The Law of Nines

He and Jax helped the nurses by rushing into rooms and pulling people out of their beds, then guiding them to the fire escape. Jax was swift and decisive in getting people moving, while managing to also be compassionate and supportive. It was all the more impressive to him because he could see by the look in her eyes that she was fighting the effect of the drugs in her system. He knew all too well what that was like; he was having to work past them as well.

The people followed directions as Alex calmly but forcefully urged them to hurry. These patients were far more alert and coherent than the people up on the ninth floor had been. He guided the growing throng to the fire escape, letting himself and Jax become lost in the mass of frightened people. He saw the men coming down the hall, searching in each room along the way.

Out on the fire escape they were greeted by cool night air. Fresh air had never felt so good. Alex was a little surprised to find himself giddy with relief to be out of the place. For a long time he had feared that he would never again be free. He wished that his mother could have tasted freedom with him.

Jax leaned closer to him so she could whisper as they made their way down the metal steps along with what seemed like hundreds of other people. “When we get to the ground we need to run before those men can find us. I don’t think that I have enough strength left to fight them.”

They slowed at a landing, inching ahead, waiting for the congested line of people to start moving more quickly again. “I need the keys to the truck,” he reminded her.

“But the keys are inside.” She knew what he was thinking and clearly didn’t like the idea. “We’d have to go back in. Now that we’re out, when we get to the ground, let’s just run.”

“You can hardly stand anymore. How far do you think you can run? Where will we go on foot? How can we get away? We can’t hide—they’ll be looking everywhere for us. We need the truck to get away—as far away as possible.”

As the line started shuffling ahead a little faster, Alex heard glass breaking. He glanced up and saw flames roar out of the windows on the top floor. Thick smoke swirled out into the darkness.

He also saw two men dressed in white pushing past people to get down the stairs faster.

“We need to get down, now,” he whispered to Jax.

She glanced up and, seeing the men coming for them, stayed close behind him as he started gently nudging people aside so that the two of them could get by. He needed to keep distance between them and the men coming after them, but at the same time he didn’t want to make it too obvious lest the men spot him and Jax running.

Alex excused himself to the people on the stairs, repeating along the way that he needed to help patients on the ground.

The descent of the seven flights of metal stairs, even pushing past people, seemed like it was taking forever. Alex kept track of the distance back to the men hunting them. The men were getting closer all the time, because they were far rougher about pushing people out of the way. At least most people, when they saw the white coats he and Jax were wearing and heard his repeated explanation, did their best to let them by.

A lot of the patients were petrified to be up on the rickety metal fire-escape stairs at night. They held on to the railing for dear life, inching along at a snail’s pace. They bottlenecked the people above them trying to get down. Jax gently but firmly lifted the hands of more than one person from the railing and with encouragement and reassurance got them moving.

From his vantage point up on the stairs among the confused people making what they considered to be a terrifying descent, he gazed out over throngs of people screaming, crying, running, wandering aimlessly, even sitting down, in the middle of a near-stampede. The thought occurred to him that he couldn’t imagine a scene any more chaotic than mental patients trying to escape a fire.

Irrational people in the hundreds were unable to cope with the necessary but simple task of getting away from a burning building. Half of them, it seemed, were crying for help and waiting for it to show up rather than escape the area.

Pushing past the frightened people on the stairs, Alex and Jax finally made it to the ground. They found themselves in the rear of the hospital among hundreds of people all rushing about in confusion. In the distance people were also pouring down emergency stairs from other areas of the institution.

There were a few orderlies and nurses trying to organize the patients and tell them where they needed to go. There were patients who were staying at the hospital for less serious conditions and some of them, too, were trying to help their fellow patients away from the burning building. There were a few people, driven by insanity, who, like salmon trying to swim upstream, were trying to push their way up the stairs against the flow of people coming down.