“If you’d throw your clothes in the hamper like I told you, I could do your laundry and you wouldn’t smell like roadkill.”
Ignoring her, he left his basement apartment and climbed the stairs into the kitchen. The upstairs lacked the clutter and smell of Eric’s room, although it was in definite need of updating. The decor and furnishings were essentially the same as they had been when Eric was growing up. Despite the obvious wear, Eric’s mom kept the place immaculate.
When Eric had first moved back, his mother had found it impossible to keep up with his clutter, so she had used the majority of her meager savings to have the basement turned into a small apartment. Eric understood that cleaning it was his responsibility. Unfortunately, he didn’t do responsibility well.
Walking to the kitchen table, he poured a generous serving of syrup over a mound of pancakes and quickly shoveled them into his mouth, only pausing to chew for a second. His mother had barely made it back upstairs when Eric had swallowed his last mouthful. Tilting the plate toward his gaping mouth, he washed the pancakes down with the pool of remaining syrup. Mumbling his gratitude for the meal, he rushed toward the door, ignoring his mother’s attempts to brush what remained of his breakfast off his uniform. He reckoned he could make it to work with a minute to spare if he skipped his regular trip to the convenience store for his Mega Gulp. Besides, the vending machine was not far from the nurses’ station. This would give him an excuse to flirt.
~*~
Keith knew that the day might end up being a long one. Things had been crazy the last couple weeks due to the abnormally high temperatures that they’d been experiencing. Many people didn’t have air conditioning in the older sections of the city and it was taking its toll, especially on the elderly and frail. There had been a steady stream of people in and out of the ER at St. Mary’s, mostly suffering from heat stroke and dehydration. Some had been sent home after being treated but several of them had been admitted. To make matters worse, Mercy Hospital had temporarily closed the previous week, putting an extra burden on other medical facilities in the area. It would be busy, but that was almost a relief to Keith. He would not have too much time to dwell on his failing marriage.
He turned a corner and St. Mary’s rose up on his right, a five story brick building that had been around forever. It wasn’t large compared to the newer hospitals scattered about the city, and it wasn’t as modern, but Keith had grown up in the neighborhood and the old brick building had always been a part of his life. He’d been born at St. Mary’s and so had his two sisters. His mother had worked there until cancer had transformed her from a nurse into a patient. She had died while Keith and his sisters were still in their teens, leaving their grandmother to finish raising them. Keith had found a part time job at the hospital the next year, doing janitorial work. It hadn’t been easy, with school and sports, but his grandmother had insisted that the kids stay busy, knowing it would help to keep them out of trouble. She’d been right. All three of the siblings had graduated from college and now had good jobs, though there had been mistakes along the way.
It had taken a four-year stint in the military to get Keith back on track after he’d started to lose interest in college. He had spent some time in Iraq as a Navy Hospital Corpsman assigned as a medic to the Marines. After that he had gone back to school and had finished his degree, taking his classes more seriously than he had done before. By that time, his two sisters had moved away and had started families of their own. Keith had decided to stay in Lansing and had bought out his sisters’ shares of the old house that had been in the family since their grandfather had bought it. The crime rates had risen in the neighborhood and he often questioned the wisdom of staying there, but being a muscular 6 foot 3 inches tall, people generally didn’t bother him much.
The automatic door swooshed open and he went inside, taking the stairs to the second floor to put his things in his locker before climbing one more flight of stairs. He stopped at the nurses’ station where he was briefed by the nurse who was just getting ready to leave.
“Doctor, excuse me, can you help me?”
The voice came from an old woman on the other side of the counter.
“I’m not a doctor,” Keith said, ignoring the snicker from the nurse at the desk. “I’m an RN. What can I do for you?”
The woman looked at him in confusion.
“A nurse? You mean an orderly?”
“No, I mean a nurse. Men can be nurses, too. There are no rules against it.”
He kept his tone level, knowing that many people were intimidated by his large size. When he raised his voice, he could be terrifying, or so he’d been told.
“Well, my husband is hurt. We were visiting a friend here and the man just bit George. I think he needs help.”
“A patient bit your husband?” Keith blinked, turning to walk with her. “What room?”
The woman hurried along, giving directions but she could not keep up with Keith’s long strides.
When he arrived at room 329, Keith took one step inside and froze. He stepped back into the doorway, intentionally blocking the woman’s view.
“Ma’am,” he said, not taking his eyes off of the horrific sight before him, “please do me a favor and go back to the nurses’ station and tell them that I said to call for security, code blue.”
“But is my husband all right?” she asked, trying to peek into the room.
“Right now! Security!” Keith replied, this time raising his voice. As usual, it worked, and the woman scurried off to the nurses’ station.
“And please don’t let it be Wapowski,” Keith muttered under his breath as he turned to watch the woman leave.
Once the woman was gone, Keith turned his full attention back to the occupants of the room. The woman’s husband was quite dead, or at least Keith hoped so, because the patient in the hospital gown was eating him.
~*^*~
~02~
Eric locked his bike to a post at the back of the hospital, outside the security room. He opened the door and fumbled for his time card and quickly stuck it into the slot.
