Like most children’s plots, though, this one was only partly thought out and not deeply considered. The idea was simply there, and when the opportunity came along it was available.
That opportunity came when a big fellow named Mike suggested hide-and-seek with the seekers to be the warders. The other “children” thought it a tremendous joke for all of them to hide in and around the ward and make the hospital people find them.
There was only one of the white-coated attendants watching them, half-heartedly, his bored mind on a lot of other things than this.
And now it was on. With a yell from Mike a bunch of them started running for the door where the attendant sat, leaning back on the rear legs of a folding chair. They caught him completely by surprise, deliberately bowling him over as they rushed to their hiding places.
He yelled, picked himself up, and ran through the entryway after them, screaming bloody murder. He ran right past Sandy O’Connell, not very well hidden behind some large metal cabinets stuck in the hall just inside the door. When he swept past and she saw she wasn’t discovered, she crept outside, looking for a new and better hiding place. Her eyes went to the fence and that telltale opening she’d discovered but shared with no one except Mr. Jinks. She headed for it, made it, and started trying to squeeze through.
For a while it was tough going; the jagged ends of the fence snared her flimsy hospital gown, which tore when she pulled the material away, and it hurt and scratched when she pressed on. She began to be afraid now, began to be afraid first that the attendant would come and see her and her secret would be lost, afraid, too, that she wasn’t going to make it, that she was going to be stuck between the fence and wall forever. She started to cry and tears welled up,but she kept at it, and suddenly, with a ripping sound, she was through and falling on her side, rolling down a grassy meadow.
She stopped at the bottom and lay still for a minute. A lot of little cuts stung, and she was still afraid, looking back up at the fence. There was no one in sight.
Finally she picked herself up and ran off toward the trees. Once there, she picked a big tree near the edge of the glade and looked back, fearfully. She could see the whole playground now, and still there was no one.
Now, suddenly, a couple of white-clad adult figures emerged and stalked around, looking over the sliding board and other kid’s apparatus. Satisfied that none of the “children” were hiding there, they took one last glance around and went back inside. Sandy O’Connell pressed back into the recesses of the tree as the men seemed to look her way, but when she peeked out again they were gone.
She turned and walked deeper into the forest, toward the small but fast-flowing stream she could hear, still clutching her teddy bear and suddenly preoccupied with other things a four-year-old would find fascinating on a warm summer day: flittering butterflies, pretty flowers, and a babbling brook.
The brook itself looked inviting, and she managed to get her sneakers off and wade in. The water was real cold, and she got out fast. The sneakers wouldn’t slip back on, though, and she didn’t know how to untie the laces to get them on, so she left them. The adult Sandra O’Connell would have followed the nearby road; the four-year-old Sandy followed the pretty if cold brook.
The chief of security was furious. “Crofton! Damn it! How could you have let this happen?”
Crofton, the attendant bowled over by his charges, looked sheepish.
“Jeez, boss, I was just sittin’ there, lookin’ at ’em, you know, when all of a sudden, pow! They all give a big yell and charge right at me! Hell, I didn’t know what was goin’ on until they hit me full and spilled me! Even so, it was only one of their kid’s games, you know, nothin’ serious.”
The security man stared at Crofton hard. “You have them all back in their rooms now?” he asked softly.
Crofton looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“Well, no, not exactly. A couple got all the way past the ward desk and out into the lobby. They were hell gettin’ back, let me tell you. We got all but one now, though. Looks like she managed to lose herself in the shuffle and got into the main hospital, but it’s only a matter of time, you know. After all, she’s only four in the head, you know.”
“Name?”
“O’Connell,” the attendant replied. “Nice-lookin’ broad, you know? A little older than I like ’em, but—”
“Can the evaluation,” snapped the security man impatiently. “You sure she’s still in the hospital? No chance of a breakout?”
“You know the exits are all guarded, and there’s the main gate, too. She didn’t get through there, so she must’ve got into the other wings.”
The security chief was dubious. “Show me where you lost her,” he ordered, getting up from behind his desk.
Eight attendants were still searching the “Children’s Wing” and many more the rest of the hospital when the chief of security and the hapless Crofton walked down the hall from his office to the exit to the playground.
All his life John Braden, now the security head, had played hunches. He was in a powerful position here, and he meant to keep it. Things had gone sour many times in his thirty-two-year government career, but never irrevocably so. He was good, and he knew it. Mistakes couldn’t be avoided in any situation; the trick was in making sure they didn’t get you.
The playground seemed innocuous enough. The fence itself was ten feet high, double-braided chain-link, not something you could easily climb. At the top were sharp barbs at the termination of every strand.
His eyes followed the fence all the way around, until it came back nine or more meters away to meet the brick side of the building. From any angle except almost on top of the juncture, it didn’t appear there was an opening.
Still, there was something that caught his eye, something that felt wrong. He walked down to where the fence met the building, Crofton following silently.
Braden spotted it almost immediately. Shards of light blue cloth were caught on the edges of the fence, and the ground dug up in the area of the opening.
“Jeez! You mean she got through there?” Crofton gasped. “But—that’s so small! She ain’t no big woman, but she’s got enough up front to—”
“Nevertheless, that’s what she did,” his boss said. “Back when I was with the federal prison system we had a guy over eighty-two kilos get out through a vent shaft less than three-quarters of a meter square.” He picked at the torn remnants of cloth.
“Let’s get going,” he told the attendant. “I want to see the outside here. You notify Region Security Command that we’ve had a break, then get Dr. Ahalsi to run a check on every one of the patients in the kiddie ward. I want to know if this was a planned break or not. I want Region to know if they’re dealing with a retard or a fully functioning adult.”
Crofton hesitated. “Jeez! Either way, she must be dirty and bruised and half-naked, with no money or nothin’. She sure shouldn’t be hard to spot and pick up.
“Get going, Pollyanna, before I commit you to this place!” Braden snapped acidly.
Crofton got going.
Following the water, Sandra O’Connell came to Lake Martha—not a big lake, but a nice, pretty blue one used by a number of people for trout fishing. It being mid-week, though, there was no one around when she got there.
She stood there for a moment just staring at the picture postcard scene, the girl-woman entranced by this new place. After a moment she went down to the lake, testing the water first this time to see if it was warm. It felt cool, but not cold, and she waded in a little, sat down in the water, splashed around and had a good time although Mr. Jinks got as wet as she did.