by James Hunt
“Hey, what the hell are you doing, man?” the orderly asked.
It wasn’t his dad. Mike let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d held.
“Sorry,” Mike said.
Mike moved to the side of the stairs and let them pass. On his way up the last flight of stairs he could overhear the two orderlies below talking.
“You think he’s gonna make it?”
“You kidding me? You see what’s happening right now? Anybody who’s dependent on modern medicine ain’t gonna last much longer. The old man’s a goner.”
Hospital
Mike leaped the steps two at a time. He burst through the open door into a hallway on the third floor. He looked left, and bright sunlight shone in from a window down the hallway. To his right, the hallway faded from the light into darkness. He rushed past nurses, doctors, and patients, scouring the floor for his father. Shouts from hospital staff filled the hallway.
“We need IV drips going in rooms twelve, nineteen, and seven.”
“We need a doctor in here now!”
“Ma’am, please, we’re doing everything we can to help your husband.”
“Any spare candles should be put in the operating rooms.”
Mike squinted, trying to make out the signs hanging from the ceiling. He read “ICU”, “ADMINSTRATIVE DESK” and “BLOOD LAB” on the bottom with an arrow pointing further down the hallway.
Mike weaved in and out of the traffic of people clogging his path. He passed room and saw the figures in bed, unmoving. He saw nurses huddling around candles, filling syringes by their light. He walked past the intensive-care unit. The silence of machines replaced by the sobs and screams of mothers, fathers, wives, and husbands slumped over lifeless bodies.
Beyond the ICU Mike passed the blood-soaked operating tables with doctors frantically trying to keep their patients alive. All of the technology used to aid them in surgery now gone.
The sign of the blood lab was plastered on the door. Mike bolted inside. The room was pitch black.
“Dad?” Mike whispered, but no answer.
Mike exited the lab. He stood motionless in the hallway. The hospital staff rushed past him. He had no idea where to look next.
“Michael!”
The light from the window down the hall outlined Ulysses’ silhouette. Mike couldn’t make out the reaction on his father’s face upon seeing him, but Mike knew Ulysses could see the relief spreading across his own.
“Dad,” Mike said, running toward him. He took his father in both arms, pinning him against his chest.
“I thought I’d lost you, old man,” Mike said.
“Not yet,” Ulysses replied. “I need your help.”
Mike tried to keep up with his father. He noticed the red bandage around Ulysses’ arm.
“Are you all right?” Mike asked.
“There are some people trapped in the elevator down the hall. I don’t know how many,” Ulysses said.
“Dad, did they give you any insulin?”
“I’ll need you to hold the doors open until I can pin them in place.”
“Dad!”
Mike seized his father’s arm. He whipped him around and the two stopped dead in their tracks. The flow of people moving through the hall rushed around them like water breaking on rocks in a river.
“Michael, I’m fine,” Ulysses said.
“Did they already give you your insulin?” Mike asked.
“The lights went out before they could give it to me.”
“We need to get you that medicine now.”
Ulysses jerked his arm out of his son’s grip.
“After we get those people out of the elevator.”
Ulysses marched back down the hallway and Mike turned his head back to the direction of the blood lab. He should have tried to grab the insulin before he left.
The shouts coming from the elevator shaft roared louder the closer they moved to it.
“You sure they’re below us?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, we need a drop key to get the doors open. I went looking for the maintenance room, but I couldn’t find it,” Ulysses replied.
“It’s downstairs. I saw it on my way up,” Mike said.
Mike flew down the hallway and rushed back down the stairs. When he reached the first floor, the number of people inside had doubled.
Mike stepped forward and his boot slid on the tile; he stuck his arms out trying to steady himself. He looked down and saw his boot print smeared in blood. His eyes followed the trail to other fluids staining the white hospital tile.
Mike pushed his way through the growing masses in the hospital’s lobby. When he reached the maintenance door he saw Garry was right where he left him. Mike paused, glancing at the covered heap of flesh.
The maintenance room was chaotic and unkempt. Mike hunted through drawers with mixed tools, light bulbs, and spare screws. Blue jumpsuits hung on a rack along the wall. He searched the pockets, turning them inside out. He reached the last jumpsuit on the rack and as his hand dug into the outer pocket he could hear the jingle of keys. Mike flipped through them until he found the three-inch long rod with a hinge piece hiding amidst the rest of the silver and bronze keys surrounding it.
***
Ulysses had gathered more candles and was joined by two stocky built men, Adam and Sam. Mike handed Ulysses the elevator key and he jammed into the hole letting it fall into place. The elevator doors’ locks released.
