The door shook along with the pounding, letting the two men know that the patient on the other side wasn’t calming down at all.
“I’ll go find someone to help,” Jack said.
As he disappeared, the old lady rounded the corner again, panting from her brisk walk down the hall. The pounding had stopped for the moment, so Keith turned toward the woman, intending to send her to the waiting area.
“Ma’am, please,” he started.
“I’m going to see my husband and you clowns aren’t going to stop me!” she said, trying to squeeze her way between Keith and the door.
“Ma’am, the man that attacked your husband is dangerous. I can’t let you go in,” Keith said, blocking her from entering the room.
She swung her purse at his groin with all her strength.
Keith instinctively let go of the door handle and doubled over in pain, wondering if the woman carried lead weights in her purse. While he had his eyes closed, trying to catch his breath, she slipped past him, shoving the door open.
“No!” Keith said through clenched teeth, straightening up again as he limped into the room. The patient was now crawling across the floor, covered in blood and gore, and the body that had been on the floor had disappeared. Keith stared for a moment until the truth of what he was seeing finally hit him. The crawler wasn’t the patient. It was the woman’s husband. The fact that the man was missing several body parts including at least one vital organ didn’t slow him down much.
“What did they do to you?” the woman yelled as she made her way over to her husband.
Keith stepped toward them but he suddenly found his path blocked. The patient lurched toward Keith with a loud moan.
“Lady, get out of the room!” Keith yelled as he backed his way into the hall toward a supply cart with the patient following. He grabbed a pile of gauze bandages, wrappings and all, and stuffed them into the man’s mouth, careful to avoid the chomping teeth. Struggling to hold his attacker back as he tore off some tape, he managed to get it wrapped it around the patient’s head to hold the gauze in place.
~*~
Eric sauntered down the hall with a soda in hand. He hesitated when he saw that the door was open and Keith was trying to restrain the patient in the hall. He could also hear some sort of commotion coming from the room.
“Everything okay now?”
As Keith struggled to hold the squirming patient against the wall, a shriek from inside the room told him that the woman had reunited with her husband.
“Yeah, Eric, everything’s great!” Keith told him through gritted teeth. He pulled some more tape out and wrapped it around the struggling man to restrain him.
“Why don’t you see if that old woman is all right? She went back into the room to check on her husband. He’s moving around in there, missing heart and all.” He looked at the tape-wrapped patient and tried to figure out what to do with him.
Eric turned to run, but Keith growled, “Don’t even think about it.”
The security guard reached into his pocket and pulled out a can of pepper spray and cautiously entered the room. The gutted man that had once been the woman’s husband had somehow pulled himself up to a standing position. The old lady’s arm was in his mouth and she was trying in vain to remove it, hitting what was left of her husband on the head with her purse. Eric lifted the canister toward the man, closed his eyes, and sprayed. His aim was a little off and he managed to squirt the old lady directly in the face, which, not surprisingly, gave her the motivation to jerk her arm loose from the mouth of her husband. Before Eric could adjust his aim, the half-eaten man turned and lunged at him. In an instant, the old man’s mouth was firmly clamped onto Eric’s throat.
~*^*~
~03~
Jack and a male CNA arrived to see the man gnawing on Eric’s neck and to hear Eric’s bloodcurdling screams. They pulled the man off and promptly cuffed him, avoiding his snapping jaws. The CNA held him to the ground, with a knee to the back, as Jack checked on Eric.
Keith left the taped-up patient in the hallway and returned to the room.
“Eric!” Jack shouted. “How bad are you hurt?”
“He tore my jugular out!” the guard moaned.
Jack checked Eric’s throat. “There’s some blood, but I don’t see a puncture.”
“I think I can explain that,” the CNA said, pointing at the set of dentures embedded in the old lady’s arm.
Keith swore quietly when he realized that the guard’s throat hadn’t been ripped out. He turned to check on the old woman. Considering that the teeth weren’t real, they had still broken the skin and had done some serious damage. He pulled the dentures loose and cleaned the wound before applying some gauze and a bandage to the bite.
“Ma’am, you’re going to need stitches,” he told her.
Eric stood up, revealing a wet spot in his crotch.
“Take her down to emergency, Eric,” Jack ordered, reasoning they’d be safer with Wapowski out of the way. “We’ve got our hands full here. And don’t let her leave your sight!”
Keith lowered his voice and told the guard, “You need to hurry. She’s bleeding badly. Don’t forget to use a wheelchair.”
Across the room, the CNA started to pull the cuffed man to his feet and finally got a close look at him for the first time. He let go and backed away quickly, eyes darting up and down as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The cloudy white eyes looked like they belonged to a corpse and the man’s torso appeared to be almost hollow. The flesh was missing from his ribs and beyond it was a dark void.
“How can he be alive?” the CNA asked, the words coming out in a panicked rush.
“He can’t be,” Keith said, shaking his head. “He’s missing his heart.”
“Then how can he be moving?”
Nobody had an answer for him.
