Save Me

Chapter Twenty-Three

"I escaped their clutches," he said. "You didn't think I was going to stay there forever, did you?"

"Oh," I said. "Where are you now?"

I grabbed a shirt discarded on the floor and buttoned it, holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder. "I'm outside the hospital, hiding behind a beautiful bougainvillea bush," he said, then laughed. "Try saying that five times."

"I'm coming to get you," I decided.

"Hurry! The enemy grows stronger each minute, and I can smell Nurse Helena's bad perfume from here. Or maybe it's the bougainvilleas."

"Stop saying that word," I said.

"What word? Bougainvillea? I love Bougainvilleas. That's gonna be my new code name, and yours can be... Buttercup!"

"And why do we need code names?" I played along.

"Because we're on an escape mission. Operation Faggot Escape is underway. Now come and retrieve me, Buttercup. Bougainvillea out." The line went dead, and I sighed, pulling on a pair of joggers and shoes, and headed out of the hotel quickly.

When I pulled my car into the hospital parking lot, I spotted him running over from the nearby bushes, a jacket over his hospital gown. He jumped inside and fastened his seatbelt, turning to smile at me. "Drive, Buttercup. We need to make a clean getaway."

"Where are we going?"

"Back to base," he said.

"And... where's that?"

"Wherever you're staying, at that hotel, now go go go! Before the enemy spots us!"

"Who is the enemy?"

"God, Buttercup, catch on already. You're not a good getaway driver at all."

I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back through the town. Darby fiddled with the radio until some pop channel came on. He blared the tunes and hung his head out the window, letting it rest on the frame as he looked out at the world teetering on passed him.

"You okay?" I asked him, turning the music down so he could hear me. "What are you thinking about?"

"The future," he said. "It looks bleak."

"You can't know the future," I told him. "Nobody can."

"It doesn't matter. With life comes suffering."

"What do you mean by that?" I inquired.

"Look out the window," he said. "Everyone that you see - they have their own issues, their own problems. They're all fucked up too, in different ways. And they'll all die, in the end. That's what I mean."

"That's why you've got to live in the now," I said. "Fuck the past, and fuck the future. You shouldn't worry about something you can't change. Some things are just out of your control."

"I suppose," he said. "You're smarter than you look."

"Thank you," I said sarcastically. "Your kind words motivate me everyday of my life."