“Cutting it kind of close,” said a voice from behind him. It was Jack, his supervisor. Jack was an African American man in his sixties who worked to keep himself busy. He was retired military, so he took his job seriously and he liked his security team to arrive early. Eric, in particular, annoyed him, as he was either constantly late or barely on time.
“Sorry,” Eric explained. “I had to make my mom some breakfast. She wasn’t feeling good.”
Jack shook his head while letting out a deep sigh. “And I told you to wash that uniform. People are starting to complain.”
Eric pinned on his badge, ignoring Jack’s last comment, and walked over to the elevators, trying to decide which floor he wanted. The vending machine on the third floor didn’t seem to get used as much as the others, so it always had plenty of variety and the odds were higher that it would have what he wanted. Decision made, Eric traveled to the third floor and went straight to the vending machine. He put in a bill and pressed the button, happy to get the second to last Cocoa Nutter Bar. Looking over what was left in the machine, he was disappointed to see only granola bars and oatmeal cookies. He put another bill in the next machine, grabbing a soda as it rolled out. He ate the candy quickly as he walked down the hall, arriving at the nurses’ station in time to see a nurse reaching for the phone.
A panicked little old lady turned to look at him and Eric quickly licked some chocolate from his lips.
“Morning, ladies,” he said in his most professional voice.
“Eric,” the nurse interrupted, "Keith needs you in room 329, stat!”
Eric smiled coolly and leaned against the counter.
“Did you know the word stat comes from the Latin word ‘statim’ which . . .”
“Now!” she yelled.
“Right,” Eric complied, rather embarrassed.
As he headed to the room, he dreaded seeing Keith. He had once tried to bon
d with him, as they were so much alike. They were both big men and had a military history, but Keith hadn't been interested. It had all gone downhill when Eric had suggested to Keith that he would be better suited for security than nursing, as nursing was traditionally a female vocation.
As he approached the room, Eric saw Keith pacing outside the door, visibly agitated. He didn't seem too pleased at the sight of Eric.
“What seems to be the problem?” Eric asked.
“The problem,” Keith said, working to keep his voice calm, “is that one of our patients is eating one of our visitors.”
Keith hated it when he had to call security. There was little he couldn’t handle himself, but he had been informed that he was only to worry about doing his job and that security would handle theirs. He stepped aside so that the security guard could enter the room.
As was often the case, Eric’s habit of not listening left him totally unaware of the spectacle unfolding in the room.
“I’m glad you called, Keith. We’re trained to deal with these situations.” He patted Keith’s shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.
“Oh, I don’t think you’re trained for this,” Keith said, glancing back into the room again with a shudder.
Eric thought he saw apprehension or maybe even fear in Keith’s eyes. Perhaps that was why he had acted so strangely at the suggestion of joining him as a security officer. Some people had it in them, and obviously, Keith did not. Maybe being a nurse was all he could do.
“I’ll take care of this,” Eric said confidently, as he backed into the room, closing the door behind him.
“Wapowski, seriously, you might want to watch it,” Keith said, but the door was slammed in his face.
Eric turned around, thinking of his training. He knew the first step was to gain control of the situation. The color drained from his face as he saw a man in a blood-stained gown hunched over what was left of an obviously dead body. The chest cavity was filleted to expose an array of organs and a look of horror was chiseled into the man’s dead face. Eric let out a gasp, which caused the patient to turn toward him, holding a mostly-eaten heart cupped in his gore-covered hands. Reaching for his radio to call for backup, Eric tried to speak, but he could only squeak out, “Mayday, Mayday!”
The macabre sight mixed with the putrid stench of punctured intestines made the mixture of pancakes, soda, and chocolate begin to churn in his stomach. He shot for the door and opened it just in time to spew the contents of his guts onto a very surprised Keith.
“Shit, man!” Keith said, stepping back quickly.
Eric collapsed into a fetal position in the hall and started to whimper.
“So, I take it everything is under control in there?” Keith asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “You’ve got the situation handled, Wapowski?”
Eric couldn’t respond. He lay curled on the floor, sobbing.
Keith was doing his best to appear calm, but it took most of his effort. He’d had patients do some strange things before, but what was happening inside the room was almost beyond comprehension. He stepped over the prone guard to look inside the room again. The patient seemed to lose interest in his meal as his eyes lit on Keith. Stuffing the last bit of heart into his mouth, the man got to his feet, shuffling slowly toward the door as a low moan rose from his throat.
Keith had seen his share of violence over the years, both in the ER and during his time in Iraq. He’d seen enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life, but never, ever had he seen anything like this. When the man in the bloodied blue gown shoved a chair aside and kept on coming for the door, Keith quickly pulled it closed, yelling for help.
“Come on, Wapowski! Give me a hand!”
The victim’s wife chose that moment to show up again and immediately asked about her husband.
“Just a moment, Ma’am,” Keith said. He reached down and picked up the radio that had been dropped. When the pounding started on the other side of the door, he grabbed the handle and pulled it to keep it closed from the outside. Keeping one hand on the door handle, he looked the radio over, punching a couple different buttons until he got the right one.
