Chapter Nineteen
Following Pam the nurse towards the door as she started across the room, she held back to the side of the door, anxiously waiting on her. "It's clear," she said. Rushing forward at receiving this assurance, Niyota walked out of the operating room with a purposeful stride, steering Pam down the hall. Grabbing her medical files on the way out, she opened it up, giving her something to do so it wouldn't be suspicious when she didn't glance up. Having memorized the layout of the hospital in the time she'd been there, when everyone else thought she'd been handling her treatment, Niyota directed her down a hall. Opposite of the one that Pam had been trying to inform her to go down, assuring her what she'd already known, the nurse was trying to get her caught.
Not on her life.
Bobbing her head in greeting to the people they passed in the hall, most of which were too busy with their own patients to notice much around them. A boon for her. All the while keeping Pam on a course to the northeast end of the hospital, aware there would be little security interference in that direction. Mostly it housed the supplies room and where the records were kept, no need for security since the patients were never allowed on that side of the hospital. Niyota now thanked her lucky stars that she had remained so alert and vigilant these last weeks, knowing her knowledge was the only hope she had of getting out of there in one piece.
"What do you think you're going to do?" Pam demanded, careful to keep her voice at the barest whisper, to make sure that no one else passing in the halls could overhear what was being said. "Even if by some miracle you get out of here, where are you gonna go? Who will you turn to? All these weeks you've refused to tell us a thing about yourself, who you are, where you came from. Are you even from around these parts?"
Adding ample pressure to her arm for daring to ask these questions of her, that only served in dredging up painful memories that were never far from her mind. Careful to keep an emotionless mask over her face, lest anyone catch on to her ploy, Niyota sneered in derision at the nurse. "It may have escaped your knowledge, but I haven't lied. I'm Niyota Y'Fell. What more proof do you need? I've passed a polygraph, undergone hypno-therapy, have the identical fingerprints and DNA matches, and answered every fucking question you guys could have of me on my life. It's time you accept the truth, I'm not lying."
"It's a fantasy," Pam protested.
She arched a skeptical, doubtful brow at that. "Oh, really? Is it a fantasy that I have the same identical bone structure, that DNA and fingerprints are an identical match to that of Niyota Y'Fell? That I have the same fucking birthmark and a tattoo that she'd gotten at age fourteen.. Which, I must admit, my father was fuming mad about and grounded me a whole three weeks for. The longest he's ever grounded me for."
She couldn't form a response.
Stopping when they reached a door, she waited until Pam used her ID card to run through the scanner and the magnetic door buzzed open. Steering her through the doorway the second that it was pushed open, hurrying down the hall as it swung closed, around the corner, Niyota turned her around to look at her. "Look into my eyes, Pam. I'm not lying. I never was. And the sooner people come to terms with this fact, the safer my father will be. He's all I care about. When my mama died and I dropped into depression, it was him that pulled me back. He did not fail me and I will not fail him. I know you don't believe me, but whoever this girl is, she isn't here for good reasons and my father, as well as everyone in this town, are in terrible danger."
The alarm went off then. "Shit!" she cursed.
"The ruse is up," Pam said, with more than a touch of relief in her voice, as the alarms blared over the intercom and the lights immediately went haywire. "It's best to stop this now, while you still have a chance. Come back with me, we'll figure this out together."
"No," she clipped. "Please...."
Frantically glancing around her, she spied a door ten feet down the hallway and immediately had the woman moving in that direction. None too gently shoving her through the second that it came open, kicking it closed once the both of them were on the other side, Niyota blocked her in. "If you want to help, you can do something for me. When you wake up, I want you to go to my room. Underneath the mattress, there is a paper. I want you to give it to my father." "Wake up?" she asked in confusion.
"I'm really sorry about this," Niyota remorsefully apologized, then a hand came down on the side of the nurse's neck and shoved her thumb hard at a point above the collarbone. Watching as the light in amber eyes slowly began to fade and then roll back in her head, she caught her up in her arms as she started to drop. Then gently lying her down on the floor, careful not to cause the woman any undo harm, who'd only ever been kind and helpful during her stay. "Forgive me." Then leaving the nurse there on the floor, confident that before too long the woman would come out of it, she slipped back out the door. Keeping her head down at all times, appearing to be looking at the file opened in her hands, Niyota walked purposefully down the quiet corridor. Swerving off to the left the second she reached the corner of the hallway, hearing the commotion that came from the other side of the hospital. Confirmed what Pam had told her at the alarms, the staff had discovered their deceased patient wasn't so dead after all and the clinic was on high alert.
