The tanned nurse said, “Well, duh.”
And the monitors in the room went crazy. Beeps were sounding so fast, they blurred together into one long screech.
Arthur turned back to the man. He suddenly understood. “You want to go to this place before you die.”
The monitors all fell silent. Completely silent.
For five seconds, the only sound in the room was the combined breathing of Arthur, the nurses, and the man.
And then the monitors started beeping in a normal rhythm again.
Arthur turned back to the nurses. “He wants to go to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center before he dies.”
“Impossible,” Nurse Ackerman said.
Arthur sat in a low-slung dark-blue visitor’s chair in front of a cluttered desk that belonged to the assistant of the assistant of the Heracles Hospital administrator. Judging from the man’s (boy’s?) age, Arthur suspected he was more than two people removed from the person in charge. But that was okay. Arthur knew how to climb bureaucratic ladders.
“So I’m not sure what you want?” the assistant’s assistant said. His name was Peter Fredericks. “Call me Pete,” he’d told Arthur.
Pete’s desk was in a corner cubicle in a room of similar cubicles nowhere near the Heracles Hospital administrator’s office. Most of the people in the cubicles were talking on the phone. Those who weren’t on the phone were typing on their keyboards; the room was filled with half conversations and the click-click of typing.
Arthur filtered out the sounds and focused on Pete. “As I said, Pete, I want to know if there’s anything in the file of the man in room 1280 that indicates why he might want to go to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center before he dies.”
“Well, yes, you said that.” Pete scratched the sparse facial hair on his chin. It appeared to be a failing attempt at a goatee, probably intended to cover up the acne there. “But I don’t know why you want to know,” Pete said in a voice that hadn’t yet found an adult depth of tone.
“I want to know because it might help me make it happen for him.”
“The man in room 1280 can’t be moved.” When Pete said “man in room 1280,” he looked down at his desk and chewed on his cuticles with great concentration.
“So I’ve been told. But nothing is impossible,” Arthur replied.
“Moving, uh, him, is.”
Arthur braced his hands on the too-soft cushion under his butt and maneuvered himself, with effort, forward in his seat. “Pete, isn’t the very existence of the man in room 1280 proof that nothing is impossible? If he can be in that room, still breathing, still able to communicate a desire, might it not be possible to fulfill that desire for him? Think about it, Pete.”
Pete glanced up at Arthur. His face was as white as the walls in the tiny cubicle. Pete was clearly thinking about the man in 1280 … and he didn’t want to be. He looked down again, and he tapped the very thin file folder on the desk in front of him. An open container of Chinese food tipped against a stack of thicker folders and threatened to spill its contents. From the aroma, Arthur guessed it was sweet and sour chicken.
“Well, there’s nothing in here, nothing about, uh, Fazbear anything.”
“I see,” Arthur said. He battled the chair for a few seconds and finally managed to stand. “Well then, I’ll need to talk to someone who can give me permission to take the man to the Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. I assume that’s not you.”
Pete stood, bumped the thick stack of files on his desk and spilled the Chinese food. Yep. Sweet and sour chicken.
Pete ignored the sticky mess on his desk and scurried after Arthur as he turned to leave. Grabbing the sleeve of Arthur’s cassock, Pete said, “No one’s going to give you permission.”
“We’ll see,” Arthur said.
Arthur stepped out of the hospital and stood under the portico. He watched mist waft sideways in a steady southerly breeze. He and Ruby would be soaked by the time they got home. Not in a hurry to start his wet, cold journey, he scanned the black-and-silver mottled sky. There were no rays of sun to be seen now. Twilight hovered.
Arthur took a deep breath of rain-cleansed air. He’d need a year’s worth of such breaths to clear his olfactory system from the torments it had endured today. It wasn’t kind to think about how bad the man in room 1280 smelled, but Arthur couldn’t help it. After over seven hours by the man’s side, he thought the smell might never leave him again.
