As he read through the handwritten pages, one style of penmanship began to dominate with great sloping paragraphs of notes. The doctor’s comparatively tidy block letters became more of a hectic scrawl. At times the ballpoint had actually gouged little holes in the triplicate sheet where he’d been logging Snow’s progress. Other times, whoever was writing it seemed to begin a sentence and then stop midway through, slashing out entire thoughts with a single stroke.

Mike flipped another page and looked down at a rat’s nest of handwriting, nearly illegible now: Pt. worsening, febrile with diminished BP, recommend more aggressive treatment in light of steadily deteriorating mental status. Correlate with—

Mike flipped the page over, but there was no more.

Someone had removed it.

34.

“Please…”

Calhoun heard the voice crying out on his way upstairs, just past the fifth-floor stairwell. It was little more than a stifled croak but it carried through the emptiness just the same.

“Help me.”

He froze on the landing, realization soaking through him in a crimson stain, and nudged the stairwell door aside and listened again.

“For God’s sake…someone, please…”

When he’d first heard the voice he had been on his way topside to gain access to the roof, having ruled out his only other option, which was the underground tunnel in the basement. There was no way he was going down into that long, dark tunnel—if Snow caught him in there he’d have no way out. The roof at least offered the comfort of starlight and relatively unobstructed terrain where he could wait out the rest of the night. And if worse came to worst, he could jump.

The voice cried: “Is anyone here?”

Calhoun cat-eyed his way down the hallway, using his peripheral vision, where he’d heard there were more rods and cones, or something. He didn’t know these floors like he did the downstairs and didn’t trust his radar enough to move forward, but he found himself inching along just the same, little by little, a man on a narrow ledge. His hands slithered ahead along the wall, letting his fingers do the walking, doing a Helen Keller routine for the railing.

All at once a bright light snapped on in his face, making him cringe back and throw up his hands to protect his eyes.

“Who are you?” a voice asked.

Calhoun lowered his hands, squinting, pupils shrinking. The old woman hunched in front of him had one hand fastened to her IV pole and the other locked onto an ancient silver flashlight that looked like it might’ve been new with Nixon. Her familiar green eyes were milky with cataracts, and her hair was a flamboyant iron wreck that stuck up and out like an old cat that couldn’t decide whether it was going to jump.

Then Calhoun saw her mouth, puckered around the absence of dentures, and her face came together.

“Ma?”

“Stevie?” She shuffled toward him, gripping the flashlight. “Is that you?”

“I’m not seeing this.”

“What’s happening?” she asked. “Where is everybody? Where’s my nurse?”