“A patient?” whispered Archie. “Great idea…” Then he was gone again.
Mark sat alone for a moment, then he heard a buzzer sound further down the ward, followed by another – and another. The two nurses hurried past him, but neither saw him sitting silently in the darkness.
“That should keep them busy for a while!” hissed Archie as he appeared back at the wheelchair, then he pushed Mark out past the now-empty nurse’s station, and into the hospital beyond.
The corridors were deserted. “What time is it?” asked Mark. He had forgotten to check the time on his PS Vita before leaving the ward.
“Two thirty-ish,” said Archie, pushing the chair. “I couldn’t sleep. I was too worried about tomorrow. What do you think happens?”
“In the operations?” said Mark. “I don’t know. I don’t trust Dr Stone, though.”
“I spoke to Mr Denby, in the bed by the door,” said Archie. “He’s in for his third heart operation this year. He says Dr Stone is a great surgeon.”
“Yes, but Mr Denby has a huge family who come in to see him every night,” Mark pointed out. “So many that they have to borrow chairs from other patients. They’d soon kick up a fuss if he suddenly disappeared.”
They reached the bank of lifts at the end of the corridor. Archie pressed the ‘down’ button. “Mr Denby said that Dr Stone’s operating theatre isn’t upstairs with the others. He has a new one the hospital built in the basement for him.”
DING! The lift doors opened, forcing both boys to shield their eyes against the harsh light inside.
“Then I guess we’re going down,” said Mark.
They found the operating theatre easily. The doors weren’t locked, so the pair crept inside. In the centre of the room, beneath a large inactive light, sat a vast operating table. Various machines and monitors – all switched off – crowded around the sides of the theatre. Archie parked Mark beside a trolley laid out with scalpels, clamps and other horrific-looking surgical tools.
“What are we looking for?” asked Archie, creeping around the room.
“I don’t know,” Mark admitted. “Something that looks out of place, I guess.”
“OK,” said Archie. “But how do we know what’s out of place in an operating theatre? I’ve never been inside one before…”
Before Mark could reply, a light switched on in the room next door, sending a shaft of light shooting across the operating table. Mark ducked below the light and wheeled himself over to Archie, who was crouching behind some kind of monitor.
“Do they do operations at night?” Archie whispered.
Mark shrugged. “I guess they do if there’s an emergency.”
“It’s Dr Stone!” said Archie, risking a glance at the window into the next room. Mark looked. The surgeon was wearing a green gown and mask, and was scrubbing his hands beneath a running tap.
“Then this definitely is an emergency!” hissed Mark. “We have to get out of here…”
Suddenly, the doors to the operating theatre crashed open and the hospital porter pushed a bed into the room. Lying on the bed, not moving, was a middle-aged woman. The porter lifted her onto the operating table.
Mark and Archie peered out from their hiding place.
“Who’s that?” mouthed Archie, pointing to the figure on the table.
“I’ve no idea,” Mark mouthed back. “She must be from the ward next to ours.”
Lights blinked on and Dr Stone entered the room. He took a moment to study the woman on the operating table, then he turned to the porter. Miss Green’s had the injection?
The porter nodded. “Yes sir, but…”
“But nothing!” spat Dr Stone. “You’ll get your cut as usual. Now get out of here!”
Blinking hard, the porter pushed the bed out into the corridor outside, applied the brakes to keep it in place, then hurried away. Dr Stone turned back to his patient.
“Hello, Miss Green!” he soothed. “I’ll be your surgeon for this evening…”
Mark and Archie watched in horror as Dr Stone chose a scalpel from his tray and got to work. But this wasn’t any operation Mark had heard about before. Miss Green wasn’t having pins inserted into a broken bone, or her appendix removed.
Instead… Mark swallowed hard. What he was seeing was almost too gruesome to bear…
Dr Stone cut the entire body into pieces!
Mark could feel Archie sobbing silently beside him. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and hugged him tightly. This was something no one should ever have to witness – but there was worse to come.
Once Miss Green was nothing more than a pile of meat, the door to the operating theatre swung open and another figure appeared. It was an older woman with a broken-toothed smile that Mark recognised as the kitchen worker the nurses called Grotbags!
“How was she?” Grotbags asked, picking up a piece of arm and squeezing it.
