Nikola tilted his head. “Oh, what does this do?”
The sports car leapt forward with a roar and squeal of tires. They slid sideways through the turn of the driveway and raced toward the far road. Louise and Jillian both shrieked in surprise and fear.
“Oh. Sorry.” The car started to slow.
“No, don’t slow down now! Go!”
“Okay!” Nikola bounced in his seat with excitement and they flew into the night. “Mapping quickest route to Manhattan.”
Third star to the right, Louise thought, straight on toward dawn.
* * *
It was twenty miles to Times Square. They did it in nearly ten minutes, leaving black contrails of tire marks at every turn. They slowed down—slightly—for Lincoln Tunnel while Nikola explained that he had avoided George Washington Bridge because it was congested despite the 3:00 a.m. time.
Louise gripped tight to the armrest built into the door trying not to scream as they zipped past slower cars. “I thought that self-driven cars couldn’t speed.”
“Speed limit is set by the road, not the car.” Nikola tilted his head back and forth as he communicated with outside computers. “Snow or ice or something could change the speed that the road can be traveled safely, so the car is told the speed limit along with all the other traffic data. I’m filtering the information as it’s coming from the road, leaving all the other factors constant but changing the speed limit upwards by sixty miles per hour.”
Louise glanced at the dashboard, read their speed and whimpered slightly.
They slew sideways into an impossibly rare parking space within view of Times Square subway station entrance. They sat there panting as the car rumbled in idle.
“So where do we go?” Jillian whispered.
“We need to go to a hospital for—for—Crow Boy.” Louise winced as she realized that they spent the last hour fleeing and not asking the most basic of questions, like “What is your name.” “We need to take him to a hospital.”
“Which one?” Jillian made it sound like there might be several hospitals that specialized in boys with wings.
Louise decided to focus on “boy” instead of “wings” “Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.”
Nikola took that as a plan and the car roared as it leapt out of the parking space.
38: MORGAN STANLEY CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
The automatic door opened for them as they helped Crow Boy into the emergency room. He barely seemed aware of what was happening and it took all their strength to get him out of the low-slung car, upright and moving. There was a woman at the admittance desk intently working at a computer while fielding phone calls. She chewed gum while listening to the other side of the conversation, shaking her head, and saying “No. No. No,” as she stabbed computer keys. She glanced at them, focused back on her computer screen, and then, with confusion spreading across her face, she looked back up. She sat there, jaw dropped, piece of gum showing, as they limped up to her desk. Her name tag read “Martha.”
The woman’s stunned expression gave Louise courage to swallow down her fear and say in Elvish, “Please, we need help. His leg is broken.”
The woman blinked rapidly. “Um, please hold.” She stabbed a button on her phone and leaned back to call “Gerri! Gerri!”
An older woman appeared, summoned by the shouting. “Oh, that’s new.”
Louise used Elvish to plead for help and then made a show of pointing at Crow Boy’s obviously broken leg.
“They’re elves!” Martha claimed.
Gerri frowned at Crow’s black wings and then at the bug antennae that the twins were wearing. As they hoped, the wings won out for close inspection, which was good because the antennae were just wires attached to bobby pins.
“He’s not an elf.” Gerri didn’t bother to qualify the twins.
“She’s speaking Elvish.” Martha pointed at Louise.
“You understand what she’s saying?”
“I only recognize the one line from The Queen’s Puddin Cake. The Lemon-Lime JEL-Lo video. She’s asking for help. I’m not sure what the rest is. His leg looks broken.”
“Do you speak English?” Gerri spoke slowly and loudly. After a moment, she tried Spanish, which was easier to ignore. “Shit. Okay, we need a patient advocate. Also try to find some kind of translator; we’re going to need one.”
* * *
Louise half expected to be told to wait in the waiting room but they were all shepherded into the examination area. It was only when she glanced at Jillian that she realized why: the twins were covered in bruises, soot, dirt, and blood. Celine might have broken Louise’s nose when she slapped her, certainly it bled for a long time afterwards.