Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 79 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
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“My uncle’s been injured? I don’t understand.”
“No, he hasn’t been injured, Josef—I told you, he just collapsed in the street,” Rob said. He hadn’t noticed the small cell phone that made its way into “Josef’s” pocket a second before Rob had opened the door. Not a safe place at all, but that’s what Martin could do for now.
“How do people just collapse in the street?”
“Maybe he didn’t feel well or something,” Rob suggested. “Or his brain injury suddenly returned.”
Martin rubbed his cheek with his palm. “And he’s in the hospital now?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t they bring him here? This is also a hospital of sorts.”
“Yes, but not for physical injuries of that type, especially when the people who were there already called an ambulance…it’s a little complicated to explain. Later on, when he is discharged, he will be able to come back here for continuing treatment until he is completely healthy.”
Martin blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter; I just wanted to update you. Very soon, everyone will be back. Don’t become nervous when you see that he doesn’t come with them.”
The youth nodded weakly. Had Perl used their outing to stage a collapse in order to escape, leaving him, Martin, stuck here? That wasn’t nice. But that suspicion was better than the dreadful idea that something had actually happened to him. If that was the case, now it would be so much more complicated to get him out of here…
“I want to visit him.” He put a hand on Rob’s shoulder as the nurse turned to go. “I want to see how he is.”
“Not today, that’s for sure.” The nurse was adamant. “If he’s still hospitalized tomorrow—we’ll ask Dr. Skulholt to consider it.”
“And meanwhile, he’ll be there by himself?”
“Just like he managed until now without you, he’ll manage now.” Rob didn’t make the effort to be too nice. The two had gotten off to a bad start from the very first minute. “I think one of our people also stayed with him.”
“The psychiatrist?”
“Besides him. Mike, who eats the kosher food with you.”
“Him again?”
“What’s the problem with him?”
“He…” Martin wrinkled his noise in distaste. “He tries to control my uncle all the time. Since the minute I got here, he’s been trying to prove that Michoel is closer to him than to me. I don’t let him be there if I’m not there too! I’m going!”
“How will you get there?” Rob asked calmly.
“Isn’t there a bus to Charleston?”
“From here?” The nurse chuckled. “No.”
“So, what kind of transportation is there here?”
“Nothing. We purposely chose a very quiet place that is not close to any roads. The quiet and tranquility are very important to mental and physical health.”
“So…how do you go to Charleston?”
“I have a car, did you forget?”
“No.”
“We have private cars, and we go out when we need to. Believe me, Josef Schorr, the world outside is not so nice that it’s worth visiting very often.”
“I know,” Josef Schorr said, nodding heavily. “I came from there. But I need to go to my uncle. It’s…it’s urgent.”
“What is so urgent?”
Martin had a sudden brainwave. “His tefillin! His tefillin are here. He must have them tomorrow first thing in the morning.”
“So I’ll bring them to him.”
“I want to bring them to him.”
“We’ll see,” Rob said. He turned toward the voices that could be heard entering the building. The people were back from the procession, chattering about their experiences. This was the most drama-laden outing they’d had since the tumultuous procession half a year earlier.
“You should have heard how your uncle screamed!” one merciless guy said to Martin. “As if someone had hit him with fiery metal or something.”
Another man nodded vigorously. “Just like that, in the middle of the street! What a show—two police cars and three ambulances!”
“It’s because they are afraid of us,” a third one said with a laugh. “There were police cars there the whole time, even before Perl fell.”
Martin grasped the first man’s sleeve. “What did he scream? Did you hear?”
“I don’t really remember,” the young man said. He was a lanky guy with a pockmarked face, and his eyes gleamed in a strange way, indicating that he wasn’t completely balanced. “Mainly he cried—‘I can’t!’ and also, ‘It hurts!’ and, ‘I hate him!’ Now leave me alone; I’m hungry and I’m going to eat.”
“Hate him? Who?”
“Don’t know. Maybe you!” The lanky young man gave an ugly laugh, released his sleeve with a sharp tug, and turned toward the dining room.
***
“Shimon?”
“Oh, it’s you! I was so worried! What happened?”
Martin rocked on his bed restlessly. In the event that someone was now following the images being beamed from the camera in his room, he hoped that they would not notice the small phone placed between his head and the pillow, and the fact that he was talking.
“There was a procession in Charleston, and during it, Perl collapsed. He’s in the hospital now.”
“Where?”
“In a regular hospital, if I understood correctly. I hope they’ll let me go to him tomorrow.”
Shimon had a quick grasp. “If you go, take with you anything important. I’ll look into a flight in the next few hours.”
“And if not?”
“If they don’t let you come to him? At least we won’t feel like we missed an opportunity to try.”
