience store and bought sodas and sandwiches for them, hoping Casey would want to eat later.
_____
The snow stopped by the time they crossed into New York State, as the early winter night fell. Zeke kept going, blindly heading west, seeing police cars and blue sedans in his mind’s eye.
In Pennsylvania, Zeke was jerked into alertness by headlights and a blaring horn, and he wrenched the car right, out of the oncoming lane.
“Jesus Christ, Zeke,” he heard from behind him. “Either pull over or let me drive.”
He looked over his shoulder and there was Casey, leaning between the front seats, a wry smile on his face. The real Casey, surfaced.
Still half-asleep, Zeke asked, “Casey, is that you, man?”
“Yeah,” Casey said. “Now let’s find some place to stop before you kill us both.”
“It’s good to see you too, Casey,” Zeke said, almost laughing. “Bossy little fucker.”
_____
Zeke bought some sort of soup for them at a 7-11 on the outskirts of Erie, Pennsylvania, but when they got to the motel room, he was too tired to eat.
“I’m gonna lie down,” he said, and was asleep before Casey could even respond.
A smell of cigarette smoke woke Zeke some time later. The room was dark, the television off, and Casey was not beside him. The blankets were pulled up to his neck, and he didn’t remember having done that. Casey must have covered him up.
Zeke rolled over in bed and saw Casey slouched in a chair, in front of the window, staring out into the night. His injured hand was in his lap, wrapped in a towel. He had a cigarette in his left hand, and took a long drag on it every few seconds.
Zeke had a sudden memory of Casey at Herrington High, of seeing him one day eating his lunch alone, high up in the bleachers, a tiny figure silhouetted against the autumn sky. A strange, teacherish thought had come to Zeke that day—he must be lonely. The thought had passed as quickly as it had come, and Zeke had not remembered it until now, as he watched Casey smoking in front of the dark window.
He must be lonely, Zeke thought, but so much more than that kid who’d had no one to eat lunch with. This Casey’s loneliness was like a pall over him, horrible, impenetrable.
“Casey?” Zeke said, and Casey turned to look over his shoulder, his face half-lit by the outside lights, bruises shadowing his skin.
“Hey. I thought you were sleeping.”
“Is the pain really bad?”
“Not too bad. Just couldn’t sleep.”
Zeke got up and helped himself to a cigarette.
“You should sleep,” Casey said as Zeke pulled up a chair.
“Well, now I’m up.” He gestured to Casey’s hand. “How does it look?”
“The same as it did before,” Casey said, then turned to Zeke with half a smile on his face. “Guess I’ll have to learn to wipe with my left hand, huh?’’
Casey stood halfway up and pantomimed the gesture and Zeke, in spite of, or maybe because of everything that had happened, burst out laughing.
“Not so hard,” Casey said, sitting down. “I’ll have to add that skill to my résumé.” He smiled at Zeke for a moment, then turned away and blew a plume of smoke towards the window.
“I’ll find a drugstore and get a sling for it tomorrow,” Zeke said. “Maybe some kind of splint, too. Then we’ll find someone to fix it…I was thinking about Stokely. She’s in medical school. Chicago.”
“Stokely…” Casey said, and seemed to drift. “She was the last person I talked to before… She told me to be careful.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Do you think she’ll be okay? I wouldn’t exactly want us turning up on my doorstep.”
Zeke thought for a moment, then nodded. “She’s a friend. I’ll try to find her number in the morning and call her. If she says no, then it’s no, and we’ll think of something else.”
“It’ll be good to see her,” Casey said, then added, “It’s like…homecoming.”
Zeke smiled. “Yeah. The good old class of ’99.”
“That might have been,” Casey said quietly.
They sat together without speaking, and Zeke’s mind rolled over the past two days.
“Casey,” he said, and Casey turned his head towards Zeke. “I’m sorry I fucked things up.”
Casey shook his head. “You didn’t fuck anything up, Zeke. You’ve done more for me than anyone. You came to get me.”
Zeke stubbed out his cigarette and swirled the ashes around with the filter, thinking. He looked up at Casey.
“Do you wish I’d left you at home?”
“Never,” Casey said firmly, and Zeke saw the Casey he’d first met in his own lab: fierce, determined, and strong. It was good to see him again.
Zeke nodded and stood up to go back to bed. He let his hand brush through Casey’s hair on the way.
“Lay off the smokes and get some sleep,” he said.
Casey reached up with his good hand and caught Zeke’s, twining their fingers together. He turned around in the chair to look up at him.
“Thank you, Zeke,” he said.
Zeke tightened his fingers, but could find nothing to say.
_____
In the morning, Zeke woke to Casey lying next to him, staring blankly at the wall. When Zeke spoke to him, Casey answered in disjointed half-sentences, confusion in his eyes as he tried to focus his thoughts. The real Casey, sinking.
_____
Later that morning, Zeke pulled over at a gas station and made two phone calls, one to Chicago directory assistance, the other to the number the operator had given him. He was on the second phone call for less than ten minutes.
“Where are we going?” Casey asked anxiously when Zeke got back in the car.
“Chicago,” Zeke said, then added, “Homecoming.”
He pulled out of the gas station and headed west.