Read Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 02 - The School for Mysteries for Free Online

lobby.
    There were no benches anywhere to be seen. That was not good. Maybe she should’ve gone to the Emergency entrance, but she was trying to keep a low profile—very low, subterranean, in fact.
    She looked over at her passenger to make sure he was still alive. He was breathing, at least. They hadn’t spoken during the drive to the hospital. He’d seemed to faint almost as soon as he got into Leon’s truck. Whether it was from an injury or the shock of being forced out into wide-open spaces, she didn’t know. She’d had to fasten his seatbelt for him.
    Now she touched him on the shoulder to rouse him, and said, “Can you stand here while I park the car?”
    “Maybe,” he said in a husky voice.
    His eyes opened to little slits. Phoebe registered the color for the first time. They were a beautiful clear green.
    She threw the gearshift into park and ran around to let him out. She helped him hobble through the automatic doors and left him leaning against the wall in the little lobby while she ran back to the truck and drove it to a dark corner of the garage. She parked it next to a concrete pillar to hide it as well as she could.
    So far so good. She was no expert, but she didn’t think they’d been followed.
    Nick’s skin was a pale blue-gray by the time she got back to him. She hoped his pallor was due to the eerie anti-viral lights mounted on the wall and not an indication that he was bleeding to death internally.
    “It’s a long way to the Radiology Department,” Phoebe said, as she pressed the button to the elevator. “I’m sorry.”
    There was a ding to signal the arrival of a car. She draped his left arm over her shoulders, and said, “Try to act as normal as possible.”
    He grunted and nodded, then shuffled alongside her as she moved into the elevator. They went up three floors and then moved out into a long empty corridor. At first Phoebe was surprised that no one was around and then she realized it was Sunday afternoon and this was the building that housed the offices of the various medical specialists. They were all closed today.
    They slowly made their way toward the main part of the hospital. At one point they had to use a glass overpass to cross above a street. Nick shuddered the whole way across. When they approached a corridor where there were some people, he loosened his grip to a more affectionate, less desperate looking hold. But his pace slowed even more.
    Phoebe realized he wasn’t going to make it, so she commandeered an abandoned wheelchair left beside one of the exit doors and rolled him the rest of the way toward their destination. He sagged in the chair and Phoebe had to grab the back of his t-shirt a couple of times to keep him from falling forward into the floor.
    They had to pass through the central lobby at the hospital’s main entrance to get to the Radiology Department. They arrived at the automated double doors at same time a gurney was being rolled in, so they followed it inside.
    Phoebe searched her brain, trying to remember how to get to Charlie’s office. Nick didn’t look like he had more than a few minutes left in him.
    She heard someone call out behind her, “Stop!”
    She knew better than to look back, but she couldn’t help herself. A burley man dressed in blue jeans and a navy windbreaker was staring at her while talking into a fancy little radio. He was clearly not hospital security.
    Dang, they had people watching the hospitals.
    Phoebe shoved the wheelchair with all her might. She took the first turn she came to and pushed Nick at a flat out run. She couldn’t keep that up for long, though. It made a spectacle for one thing. Doctors and nurses only ran and screamed and acted like lunatics on television shows. Behavior like that would be highly detrimental to a real patient’s recovery.
    Phoebe needed to find a place to hide until she could figure out a way to get in touch with Charlie. She took another turn and then, miraculously, she realized where she