The nurse - the same one who’d admitted me that morning - stayed in my room for twenty minutes. Fifteen for her to re-appraise my condition and take note of my dramatic decline. And five for me to subtly pick her brains about the whereabouts of any other new arrivals. Because it seemed to me that anyone with a mind to help themselves to other people’s property would want to get in early, while the richest pickings were still available. Like they’d done to me. So if I wanted to track them down, the new patients’ rooms would be a good place to start. Which was fine, in theory. It only had one snag. The nurse told me that no one else had been brought in for four days. And as the unit only catered for trauma patients, it wasn’t possible to predict when any more would arrive. Unless I went out and bashed someone over the head, I thought, but that seemed a little extreme. I kept on pressing, but the best lead she could give me was that there were only two empty rooms left. They were both at the far end of the corridor below mine.
The rooms were easy to find. They were opposite one another, and you could tell they were still not being used because their doors were propped open and you could look inside. The nurse had told me they always filled these ones last, because their location made them the least convenient for the staff to reach. But that also made it impossible for me to stake them out. There was no cover of any kind. Any potential thieves would see me a mile off, so I decided to scour the rest of the hospital for anything useful, then come back and check on developments.
One area I didn’t have a clear picture of was the top floor of the admin wing. The MRI technician had mumbled something about steering clear of it, so I decided to head there next. I thought his warning referred to boredom when I peered through the first few doors. An abandoned classroom, choked with dust. Two storerooms, with half their shelves left empty. A cupboard, full of filing boxes. And then I found what he must have really meant. Tucked away in the far corner, hidden behind an unmarked door, was a kind a macabre museum full of grotesque anatomical specimens in ancient glass jars.
A breath of fresh air seemed like a good idea in the circumstances, so I made my way to the nearest exit and stepped outside into the garden. The ground was strewn with twigs and branches. There must have been a storm recently. A big one, judging by the amount of debris. I hadn’t known anything about it. Maybe it had happened when I was over in Luxembourg. Or before that, in Tokyo. But either way it had passed me by. The thought made me strangely uncomfortable so I made for one of the benches that lined the path around the centre of the lawn and perched on the edge, suddenly feeling sickened, and almost light headed. If I was unaware of something simple, like the state of the weather in my home city, what else was I in the dark about? What else was I missing about the place? And what about the people? What was going on with them? Was I perpetually bouncing from country to country, putting myself in harm’s way on their behalf, just so they could rob each other blind? Steal from me? Fill their veins with drugs? Or carry on like the family on that TV show?
I woke up in the dark. I was lying on my back. On a bed, but not under the covers. Still wearing my pyjamas and slippers. My head was back to normal, and no other parts of me were showing any signs of damage, so I sat up and waited for my night sight to adjust. Objects and shadows gradually took shape around me, and after a couple of minutes I realised I was back in my hospital room. I tried to focus, and managed to coax a few vague pictures out of my recent memory. I was fairly certain I could recall getting up from the bench in the garden. Picking my way through the detritus. Coming in through the main entrance to the north building. Hauling myself up two flights of stairs. Drifting down the corridor, making doubly sure I selected the right door. And doing something else. What was it? The curtains. For some reason I’d closed them before lying down. I felt my way across to the window and tugged them apart again. They must have been thicker than I’d realised because with the street lights on it turned out to still be fairly bright outside. I turned and checked the clock on the wall above the bed. It was ten past six in the evening. I’d only been asleep for around an hour. That wasn’t too serious. And it wasn’t too late. There was time to nip downstairs, check the vacant rooms, and still be back in time for dinner. If there was anything on the menu worth eating.
I could tell from the second I stepped into the lower corridor that something was different. The shadows at the far end had changed. One of the doors - the one on the left - had been closed. No one else was around so I approached, silently. I heard a voice from inside. A woman’s. Then another woman answered it. I didn’t recognise either one. A nurse, perhaps, or a doctor, speaking to a patient? A reasonable guess, I thought, but I had no way of knowing for sure. Not without seeing them. And I couldn’t afford for them to spot me, so I slipped into the empty room opposite, closed the door, and stooped down far enough to fit my eye to the peephole.
Nothing happened for eleven minutes, then the door I was watching swung open. A woman shuffled into the corridor. She was a nurse, but not the one who’d helped me, earlier. She took one step to her left and stopped, staring into the distance. Another thirty seconds ticked away, then she moved back and a man appeared. He was in his mid twenties, I’d guess. Thirty at the outside. It’s hard to be precise through a fish-eye lens. He was wearing a porter’s uniform. The material was faded and the trousers looked too tight in several places, but he didn’t seem concerned about it. The pair conferred for a minute, then disappeared into the room.
They were out of sight for less than a minute. The nurse re-appeared first. She positioned herself near the hinges and reached back into the room to stop the door from closing. Then I saw the porter again. And realised why the nurse had waited for him. The person I’d heard her talking to was using a wheelchair, and she wanted someone to help push it. But the patient’s condition wasn’t relevant. The important thing was - she was a new arrival.
All I had to do now was wait for the thief to show his face. That wouldn’t be too hard. Waiting is one thing I’ve had a lot of practice at. It’s easier than chasing. And that night, I was in luck. Because it took less than four minutes for my trap to spring shut.
I saw a man enter the room across the corridor. He was also dressed as a porter. Only his uniform was subtly different from the guy’s who’d been pushing the wheelchair. The material was in better condition. It looked brand new, in fact. It had no hospital logos. And it fitted him way too well.
I guessed from the mess he’d made in my room that the thief would only be inside for a couple of minutes, so I didn’t waste any time. And it wasn’t like I needed to catch him in the act. All I wanted was to get my boots back. I was planning to have the same conversation with him regardless of what he was doing when I walked through the door. So the fact that I found him sitting in a visitor’s chair, fiddling with the combination on a black leather briefcase was of no concern to me at all.