63 Days

The doctor’s office was as any other small town white coat’s office would be. Stale antiseptic spray hovering in the air around the fake greenery crammed into every spare corner and crease in the place. A woman sat behind the counter, a window drawn in front of her to protect her from…um…coyotes? We were in Escalante, population 610. I’m thinkin’ to myself that if someone was gonna rob this joint, they’d be known just from their scent before they got to the counter. Either way, Cody and another counselor told us to sit quietly in the waiting room chairs and that we were not to move a single inch. I was fine with this, I was under a roof at the moment, and I was savoring every single second of it.

The woman behind the counter peered around Cody at us sitting there, ever so still. She had a look of terror in her eyes, God knows what they’d told her about us. I saw her put together a couple of clipboards and as she handed them to the counselors, she slammed the window shut in a hurry. I’m assuming she thought we were going to kill her. Yeah, my 110lb. 5′3″ ass was going to take her 250lb. self down. Please.

We filled out our information, birthdays, medical history, race, sex…you know the drill. When we were through, we were lead cattle style into a single white room. There was only one picture on the wall, and it was of a woman’s reproductive organs. You could see where the ovaries were being reached out to by the fallopian tubes that lead to her ample uterus, lining still intact, fertilized egg almost to its destination. I knew the egg moving through the tubes was fertilized beause it had a smiley face drawn onto it.

Doc Ed came in. He was a jovial man, bearded, not unlike Santa. He treated us like human beings, and for us, this was a welcome surprise. He listened to Natalie’s chest and after a minute, patted her on the knee and told her she’d get antibiotics. He did the same to Forrest except he handed him an inhaler. Forrest smiled, just happy to be able to breathe for a change. When it was my turn, he gently took my feet in his hands, and turning them over, I heard him gasp.

“Good heavens, what have we here?” he asked.

“Sir, I uh. I got some blisters” I replied.

“Well you certainly do have something going on back here. Hmmm…” he thought out loud. “I’m going to clean this out and apply a topical antibiotic. You should be ok to hike in a week.”

A WEEK! This was much more than I’d expected. I was hoping that at the very most I’d get a day off. Now I was contemplating whether or not we should continue with our plan to escape.

He cleaned me off and dressed my heels, and we were off. Back to the cabin at the edge of town. As we pulled into the driveway, Murdock came out and spoke with Cody. I heard them discussing what the doc had said, and after a minute or two, Murdock turned to us and ordered us inside. As I walked past him he leaned in close to my ear and in a raspy voice said “you ain’t gettin’ a week off, no ways. You’re going out tomorra if I have to drag you myself.”

Suddenly the urgency to flee was back. Those words spoken into my ear by Murdock just fueled my determination once again, and I nodded at Natalie to let her know that the plan was still on. We’d escape tonight.