Free Pool of Crimson by Suzanne M. Sabol

with my firm grasp. It wasn’t hard since she was already weak from blood loss and pain. “We’re not going out that way,” I said softly as I motioned toward another door. I explained as I walked with her arm tightly tucked underneath my own. “For those who know, there’s more than one way to get in and out of the emergency room. The hospital buildings are all connected by a series of tunnels.” I smiled, trying to reassure her. She didn’t smile back. She looked like she was in pain and trying to hide it. The farther we walked, the more her expression reflected that pain and the slower our pace.
    “You think they followed us here,” she said with a hint of anxiety in her voice. It wasn’t a question.
    “It’s just a precaution but if it were me and I’d just tried to run someone off the road, I’d wanna check. We came in the Emergency Department but we don’t have to leave that way. We’ll go up to the main hospital and leave from there. There are usually a few cabs waiting at the main entrance anyway. We won’t have to wait.”
    “Oh.” She was quiet for a long time as we made our way through the tunnels. I imagine it was a longer walk than she’d suspected.
    The tunnels always gave me the creeps, helped by the florescent lights in a long line against the ceiling giving a greenish tint to everything. The tunnels were thousands of dark gray cinder blocks lining almost a half a mile of tunnels, giving it a cold prison feel and like prison, there was no way out except the other end.
    Jade looked just as uncomfortable in the long, dreary hallway. Her eyes darted from side-to-side and occasionally over her shoulder back down the long empty corridor. The only sound in the tunnel was the click, click, click of our heels on the cement beneath our feet.
    “Can I stay with you tonight?” Jade whispered, but her quivering voice seemed to echo in the emptiness of the tunnel, bouncing off cold walls and green tinted floors.
    “Yeah, sure,” I said with a quick look over my own shoulder.
    I caught a glance of her from the corner of my eye. She looked shaken, her body stiff and her breathing shallow with shock but she tried to hide it.
    How could I be thinking about letting her stay in my house? She was a complete stranger and being involved with me had almost cost Jade her life. But she could think on her feet and I liked her. I only had Amblan. I was selfish, and I didn’t care. I’d gone so long, alone and alienated. I just wanted a little time where I wasn’t alone anymore. Just a little time and then I could go back to being alone.
    “I want to help,” she said softly as we made our way through the door to the main hospital. I wanted her help. Hell, I needed her help. I didn’t know shit about herbs and amulets and as blasé as she was about the subject and how she only did it to piss her dad off, she was good at it.
    “I’ll think about it. We’ll see how things look in the morning,” I said after a long pause. I was too tired, more than a bit shaken, and too far out of my element to trust my own judgment. I changed the subject instead.
    “That police officer seemed to know you,” I said as I watched her out of the corner of my eye.
    “Yeah,” she said as she bit her top lip and quickly looked away. We’d reached the admission’s waiting room. “You know that story I told you about the bad date and the bathroom?” she asked sheepishly.
    “Him, really?” I said in amazement as the laughter bubbled up again.
    “Yeah,” she said, sadness deepening her sultry alto to something deeper.
    We reached the hospital’s main entrance after what seemed like an eternity with the smell of ammonia in my nose. Thankfully, there was a cab already waiting. We got in quickly as I glanced over the roof of the car and scoped around for anything that sent my internal warning system off. It all seemed too clean or too sloppy, I couldn’t decide which. Maybe I wasn’t a big enough threat to worry about.