The Donors (4 page)

She stopped giving a damn what the lights were and ran to her car, her keys still in front of her like a talisman that might ward off whatever evil lurked in the dark. Jenny kept her eyes locked on the floating orbs, ready to change direction should something leap out of the dark. Another nail tore as she pulled open her car door with such force that it bounced back on its hinges and struck her painfully in the hip.

Suddenly, she felt, more than heard, a pop, like a sudden change in the pressure in an airplane, and a terrible smell filled the garage. The four glowing embers vanished. Jenny stopped, her hip throbbing, and looked deep into the darkness, but the little lights were gone. A static-like crackling made her jump. A random noise came from her throat that in other circumstances would have made her laugh, and then the luminescent, overhead lights in the stairwell flickered twice and crackled to reveal—

Nothing.

The landing stood completely empty. Jenny felt emotionally exhausted, unable to even chuckle or chide herself. She slid heavily into the driver's seat, then closed and locked the door. The seatbelt clicked into place and the engine roared to life, but instead of pulling away, Jenny leaned her head on the steering wheel. She felt so tired that for a moment she could barely move. Then she sighed heavily, shifted into reverse and turned to look over her right shoulder, to back out.

She froze. In the seat beside her sat a strange, terrifying figure with his hands clasped together in the folds of his heavy overcoat. What she could see of his face was white—paler than the handful of dead bodies she had seen in her young career—interrupted by a red slit of a mouth. His eyes were hidden in shadows from his top hat but she thought she saw a pale glow beneath the brim.

“Hello, Jenny,” a scratchy voice said, though she was certain the hideous lips never moved.

She heard a horrible scream. Her mind clouded, and the world tilted sharply to the left. It was impossible to tell if the scream was out loud or in her head. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel as she faded out, the world and the horrible creature beside her turning gray.

“I am going to help you remember things better, my dear,” the voice said from somewhere behind the motionless lips. “And then you will be able to help us.” Now the lips did part, revealing a shark-like row of impossibly long teeth. She realized now that the screaming was actually her car horn and that her head rested on the steering wheel. She couldn't move. She listened to the shrieking horn and watched as thin, sallow fingers reached out and caressed her cheek. The skin on the bony hand felt as cold as ice, rubbery, like a piece of raw fish.

The grey turned black, and far away the sound of the horn abruptly fell silent. She thought that should mean something to her but it didn't. Then she let herself drift away into the darkness.

 

*  *  *

 

If I go crazy then, would you still call me superman?...If I'm alive and well would you be there, holding my hand?...I'll keep you by my side with my super-human might…

Kryptonite!

Jenny slowly comprehended that the sound was coming from her car radio and not from her alarm clock, as her mind had tried to convince her. She peeled her eyes open as the 3 Doors Down tune continued to blare, way too loudly, from her radio. She smelled something, like road-kill, but in the moment it took her to grow disgusted, it disappeared. She raised her head off the headrest and found her neck painfully stiff.

She had fallen asleep in her car with the engine running and the radio on. From her stiff neck she guessed it had been for more than a moment.

Nice. Great way to become a statistic. As if you don't have enough bad shit in your life.

Jenny shook the cobwebs from her mind and looked around the nearly empty garage. She felt like she needed to remember something but had no idea what it could be and discarded the feeling. She twisted the radio down to a tolerable level, put her truck in reverse, and backed out, looking around the lot as she did.

Definitely empty. What the hell is wrong with me?

As she drove carefully around and around the tight turns that wound her down from the nosebleed section of the parking deck, her mind drifted to Jason Gelman for a minute. Very attractive man—a little dark and mysterious. Jenny wondered whether she was (or ever could be) ready for something intimate. She fantasized about kissing him… or more. Another part of her felt terrified of the thought, anxious about the memories it might resurface.

Thanks for that, Dad, you miserable shit.

She shuddered. Why did that feel so wrong?

A sudden vibration in her scrub jacket made her jump, and she fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone. She silenced it as she brought it up to eye level so she could read the caller ID without slamming her budget SUV into a cement wall.

MOM
the phone flashed.

She sighed and tossed the thing on the passenger seat.

