St. Geromes Hospital

 The End of the Day

The trees became one long green blur as the car sped past them on the highway.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?" asked Sarah. Her husband, Michael turned to look at her. "No. I'm pretty sure that was made clear in the last 25 minutes."

"Okay, well try reading the signs."

He rolled his eyes. "Thanks for the advice."

There hadn't been a sign in sight for the past half hour, not even one to tell them what mile they were on. And it didn't help that Sarah was drunk. Or on her way to being drunk.

It was his wife's 21st birthday and they had planned to stay at Little Rock's Resort for the weekend. Part of the trip involved driving through countless miles of wooded highway, and somewhere along this stretch of road, he had missed an exit vital to arriving at the resort.

Ok, calm down and do something sensible, he thought to himself. Reaching across Sarah to the other end of the dashboard, he grabbed his portable GPS. Sarah looked away from the window and set her open bottle of beer into an empty slot of the six pack sitting on her lap.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"What any normal human does when they get lost." He replied, tapping the address of the resort into the GPS. She continued to stare at him. He sighed, settling the GPS into it's mount. "I'm using the GPS, Ser."

"That's what the signs are for!"

"Yeah, well there aren't any signs here, so we're using this."

She shrugged and turned back to the window. Having already experienced his big 21 two years before, he was understanding of the fact that she had already downed two beers just on their way to the resort. That didn't mean it didn't irritate him.

"Alright, we should be there in an hour." he told her.  She responded by humming one of her favorite pop songs and twirling her long blonde hair. He sighed and looked at the clock. 5:47. They were going 81mph. 16 over the limit and they still wouldn't get to the resort till after dark. He eased up on the pedal.

Looking back to the GPS, he blinked in surprise. That's odd. The GPS would always provide a map for a little representation of their car to drive on, in order to better illustrate where they were. Little yellow and red lines with street names and a purple highlighted path for whichever road the car should be driving on. But the map was gone now. It simply showed the car traveling over a screen of blank tan color.

He looked ahead and out the windshield. They were clearly still on the highway. "Damn it!" He gave the GPS a look of disgust. Sarah turned in her seat. "What is it, honey?"

"The GPS is broken."

"Oh." Her reply generated an awkward pause.

"So...are we completely lost?"

"Yep." he muttered.

Sarah didn't reply. The sunlight had been fading as they drove, and the sky was now a deep blue.

"It's going to be dark really soon." he said.

"I know."

She was sitting still, the three beers left in the six pack forgotten. Her short answers told him that something was wrong.

"I'm sorry, Ser." he frowned. "We were supposed to get there earlier this afternoon."

She sighed and leaned across the seat to lay her head on his shoulder. After a moment she spoke.