Richard by Aelius Blythe Page B

over his shoulder.
    The desk woman rubbed the edge of one nail
against her thumb then went back to filing.
    He'd find what he needed himself.
    Richard turned his back on them and wandered
down the hall.
    What now?
    His feet kept moving. It was a hospital – it
had to have something . He kept moving, without a strategy,
walking and walking and walking down the glowing hallways, past
rooms with doctors, rooms with empty beds, rooms with bored looking
nurses and tables and TVs. And he kept walking. There had to
be something. Something useful...
    Finally, finally, he saw it:
    Department of Supplies
    He'd just turned round a corner, and there it
was. He smiled at the sign – giant black letters hanging above a
second set of sliding glass doors. He tried not to trip over his
own feet as he almost ran towards it.
    He smiled and nodded to the two big men
standing on either side of the doorway. The doors slid open, and
the sound of a hundred printers churning away filled the hallway.
Richard jogged gratefully towards the noise.
    An arm from one of the big men shot out and
barred his way.
    "Can I..." Richard gestured to the
warehouse-sized space beyond the glass doors.
    "What d'you want?" the man with the
outstretched arm asked. His voice was very deep.
    "I need some bandages," Richard explained,
craning his neck to look into the Department, trying to spot what
he needed. "And some antiseptic. My friend got cut up when our sh–
um, when–when we... we had a crash. I just need to get him
som–"
    "License?" The man cut off Richard's
babbling.
    Richard looked up at him. "What?"
    "License?"
    "Um." What? "Um, I don't have–"
    "No license, no supplies."
    The other guard, the one who had stood still
like a silent rock up until now, reached out and shoved against
Richard's left shoulder.
    "Out," he growled.
    "Wait, I just–"
    "Out," the rock-like guard growled again.
    The other guard moved to plant himself right
in front of the doorway, arms crossed.
    "No license, no supplies."
    "But I just–"
    The rock-like guard grabbed Richard by his
upper arms and spun him around to face the hallway, then pushed him
hard between the shoulder blades.
    "Out."
    "But I don't even need–" Richard turned back
to the sliding doors.
    "Out."
    With another shove, the silent guard pushed
Richard away from the doors. Richard stumbled backwards. One hand
on the wall, he steadied himself, straightened his t-shirt with the
other hand and stared open-mouthed at the two men in front of them.
They stared impassively back.
    So Richard turned away from the guards and
the supplies he needed.
    "Fine," he said as he walked away, peeking
over his shoulder until he was around the corner.
    And he was back to wandering randomly through
the cheerfully glowing hallways.
    It's a hospital. There must be supplies
laying around somewhere.
    His feet moved over the spotless hallway
floors, carrying him around corner after corner. More doctors and
nurses sat in boring-looking rooms, sleeping and depressed looking
patients lay in beds here and there and one green-shirted man
mopped a floor.
    There must be something...
    And then there was.
    At the end of the hall, just sitting there: a
rolling cart, and on top of it a high pile of neatly curled
bandages in sealed plastic. Underneath were little bottles, some
with labels he couldn't understand, some with the labels he'd been
hoping for: antiseptic .
    Richard jogged towards it.
    He picked up a bandage from the top of the
cart.
    "What do you want?"
    Richard jumped and dropped the bandage back
onto the stack. "What?" He looked around.
    A very annoyed-looking face was peaking
around the doorway of what looked like an exam room.
    Richard pointed at the bandage he'd dropped.
"Can I see that?"
    "What for?"
    "I just want to see it. Can I–"
    "You need a bandage, you see a doctor. You
need to see a doctor, you wait your turn."
    "But–"
    "You wait your turn. You don't just go
grabbing supplies. Go on, back to the waiting room."
    "I'm not taking