It's a struggle to talk to that self-pitying woman on holidays. What on earth would make her think I would talk to her at eight o'clock in the fuckin' morning?

She turned the music up, tapping her thumb on the steering wheel to an old Pearl Jam tune as she pulled out of parking deck and turned left toward her apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve watched as the light grappled for life, as if a thin sheet were being pulled slowly off of his face in a poorly lit room. At first it felt like waking from a nightmare. He watched as reality came into focus, white with a black line down the middle. He tried to raise his right hand to his face, to rub his eyes, but couldn't. In the background of his hazy mind, he heard an annoying beeping he couldn't ignore but couldn't pinpoint, either.

Suddenly, his mind was jolted by a loud
HISS
and a rush of air in his chest. He felt his lungs fill, his ribcage expand. It was excruciating. Something forced gas into his chest, followed by a terrible metallic taste. He tried to hold his breath, hold back against the rush of pressure, but he couldn't. God, his body might explode! Then, just as suddenly, the rush of air disappeared and he felt his body deflate. He tried to raise his hands to his face again, tried as hard as he could. He concentrated on moving his arm—nothing. He felt no pull on his limb, no tightness at his wrist. He simply couldn't move it, like it wasn't connected to his body at all—except he could feel it. He felt a distinct prickling in his skin and a burning in his mid-forearm. Farther up his skin felt cold. The panic returned, a breaking force in his head like a hangover, and then—

HISS!

—the hissing rush of pressure filled his chest. Again he struggled to fight it and couldn't. The annoying beeping grew faster and louder.

When the overpowering sensation went away again, he felt his eyes fill with tears. His vision became distorted and fuzzy. He tried to blink but nothing happened. He tried again—strained with all his might, focused as hard as he could, and then he watched as darkness pulled slowly over his vision, like a window blind being lowered. He felt tears, forced from both of his eyes, trickle down the sides of his face and soak into the hair at his temples. Then he relaxed and the blinds retracted, stopping halfway, until he concentrated again and they finished pulling all the way up, out of his field of view. He half-way noticed that the beeping had slowed again until—

HISS!

—the pressure began again and the beep picked up tempo.

He stared at the whiteness with the dark line, unable to look anywhere else, and searched for a reference to the familiar pattern. It looked like white press board panels separated by dark strips between them—a ceiling! Unable to move his eyes, he followed the checkerboard pattern with his peripheral vision, marching the panels out until they ended at an all-white wall. To his left, he saw a large metal saucer of some sort, like a big, upside-down metal bowl, with a handle that stuck out from the middle. Frustrated that his head wouldn't move, he tried instead to move his eyes to the left. They ticked briefly and then snapped back to the center.

What the fuck is going on? Why can't I move?

He felt his stomach tighten in fear and confusion, and again the beeping sound got faster, just as—

HISS!

The pressure and expansion that he couldn't fight eclipsed the fear erupting from his very soul. The sensation didn't bring its own terror this time, as he knew what was coming, but it felt awful.

Have I been in an accident? Am I some kind of cripple now, paralyzed like that guy who played superman in the movies?

He had seen the guy on TV and the idea of being strapped to a chair, breathing through a big tube in his neck nauseated him. He tasted bile in the back of his throat. The beeping got faster again. This time—

HISS!

—he barely reacted to the hissing and rise of his chest.

Wait a goddamn minute
.
I hadn't been in any fucking accident!
He remembered now! He remembered the darkness and the rustling—remembered the strong hands holding him and the deep whisper of a voice. What had it asked him?

“Are you sorry for what you have done?”

What the hell happened after that? Sorry for what? He remembered the burning that ran up his arm and the feeling of drowning. He remembered passing out and then—

HISS!

—nothing, until the ceiling and the awful hissing that made him feel like his entire body would explode. The beeping seemed louder and was definitely faster. He became aware of the burning in the back of his throat and then he felt his stomach muscles contract violently.

He vomited. The warm, thick liquid filled his mouth, then overflowed and ran down both cheeks, pooling behind his neck. His hearing became muffled as the puke filled his right ear. A shrill squealing like an alarm joined the annoying
beep– beep– beep
. He tried to turn his head and raise his hands to his lips, but couldn't. He tried to spit the vomit out of his mouth but couldn't. He was sure he would choke if he didn't and again—

HISS!