Then the voice came. "There she is."
"Stop!" guards said.
Glancing over her shoulder as she heard the men's voices rise above the din of patient voices, she saw two men barreling down the hall. Straight for her. Cursing under her breath at the realization that she had been found out by them, a whole lot sooner than she'd been anticipating. These people were fast. Immediately disbanding her attempts to appear normal, Niyota snapped the file in hand closed and began running down the hallway. The security guard ran faster too. "Close the gates!"
It didn't come fast enough.
Instantly picking up her speed as she heard the command shot out, watching as the security guard at the main gates immediately jumped to his feet. Oh no he didn't. Slamming her body as hard as she could up against the door of the cage, bulldozing her way right through the doorway he'd thought to close. Kicking him back when he thought to come after her, Niyota slammed the door closed and quickly used the key in his hand to lock it. She grinned. "Not fast enough."
"You won't get out of here," a doctor warned.
"Watch me," she taunted mischievously, breaking the key off in the hole, ensuring that it'd be a whole lot harder for them to get out of the main part of the hospital.
Haunting laughter growing louder at the doctor's savage curses, Niyota stalked across the cage to the guard on the floor, unconscious from her attack. Stepping over his bulky frame to the keys hanging up on the board-belonging to all those on Greenwood staff-she gathered them in her hands and sent them down the garbage shoot. This received even more curses, the realization she was making it hard for them to get out of there. Yes, she'd planned this all out. Moving back to the other side of the cage, feet kicked open the door to the observation room and went straight for the control board. Let's have some fun. Immediately flicking every switch there was, not bothering to take the time to look at the labels to see what the controls could be to.
Walking back out to the main area of the cage, she listened to the commotion that went on the other side of the caged door, all hell had broken loose. Niyota tipped her head. "Have fun."
Then slipping through the other door of the security cage, again breaking the key off into the keyhole, Niyota tore down the hallway as fast as her legs could go. She may be one step closer to her goal, but she wasn't in the clear yet. Halfway down the hall, she came to an immediate skidding halt as two guards came around the corner, turning around only to see two more behind her. "It's over," one said.
Another tapped his nightstick.
"No way," Niyota growled in denial, not about to allow these men to take her back inside there, after all the trouble she'd taken in order to get free. "If you want me, come get me."
The four burly guards took her challenge to heart. Watching as the men moved towards her, determined to bring an end to the escape attempt she'd concocted, Niyota frantically glanced around her. Looking for a way out of the situation she had found herself in tonight, desperate to do just about anything to keep these men from getting her. Then she saw her opening. Cringing on the inside at the thought of what she was about to do, but aware that it was the only chance she had, if she wanted out of there. And she did, more than ever.
Backing up against the wall, taking a deep breath to gather the courage that she needed for what she had in mind, Niyota ran to the other side of the hallway. Crashing into the plexiglass window, glass shattering into a million different pieces all around her, she went hurtling out the window and into the cool night air. She received a few nicks and scrapes, cut up by glass that had come reigning down on her, but it was small compared to the pain she suffered every day. Then dropping onto the rooftop of another section of the building ten feet later, she rolled along the roof and popped straight back to her feet. Hearing the security guards who were in hot pursuit of the runaway patient, Niyota immediately took off across the rooftop, maneuvering around obstacles in her way.
Coming to a skidding halt as she came to the edge of the rooftop, she stared down over the side of the building, straight into the Olympic-sized pool. A thirty-foot drop, to be sure. She might have survived the ten-foot drop through the window to the roof, Niyota had no doubt that she'd be killed the second she hit the water.
"Give it up," the guard warned. "You have nowhere to go."
Then on second thought, if the fall killed her, then so what? She didn't have anything to lose. If she didn't get out of there, then something terrible would happen to the only parent that she had left and Niyota would prefer death to that fate. No, she had to protect him. Even if he didn't realize that's what she was doing. Silently praying that she wasn't about to plunge to her own death, she threw herself over the side of the building and spiked through the air. Then arms were parting through the water,