~*~
Eric was glad to leave the room. Besides, it would give him a chance to change his pants. Oh great, it’s Friday, he thought. The ER was always packed on Fridays. He led the woman, still blind from the blast of pepper spray, slowly down the hall. He glanced around for a wheelchair but didn’t see one, so he decided she could just walk.
“I’m sure you understand why I had to spray you like that,” he said, not wanting to be sued. “Sometimes a person needs a little burst of adrenaline to escape a potentially harmful situation.” Eric stopped and turned toward her.
“You know, Cheri and I used to fight, too, sometimes. I mean, I never bit her, but sometimes we said and did things we didn’t mean. Well, I’m sure it’s too late for you and your husband, with him being mutilated and all, but if you ever find someone else . . .”
The woman mumbled some profanity through her fingers, which were still covering her tender eyes.
“Fine,” Eric replied, as he continued to lead her down the hall. Spying the vending machine, he hesitated, remembering that there was only one Cocoa Nutter Bar left. If he waited until he got back upstairs, someone else might get it. He turned to the old woman.
“Wait here, I’ve got to check something.” Reaching into his wallet, he saw that he had only a twenty.
“Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back,” he said as he went on a quest for change, ignoring the woman’s protests.
Several minutes later, Eric returned with his change and claimed another soda and the last remaining Cocoa Nutter Bar. He smiled as he tucked his prize in his pocket.
The woman, still rubbing her eyes, was mumbling words that Eric’s mom usually didn’t allow him to hear. Occasionally the word “lawyer” would pop up among the profanity.
No wonder your husband bit you, Eric thought as they took the elevator down to the first floor. They started down the south hall toward the ER, but as they passed the cafeteria, Eric asked the woman to wait again. He walked in to check the white board for the day’s lunch specials then decided to buy a breakfast sandwich though he’d already eaten. He stuffed it into his pocket so the old woman wouldn’t see it.
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“Had to make sure everything was okay in there,” he informed the woman as he led her to the ER. They walked up to the front desk and he got the attention of one of the busy nurses.
“This lady needs a doctor, fast,” he commanded in his most forceful voice.
“Chest pains? Bleeding to death?” the nurse asked sarcastically.
“She’s got some eye problems,” he replied, oblivious to the pints of blood that had already soaked through the bandage as they had traveled down the hall.
“Well then,” the nurse replied without looking up, “she can wait with all of the other patients who don’t have chest pain and aren’t bleeding to death.”
The nurse pointed to the chaotic mass of people around them.
“But, my arm is bleeding,” the woman mumbled in inaudible tones. She lifted her bandaged arm to show the nurse, but the emergency doors opened and another group of people rushed through, supporting a man who was covered in blood.
“Help!” one of them yelled, close to panic. They all began to talk at once, drowning out the quiet voice of the old woman.
Eric led the woman, still mumbling, to a vacant seat. “You’d better sit here,” he suggested. “It could be a long wait.”
She whispered something and Eric bent down to listen.
“I-I’m not feeling too well,” she said, her demeanor changing.
“Lady, we’re in a hospital. Nobody feels good here. That’s why they call it a hospital.”
She slumped over onto her side.
Good girl, he thought to himself. While you’re resting, I can go change.
~*~
“This is insane,” Jack said, looking at the man who was still struggling to crawl on the floor, cuffs and all. “How can he be moving around? His heart has been eaten and this was after it was ripped from his chest.”
Keith shook his head. “I thought the guy might be on something at first. It might explain the attack but it sure doesn’t explain this.” He nodded toward the man on the floor.
“What do we do now?”
“Let’s get the other one back into the room then I’ll need to make some phone calls,” Jack said.
They stepped out into the hall and the patient immediately lunged at Keith, managing to head-butt him. Even with his arms bound and mouth taped, he kept trying to attack as the two men pushed him back inside the room. Once the door was shut, Keith put a “do not enter” sign on it and hoped that it would be enough. With the patient slamming his body against the door, he was afraid that someone might investigate.
A call came through on the radio for Jack and he answered it, promising to come to the fifth floor where one of the visitors was threatening a doctor. No sooner had he put the radio down than there was another call, this time someone complaining about two men fighting outside. “They’re not on hospital property, so I can’t do anything,” Jack said. “Call the police.”
“I’m going to go get another shirt and I’ll be back,” Keith said, looking down at the vomit-soaked top of his scrubs. “I’ll try to keep my eye on the room until you find out what we’re supposed to do.”
Jack thanked Keith and was moving toward the elevator when another call came in. This time it was the ER saying that they needed security right away.
“Eric should be there. In fact, he should have gotten there a long time ago,” Jack said.
He was not pleased to hear that Eric had already been there and had left the old woman behind.
“I’ll find him and send him back down,” Jack said, getting into the elevator.
The reply was less than enthusiastic.
“I know,” Jack sighed. “But I’ve got an emergency on the fifth floor, so it’ll have to be Wapowski. I’ll be down to check on things once I’m done upstairs.”
