“No, this way.” Jenny took his arm and turned him around. The brown piece of paper fluttered on his shirt like a child's bib. Jenny tore it away and stuffed it in her jeans pocket.
The clear doors to the emergency room slid apart automatically as Jenny walked him in. The bright fluorescent lights gave the hospital an unreal, washed-out look.
Jenny brought her dad to the front desk, where a bored nurse looked up from a portable TV.
“Yes?” the nurse asked.
“Hi,” Jenny said. “This is my dad.”
Jenny's dad stood beside her, fidgeting and looking around the waiting room, but not doing anything obvious to indicate his confused state.
“Yes?” the nurse asked.
“He's really off,” Jenny said. “Like not making any sense.”
“Sir?” the nurse said. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Huh?” He had troubled focusing on her—his head kept moving around. “Just looking for my wife.”
“She's been dead eighteen years,” Jenny whispered to the nurse. “Almost nineteen.”
“Is he on medication?” The nurse looked her dad up and down with a hint of disgust. “Or drugs? Alcohol?”
“Nothing like that,” Jenny said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
The nurse nodded and handed her a stack of forms on a clipboard. “Fill these out. We'll need your insurance information.”
“Um...” Jenny said.
“You do have insurance, don't you?”
“Maybe. Dad, let me see your wallet.”
Her dad stared at a framed photograph on the wall, which showed a decrepit old general store with a prominent Coca-Cola sign. He seemed lost inside it. Jenny poked his arm.
“Huh?” he asked.
“Your wallet.” Jenny held out her hand. “Give me your wallet.”
“Oh. Okay.” He took his wallet out and held it in her general direction. Jenny took it from his hand.
“You gonna give that back, right?” he asked.
“Yes, Dad.” She flipped through the wallet for a minute. “I can't find anything about health insurance.”
“Indigent,” the nurse sighed. “Go have a seat and fill out those forms. Someone will see you when they're available.”
“Okay, thanks.” Jenny led her dad to the row of hard plastic seats in the waiting room. She couldn't make him sit, so she let him stand where he was, gawking at everything.
Jenny filled in all the information she could, looking up frequently to make sure he hadn't wandered off. He was trembling and shuffling his feet around, but he seemed a bit calmer now.
After fifteen minutes, she returned the clipboard of forms to the nurse.
“Have a seat,” the nurse said. She seemed a lot colder now, having determined that Jenny's dad might be poor and uninsured.
Jenny sat. She reached into the pocket where she'd put her dad's cell phone. The crumpled brown paper was on top of it, so she had to pull that out first. She'd been in such a panic that she hadn't really looked at it.
Now she unfolded it.
SETH DIES TONIGHT.
YOU KNOW WHO.
It was Ashleigh's opposite, Jenny thought. He must have inflicted a massive dose of fear on her dad.
The gray eye was one clue, and so were the words “You Know Who.” That was what everyone called the villain, Lord Voldemort, in the Harry Potter books. Ashleigh's first big campaign, when she was a sophomore in high school, was to get Harry Potter banned from all the school libraries in the county, on the grounds that it promoted witchcraft to children. The whole thing had just been a big power trip for Ashleigh.
Jenny dialed Seth, but it went straight to voice mail again, so she tried Darcy’s cell phone, though she was a little unsure about the last digit of Darcy’s number.
“Guten tag!” Darcy’s voice answered. “You’ve reached Darcy. Leave a message, okay? I will definitely call you back.”
The phone beeped.
“Darcy, it’s Jenny, it’s an emergency. Y’all might be in danger, and I need to talk to Seth right now. Please, please call me back right away.”
She hung up the phone. A nurse was approaching, so Jenny shoved the nightmare boy’s note back in her pocket.
“Mr. Morton?” the nurse said.
Jenny’s dad just looked at the picture of the Coca-Cola sign.
“That’s him,” Jenny said.
The nurse put a hand on his arm and he jumped.
“Mr. Morton, we need to go this way,” the nurse said. She led him toward a pair of double doors that said STAFF AND PATIENTS ONLY.
‘Where are we going?” He started to shake again. He looked back over his shoulder at Jenny. “Where are we going? Where are we going?”