The Personal Heights
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 3:18 am
((Brendan Wallace continues from The Cavalry Arrives))
As soon as the nurse left the room and it looked like Jay was asleep, Brendan was on his feet. He grabbed his clothes and threw the hospital gown under his bed. A few painstaking minutes later he was in change of clothing number three. The only outfit he never wore on the island, the one he planned to wear back home, was now wrapped around his body, and that body was now heading out the door of the room.
He checked the corridors, no nurses or doctors or anyone. Good. Time to re-engage nightly ritual. Brendan held his sneakers in his hands and crept along the sleek shiny hospital floor in a pair of black socks in silence. The stairway was only a few doors down, luckily, but no risk should be taken when you're not supposed to be doing what you're doing.
There was only a few sets of stairs to the top of the building, where he'd gone every other night he could make it since he'd been well enough in the head to walk. He bound up the tile steps like his life depended on getting up there and seeing the fresh air. Every landing he'd stop. Sometimes he could swear he heard a sound, like a set of footsteps following him up the stairs. But as he hit the landing they stopped. Brendan parted it from his mind. Stairwells had a lot of echo, it was probably his own steps following him.
Finally he reached the roof, and like clockwork pulled out his wallet and the very same card used for this sort of thing ever since his youth. He gripped the door handle and inserted the laminate plastic into the crevice to the same familiar place. Just like he expected it to, the lock clicked, and Brendan pulled open the heavy door before grabbing the piece of wood he'd stuck beneath the gap in the doorway and the cement floor of the rooftop and inserting it into the newfound gap to keep it open.
He slipped his shoes on and strode through the doorway into the night air.
Sometimes, the Hospital garden just didn't do it. There was nothing that could keep him full inside like the night air, it was so familiar and such a feeling that you couldn't replicate. You weren't supposed to be on the roof, but Brendan didn't care. He needed this.
He strode towards the roof's edge and planted himself on the ledge he'd been accustomed to sitting on. There was so much of a risk of falling off and ending up on the sidewalk as though you never left the island. But that...
That wasn't much of a problem to him.
As soon as the nurse left the room and it looked like Jay was asleep, Brendan was on his feet. He grabbed his clothes and threw the hospital gown under his bed. A few painstaking minutes later he was in change of clothing number three. The only outfit he never wore on the island, the one he planned to wear back home, was now wrapped around his body, and that body was now heading out the door of the room.
He checked the corridors, no nurses or doctors or anyone. Good. Time to re-engage nightly ritual. Brendan held his sneakers in his hands and crept along the sleek shiny hospital floor in a pair of black socks in silence. The stairway was only a few doors down, luckily, but no risk should be taken when you're not supposed to be doing what you're doing.
There was only a few sets of stairs to the top of the building, where he'd gone every other night he could make it since he'd been well enough in the head to walk. He bound up the tile steps like his life depended on getting up there and seeing the fresh air. Every landing he'd stop. Sometimes he could swear he heard a sound, like a set of footsteps following him up the stairs. But as he hit the landing they stopped. Brendan parted it from his mind. Stairwells had a lot of echo, it was probably his own steps following him.
Finally he reached the roof, and like clockwork pulled out his wallet and the very same card used for this sort of thing ever since his youth. He gripped the door handle and inserted the laminate plastic into the crevice to the same familiar place. Just like he expected it to, the lock clicked, and Brendan pulled open the heavy door before grabbing the piece of wood he'd stuck beneath the gap in the doorway and the cement floor of the rooftop and inserting it into the newfound gap to keep it open.
He slipped his shoes on and strode through the doorway into the night air.
Sometimes, the Hospital garden just didn't do it. There was nothing that could keep him full inside like the night air, it was so familiar and such a feeling that you couldn't replicate. You weren't supposed to be on the roof, but Brendan didn't care. He needed this.
He strode towards the roof's edge and planted himself on the ledge he'd been accustomed to sitting on. There was so much of a risk of falling off and ending up on the sidewalk as though you never left the island. But that...
That wasn't much of a problem to him.