Free Red Girl Rat Boy by Cynthia Flood Page B

dumpsters’ fermenting odour, but it rose again with the sun. The crows didn’t attend Crafts to explore playdough’s tactile pleasures, nor squeeze remotes with bleeding claws. They strutted about squawking while the rats and their babies snoozed in the warm dark rimmed with gold. Yearling gulls chased an eagle until, bored, it soared so its pursuers heeled away down the air.
    Sally grumped, “Can’t the bloody Wanderer get on with it?”
    In the elevator, the Boss Lady lectured Annabel. The resident crossed her eyes.
    Lorraine received from the Wanderer an Ambrosia apple and a photo of a willow-edged river curving away. At bedtime, a nurse checked her vitals. Her roommates didn’t let their eyes meet.
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    Thursday, flower-arranging
    Muggy. Rain forecast.
    Lorraine lay on a gurney by 17-A’s door, helpless before a doctor’s order for a bedsore treatment over in the hospital.
    Annabel stroked her roommate’s hand.
    Sally adjusted her walker. Too high. Too low.
    â€œFuck!” she shouted.
    As if signalled, the TV in 17-B burst out In the criminal justice system, the volume rising to a bellow for police, who investigate crime. The Wanderer exited, holding a flag. Snapping it downward, she raced for the nurses’ station.
    Lily ran towards the roaring These are their stories, but Lorraine extended one arm off the gurney. She got the aide across the diaphragm.
    Winded, Lily fell.
    Sally threw herself upon her walker so it and she collapsed, then screamed.
    Officer down! Teevee-gal laughed. Her rictus turned to hiccups as she handed the remote to Annabel. Bang bang, gunshots. Two dead here.
    Annabel scooted to the linens while aides, LPNs, even a nurse responded to Sally’s cries.
    Lorraine sobbed. Her arm drooped from the gurney.
    Just a kid, roared Jerry Orbach.
    A black kid way out of his neighbourhood, Chris Noth sneered. Of course he had to die.
    To the staff crowded into 17-B, Orbach blared Where’s justice?
    â€œLook, Teevee-gal’s laughing!”
    â€œWho knew she could?”
    A shout, “You won’t tell where it is, will you? You bad girl,” laughing.
    â€œVery bad!” Pats on the tattered fingertips.
    In the hall, an LPN bent to Lorraine. The Boss Lady glanced their way but stalked on into 17-B, grasped the TV’s cord, traced it to the outlet, pulled.
    Silence.
    â€œNo one thought of that?”
    Hiccups racked Teevee-gal.
    â€œOr noticed this? You, attend to her. You, get rid of that TV. Shove it out the window for all I care. I’ll page a doctor,” gesturing at Lorraine. “The rest of you, back to work! No one’s at the nurses’ station.”
    Lily got to her feet.
    There came the noise of a truck grinding into gear.
    â€œFucking great!” Sally shouted from across the hall.
    â€œDid you hear me?”
    Obedience cleared the room.
    Lorraine almost welcomed her pain, as suggesting a correctable mechanical wrong, and waited calmly for the analgesics to kick in, while hearing Sally’s tale. Scrambled, yes—yet she and Annabel saw just how staff had huddled by jumbled human and metal limbs while the unseen Wanderer reached the window, her whir-whir inaudible under Law and Order.
    Out flew the blue files, three, four, twelve, butterflies shedding hundreds of white inner wings as they tumbled. Twinkling paperclips, staples. Screech of plunging gulls. The truck heaved up the dumpster so its maw could vomit out all waste, everyone—but the Wanderer didn’t stay to see that.
    Sally finished telling just as the nurses’ station broke into uproar.
    â€œScore!” cried Annabel.
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    Friday, baking
    Overnight, the skunky vehicle stayed in the parking lot as the soft persistent summer rain of the West Coast began to fall. At dawn, animals drank. Birds stepped through puddles, shook rainbows off their wings.
    With her trolley, Lily entered the watery light of 17-A. One woman had a bandaged