The Law of Nines

The nurses’ station was staffed by three nurses, all engaged in a light conversation with an orderly sitting at a desk to the side. Charts and a jumbled stack of files sat on the desk. When they saw the somber group enter their station on the way through, they made themselves busy.

The women’s ward on the ninth floor was just as dark as the men’s wing had been. The small group paused when Alex’s mother unexpectedly shuffled out of the bathroom. She was wearing pajamas and a pink robe that Alex had given her. She only briefly glanced in their direction before yawning and turning back toward her room. She had looked at Alex, along with the rest of the party, but he didn’t think she had recognized him.

When she had shuffled down the hall and turned in to her room without looking back, Henry shoved Alex into the women’s bathroom. It was better lit than the hall so that patients could use the bathroom in the night if they needed to. A sign saying “Out of Order” was taped to the shower door.

A nurse leaning against the wall unfolded her arms and looked down at her watch. “You’re early.”

“What difference does it make?” the doctor snapped.

She shrugged. “Just that Yuri isn’t here yet. I had Dwayne stay late to let Yuri in when he gets here.”

Dwayne was the security guard inside the back door Alex always used. As he waited, Alex stood slump-shouldered, trying to act passive. With the way the orderlies stood at ease, it seemed to be working. If only he could slow down his galloping heart.

Henry came forward, pulling out the keys attached to the reel on his belt. “We don’t need Yuri to get started.”

“What was Helen Rahl doing in here?” the doctor asked as Henry worked the lock.

“Taking a pee,” the nurse said.

As the doorway leading into the shower opened, Alex could see that only one light was on. The cavelike room beyond had a ghostly cast to it. He thought that it looked like a place where death itself waited.

His heart felt like it came up in his throat when he saw Jax still hanging there. In addition to the blindfold, she was now gagged with a cloth through her mouth and tied behind her head. She trembled slightly. It was clear that she was having a lot of trouble breathing. She had to push up on her toes as best she could to draw each ragged breath. Her arms shook with each effort.

Alex was so enraged that it was hard for him to focus on where everyone was around him. He reminded himself that he had to keep track of where everyone was or he could be blindsided. Surprises could be deadly. He had to take a measure of the situation and not make a reckless mistake. He couldn’t afford a mistake.

Jax couldn’t afford a mistake.

The nurse dragged a straight-backed wooden chair from the side. The chair’s feet stuttered across the tile floor, the sound echoing around in the shower. She set the chair in the center of the room, not far in front of Jax. Alex remembered seeing Jax’s clothes thrown to the side, but he didn’t remember seeing the chair before.

Henry, grinning with anticipation, pulled off the blindfold. Jax squinted and blinked at the sudden light, even though the light wasn’t bright. She took appraisal of everyone in the room. When she met Alex’s gaze there was a world of meaning, a shared understanding, in that silent connection.

Henry slid his hand down her belly and between her legs. “Getting eager for me, aren’t you?”

Alex thought the deadly glare Jax gave him should have backed him up a few steps, but it didn’t.

Henry, obviously enjoying his control over her, probed further as he used his other hand to pull the gag from her mouth. He let it hang around her neck. “Oh, sorry.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“You’re already dead,” she told him. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Henry removed his hand from between her legs and put it over his heart in mock alarm. “Really? Don’t tell me, you intend to kill me?”

By the look in her eyes Alex could see that her rage easily matched his. She let that lethal look be her only answer.

“Did you find Alice?” the nurse asked, tiring of the game Henry was playing.

The doctor gestured irritably. “No one has seen her.”

“We looked everywhere,” Henry said as he turned his attention away from Jax, “and like the doc says, there’s no sign of her. She’s vanished.”

Jax’s gaze immediately sought Alex. He smiled the smallest bit in answer to the question in her eyes. A hint of a smile came to the corners of her mouth. In that smile he could see that she grasped that he’d had something to do with Alice’s disappearance.

But then she had to close her eyes with the effort of pulling herself up with her arms as she stretched on her tiptoes to get a breath. Alex could see how mightily she was struggling to fight back panic at not being able to breathe.

“Maybe she went back for some reason,” Henry suggested.