steve's been shot

frontier vegetarian burrito, 2 pints at kelley's, 2 MGD at gecko's, late night cereal

Steve's been shot. But in this concrete and steel society, I can't get to him in the hospital. I want to so badly. The front of the hospital is essentially the back stairs by the museum office. There are police everywhere-- not for Steve I assume, but a person like me won't be able to waltz in. A group of us are milling about, trying to think of something. Someone, some friend, shows up in a fake uniform and determinedly herds a group of us in, but I'm not standing there when it happens, I miss it, I whistle the signal to get their attention and a few glance back, but we all know there's no way for them to pause, it would give it all away.

A guy in a uniform I don't recognize, maybe hospital security, comes walking up to me. I recognize him, but I don't know why. He comes straight up to me and tells me to follow him, don't look back, don't stop, keep moving. I follow him without a question. Up the stairs, past the police, and very quickly into a strange, isolated stairwell, a very tight spiral with a metal rail [like at the CFA, incidentally]. People are coming up as we're going down, and I can't seem to figure if I should pass on the right or left. I think that the last time I was in this situation was in castles in the UK, and maybe I passed on a different side then.

But finally we're down the stairs--way far down in the building, far underground. My guide puts me off at a door into a dim concrete room the size of a storefront. There are winiding concrete bench platforms through the room, every several feet there is a young man laying, many with some minimal instrumentation next to them. They are all seemingly made of plastic, cast in plastic with the quality of a kid's bath toy. They look like Egon Schiele drawings, or Aeon Flux characters, cast in plastic. I find Steve in the middle of the room, he's on his back, one leg pulled up and crossed over alarmingly, his heel up by his waist. He's in a strange loincloth, and there is a drawn circle over one thigh, apparently where the bullet hit him. I sit down and begin sobbing. Steve wakes up, unfolds like a spider and sits up, puts his arm around me. I'm sobbing uncontrollably, I have to be quiet or we might draw attention.