—he began to panic. But he didn't choke, for some reason. His eyes filled again, his vision blurred and warm tears ran down his face, mixing now with the vomit he could feel clinging there.

PLEASE, GOD, WHERE IS EVERYONE? WHY WON'T SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED? I DON'T WANT TO DIE!

The salty stream flowed down his cheeks and his monotonous view of the checkerboard ceiling cleared when—

HISS!

—he heard a sound like a heavy door opening.

THANK GOD! Someone is coming! A nurse or a doctor maybe.

Finally
,
someone to help him, tell him what had happened! He felt movement above him, just out of view. He heard a click and the alarms stopped, then the beeping got quieter, like someone had turned down the volume on a TV. In a minute he would be able to see them. The face of a kind nurse, a hand on his arm, and everything would be all right. Above him features came slowly into view. He strained to move his eyes up, to see the peaceful face of his nurse when—

HISS!

—something familiar, pale, thin-lipped bent over him, the eyes hidden by shadows, below the brim of a gray hat.

“Good morning, Mr. Prescott.” The thin lips held the hint of a smile and Steve tried to scream.

But of course he couldn't.

 

*  *  *

 

Jason found himself unable to get engaged in the chart he was reviewing (okay, re-reading for the third friggin' time). His mind raced repeatedly away from the elderly man in Chest Pain Two and found its way to either Nathan up in Pedi ICU or Jenny. She would surely be gone by now, her night shift long over, but he found himself hoping that she was on duty again tonight, that he might run into her after his shift when he went to check on Nathan.

Nathan. How quickly that little kid had become real to him. He no longer thought of him as “the burns and fracture in Pedi room number three.” Nathan had captured him for certain.

What about the little kid's nightmare bothered him so much? Something about Lizard Men and the terrible things they would do to Steve, his abuser. No reason in the world that should bother him. A dream about that son of a bitch getting what he deserved seemed more of a dream come true. Still, something he couldn't quite remember frustrated him.

Jason noted that the CPK-MB's on Mr. Montoya were normal. Who the hell was Mr. Montoya and why should he care? ...Oh, right…chest pain guy. Normal enzymes so he hadn't had a heart attack. A little angina maybe. Better rule out pulmonary embolism. The man didn't look like he got around much.

“The men with the glowing eyes are going to hurt him real bad.”

Nathan's scared, cracking voice from early that morning. Men with glowing eyes…

Jason's mind shot suddenly to the alley beside the hospital and the two figures in long trench coats and top hats. Shadows over their g
lowing eyes.

He felt his throat tighten and his heart race. Had he mentioned that to Nathan? Oh, for Christ's sake… of course not. Why would he tell that eerie story to a five-year-old? Where the hell had it come from?

Easy there, brother. You're getting a little ahead of yourself. You're acting like you think you really saw two dudes in top hats with glowing eyes. Time for a short reality check, man.

Of course he had imagined the men in the alley and for sure he had imagined the glowing eyes. One hell of a coincidence though, huh? He shuddered for a moment, like when you hear a story about a man on a road warning two travelers that the bridge is out, and later find the man died two years ago on that bridge.

This felt different than that, though. There was no ghost talking to people on the side of a road here. Just two people, a man and a child, with similarly bizarre imaginations. Nothing other-worldly.

“Whadya think?”

Jason jumped. He looked up at Dr. Yeatman, the Emergency Room attending and his boss for the day. “Think?” he stammered, still confused.

“MI or no MI?” Dr. Yeatman asked impatiently and stared at him over his half-lens reading glasses that everyone agreed he wore for effect.

MI? ...Oh, yeah. Myocardial infarction. Heart attack. Right, the dude in Chest Pain Two.

“Uh, no MI,” he answered, coming back. He flipped through the chart, though he wasn't looking for anything. “Normal enzymes, borderline EKG—I'm gonna rule out PE and then have medicine admit him.”

“How are you going to rule out PE?” Yeatman demanded.

“Helical CT,” Jason answered without hesitation.

