“The only movement you’ll be capable of performing is blinking. You won’t even be able to scream as you feel the cutting and sawing and drilling. Our fingers inside you. The surgery will take hours, and you will be alive, awake, and fully alert for every agonizing second of it. It’s the stuff of horror fiction.”

Ethan put his hand on the doorknob, the flush of the drug lifting now, enveloping his brain, flooding into the tips of his ears. He wondered how much more of this he could stand before his legs gave out.

Turn it slowly, Ethan. Turn it so, so slowly.

Tightening his grip on the doorknob, he waited for Nurse Pam to speak again, and when she finally did, he began to turn.

“I know you can hear my voice, Mr. Burke. I’m standing just outside the room where you’re hiding. Are you in the shower? Under the bed? Perhaps standing behind the door, hoping I’ll walk blindly past?”

She laughed.

The latch cleared.

He fully believed she was standing with her back to him, facing Beverly’s room, but if she wasn’t?

“You have ten seconds to come out, and then my generous offer of anesthesia will expire. Ten...”

He edged the door back.

“Nine...”

Three inches.

“Eight...”

Six inches.

He could see into the corridor again, and the first thing he spotted was the splash of auburn hair down Nurse Pam’s back.

She stood straight ahead of him.

“Seven...”

Facing Beverly’s door.

“Six...”

The needle gripped like a knife in her right hand.

“Five...”

He kept tugging the door back, letting it glide silently on the hinges.

“Four...”

Stopped it before it banged into the wall, now standing in the threshold.

“Three...”

He studied the floor to make sure he wasn’t throwing a shadow, but even if he had been, that flickering fluorescent bulb would have masked it.

“Two, and one, and now I’m angry. Very, very angry.” The nurse lifted something out of her pocket, said, “I’m down in the basement, west wing, pretty sure he’s here. I’ll wait until you arrive, over.”

A walkie-talkie belched static and a male voice answered, “Copy that, on our way.”

The drug was hitting Ethan hard now, his knees softening, his sight beginning to come off the rails in bursts of blurriness and double vision.

More people would be here momentarily.

He needed to do this now.

Telling himself go, go, go, but he wasn’t sure if he even had the strength or presence of mind.

He backed several steps into the room to lengthen his runway, took a long, deep breath, and went for it.

Seven paces covered in two seconds.

Collided into the nurse’s back at full speed, driving her across the corridor and slamming her face-first into the concrete wall.

It was a hard, devastating hit that had taken her completely off guard, and so the speed and accuracy of her reaction surprised him, her right arm swinging back, the needle stabbing him through the side.

Deep, penetrating, blinding pain.

He stumbled back, listing, unsteady on his feet.

The nurse spun around, blood sheeting down the right side of her face where it had met with the concrete, the needle cocked back, and charged him.

He could have defended himself if he’d been able to see worth a damn, but his eyesight was lagging, drawing images out across his field of vision like an ecstasy trip.

She lunged and he tried to parry back but misjudged the distance, the needle spearing him through the left shoulder.

The pain when she jerked it back out nearly brought him to his knees.

The nurse caught him with a perfectly placed front kick to the solar plexus, and the sheer force behind it punched him back into the wall and drove the breath out of his lungs. He’d never hit a woman in his life, but as Pam moved in for more, he couldn’t shake the thought that it would feel so satisfying to connect his right elbow with this bitch’s jaw.

His eyes locked on the needle in her hand, thinking, No more of that, please God.

Brought his arms up to defend his face, but they felt like boulders.

Sluggish and cumbersome.

The nurse said, “Bet you’re wishing you’d just come out when I asked nicely, huh?”

He lashed out at half speed with a wide-arcing hook that she easily ducked, firing back with a lightning-fast jab that rebroke his nose.

“You want the needle again?” she asked, and he would’ve charged, tried to get her on the floor, pin her underneath his weight, but proximity, considering the needle and his diminished senses, seemed like a bad idea.

Pam laughed, said, “I can tell you’re fading. You know, this is actually kind of fun.”

Ethan struggled to slide away against the wall, shuffling his feet to get out of range, but she tracked his movement, staying in front of him and aligned for another strike.

“Let’s play a little game,” she said. “I poke you with the needle, and you try to stop me.”

She lunged, but there was no pain.

Just a feint—she was toying with him.

“Now the next one, Mr. Burke, is going to—”

Something smashed into the side of her head with a hard thunk.

Pam hit the ground and didn’t move, Beverly standing over her, the frantic light blinking against her face. She still held the metal chair she’d dropped Nurse Pam with by its legs, looking more than a little shocked at what she’d done.

“More people are coming,” Ethan said.

“Can you walk?”

“We’ll see.”

Beverly tossed the chair aside and came over to Ethan as it clattered against the linoleum floor.

“Hold onto me in case your balance goes.”

“It’s already gone.”

He clung to Beverly’s arm as she pulled him along back down the corridor. By the time they’d reached the nurses’ station, Ethan was struggling just to put one foot in front of the other.

He glanced back as they rounded the corner, saw Nurse Pam struggling to sit up.

“Faster,” Beverly said.

The main corridor was still empty, and they were jogging now.

Twice, Ethan tripped, but Beverly caught him, kept him upright.

His eyes were growing heavy, the sedation descending on him like a warm, wet blanket, and all he wanted to do was find some quiet alcove where he could curl up and sleep this off.

“You still with me?” Beverly asked.

“By a thread.”

The door at the corridor’s end loomed fifty feet ahead.

Beverly quickened the pace. “Come on,” she said. “I can hear them coming down the stairwell.”

Ethan heard it too—a jumble of voices and numerous footsteps behind a door they passed leading to a set of stairs.

At the end of the corridor, Beverly jerked the door open and dragged Ethan across the threshold into a cramped stairwell whose six steps climbed to another door at the top, over which glowed a red EXIT sign.

Beverly paused once they were through, let it close softly behind them.

Ethan could hear voices on the other side filling the corridor, sounded like the footfalls were moving away from them, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Did they see us?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

It took all of Ethan’s focus to climb those final steps to the exit, where they crashed through the door and stumbled outside into darkness, Ethan’s feet on wet pavement and the patter of cold rain on his shoulders already beginning to seep through the paper-thin fabric of his gown.

He could barely stand and already Beverly was pulling him toward the sidewalk.

“Where are we going?” Ethan asked.

“To the only place I know they can’t find you.”

He followed her into the dark street.

No cars out, just a smattering of streetlights and houselights, everything dim and obscured by the rain.

They took the sidewalk down a quiet street, and after the second block, Ethan stopped and tried to sit down in the grass, but Beverly wouldn’t let him quit.