Lost by Gary; Devon Page B

the stark white walls flowing by as she passed from the dusky laundry room through the metal-plated swinging doors, up the six or eight steps of the shadowed vestibule, and to the right into the glare of the corridor where five doors away, five rooms on the left, was Mamie’s room.
    Now there was nothing to do but wait—wait in her old blue Buick parked in the darkest part of the lot as close to the laundry-room entrance as she could maneuver it without being conspicuously out in the open. She had backed the car up twice now to escape the moonlight, but she had gone as far as she could and the pale glow was catching in a glint on her hood ornament. She stared past it to the window with the speckled light.
    Weeks ago, when she bought the blue lampshade with the tiny cutout stars to brighten Mamie’s room, it hadn’t occurred to her that it would make a light in Mamie’s two windows unlike all the others; she’d bought the shade only because she thought the thin cones of light flying from the pinpoint cutouts might arouse a happy response in the child. Now she was waiting, her breath beginning to fog the windshield, for the speckled light to go out. That would be the first domino of the planned sequence.
    Long before there was reason to plot anything, she had become familiar with certain of the hospital’s night habits, and they would be used tonight as milestones: visiting hours for children ended at eight, adult patients could be visited till nine, then a brief onslaught of nursing activity followed, the taking in of night medications to patients, the plumping of pillows and turning off of lights, the good nights and sweet dreams. This ritual varied only slightly, although some nights it lasted longer than others. Somewhere around quarter to ten, the nurses would drift back to the central nurses’ station (where the three long corridors converged) for a last sip of coffee, to freshen their lipstick and comb their hair, to tease each other about the night still ahead, and to pull on sweaters and wraps, anxious to be relieved by the skeleton late-night shift at eleven. Unless one of the patients pushed his buzzer in the night, the corridors would be deserted until six the next morning. That’s when they would find Mamie missing.
    Although he had always infuriated her with his banging and clanging as he checked and locked and rechecked the exit doors, Leona in her planning had almost overlooked the nightwatchman, who made his rounds shortly after the last shift arrived at ten-thirty. So it was in those minutes of shift change and confusion, but before the rattling passage of the watchman, that she had to make her move.
    The speckled light in Mamie’s room went out. Leona turned the radio on without turning it up. She checked her watch by the ghostly radio light—ten till ten, right on time. Now her breath came heavier and deeper. She shut the radio off; the pale light blinked to black. The windshield became opaque with her breath, two bluish surfaces fogging up until she couldn’t see out. But, she thought, no one can see in either. She pulled on her cream-colored tam; then, squirming and raising her body under the steering wheel, she changed from her mink coat to a tan raincoat, too thin for this early November weather but practically invisible down a long corridor of doors. From a distance, it would be almost indistinguishable from a nurse’s uniform. On the seat beside her sat the shopping bag of clothes and the new white parka she had brought for Mamie to wear tonight, but it would take too long, would be too much trouble; and she stood out in the bristly cold air, easing the car door shut with only a click.
    Across the asphalt in her crêpe-soled nurse’s shoes, into the darkness of the laundry room, through the swinging doors into the shadowed vestibule—empty as expected. Then up the stairs to where the first-floor corridor began. She peered around the corner.