"Here." A gravelly voice and a sudden thunk of something heavy on his legs snapped Sue out of his daydreaming. It was a male nurse, and he'd just dropped a plastic bin onto Sue's bed. While the boy was still blinking the haziness from his eyes, the nurse pointed at the bin and instructed Sue stonily, "Take a look, get something your size."

Sitting himself up, Sue got a look at the contents at last. Clothes. Real clothes, with backs and everything. Probably from the lost and found, though for all Sue cared, it could have been plumbed up from the sewers - he was already diving in with a desperate glee, digging out a pair of too-big jeans and thrusting his feet into the legs. "This means I'm free?" The wording made one of the nurse's eyebrows twitch, but he nodded all the same. Sue pulled free the ties of his gown, rifled out a sweatshirt with a skateboarding alligator decal, and quickly swapped out. "God bless," Sue sighed, straightening out the collar.

He'd already talked out the arrangements with his mother; she'd loaded up his checking account with enough money for a hotel room, some light shopping. The accommodations weren't great - Sue would much rather be spending the money to replace his laptop, after all - but until school started, it would have to do. And as for the laptop, well - Santa was going to be coming late this year, his mother said. Sue would just have to sit tight.

But as long as he didn't have to sit tight at the hospital anymore - as long as he could wear pants, like all good decent Americans ought - was fine with that.

Sue collected his things - just the jewelery, really, and the amber pin his mother had given him for his birthday - and went to fill out some last bits of paperwork. Then the nurse walked him out, made a curt farewell, and then that was it. Sue was off on his own.

Almost, anyway. Because somewhere among the crowds on the street, where people hunched over themselves to ward against the cold, fixating their eyes in a straight line in front of them that never looked up or down, there was a distant, familiar cry. That little noise that reminded Sue that he was put on his Earth for a reason, that he had a job to do.

Sue made a few quick mental calculations. He had enough money saved from his job yet, he decided, making a beeline for the direction the noise had come from. He could afford the food bills for at least one new stray....