The Truth Hurts

75 │manhunt

Only smoking half of his cigarette, Morgan flicks the bud onto the pavement below and watches as it sizzles in a puddle of water that fills a small pothole. He glances up, looking around at the near empty parking lot ahead of him, before turning around to walk toward the automatic doors leading into the hospital's main lobby.

The sensor takes a moment before registering that he's standing there and, after a couple of seconds, the metal doors begin to slide open. As he enters the building and approaches the front desk, in which an older woman sits behind as she reads from a gardening magazine, he looks around the lobby to see it is completely empty. He figures the few cars that are scattered throughout the front lot must be from the staff.

As the nurse glances up at him with squinting eyes, she pushes her glasses further up the bridge of her nose as her eyes finally focus on him. The magazine slips from her fingers, flopping upside down onto her desk and she pushes her chair out to quickly stand to her feet.

"Hi..." Morgan says awkwardly, not quite sure why she has taken such interest in him. He looks down at the visitor log on the clipboard in front of him and, after grabbing a nearby pen, starts to sign and date his name.

"You heard about your friend." The nurse replies, recognizing him from a previous visit. Her voice is sympathetic, as if bad news is on the verge of slipping from her tongue. Which, really, is the last thing he needs right now.

"I'm the one that dropped her off earlier." He looks up from the counter, concerning sweeping over his face. "Did something happen to her?"

"Her?" Again, the nurse pushes her glasses up the crooked bridge of her nose. "No sweetie. Weren't you the one that came to visit your sister and with her was—"

"Morgan Chase?" A stern, unfamiliar voice echoes from the hallway ahead of him.

"Yeah. Who's asking?" Morgan finishes signing his name before looking up from the clipboard to see two officers standing in front of two double doors at the end of the short hall. One not much older than him, probably someone who just left the academy months ago, and the other is a middle-aged heavyset man who he has seen on the street a few times before. Often outside of the burger joint down the block. Morgan opens his mouth, as if about to ask them what they want, when he notices the younger one slowly step forward.

The other officer places his palm against the handle of his Taser gun. He, too, begins to slowly approach Morgan as if the two are cornering a stray puppy. "Sir, we need—"

Having been in similar situations before, Morgan already knows where this is going. And it's nowhere good. He suddenly remembers that, the last time he was arrested, he wasn't there to protect Taylor when she was attacked. Hell, he was lucky that the sheriff let him leave to go visit her at the hospital as he still could have been detained for the remainder of the 24 hour questioning period. Immediately, Morgan spins around and bolts for the exit. He cuts through the many empty chairs, purposely knocking a few down behind him along the way, and the closer he finds himself to the automatic doors the more he worries that they won't open in time.

Behind him, he can hear the older man's voice as he yells into his radio.

"We got a visual on the suspect fleeing on foot from Riverside Med." The officer takes a moment to inhale deeply, already nearly out of breath even though he has ran no more than a few feet. "Repeat, suspect is at Riverside Med!"

The doors slight squeak as the two thick sheets of glass rattle in their steel frames, slowly being pulled apart.

"Sir, stop!" The younger officer yells, just as Morgan squeezes through the narrow opening in the doors and out into the small drive near the front of the building.