The Lost and the Damned (16 page)

“Nurse Callahan! I will kindly remind you that I am your superior and at work you will address me as Nurse Phillips!” said the fat nurse indignantly. “As to young Mr. Schraeder, I will make sure he is properly welcomed and has a respect for proper authority. I’ll make sure that he has a greater respect than any of our other patients.” Her voice was icy. I even shivered involuntarily. I’d hate to be the on the wrong side of her.

The thin nurse let out a deep sigh and relaxed. She took another drag off her cigarette. “That’s such a relief! You don’t know how worried I was about that little shit! I thought I was going to have to be walking on eggshells!”

“No, there is no need to worry, Nurse Callahan. He will be well taken care of.”

“But what about the doctor? Do you think he will notice? What about the boy’s relatives?”

“No,” said the fat nurse, “the doctor will not care. And the boy is a ward of the state, so no relatives will be coming to see him.”

“Are you sure the doctor won’t care?” said the thin nurse, still worried.

“Absolutely. He’s an idiot at heart, but an idiot who appreciates order. As long as I keep what’s left of this hospital running smoothly, he doesn’t care what I do.”

“Does he know what you do?”

“Maybe,” said the fat nurse, “but knowing our doctor, I think he turns a blind eye. He wants simplicity. And that I can give him.”

The thin nurse broke out in a chittering snicker. She put out her cigarette on the floor, crushing it under her heel. She turned to walk away.

“Are you going to pick that up?” asked the fat nurse.

“No,” said the thin nurse with a smile, “that’s Pablo’s problem now.”

The fat nurse smiled and they walked off, their heels making a loud noise in the empty hallway.

Now I was more confused. The hospital was back in service? It was falling apart and under siege by the Army before we passed out. But now the nurses were going about like nothing had happened. Not even a mention of the catastrophe. I could believe we were out for hours, maybe even a day. But for the hospital to have returned to normalcy, we would need to be passed out for days, maybe even weeks. And what’s with the nurse’s getup? Why weren’t they wearing scrubs?

I wished that Katie was capable of real conversation. She was the only one I could try to piece this together with and she was… well, she was not much of a conversationalist. Right now she was using the mop like it was fake hair and giggling the whole time. I pulled the mop away from her gently and offered my hand. She took it and I pulled her up, knocking over a broom in the process. I checked the door again, found it was clear, and pulled her out of the closet.

From outside, the corridor wasn’t any more familiar. Definitely the same basic structure as Wings B and D, but this place looked different. The paint was peeling, the walls stained. Dust and trash sat on the floor haphazardly. This place was dirty and barely cared for. It was nothing compared to the immaculate halls I had seen in the hospital previously. I wondered if this was a disused wing, but the fact nurses still walked these halls made it appear to be in some use.

We were dusting ourselves off when a man came around the corridor. I tensed, but he looked at me and shrugged, averting his eyes. He was a sad man. He wasn’t old, but the lines on his face showed life had aged him.  He wore work overalls that had the name Pablo. He walked by us and then grabbed the door to the closet. I guessed him to be a custodian. His breath smelled of alcohol. I decided he must not be a very good janitor. The hospital was dirty and he hadn't noticed us passed out in the closet. He looked just broken: broken by this place, broken by these people. He fumbled in the closet before pulling out a broom that he held and stared at for a moment, almost as if wondering how to use such a thing. Then he grabbed it more firmly, closed the closet door, and then wandered off with the broom, not using it.

It looked like the time had come for me to do some Hardy Boy stuff. I needed answers. Question 1: What the fuck? Question 2: Also what the fuck? What was the status of hospital? Where was the Army? What happened to the destroyed parts of the hospital? Why weren’t these people talking about what happened? Why was this part of the hospital so dirty and the nurses so… different?

I walked down the hallway, Katie in tow. The hallway was dim, the lighting not as bright as the rest of the hospital. The doors on the hallway were different as well. These doors had brown wood finishes that looked not only out of style but in need of repair. White plates with thick black numbers labeled the doors. The offices had a pane of frosted glass, but other doors were just wood. Most of these were offices, though down a side hall, I saw what appeared to be patient rooms. Strange that on this wing the patient rooms were mixed in with offices without the dividing walls or even a metal gate. I didn’t see anyone in the halls, which was good, since I wanted to keep a low profile. The janitor seemed not to care that we were looking around, but I’m not sure everyone else would be so blasé.