~*~
Keith changed quickly and grabbed an apple from his backpack to eat on the way back to the third floor. He finished his rounds, keeping an eye on room 329 as much as possible. When he saw two men in suits round the corner and approach the room, he got there first. One of them flashed a badge at him.
“Can I help you?” Keith asked.
“FBI,” said the one with the badge. “We heard you had a biting incident.”
“That’s a bit of an understatement, but yes, we did. You guys got here pretty fast.”
Not much time had passed since Jack had left to make the calls. Keith had figured the local cops might show up within an hour or so but he hadn’t expected the Feds. As if on cue, Jack rounded the corner and headed over to where the other three men were talking.
“There were two people that were bitten on this floor. The biter and one of the victims are both inside this room and we sent the other one down to the ER. What’s going on?” Keith asked with a frown.
“And the ones inside the room have both been restrained?” asked the taller of the two agents.
“Yes,” Keith said, telling them the whole story with Jack jumping in with some additional information.
The tall agent tried to enter the room but the patient inside was banging his body against the door, making it difficult. They finally managed to force the door open, pushing the taped-up man back with it.
Keith pointed to the man on the floor with the gaping hole in his chest where his heart used to be. He’d managed to roll onto his side but he hadn’t been able to get back onto his feet.
“That’s the biting victim. The guy that did it is the one behind the door, wrapped in tape.”
“We’ve been instructed to take one of them to CDC,” the taller agent said, glancing at a piece of paper in his hand before looking behind the door. Jack thought he caught a glimpse of a photo.
“CDC?” Keith repeated. He asked for the second time, “What’s going on?”
Once again, the agents didn’t reply. Instead they busied themselves putting on gloves as they discussed something in quiet tones.
Keith thought he heard one of them say, “This one.”
The other agent looked at the paper and nodded.
Keith edged a little closer to Jack and whispered to him, “Get the feeling they know something we don’t?”
Jack feigned his best surprised look. “What? The government hiding something? You notice when they saw the guy rolling around with no heart, the ‘holy shit’ factor was about zero?”
“Yeah, I know these guys are notoriously unemotional, but seriously.”
The two agents whispered together for a moment longer then announced that they’d be taking the man wrapped in tape. While they worked at getting the tape off his arms and cuffing him, Keith whispered to Jack again.
“Guess they thought that dragging the guy without a heart through the halls might raise a few eyebrows.”
When the two agents started to leave the room with the patient, Keith said, “Hey, what exactly is going on here? And what are we supposed to do with this other guy?”
One of them shrugged.
“Not our problem,” the other agent said over his shoulder.
“Hey, wait!” Keith said, determined to find out what they were up against, but the men ignored him once again as they headed for the elevator.
“Great,” Keith said, frustrated.
Jack picked up his radio and tried calling Eric.
“Eric, you there?” There was no answer. “I’d better head down to the ER and check on the village idiot. I reported this to admin, by the way, but had to leave a message. No response yet.”
“Maybe I’ll see if I can reach them,” Keith said, knowing that Jack had his hands full.
Jack left for the elevators while Keith closed the door to room 329, locking the partially eaten man inside. He called for housekeeping to clean up the blood in the hall then tried to call administration but he got the answering machine, just as Jack had.
~*~
In the emergency room, one of the nurses shook her head, wondering how Eric managed to keep his job. She looked up to make sure he hadn’t returned before muttering, “He must
be sleeping with someone; someone desperate.”
Her eyes widened as she noticed that the old woman now lay crumpled on the floor. With a new sense of urgency, she grabbed the other nurse and approached the patient, a trail of blood droplets leading to the old woman.
“Eye problems my ass,” she said incredulously. “We’ve got another bite victim.”
“Another one? This is getting creepy,” the second nurse said, reaching down to try to find a pulse. “How many is that today?”
The first nurse shook her head. “Several. Besides the ones that we let go home, I know we sent two upstairs and others are still waiting down here to be admitted to the ICU.”
Well, we won’t be admitting this one. She’s dead.”
~*^*~
~04~
Eric returned from the security room with a mostly eaten bag of chips, after a ‘well deserved’ nap. He had changed into a clean pair of pants, which he kept adjusting as he wasn’t accustomed to going without underwear. It had been some time since he had taken the old woman to the emergency room and he was hoping that Jack wouldn’t discover that she had been left alone. As he approached the lobby, he was met with a greater scene of chaos than there had been earlier. The nurses were desperately trying to regain control as the crowd had turned wild. The nurse that he had spoken to earlier grabbed him, hands shaking as her eyes darted between Eric and the chaotic scene.
“We called for security a while ago and Jack said that you should be down here. The woman you left here just started going crazy and attacking people. I don’t know how many she’s bitten, but I’d swear she was dead a few minutes ago because we couldn’t get a BP on her. A couple big guys have her pinned down over there. She even bit them in the struggle. I don’t know what’s going on!”
A woman’s shriek rang above the noise. The crowd scattered in all directions exposing a horrifying scene. Two men were tearing a casted patient limb from limb and fighting over the pieces. Both of the men appeared to be bathed in blood and the one that Eric could see the best had a huge hole where his throat used to be.
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