Nurse Ackerman had tried to get Arthur to leave right after the man’s communication breakthrough, but Arthur had refused. He spent the next three hours sitting with the man, praying, asking for help. Arthur needed to know if he was simply helping a tortured soul or … something else.
He never got a clear answer, so in the absence of definitive evidence to the contrary, he chose to stay positive: this was a man who needed his help.
“Hi, Father, I mean, Father Blythe.”
Arthur smiled. “Mia!” he said as he turned. “How was your first day of work?”
Arthur could probably have answered the question for her. Her ponytail had slid lower on her head, and dozens of strands had come loose to fly around her face. She kept blowing one of them away from her nose. Her mascara was smudged, and there was a blackish stain on her uniform.
“It was okay, I guess. Well, not okay exactly. My dad used to say when I asked him that question, ‘Well, Miamymia’ … that’s what he called me, all one word like it was my name, he’d say, ‘Well, Miamymia, it was a day.’ So I guess I had a day. It was a day.”
Arthur nodded. “Sometimes all we can do is have a day.”
Mia tilted her head and studied Arthur. “I think you had a day, too? Maybe?”
Arthur nodded. “That I did.”
A group of boisterous men in soccer uniforms converged on the portico. They were mud and grass stained, and appeared to be celebrating a victory as they charged toward the hospital entrance. Arthur guessed one of their teammates had gotten injured.
Mia stepped closer to Arthur when one of the men whistled at her. Arthur ushered her back to the friendly panicle hydrangeas they’d stood next to that morning.
Morning.
Arthur couldn’t believe he’d spent the whole day at Heracles. Peggy would be furious with him. He’d called her to have her reschedule his other appointments for the day. Now he was going to have to tell her to reschedule the rescheduling.
“Have you been here all day?” Mia asked.
“I was just thinking about that. Yes, I have. It wasn’t my plan, but—”
“Man plans. God laughs.” Mia giggled, then covered her mouth. “Oh, I hope that’s not like an insult or something for a priest?”
Arthur laughed. “No. Not at all.”
They stood in silence and watched cars coming and going under the portico. They both coughed when a loud diesel engine belched exhaust three feet away.
Arthur’s stomach growled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten anything but a protein bar since he’d left the rectory. But Mia looked like she wanted to say something, so he lingered. Plus, he was just enjoying being in relatively fresh air looking at a lovely human being.
“Father Blythe?”
“Yes, Mia?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
Mia looked around, then stepped closer to Arthur. Her hair smelled like ammonia, but her breath smelled like peppermint.
“Father, do you believe in evil?”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I do.”
“Do you think there’s evil … in there?” Mia lifted a shoulder in the direction of the hospital.
Arthur frowned. He believed evil was everywhere. But so was good. The eternal battle was waged daily, all over the world.
“Why do you ask?”
Mia wrinkled her nose and twisted her mouth. “Can I ask another question?”
Arthur nodded.
“Did you spend the day with someone in the hospice wing?”
Well, telling her he was on the wing didn’t reveal any confidences. “Yes, I did. Why?”
Mia opened her eyes wide. Arthur could almost hear her brain cells shifting gears. “I don’t know about the nurses on that wing. I mean, besides me, but I don’t feel like I’m really one of them yet. It’s the others, you know. Nurse Ackerman and Nurse Colton and Nurse Thomas.”
“Ah.”
“So it’s just that—”
At that moment a zippy red sports car whipped into the driveway under the portico and beeped its horn. Mia’s face lit up when she saw it. “That’s my boyfriend!” She blew the good-looking young man behind the wheel a kiss. She turned back to Arthur. “Um, sorry. I need to go.”
“Of course.”
Mia took a step toward the red car.
“But Mia?”
She turned.
“Some people have closed minds. Always keep yours open.”
She looked at him, her face as solemn as he’d seen it. “I will,” she promised. “Bye, Father Blythe.”
“Bye, Mia.”
