Run or Die

ONE

5th of May

In forty minutes, I had passed three Doctors, the same nurse twice and two catering girls, who were removing the breakfast implements from the semi-private rooms at the back of the 32-bedded surgical ward. I had only made it 10 metres down the corridor, but for a guy with a badly bruised shoulder, three cracked ribs and an already boot casted broken ankle, it wasn’t half-bad. It was my Marathon de Sables and I was already delirious that I had managed to get out of my own room. I had procrastinated long enough over what had needed to be done.

I had one hour to live or as I saw it, I would be murdered in my own hospital bed. I used my free hand, my right, the one that did everything for me, and stuck it on the wheelchair rim and pushed.

Three more metres.

I was running out of time.

A meandering medical team of young, Junior Doctors passed by me, eager to visit a patient of theirs and get off the ward. They all wore white, below knee length coats, but made fashion statements beneath. One, a girl, who had shiny red heels on and wore a burnt orange dress smiled at me, as she hung out near the back of the group, which now stood to my side. I kept my head down, as did she, unwilling for us both to engage in small talk. None of them were here to see me. She smiled though. That had to mean something.

I could not trust any Doctor now, especially my own. He had been eager to fix me up with a new ID bracelet in the middle of the night as I lay on my bed, semi conscious from a morphine cocktail. He said something about needing my ID so that when the Phlebotomist came along to take my bloods, all she would need to do is scan my wrist and the technology would take care of the rest.

‘Your name is Diego Gonzalez.’ The Phlebotomist had said this morning.

‘I am Michael Brown, you must be mistaken.’ However, she wasn’t, showing me on her little console, clear as day that I was Diego Gonzalez. She looked edgy, more afraid than anything. She flinched as I tried to grab her console.

Saying slowly and clearly, ‘I am not going to hurt you, but I am not Diego Gonzalez, I am Michael Brown.’ She backed away, taking her console with her.

There were three other guys in beds near and across from me. One, sat up with the same intensity and with the same trepidation that the Phlebotomist had shown.

‘Hey nurse, this guy ain’t Diego Gonzalez. I know that guy, and he ain’t him.’ She exited the room.

He looked to me.

‘Why does she say that you are Diego? You don’t wanna be Diego Gonzalez man.’

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to get into any more trouble. I was already in hospital for being in trouble. Still, I had to ask.

‘Who is Diego Gonzalez?’

He didn’t tell me, but nodded deeply as if I were in trouble. He looked at me as if thunder, were on the horizon and I just knew then that I had to get out of the hospital. A lot had happened in the past twenty-four hours to make me certain of the feeling that I was having. The past had a way of catching up to someone. I just needed to get away from the present first. Somebody was coming for me, of that, now I was certain.

For an hour, I weighed up my options, quickly realising that I had none and spent the next forty-five minutes wondering how I was going to get away from this hospital as quickly as I could. If the Doctor had switched up my ID bracelet for this Diego Gonzalez, then I knew that people inside were out to get me too. I couldn’t trust anybody. I made as little noise as possible and pulled the wheelchair that the Physiotherapist had given to me, closer to the bed. I used a bent board, called a banana board, and pulled it towards me and slipped it under my ass and on top of the chair. It acted as a bridge and let me simply slide down and into the wheelchair. I was on enough pain meds to be able to do it fairly pain free. I was cautious though. The nurse and physiotherapist had given me the same advice. Move too much when pain free and when I came off them, the pain would feel twice as bad.

I aimed my chair across the room and towards the guy who had warned me of the character, Diego Gonzalez. I needed more information. I edged my way towards him as he slept. His head and large body were only half-covered by a thin blue hospital blanket. No sooner had I reached him, had he pulled the covers down. Unblinking. He was wide-awake.

‘Don’t ask a question that you don’t want to know the answers to.’ He tried to warn me off but I was a few broken bones past a warning.

‘I need to know. I think my life may be in danger.’ He looked me dead in the eye.

‘Only because I want him dead will I tell you anything. And if you say this to anyone, that you talked to me, then Michael Brown will be the one who will die instead.’

More Spaniard in look, his sallow skin was paler now. I chanced a further drop in pallor and asked.

‘Why am I wearing Diego Gonzalez’s hospital ID tag?’ He tried to laugh but blessed himself instead.

‘It means that puta survived a hit and he is somewhere in this hospital. It means that you have been caught up in being in his death wish. And it means that you are as good as dead.’ Panicked, I held out to grab his hand but he tried to push me away.

‘Did you try to have him killed? Did you switch our hospital ID tags?’ He looked at me, weighed up the options of what he wanted to happen, and spilled his guts.

‘I am only telling you this because I want you to live. If they kill you, then Diego Gonzalez will break free. You staying alive is the only option.’ Feeling confusion, I nodded, hoping to gain an insight by just listening.

‘I am a regular guy. Don’t drink, don’t do drugs. I keep myself to myself and mind my kids. Guy like Diego Gonzalez, he tries to burn all of that. He destroys neighbourhoods by selling H and giving automatic weapons to children who all want to be him. When you wonder what kind of guy is ruining our world? That is who Diego Gonzalez is. He is all of them. The pusher and the murderer,’

This patient was once a handsome man, but now carried a barely concealed anger upon his brow. He thought about not telling me the rest, but relented.

‘Couple of us in the neighbourhood decide that we have had enough, and that we need thugs like Diego Gonzalez off the street, so we try and set him up. We made it look like he was about to threaten the cops by placing anonymous phone calls in about weapons on the street. We just wanted to get him arrested but it turned into world war 3 on the streets,’ Pulling down the covers, he showed off a thick white bandage across his abdomen.

‘I was hit in the cross fire, as were some cops, but Diego must have survived and is in this hospital somewhere.’

You could read confusion on my face like a pamphlet. Something about his story just didn’t add up.

‘But why me? Why not target you?’ I asked.

He replied, guessing.

‘Age profile, build maybe. Diego looks like you a bit. He has short brown hair, strong build, not that tall. You kind of look alike too, sort of.’

He trailed off, lost in thought, trying to remember what Diego had looked like.

‘Diego is like a ghost. We know what he looks like, kind of. But he goes months without coming out of his house. His enemies often do not know what he looks like. He puts on weight easily and he shaves his head and grows it long too,’

He was not answering any of my questions.

‘Diego could have set this up himself. Having a Diego Gonzalez death in the news will free up some time for him to disappear again, and all before they properly ID you.’

I could fill in the blanks myself.

He meant when I was dead.

‘I will just tell the nurse that treated me yesterday. She treated Michael Brown. She knows who I am.’

My vain attempt at applying logic to the situation.

‘Look around man, those nurses ain’t on shift today. If they went to so much trouble to change your ID, then I reckon your file has been moved too.’

‘But that’s all impossible. Somebody here will know who I am.’ Nodding a cold hard no, he said.

‘A man like Diego Gonzalez will have paid enough people off, that they will swear blind that you ain’t Michael Brown. You are fucked.’

I saw the twisted logic in what he was saying. I was only in hospital a day and not many staff would even know if I were Michael Brown or not.

‘So what the hell do I do? Can I borrow your phone?’ Tutting, he pointed to a sign on the wall that said.

Electronic devices are not permitted on this ward.

‘I have tried but they have some sort of signal jammer in the hospital.’ He said, lifting up his Sony Ericsson phone, and showing me the vacant levels of reception that he was receiving. Turning around to face the wall, he dismissed me with a wave of some fingers. He had told me all that I needed to know. Despite the trouble I should have been in, I was now mixed up in something far more dangerous.