“A little scared at first,” replied Dr Stone from behind his mask. “In fact – she almost went to pieces!” The pair cackled together for a moment, then the surgeon’s hard expression fell back over his eyes.
“You’ve got something for me?”
Grotbags nodded and pulled a thick stack of money from the pocket of her apron. “I still say this is too much.”
“Do you want a supply of cheap meat for the kitchen or not?” Dr Stone snarled. “I have certain people to pay to keep their mouths shut.”
Grotbags sighed and handed over the cash.
“Wonderful doing business with you!” said Dr Stone. “Any idea what you’ll make of Miss Green?”
“I thought I could smell lasagne on Ward 13 tonight,” said Grotbags, rummaging through the assorted body parts at the end of the table, “although I don’t know why – I served chicken. Or, at least, what I told everyone was chicken.” The woman lifted a severed foot to her nose and sniffed at it as though it was a prime cut of steak. “Yeah, I reckon she’d go lovely with a few layers of pasta!”
Mark couldn’t help himself. That had been the writing on his piece of chicken earlier! R… O… Y… A… L… N… A… V… Y…
Jack’s tattoo! He vomited – loudly.
CHAPTER 6
THE OPERATION
Dr Stone strode over to the monitors and peered over the top. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
Mark wiped the sick from his pyjama top and turned to Archie. “Go!” he cried. “Run!”
“I can’t leave you!”
“Run, now!”
Archie leaped up and pushed past Dr Stone. He raced for the door. Grotbags saw him coming and swung at him with the severed foot, but Archie was fast. He quickly changed direction and dropped to the floor, sliding underneath the operating table and out the other side.
Grotbags chased him out of the operating theatre doors, but was back in a less than a minute, out of breath. “I couldn’t… catch him…” she wheezed.
“Never mind the little one,” growled Dr Stone, turning back to Mark. “I know where to find him. But this one…”
He reached down and grabbed Mark by the neck of his pyjamas, dragging him awkwardly to his feet. “This one has already been sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. Perhaps it’s time we stuck it somewhere else – like inside one of your meat pies!”
Grotbags hurried over to take hold of Mark’s arm. Dr Stone released his grip on Mark and turned to collect something from his tray of implements. It was a large syringe, loaded with a green liquid.
“Say hello to my own little mixture of medicines…” the surgeon beamed. “I call it Stone’s stonemaker…”
Mark struggled to get free. He swung up his fist, aiming for Grotbags’s face, but she caught his wrist and forced it painfully back down to his side.
“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to avoid ending up as someone’s din-dins,” she grinned.
“You won’t get away with this!” Mark snapped.
“Oh, but I will,” soothed Dr Stone. “Who’s going to miss an
annoying little runt like you? Certainly not the innocent shoppers you annoy with your skateboard antics down in the precinct every evening.”
“There are the carers at Keating House!” said Mark. “They’ll come looking for me.”
Dr Stone laughed. “You won’t be the first kid who’s run away from his children’s home,” he said. “I’ll simply tell them we found one of the windows open in the middle of the night – and your bed was empty. They’ll call the police to look for you but, by that time, you’ll be safely digested!”
“No!” cried Mark. “You can’t…”
“Yes!” exclaimed Dr Stone. “I can!” Then he plunged the syringe into Mark’s upper arm and injected the green liquid directly into the boy’s veins.
The effect was almost instant. Mark found his muscles stiffening and his chest growing hard. He struggled to breathe and tried to raise a hand to his mouth – but found that he couldn’t move.
“Wh… what’s happening?” he croaked.
“Stone’s stonemaker!” said Dr Stone as he and Grotbags lifted Mark onto the operating table. The metal surface felt cold against his back, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t move at all. Even his eyes were locked in place, staring straight up at the blinding light.
The surgeon’s face came into view. He sneered down at Mark. “Instant petrification! Good word, isn’t it? It means you can no longer move any part of your body at all – not unless I inject you with the antidote, of course. And, the best part is – you’re wide awake and can still feel pain.”
Mark breathed fast, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.
“I usually finish my victims off first so they don’t feel the agony of being dismembered – piece by piece – they just fall asleep and never wake up again. But, in your case, I think I’ll make an exception…”
Laughing, Dr Stone placed the empty syringe onto his tray and selected a scalpel to begin his work. Mark watched the razor-sharp blade glint in the light as it came closer and closer to his face.
“Let’s start with that pesky nose, shall we?”