Adam and Sam pulled the doors open. Mike glanced down and saw the elevator was stuck between the second and third floor five feet below them. The shouts were more audible.
“Help us!”
Ulysses stretched out his hand to grab the cable and Mike knocked it away.
“I’ll go down and check first,” Mike said.
Before Ulysses could protest Mike shimmied down the cable. His landing shook the elevator car a bit and he yanked the service hatch open.
A nurse in scrubs was furiously pumping a patient’s chest on a gurney while a young girl squeezed an air mask over the patient’s face.
“What happened?” Mike asked.
“His pacemaker went out when I was taking him upstairs for some tests. We need to get this guy out of here and into surgery now,” the nurse said, while continuing to pump the man’s chest.
“Adam, I’ll need your help getting him out,” Mike said then looked over to his dad. “As soon as we get this guy out of here you’ll need to start CPR on him.”
“Okay,” Ulysses said.
Adam took Mike’s place on top of the elevator and Mike slid through the service hatch. Mike noticed the trembling hands on the young girl holding the mask. Her face was down and her hair hovered over the patient’s head. Mike placed his hands over the young girl’s. She looked up when their hands touched. Her eyes were misty.
The nurse brought the straps from the side of the gurney and tightened them over the patient’s body.
“We’ll move him on three. One, two, three,” Mike said and he and the nurse lifted the patient to Adam’s extended hand.
Mike pushed the patient up through the service hatch with the nurse’s help and watched it disappear out of sight. He folded his hands like a step and motioned to the young girl.
“C’mon, you’re next,” he said.
The girl placed her Converse sneakers into Mike’s hands and he lifted her up to the ledge of the service hatch above. He could see Adam’s hands grab under her arms and pull her the rest of the way.
“Thank you,” the nurse said.
“Up you go,” Mike said and thrust the nurse up to freedom.
Once everyone was out of the shaft, Sam jumped down to the top of the elevator next to Adam and the two of them lowered their arms inside the service hatch. Mike jumped and grasped both of their hands. He felt himself being yanked up through the hole in the ceiling and then his feet landing on the metal casing on top of the elevator.
The nurse and patient had already disappeared. The young girl wrapped her
arms around Mike when he stepped back into the hallway. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. His hand held the back of her head gently and then, without a word, she left.
“Appreciate your help, boys,” Ulysses said shaking Sam’s and Adam’s hands.
“Yeah, thank you,” Mike said.
The two men nodded and disappeared into the crowd. Ulysses pocketed the maintenance keys. Mike gave him a frown.
“They might come in handy later,” Ulysses said.
“Dad, we need to find the pharmacy here,” Mike said once the others had left.
“What for?”
“We need to grab you as much insulin and needles as we can.”
Beyond the busy operating rooms and ICU, the rest of the hospital was eerily quiet. Mike could see shadows moving in the rooms he passed and hushed murmurs coming from the inside. The deeper they went into the center of the hospital the quieter it became. Patients sat in the darkness, some with loved ones, others completely alone.
Finally, Mike saw “PHARMACY” painted in bold black letters across a door window. Inside he found a twelve pack of 10 ml bottles. Mike found a backpack and emptied the contents. He stuffed the pack full of insulin and disposable needles. He tossed one to Ulysses.
“Take one now before we leave,” Mike said.
“I have that stuff back at my place. You don’t need to steal it, Michael,” Ulysses said.
Mike’s gut turned sour. That’s what he was doing wasn’t it? He’d never stolen anything in his entire life. Then he remembered the hordes of people trampling each other to get into the police station. He saw the young man with the gunshot wound. He wasn’t going to let his father die when he had the means to save him.
“C’mon, Dad. We need to get out of here,” Mike said.
Mike peeked around the corner outside the lab. The hallway was empty. He motioned for his father to follow and he walked briskly down the hall.
On their way back to the stairs, Mike noticed a large group crowded around the window. He pushed his way through the crowd and made it to the edge of the windowpane.
The streets were chaos. Looters smashed windows and ran from stores with whatever they could carry in their hands. People were jumping and stomping on car roofs. Police officers were in full force in their riot gear trying to calm the riots breaking out everywhere, while those not joining in the riots searched for places to hide.
Mike pushed his way back to his father.
“What’s going on out there?” Ulysses asked.
“Nothing good. We’ll have to take the back way out of here. I-279 is right behind us. We can hop on that and take it to 65 back to my place. I’m not sure how safe it’ll be, but we should be fine as long as we make it back before dark,” Mike replied.
