He stopped. He imagined it. Ricky called for him, confused, but Gabriel stood there, lost in his thoughts.

Then he made his decision.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Gabriel never called back. I tried Ricky again but continued getting the “customer unavailable” message. In desperation, I dialed Gabriel’s number forty minutes later, only to find that I had no reception.

Maybe he tried to call.

That wasn’t it. I’d checked for messages every few minutes as I’d wandered the hospital, the endless halls and sequences of rooms that only ever brought me back to the cribs. My phone worked fine then.

When I realized he wasn’t calling, I’d thought of dialing someone else. Anyone else. Hell, 911 if it would help.

Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?

I’m lost.

Where are you?

In an abandoned hospital. I can give you directions, but I don’t think you could find me even if I did.

I had to get myself out of this. Only I couldn’t. Walk in any direction and I ended up back with the cribs. I’d tried staying there, in case there was more for me to see, trapped in a performance where the exit doors wouldn’t open until the final curtain call. But the same scenes had repeated over and over.

“Okay!” I finally shouted. “It was Pamela. Todd was the innocent one. I get it. And also, you’d like me to kill myself. I get that, too. Not happening!”

No one answered, of course. Ricky had long since stopped shouting for me, if it ever had been Ricky at all, and not just a phantom voice. If it hadn’t been Ricky, where was he? Was he all right?

Those were just the kind of thoughts that sent my brain flapping madly, like a bird in a too-small cage. I’d told Gabriel that I felt as if I might go mad in here. I’d been trying to joke—hey, if it gets any worse, I’ll belong here, permanently, heh-heh—but it was no joke. I kept thinking about Isolde and seeing those words, feeling the truth of them, along with the very possible truth that I wasn’t in the hospital at all but had already gone mad, and that’s why Ricky wouldn’t answer and Gabriel wouldn’t call back. I was trapped in the prison of my mind, and there was, indeed, no escape.

Finally, I did what I would have sworn I’d never do.

I gave up.