As the elevator rose, Pittman’s light-headedness increased. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, he strained to look natural and walked toward the intensive-care area. If Jill Warren came out, or the female doctor he’d spoken to earlier, he doubted that he’d have the strength to explain convincingly why he had returned.
But Pittman didn’t have another option. The intensive-care waiting room was the only refuge he could think of that he knew he could get to. Its lights had been dimmed. He veered left from the corridor, passed several taut-faced people trying to doze on the uncomfortable chairs, stepped over a man sleeping on the floor, and came to a metal cabinet in back.
The cabinet contained hospital pillows and blankets, Pittman knew. He had found out the hard way when Jeremy had been rushed to intensive care and Pittman had spent the first of many nights in the waiting room. A staff member had told him about the pillows and blankets but had explained that usually the cabinet was kept locked.
“Then why store the pillows and blankets in the cabinet if people can’t get to them?” Pittman had complained.
“Because we don’t want people sleeping here.”
“So you force them to stay awake in those metal chairs all night?”
“It’s a hospital rule. Tonight I’ll make an exception.” The staff member had unlocked the cabinet.
Now Pittman twisted the latch on the cabinet, found that it was locked, and angrily pulled out the tool knife Sean O’Reilly had given him. His hands trembled. It took him longer than it normally would have. But finally, using the lock picks concealed in the knife, he opened the cabinet.
Dizzy, nauseous, he lay among others in the most murky corner of the waiting room, a pillow beneath his head, a blanket pulled over him. Despite the hard floor, sleep had never come quicker or been more welcome. As he drifted into unconsciousness, he was dimly aware that others in the waiting room groped toward the pillows and blankets in the cabinet that he had deliberately left open.
He was disturbed only once-an elderly man waking a frail woman. “She’s dead, May. Nothin’ they could do.”