Chapter Thirty
He’d seen her. She knew that from the pounding footfalls she heard behind her. Hannah ran down the hallway as fast as she could. She opened the door to the hospital corridor, dashed through, and made a sharp turn to the left, thanking her lucky stars that she was wearing her tennis shoes.
She’d never been down this corridor before. Lake Eden Memorial Hospital was expanding and this section was still under construction. Her hope was that Ben would expect her to flee in a straight line and not to veer off into a construction zone.
The lighting was dim in this section. The overhead fluorescents had yet to be installed, and only the occasional bare incandescent bulb hung from the open ceiling. This was uncharted territory for her, and her hope was that it would be uncharted territory for Ben as well.
Hannah rounded a corner and saw a door. It was painted bright yellow, and that was a good sign, wasn’t it? She paused, wondering if she should take a chance and go in.
The running footfalls she heard behind her were the deciding factor. Hannah yanked the door open and ran into another corridor. This one seemed to be leading downward and it was tiled. The walls were painted institutional green, and she passed another door with a stenciled sign on it that read Engine Room, and she knew where she was.
She was in the basement of the hospital. She remembered taking a tour when it was first built and the tour had included the basement. It ran under the entire hospital and it housed the power plant, the backup generators, the furnace, and the air conditioners. If she remembered correctly, there were also several storerooms for things like medical and janitorial supplies. There had once been a cafeteria in the corner of the basement, but it had closed several years ago and a new cafeteria for visitors and hospital workers was under construction on the ground floor as part of the expansion project.
Ben was gaining on her and Hannah didn’t know what to do. It had been over ten years since she’d taken the tour of the hospital basement and she couldn’t remember how to get up to the ground floor. Even if she did manage to locate a stairway, he’d catch her going up the stairs. It would be smarter to hide down here and use her cell phone to let Mike know where she was.
As she rounded the next corner, she saw a another door. She skidded to a stop, tugged it open, and ran into a large room. Then she stood leaning against the closed door, catching her breath, and hoping he hadn’t spotted her. She couldn’t keep running like this forever. There was a limit to her endurance.
Someone ran past the door. It had to be Ben. She heard his footfalls fade into the distance, and gave a sigh of relief. She was safe, at least for a while. But she didn’t know where she was.
It was quite dark in the cavernous room, and it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Low wattage bulbs were glowing in some ceiling fixtures, and Hannah could make out massive brushed steel cabinets with pull out drawers against the back wall. Perhaps this was a supply room?
A steel shelving unit sat against the wall, just to her left. It contained pairs of folded scrubs and plastic aprons. There were masks on the top shelf, along with booties, the type that operating room doctors wore, and there was a large sink on the opposite wall, the kind you’d find just outside an operating room.
A steel operating table was positioned in the center of the room. Next to it was a rolling cart that held a scale. A second steel cart was filled with various basins, beakers, and glass containers.
The tiled floor sloped down to a line of drains, the type you’d see in showers or locker rooms. It was clear that this room had been designed for easy cleaning. All you’d really have to do was hose it down. Any debris on the floor would wash down the drains.
Hannah spotted a microphone hanging from the ceiling over the operating table. There was also something that looked like a video recorder. What type of patient would give his doctor permission to record his surgery? And what type of operating room would be equipped this way?
She walked over to take a look as the two questions circled in her mind. She was stymied for a brief moment. and then she had the answer. A dead patient wouldn’t object if the doctor recorded his operation, and the pull-out drawers were built to contain dead bodies waiting for autopsies. She’d never seen this room before because it hadn’t been included in the tour she’d taken. She was hiding in the Lake Eden Hospital morgue!