“But they have my passport.”
“Whose passport, Yosef’s?”
“Yes.”
“But you have your real one, right?”
“Yes,” Martin said slowly, as a smile crossed his lips. How good it was that he had two. But if he would indeed flee with just his passport, he would not be able to return to Sudbury, even for a short time, under Yosef’s assumed identity. Too bad; he really wanted to go there… Maybe it was worth trying to get his hands on Schorr’s passport?
He would just try to get close to the office, so that, as Shimon had said, at least he wouldn’t feel like he’d missed an opportunity to try.
The door opened, and a tall, unfamiliar nurse walked in and turned on the light. “Are you not sleeping well, Schorr?”
“I’m worried about my uncle!” Martin’s tone rose, but he was careful not to get them too angry. All he needed was for them to stop him from going to Charleston as a punishment for being unruly. He also didn’t move his head so as not to reveal the cell phone resting under his ear.
“If you’ll be too tired in the morning, you for sure won’t be able to go visit him,” the nurse said, as if reading Martin’s concerns.
“I know.” Martin sighed. “I’m trying to sleep. But my thoughts are disturbing me. Don’t you sometimes have disturbing thoughts?”
“Sometimes, maybe,” the nurse partially agreed, studying Martin from the doorway.
Just don’t get too close, Martin prayed. Don’t notice any black plastic piece sticking out anywhere… “So when it happens to you and you’re trying to sleep, what do you do?” he asked.
“I close my eyes and don’t move too much. Moving around doesn’t let you fall asleep.”
“Really?” Martin put two hands on his pillow, at the sides of his head, and closed his eyes without moving a muscle. “So, like this?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh,” he said, and fell silent.
“If you see in a few more minutes that you’re still not falling asleep, come over to the nurses’ station, and we’ll give you something to help you, okay?”
“Fine,” Martin said, barely moving his lips.
“Good.”
Martin heard the smile. After he also heard the door close, he dared to open his eyes again. The cameras probably couldn’t pick up on such tiny details like eyes open or closed, but he certainly couldn’t move. There was no chance he could get out of here and into Dr. Jerry Skulholt’s room without being seen.
Cautiously, he stuck the tiny phone deep under the pillow, and then straightened his hands at the sides of his body. He lay motionless for many long moments.
His arms and back were hurting already, but he didn’t dare move. Even if he had a way to get up, what could he do to extricate Yosef’s passport?
Maybe if he’d fall asleep and wake up after two hours, his mind would be clear enough to come up with something brilliant that wouldn’t put the whole staff here on his tail. It was hard to believe that he’d be able to come up with such an impossible plan, but what was wrong with hoping?
His stiff legs joined his other limbs that were complaining about his forced frozen position, but he still didn’t dare move. Maybe in two hours he’d have an idea… Maybe in another hour…or another three…
But he didn’t wake up after two hours or three. He woke up after five and a half hours, when the sun was already shining into his room, bringing with it an icy cold temperature. He mused dejectedly that the nurse’s idea was indeed very effective for insomnia.
His first thought was to leap straight to the window and see why it was so cold in the room, but the image of Yosef Schorr was in his mind’s eye, and it sent him instead to the small bathroom, where he could wash his hands. Only then did he shuffle over to the window, barefoot and with dripping hands, and he discovered a layer of soft, white snow covering the grass outside.
Eight minutes later, he appeared in Michoel’s room with his tefillin bag in hand. He collected Michoel’s tefillin and the siddurim from Michoel’s shelf and stood at the door.
Someone passed by the corridor just then. “Hey, Josef.” Rob smiled at him. “What are you waiting for?”
“My uncle,” he said quietly. He felt that if he had a chance of going to visit him, it would only be with this tactic.
“Did you forget that he’s in the hospital?”
“You said he might be released.”
“Maybe, but for now at least, he’s not here.”
“Mike stayed with him at night?”
“Yes.”
“I need to bring my uncle his tefillin,” Martin said, still in that same defeated, tired tone. “When are we going to him?”
“I don’t know. Dr. Jerry came back very late last night. When he gets to his office, you can ask him.”
“Fine,” Martin whispered and dragged his legs as he walked back into the room. Like an expert, he put on the tefillin he had received from Dov, and stood and swayed in front of his siddur with closed eyes. Although he’d picked up the Hebrew language very well, his reading skills were nothing to write home about. But Dov had said that he could daven by heart too, right?
He didn’t know if the words, “Please help us already, Hashem. Please, help us get out of here soon. And may it be in the best, cleanest way possible,” could be called a prayer, but that was what he said.
After repeating these words about a hundred times, while leafing through the pages of the siddur, he closed it, took off his tefillin, and sat down quietly on Michoel’s bed, waiting.
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