Suddenly, the doors to the operating theatre crashed open.
Dr Stone spun round and shouted. “What are you lot doing here? Get back to work this instant!”
Mark couldn’t turn his head to see who had entered the room, but he could see their reflection in the metal casing of the light above him. Standing in the doorway were half a dozen nurses, the hospital porter – and Archie!
Nurse Helen held up a syringe containing a red liquid. “The antidote to Stone’s stonemaker!” she announced. “We found it in your locker.”
Dr Stone laughed. “Too bad you don’t have the courage to use it!” he spat.
The nurses glanced at one another nervously.
“I told you so,” said Dr Stone. He turned to Grotbags. “Get them out of here…”
The bulky kitchen worker took a step forwards and the nurses began to back away. But the porter stood his ground.
“No,” he said. “No more…”
He grabbed Grotbags by the wrist and twisted her arm up her back. The woman cried out in pain.
Archie turned to Helen. “Go on!” he urged the nurse. “Set Mark free!”
But Helen – and the other nurses – didn’t move.
“He’s not that scary!”
The nurses just stared at Dr Stone in terror.
Archie sighed. “If you want something doing…” he snatched the syringe from Helen’s hand and raced across the operating theatre.
“Oh, no you don’t!” bellowed Dr Stone. He threw his scalpel directly at Archie, the spinning blade just missing the boy’s head, but nicking his ear and drawing blood.
“What a crap shot!” Archie yelled. He reached the table and stabbed the needle deep into Mark’s thigh.
Mark felt his entire body begin to tingle. He found he could turn his head, and watched as Dr Stone grabbed another scalpel and lunged furiously at Archie. Mark cried out. He had to help his friend, but he couldn’t jump off the table and fight because of his broken leg.
That was it! His broken leg!
Using all his effort as the antidote swept through his veins, Mark swung his broken leg out as hard as he could. The solid white plaster cast hit Dr Stone’s jaw with an almighty CRACK! Then the surgeon slumped to the floor, out cold.
“Stone’s stonemaker!” laughed Mark as Alfie helped him to sit upright. “It’s nothing compared to Jackson’s jawcracker!”
CHAPTER 7
THE REVENGE
Dr Stone woke groggily, forcing his eyes open against a thudding pain that completely enveloped his head – but seemed to be focussed on his jaw. He tried to raise a hand to rub his chin, but found he couldn’t move.
“It’s good stuff, this mixture of yours!” said a voice. “Works really quickly.” A face came into view, then another. Dr Stone found himself looking up at Mark and Archie – and the younger boy was holding a syringe with the remains of a green liquid inside. A row of angry nurses stood behind the pair.
The surgeon tried to scream, but could only make a weak gurgling sound.
“Just to give you an update…” said Mark, smiling, “you’re in Ward 13, and the police have been called. However, it’s a busy night for them – what with them receiving dozens of anonymous calls reporting people missing tonight…”
Archie grinned. “I got to do a few of those!”
Mark nodded. “You know what we’re like, us boys!” he beamed. “We get bored very easily so we go out skateboarding to try our hand at tricks and stunts…” He raised a finger as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Or… we could pass the time by playing ‘Doctors and Nurses’. Yes, I think a bit of scalpel practice would be in order.”
The nurse with the curly hair turned to the hospital porter. “Take him down to the operating theatre.”
The porter nodded and began to push Dr Stone’s bed towards the exit of Ward 13.
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
Out of the corner of his eye, the surgeon could see the kitchen worker lying on another of the empty beds, bound and gagged.
Mark half limped, half hopped to catch up with the bed as it was wheeled out into the corridor.
“Can you hear the sirens yet?” he asked Dr Stone. “No, me neither – at least not over the sound of that squeaky wheel.”
SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!
“I wonder if the police will get here before we reach the operating theatre…” Mark continued.
SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!
“If not – I hope they’re hungry!”
THE END
Ward 13 ISBN: 978-1-78464-195-5
Text © Tommy Donbavand 2014
Complete work © Badger Publishing Limited 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in any form or by any means mechanical,
electronic, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Tommy Donbavand to be identified as author of this Work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
Publisher: Susan Ross
Senior Editor: Danny Pearson
Publishing Assistant: Claire Morgan
Copyeditor: Cheryl Lanyon
Designer: Bigtop Design Ltd
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