Arthur watched the sports car whiz away, and he thought about the man in room 1280. His attempt to get answers in the hospital administration office, and his brush-off by Pete, made it clear Arthur wasn’t going to find out why the man wanted to go to the Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. But no matter. That wasn’t Arthur’s business. It was just his job to ensure the man got there.
However, that was easier said than done. Pete and Nurse Ackerman weren’t the only ones at Heracles Hospital who thought such a trip was impossible. Arthur had a battle ahead. He just hoped he was on the right side of it.
Mia’s second day of work started weirdly.
Unable to find her fellow nurses when she arrived at the nursing station for her assignments, Mia just shrugged and went from room to room checking on her patients.
Mia didn’t love taking care of hospice patients, because she had too much empathy for the families. She knew they often suffered even more than the patients. But she did find the work satisfying when she did it right. She wouldn’t have minded the new job so much if it wasn’t for the other nurses … and the other thing …
Mia shook her head and strode briskly down the hall. Popping in and out of rooms, she checked IVs, adjusted pillows, filled pitchers, and emptied urine collection bags. When she reached the last room she’d been told to attend to the day before, room 1200, she wondered why the rest of the doors on the strangely long hall were closed.
She lingered in the hallway just outside the last open door. A storage room was across from her, its door slightly open. Then Mia saw a shadow flit past that opening.
Sucking in a deep breath, Mia tiptoed across the hall, making sure her crepe soles didn’t squeak on the tiles. She hesitated outside the storage room. She was about to open the door and investigate when she heard voices.
She knew immediately that she’d found her fellow nurses. Mia was about to walk in and ask what was going on, but then she heard the word “kill.”
Mia went as still and silent as the floor she stood on. She took a stealthy step to the wall and pressed against it as she put her ear to the sliver of an opening at the hinge side of the door.
“I suppose we must,” Nurse Thomas said.
“Someone has to do it,” Nurse Colton said. “I don’t have a problem with it. It’s not like murder, because it’s not human.”
“It’s extermination,” said Nurse Ackerman. “We’re doing nothing more or less than ridding the hospital of vermin.”
“Oh, I think it’s much more,” Nurse Thomas said, “don’t you? Killing rats or cockroaches is good, of course. But ridding the world of evil? That’s more than pest removal. That’s a calling. It’s, well, it’s heroic!” Nurse Thomas’s voice had climbed to a new level of self-righteousness.
Heroic? Mia’s fingers twitched. She wanted so bad to throw the door open and ask what these three odd women were talking about.
“Well, I agree with you both,” Nurse Ackerman said, “but others won’t see it quite the same way. Technically, he’s one of our patients.”
They were going to kill a patient?
Mia looked around. What should she do?
“They don’t pay me enough to call that … thing … a patient,” Nurse Colton said. “I don’t need people to understand. I know what’s right. Killing evil is right.”
Nurse Colton must have been standing close to the door, because her body odor nearly blotted out the smells of bleach and wood polish that usually emanated from the storage room. Mia hoped she didn’t have any telltale odors or scents herself. She caught the end of her ponytail and inhaled, but she only got a faint whiff of her conditioner.
“Absolutely,” Nurse Thomas continued.
Mia dropped her ponytail and returned to listening.
“Then we’re agreed,” Nurse Ackerman said.
The women must have been nodding, because they went silent.
“I’ll be the one who does it. I’m head nurse. It’s my responsibility,” Nurse Ackerman declared.
“We’ll do whatever you need us to do,” Nurse Colton offered.
“I’ll need morphine,” Nurse Ackerman said.
“I can fudge the tracking,” said Nurse Colton.
“We can take a little here and a little there from the other patients,” Nurse Thomas added.
“We have to hurry,” Nurse Ackerman said. “We don’t know how quickly that priest will move. He’s determined enough to get the hospital to cave, and we have to get this done before the … thing … in room 1280 can leave.”
The nurses must have nodded again, and now Mia could hear faint rustles from inside the storage room. She decided she’d better go.