Are you kidding me? You got any tough questions?

“Alright, young man,” Yeatman answered, satisfied. “Carry on.” He walked away with his hands clasped behind his back. Jason rolled his eyes, tucked the chart under his arm and headed to Chest Pain Two to tell the old man he didn't think he'd had a heart attack.

The voice inside his head, with its demand for answers, remained relatively quiet through most of the morning, and after a while, he settled into the routine of the ER. The questions rattled inside him like background noise, rarely rising to a level that demanded attention. When he could provide no answers, they settled stubbornly and pouted like children.

The emergency room took on its own pace and rhythm, making the routine unique and, in fact, not at all routine. Jason thought that maybe this was what he liked about his job. No two days were really the same, which was not to say they were never dull, just different in little ways. This morning he ploughed through a lot of mundane problems. There were relatively few “emergencies” in the emergency room.

Before he knew it, his stomach told him it was nearing lunchtime. It refused to be quieted by coffee, no matter how he dressed it with creamer. A glance at the clock over the large patient board and showed that it was eleven-thirty and, more importantly, only two patients had “JG” in their provider column. They had nothing in the DISPO column and both had unchecked items in the PENDING column—a CT scan for HR (Ms. Rodgriquez and her probable diverticulitis) and an MRI that Neurology wanted on CP (Mr. Powell and his ten minutes of not being able to move his right side). He figured he had a good twenty or thirty minutes to grab a quick bite.

“Yo', Scooter,” Jason called out to the short, dark-haired man in the stained lab coat at the chart stand. Rich Rizzutto had been Scooter since their orientation when one “clever” attendee had noted he shared a last name with a baseball player. Rich looked up with a “whatcha need?” arch of his eyebrows. “I'm gonna sneak away and grab a bite,” Jason told him.

“I got the bitch,” Rich responded with a thumbs-up and a nod. No one knew why Rich called covering the ER “having the bitch” but Jason chuckled every time he heard it.

“Getcha something?” he asked Rizzutto.

“Nah,” he answered back. “I got something in the back I'll grab in a while.”

Jason nodded and shuffled down the short hall to the push button activated doors into the back of the ER.

The cafeteria was crowded, as usual. There were several long lines for the various unhealthy venues in the hospital food court. He picked the shortest line, Subway, and waited patiently behind two loud girls in scrubs. They talked almost without breathing about a cute surgery resident that one or both of them apparently wanted to “get next to.” He tried desperately to let his mind wander away from the piercing voices and found his mental route leading back to Jenny.

Jason realized, with some annoyance, that it had been months since he had been on a real date. Unlike his gregarious friend Dr. Dietrich, he found small talk with one person like practicing bleeding. The more someone tried to get to know him, the more he tried to turn a conversation superficial. For some reason this didn't seem to be a big formula for success with worthwhile women. This made the realization that he would love to sit in a quiet place and find out more about Jenny all the more shocking.
And I've never even talked to her.

Maybe it was the way her eyes seemed so alive, so sincere. She was strikingly beautiful, no question about that, but it was something behind the exterior that was enticing. He wanted to caress her cheek, maybe kiss her. He felt drawn to her. She somehow seemed familiar.

“Next. Whatcha want, buddy?” The bored voice brought him back from his fantasy. He looked at the overweight, sweaty kid staring at him from beneath his blue hairnet and ordered a sandwich. Almost as an afterthought, he ordered three chocolate chip cookies from the hazy plastic box that claimed, “fresh-baked cookies.” Every kid likes chocolate chip cookies.

After an annoying additional wait to pay for his food, Jason grabbed a plastic seat in the dining hall to wolf down part of his sandwich in time to take the cookies to Nathan. He chuckled, realizing he felt more excited about seeing the little boy than about catching up with Jenny.

 

*  *  *

 

He knew he was dreaming before the dream even started. Nathan promised himself he wouldn't get scared this time. Not because his mommy would want him to be brave. In fact, he felt pretty sure his mom would scream her head off if she saw what he knew he would see. No, he wanted to be brave because it seemed like being scared made the Lizard Men happy. It also seemed to make them stronger. Their being strong in his dream was a really bad thing.