I heard voices from a side hallway and I flattened against the wall, hoping the dimness of the hallway would hide us. I held my breath, listening as I heard the clack of loud heels coming this way. I turned and looked behind me, noticing Katie standing dumbly in the middle of the hallway, looking at me strangely. I waved for her to flatten against the wall, but she just stood there. She tilted her head and looked at me. The footsteps were becoming louder. I stepped forward and quickly grabbed her, pulling her against the wall with me.

Against the wall, my breath held, I listened for the heels coming from the side corridor on my right. We were maybe ten feet from the corridor intersection. If they turned left, it would be difficult for them not to see us unless they were oblivious. In my head, I hoped they didn’t turn left. The footsteps were louder, they were definitely women’s heels, so it was a nurse. Please don’t turn left, please don’t turn left.

The nurse came into view. It was the fat nurse I had seen previously, Nurse Phillips if I recalled correctly. There was someone to her right, but I could not see them due to the nurse’s girth. I was in luck, though. They turned right. As they turned, I got a look at the other person. It was a teenage boy in a bathrobe. His hair was dark and he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I watched as the nurse led him down the hall to a door, pausing before it.

“And here we are,” said the nurse. “Now Mr. Schraeder, I want you to take note of how we do things here. This is a place of order. And for that order to continue, authority must be respected. I know you have had trouble with authority in the past, but here at Sommersfield, you will respect authority at all times. Now we shall give you a taste of what happens to those who do not show the proper respect.”

With that, she led him in the room, the door closing loudly behind her. The hallway was silent again.

I was curious. Before, I was perfectly happy with hiding out until things improved. But at this point, I’d been dicked around and weirded out too much to leave stuff alone. I had questions I needed answered, and I was damn well going to find some answers. The nurse seemed to know something. If not, she seemed to be in charge here. Perhaps I could find something out. We crept over to the door.

The door was like most others, brown finish with a pane of frosted glass. I crouched down, so I wouldn’t cast a shadow through the glass. The room did not have a label with a number or a name, just three letters: ECT. I wasn’t sure what that signified. I tried listening, but I couldn’t hear speaking. I peered up at the window, but couldn’t see clearly through it due to the frosting. What I could see was the shadow of the nurse moving around the room, bending over this and that. She kept returning to the center of the room, which is where I expected there was a table or something. I did not see a shadow for the boy, nor did I hear him say anything. What did she mean “a taste of what happens?”

I looked back at Katie, who was crouched down with me. She was looking up at the letters ECT with concern.

“Do you know what ECT means?” I whispered.

She didn’t look at me, but still stared at the letters. Then finally she shook her head once with hesitation, then shook her head a few times. Then she hid her head, face down, almost in her armpit.

I turned back to the window, noticing the nurse back in the center of the room again. “And now we’ll begin. Remember this feeling. Remember it well,” she said before moving to one side of the room, her shadow out of my view.

I still wondered what she meant. Suddenly, the room was full of screaming. I jumped back, almost falling backwards. Katie looked at me wide-eyed, her expression absolute terror. The screaming continued, the very obvious wail of that poor teenage boy. I looked down the hallway either way, expecting concerned people to come running to try to stop the pain. Even after thirty seconds, there was no reaction. The hallway was empty, filled only with the horrible screaming.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. There was so much anguish in that scream. I had to do something. I couldn’t be the man who walks away. I clenched my fist and squared my shoulders. I looked at that door with such anger. Then I hurled myself at the door, busting it open. I heard a crack as I broke the lock, the door slamming against the wall. Inside I was surprised by what I saw.

The center of the room held a table out of a B-movie. Strapped to the table was the young boy, still screaming and writhing in pain. Electrodes were attached to the boy’s head, wires leading to a huge machine that took up a majority of the room. At the controls of the machine was the nurse, her mouth gaping at me. Soon a shriek erupted from her mouth. I stood in the middle of the room, panting, glaring at the nurse with rage.

