She didn’t give him a chance to reply. The tires spun against the gravel and the windshield wipers squealed to life. Dr. Begbie rolled up her window with a friendly wave, using her other hand to steer the car back and pull out of the parking space. The little green numbers on the dashboard read 2:45 a.m.
“Try to cover your face as much as possible,” she muttered before flicking on the radio. I didn’t recognize the song, but I recognized David Gilmour’s voice, and the ebb and flow of Pink Floyd’s synthesizers.
She turned the volume down, taking a deep breath as she turned out of the lot. Her fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel.
“Come on, come on,” she whispered, glancing down at the clock again. There was a line of two cars in front of us, each waved forward with agonizing slowness. I thought she was going to crawl out of her skin by the time the last car pulled forward into the night.
Dr. Begbie hit the gas too hard and the Jeep lurched forward. The seat belt snapped into a locked position when she slammed on the brakes, knocking the air out of my chest.
She rolled the window down, but I was too tired to be afraid. I pressed my hand over my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. The surgical mask brushed against my lips.
“I’m taking Dr. Rogers home. Let me just get her passes—”
“It’s fine. I have you on the schedule for tomorrow at three p.m., is that correct?”
“Yes. Thank you. Please indicate Dr. Rogers will not be in.”
“Understood.”
I was too tired to try to control my brain’s wandering fingers. When Dr. Begbie touched me again, brushing the hair out of my face, an image bloomed to life behind my eyes. A dark-haired man, smiling broadly, with his arms around Dr. Begbie, spinning her, and spinning her, and spinning her, until I could hear her delighted laughter in my ears.
Cate cracked our windows, and the air rushing by brought in the scent of rain and carried me quickly into sleep.
SIX
IT WAS STILL DARK OUT when I opened my eyes.
The AC blew through the vents, batting at the little yellow cardboard tree hanging down from the rearview mirror. Its vanilla fragrance was sickeningly sweet and so overwhelming that it turned my empty stomach. Mick Jagger crooned next to my ear, singing about war and peace and shelter—those kinds of lies. I tried to turn my face away from wherever the song was escaping from, but I only managed to smack my nose against the window and strain my neck.
I sat straight up and almost hanged myself on the gray seat belt.
We weren’t in the Jeep anymore.
The night came back like a deep breath, complete and overwhelming all at once. The glow of the green dashboard lit the scrubs I wore, and that was enough to flood my mind with the reality of what had happened.
Smears of trees and undergrowth lined a road that was completely dark, save for the small car’s weak yellow headlights. For the first time in years, I could see the stars that Thurmond’s monstrous lights had faded into nonexistence. They were so bright, so clear that they couldn’t have been real. I didn’t know what was more shocking—the endless stretch of road or the sky. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes.
“Don’t forget to breathe, Ruby,” came the voice beside me.
I pulled the surgical mask down from over my mouth as I looked over. Dr. Begbie’s blond hair was around her face, sweeping against her shoulders. In the time it had taken us to get from Thurmond to…wherever we were, she had stripped off her scrubs and changed into a black T-shirt and jeans. The night stained the skin under her eyes like bruises. I hadn’t noticed the sharp angles that made up her nose and chin.
“You haven’t been in a car for some time, huh?” She laughed, but she was right. I was more aware of the forward lurch of the car than I was of my own heartbeat.
“Dr. Begbie—”
“Call me Cate,” she interrupted, a bit harsher than before. I don’t know if I reacted to the abrupt change of tone or not, but she immediately followed with, “I’m sorry, it’s been a very long night and I could use a cup of coffee.”
According to the dashboard, it was 4:30 a.m. I had only had two hours of sleep, but I felt more alert than I had all day. All week. All my life.
Cate waited until the Rolling Stones had finished out their song before turning down the radio. “All they play are oldies now. I thought it was a joke at first, or something Washington wanted, but apparently that’s all that gets requested these days.” She snuck a look at me out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Dr.—Cate,” I said. Even my voice was stronger. “Where are we? What’s going on?”
Before she could answer, there was a cough from the backseat. I twisted around despite the pain in my neck and chest. Curled up there in a protective little ball was another kid, about my age, or maybe a year younger. That other kid. Max—Matthew—whatever—from the Infirmary, and he was looking far better than I felt as he slept on.
“We just left Harvey, West Virginia,” Cate said. “That’s where we met with some friends that helped me switch cars and remove Martin back there from the medical trunk we had to smuggle him out in.”
“Wait…”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Cate said quickly. “We made sure it had air holes.”
Like that was my biggest concern?
“They just let you take it out to the car?” I asked. “Without even checking it?”
She glanced at me again, and I was proud of the look of surprise there. “The doctors at Thurmond use those trunks to transport medical waste. The camp controllers started forcing the doctors to dump the waste themselves when the budget got cut. Sarah and I had duty for this week.”
“Sarah?” I interrupted. “Dr. Rogers?”
She hesitated a split second before nodding.
“Why did you tie her up—why did she—why are you helping us?”
She answered my question with one of her own.
“Have you ever heard of the Children’s League?”
“Bits and pieces,” I said. And only in whispers. If the rumors were true, they were an antigovernment group. They were the ones the younger kids—the later arrivals to Thurmond—claimed were trying to take down the camp system. The ones that supposedly hid kids so they couldn’t be taken. I had always assumed they were our generation’s version of a fairy tale. Nothing that good could ever be true.