Pushing off from the wall, Mia took a step. And that’s when she saw what she’d been trying to convince herself she hadn’t seen before.
A little boy slithered out from the storage room. He came sideways through the slim door opening.
Mia slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. She gritted her teeth, exasperated with herself. She’d had the same reaction when she’d seen this boy just the day before. But he was only a little boy, a cute and playful little boy! With his curly black hair and rosy cheeks, the boy’s adorable factor was diminished, slightly, by just two things. First, he wore a cheap alligator mask that covered his forehead and his eyes; the gator’s mouth rested on the boy’s impish nose. Second, the boy had a toothy grin, just a little too devilish to be endearing, one notch past acceptable on the scale of mischief. But he was a little boy, and little boys liked to look like this. Mia’s cousin, Lucas, was a case in point. That child always looked like he was up to no good, and he usually was.
So why did this boy make Mia want to scream?
Before she could answer her own question, the boy winked at her and scampered down the hall. Mia turned to watch, but realized the nurses were about to exit.
Mia darted toward the open door of the last patient she’d attended before loitering outside the storage room, looking for the boy again. But he was gone.
When Mia burst into room 1200, Mr. Nolan, the room’s occupant, looked up from his crossword puzzle. “Hello, Nurse Fremont,” he said, “how fortuitous. What is another word for hell? Six letters, starts with an S.”
“Shades,” Mia blurted, wondering why the word was on the tip of her tongue.
Mr. Nolan, whose gaunt face was haunted by the sunken eyes of the soon-to-be-gone-from-this-world, slowly wrote in his puzzle book. “Exactly right. You’re an angel.”
It took two days for Nurse Ackerman to acquire enough morphine for her task. At least she hoped it was enough—she wasn’t actually sure what enough was, in this case. Normal treatment dosages versus overdoses had never been relevant to the man in room 1280. Nothing about him was normal, so there was no reason to assume medication would affect him the same as it would other humans of his size and weigh
t. Allowing for this, Nurse Ackerman and her colleagues gathered enough extra morphine to kill an entire wing of evil patients. She figured she’d start with what she thought might work and add to it as necessary.
As soon as she had a quantity of morphine that gave her at least some level of confidence in the success of her mission, she didn’t waste any time. A friend who worked in admin had informed Nurse Colton that Father Blythe was being relentless in his campaign to get the man in room 1280 to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center.
Nurse Ackerman strode down the long hallway, her rubber soles smacking the tiles. Her thoughts about Father Blythe made her footsteps even louder than usual. She clenched her fists. She was so angry with the man.
How could Father Blythe be so clueless and blind? Couldn’t he see he was being duped, being used as a tool for wickedness? Wasn’t the very place the man wanted to visit a clue?
Nurse Ackerman had researched Fazbear Entertainment, and she was alarmed by what she’d found. The company’s distribution center was its central hub for all Fazbear-related toys, costumes, and decor. It shipped to restaurants and specialty and retail stores. She’d looked at some of those toys and costumes, and they were unsettling to say the least. What better container for pure malevolence than some creepy toy? Nurse Ackerman suspected that whatever was inside the man in room 1280 had a plan. A plan that needed to be stopped.
Checking over her shoulder one more time, Nurse Ackerman picked up her pace. She hoped she’d have enough time to finish the job at hand before Nurse Fremont finished her lunch.
Nurse Fremont was the other challenge the nurses had to handle. The timing of her addition to the hospice wing roster was unfortunate. She was just a little too perky, a little too energetic for comfort. Nurse Ackerman had given Nurse Fremont a little test on her first day, talking about the man in room 1280 and Father Blythe in the break room while Nurse Fremont ate. If she’d turned and asked what they were talking about, they’d have included her. But she’d just eavesdropped, and Nurse Ackerman didn’t trust eavesdroppers.
At the doorway to room 1280, Nurse Ackerman paused. She looked behind her. The hallway was empty. It was time.
Bunny Call Page 13