Mike and Ulysses rushed down the stairwell and burst out onto the first floor. Almost everyone that wasn’t dead or dying had crowded near the large lobby windows to watch the events outside.
They hurried down the hallways, turning left and right around corners, searching for the back exit of the hospital. Around every turn was death. All of the failed equipment in the hospital had turned the place into a morgue. There were so many individuals that couldn’t survive without the aid of machines and the computer chips that powered them.
When Mike and Ulysses finally made it out the back they shielded their eyes from the sun. Mike could hear the shouts of voices coming from the other side of the hospital, voices with a mindless purpose of chaos.
The Highway
The summer sun was brutal. Even the asphalt was sweating. Mike and Ulysses trudged between the abandoned cars on the highway. Other travelers were spread out on the road, heading to whatever home they still hoped was there.
It’d been three hours since they left the hospital. Mike pulled the water bottle from the bugout bag he grabbed from his truck at the steel mill. The rays shining through the plastic hitting the water shimmered like crystals. He had to keep reminding himself to drink, while restraining himself not to down the entire bottle in one chug.
Mike pressed the bottle to his forehead, attempting to cool down. The water felt hot against his head. He reached out his hand to Ulysses, but the bottle hung in the air, and when Mike looked over Ulysses was gone. He spun around searching behind him.
“Dad?” Mike asked.
Ulysses was bent over on his knees and slowly slid down the driver’s side door of a car and collapsed on the pavement.
“Dad!”
Ulysses sprawled out on the ground. He was breathing quickly, panting like a dog trying to cool off, but with no success. Mike lifted his father’s head up and felt his forehead. He was burning up.
Mike tipped the bottle into Ulysses’ mouth. The water spilled over his lips and dribbled down his chin. Ulysses coughed and pushed the bottle away from his face.
“Dad, you have to drink,” Mike said.
“I’m fine.”
“Godamnit, Dad, now’s not the time to be stubborn.”
Ulysses put his hand down and took a few more gulps of water. Mike dropped the bottle in Ulysses’ lap. His eyes fell on the bandage around his arm where the hospital staff had drawn blood.
“Did you take that shot I gave you before we left the hospital?” Mike asked.
Ulysses took another sip of water, avoiding his son’s face. Mike ripped open his pack and pulled one of the bottles of insulin out of his bag. He ripped one of the needles out of the packet. He pulled the syringe back, filling it with the insulin from the bottle. Mike jammed the needle into his father’s arm and emptied it.
That was typical of his father. Never thinking he needed outside help. He’d never needed it before. He worked two jobs while going to school finishing his engineering degree. He lived in a broken down apartment in the slums of the city when he was first starting out, with barely enough money to feed himself, and ended up as head engineer for one of the most prestigious firms in the city.
When Mike was little his dad was superman, he could lift him up in the air with one arm. Now, just like the patients in the hospital on life support, without this tiny bottle of liquid he’d be dead.
Mike joined his dad under the shade of the car. The two of them sat there in silence for a while. The people passing them didn’t bother to stop. They didn’t think to ask what was wrong. They just kept moving toward their destinations, mindlessly. Mike thought about his destination. He needed to get back to his family.
“You and I both know that those insulin bottles are only good for another month,” Ulysses said.
Mike’s heart dropped. He’d never heard his father talk like that before. His dad had always been the one to push forward, find solutions, and get it done. It was the first time in his life he’d heard his father hint about the inevitability that comes to all men.
“Insulin isn’t the only thing that can help fight diabetes, Dad,” Mike said.
“It’s the only kind that can fight the type I have, and you know it.”
“Think you can walk?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Ulysses replied.
Ulysses handed the bottle back to Mike and the two headed down the path toward home. Mike’s eyes kept wandering to the windows of the cars he passed. Items left behind in the vehicles that he could easily take. Flashlights, emergency flares, food, water, all sitting in back seats, cup holders, and glove boxes.
Stop it. His eyes went back to the road. He wasn’t a looter. He only took the insulin because without it his father would have died.
Two men one car over from Mike were talking in whispers trying not to be too loud. One wore a grey Steelers jersey and shorts. The other was dressed in a short-sleeve polo and khaki pants.
“I’m tellin’ you, man, this was an EMP,” said polo shirt.
“It’s just a power outage,” said Steelers jersey.
“A power outage doesn’t cause your phone and car to break down.”
“You really think it’s the whole country?”
“Why haven’t
we seen the national guard roll in yet? You saw what was happening in the city; people were going nuts.”
“You think it’s safer in Philly?”