“How dare you!” shouted the nurse, turning to glare at me. Still panting, I glared back at her, murder in my eyes. I couldn’t believe someone could do that to someone else. In that moment, I felt I could kill her, if only to save the boy. We glared at each other, neither backing down. Her resolve finally broke and she screamed again. Then she threw up her arms and screamed a third time, running past me out of the room, her massive girth nearly knocking me over.

I ran over to the controls of the machine, still hearing the screams of the boy. I looked at the console of buttons, lights, and letters. Katie entered the room, covering her ears, running over to me.

“How do I turn it off?” I shouted, pressing buttons and pushing levers. Finally I found a dial labeled with numbers. I twisted it to zero and the boy immediately stopped writhing, his screams abating. I sighed, my breath rasping. After a moment to relax, I went over to the table, pulling the electrodes off the boy. My hands shaking, I removed the leather straps from the boy. I looked down at the boy. He was unconscious but he looked to be no longer in pain. Katie wiped the hair out of his face. He still looked familiar to me, but I just couldn’t figure out how.

“Come on,” I said to Katie, “we need to get out of here. I don’t want her to bring a gang of orderlies back here.”

Katie looked at me and back down at him. Then she looked at me again. “Him?”

“He’ll be fine.”

She looked at him and me again. “Him?”

“He’ll be fine. Really. Look, we can’t take him with us. What she was doing to him wasn’t legal. They’ll come here and find the torture stuff. But if we’re here when they show up, it will be really bad for us.” I held out my arm for her. “Come on.”

She looked at him again. I waved my arm in the air again insistently. Finally she took my hand and we ran all the way down to the end of the hall. There was a door for the stairwell. I grabbed the door and gestured Katie in. I followed behind her, running halfway up the stairs, making sure it was clear. Then I went back to the door we entered, peering out for the group of orderlies or security guards that would have been summoned for the nurses. I watched for a few minutes.

No one came.

I sat back against the stairs in my adrenaline crash. My breathing had slowed and my muscles had begun aching again. Katie sat higher up on the steps, looking at nothing in particular through the bars in the stair railing. I let my mind wander as I rested. What was up with this crazy hospital? It was pretty messed up before we passed out, now it was just weird. Run down hallways, torture devices, strange nurses, and no one running to help either the patients or the nurses. The walls were peeling and I had seen quite a few roaches, giving this place the feeling that it was abandoned or about to be. The previous wings of the hospital had been up to date and clean, a high class affair. Why was this wing ignored while the others cared for? And why have patients in this run down wing?

Then there was the Army question. What happened to them?

“What’s going on here?” I asked rhetorically, laying my head back on the stairs. I could see Katie above me, who shrugged and made a childlike noise indicating she didn’t know.

I pulled out my cell phone. Yup, still no signal.

I put my phone away and scratched my head. I felt rested enough. Time to figure out some stuff. I stood up, wiping off my pants. I wanted to find a window that looked out on the front of the hospital. I assumed the Army had gone, would be too big an assumption. I need to know for myself. I walked up the steps to the second floor landing. I put my hand on the door and started to push before I stopped, letting go of the door and staring at the sign next to the door.

The sign next to the door said Wing B.

I stared at the sign for a long time. It was an old, worn out sign with its letters in a black blocky retro font. I wondered if it was a mistake, but it clearly said Wing B. The same Wing B I had been in earlier where I met Max. But Wing B was nothing like this. I had been through most of the wing and it had been white, well-kept, and bright. Wing B was almost completely patient rooms, but this wing I had just been through had been offices and patient rooms mixed together. Where was the big glass partition with the key card readers? Where was the antiseptic hall design?

I had just been on the first floor, which was the same floor I had been on before. I opened the second floor door, just to be sure they hadn’t been misnumbered. I looked out. Dim lights, peeling walls, the hall empty except for a roach creeping across twenty feet down. Was there another Wing B? Was the sign wrong? I closed the door and trotted down the stairs to the first floor landing. The sign next to the door also said Wing B.