“This is Keith Corbin,” he said quickly into the radio as he continued to hold the door shut. “We need some backup here on the third floor, room 329, stat, code blue, hurry.”
He tossed the radio to the security guard, who didn’t even make an attempt to catch it. The man on the other side of the door didn’t seem to be trying to open it; instead he just kept pounding but Keith didn’t want to take a chance so he held the handle tightly with both hands.
“But my husband is in there,” the woman began again.
“Ma’am, the patient inside is violent and we can’t let him out until we get more help,” Keith said, trying to be heard over the loud pounding on the door.
“But my husband is in there with him!”
“I know and we’ll do what we can as soon as help arrives,” Keith said, not sure how much to tell her.
Jack’s voice came over the radio, snapping Eric out of his haze.
“Eric? Are you anywhere near the third floor? I got a call from Keith in 329. We need to check it out, but I’m still a few minutes from getting there.”
The sight of Keith holding the door gave Eric some comfort. Taking a couple calming breaths, he grabbed the radio and answered, “I’m there now. I’ve got the situation under control, but we could use some backup, just in case.”
“You do?” Keith looked at him in disbelief.
Eric looked at the confused old lady, who kept asking about her husband, then at Keith. Standing up on wobbly knees, he said, “My blood sugar is acting up. If I don’t get to the nurses’ station, I could go into a coma.”
He turned and ran down the hall.
“What the hell?” Keith said, watching the guard take off at a run. It was the fastest Keith had ever seen him move. “Hey! Hey! Get back here, Wapowski!”
“Perhaps I should go in and check on my husband,” the woman said, stepping closer to the door. “It sounds as though he wants out.”
“Ma’am, you do not want to go into that room right now,” Keith said. “It’s dangerous. I would appreciate it if you could go find that fat security guard and tell him to get back here. Better yet, find a different security guard.”
~*~
Eric reached the nurses’ station at about the same time as Jack.
“Eric, do you mind telling me what the . . .”
Eric interrupted his boss. “We’ve got a 1327, Jack, in room 325,” he said, forgetting the room number.
Jack looked perplexed. “1327? What the hell is a 1327?”
Eric smiled at the nurse. “Very few people know that a 1327 . . .”
“Get to the point, Eric!” Jack yelled.
“Cannibalism,” Eric answered sheepishly.
“Let’s go,” Jack demanded as he started toward the room. He turned to see that Eric wasn’t in tow. “You coming?”
“Blood sugar has me on the edge of a coma, boss. Already had one seizure. It’s all right. I locked the perp in his room and I have that male nurse guarding the door.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Jack waved him off in disgust and ran down the hall, passing the old lady along the way.
The old woman approached Eric and started to address him.
Eric pointed to Jack. “You’d better follow him.”
She watched Jack disappear around the corner and turned to scowl at Eric. “I’m going to sue everyone in this hospital,” she said, turning to follow Jack.
Eric leaned on the counter and addressed the nurse. “I guess we’d better take care of me now, huh, darlin’?”
~*~
Keith was relieved to see Jack come around the corner.
“Jack, we’ve got some major shit going down here,” he said, explaining everything that had happened, or at least as much as he knew about it.
The pounding started again, the door shaking each time it h
appened. Moans could now be heard on the other side and Keith could swear there were two different voices.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked. “I can open the door and let him out but it may take a few men to restrain him. The guy must be on something. Do you have more guards that can be called in? I mean real guards, not Wapowski.”
~*~
Back at the nurses’ station, Eric winced as the nurse pressed the glucose meter to his arm.
“That always gets me a little,” Eric admitted. “A doctor once told me that I must have more pain receptors than the average human. It’s not like I’m like a wimp, or anything.”
The nurse paused her activities and stared for a second at the ceiling. “This isn’t one of those meters, Eric. It barely breaks the skin.”
Eric quickly changed the subject.
“Yeah, I think your male nurse peed himself back there. Can’t blame him though, I haven’t seen crap that nasty since Panama.” Eric leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “I was on the team chasing Batista when . . .”
The nurse interrupted him, “Noriega.”
“Huh?” Eric looked confused.
“Batista was in Cuba, you putz and your glucose level is fine.”
Eric let out a nervous chuckle.
“Yeah but we’re the ones that chased him to Cuba! Guess I’d better check on my men.”
He rubbed his arm and started down the hall, stopping at the vending machine, hoping to give Jack and Keith a little more time to get things under control.
~*~
“You think I’d be working Wapowski if I had someone else?” Jack shot back.
“Good point,” Keith said.
“Sorry,” Jack said with a sigh. “Juarez got mugged or attacked or something on the way to work today and called in. I’ve been running my ass off on calls all morning and Wapowski is busy buying candy and flirting with the nurses. I think I’ve had twenty calls this morning already and the day’s barely started.”
“This isn’t going to make it any better, I’m afraid,” Keith said, nodding toward the door.
Dead, but Not for Long Page 2