Bron groaned. He had been driving the ambulance for over an hour, and was rapidly tiring of the repetitive monotone that was his view from the driver's seat. On the other hand, he did feel some guilty pity for Troy, the patient he was transporting. The poor bloke was sick, but there was not a hospital bed in the whole of town unoccupied. Troy had no option but residency at a barely adequate sanitarium a long trip north of the city, but a trip that had to be made. Troy had come down with a severe case of pneumonia, unusual and unfortunate for a man as young as he. He needed twenty-four hour care, drugs and oxygen, but the overcrowding problem infecting the city's hospitals had reached a peak, and Troy was sent to one Blackdale Sanitarium, in the dull hope he could be well cared for. His ambulance eventually arrived. Peter, the paramedic who had assisted Troy on the ambulance journey, tapped on the hospital lobby bell several times, with the faintest apprehension. He did not feel at all comfortable in the building, a dark, dank and deserted construction, which smelt bad. Perhaps the most frightening thing about Blackdale was the fence: high, rigid and uninviting, a fence usually reserved for manors and the like, to keep people out. Here, from stories and rumours, it appeared to be keeping people in. The paramedic rang the bell again, impatiently. Troy was a little impatient also. The hospital made him feel sicker than he already was, immobilised and uncomfortable. He had been ushered from place to place all day, waiting and wondering where his tour would end. He quietly hoped it wouldn't end here. "Ich komme! Ich komme!" echoed the fretting German cry from a room or so away, just as Peter was ready to send the lobby bell rattling through the dusty front bench. A wheelchair-bound man rolled out from a corridor behind the bench, and tried his best to seem eager to please. It wasn't easy. Deutschland's representative had matted, dark, greasy hair, a scornful, scarred face and stumps for legs. He peered over the desk at Troy. "You might
want to be quicker next time, mate. Your patients'll leave," Peter said,
snorting a laugh.
What could only be described as a buxom brunette came strutting down a corridor. "Ja, Klaus? Ah! De patient Troy. Hallo, I am Heidi," she began. "I am a nurse,? she smiled. She turned to Peter. "Danke schön. Ve vill be in touch." Heidi gently grasped Troy's wheelchair and began pushing him and his oxygen towards a distant door. Klaus wheeled himself out from the desk to travel alongside Troy, engaging him in hospital nostalgia and formalities. Not that Troy was listening. For his part, Troy felt incredibly fortunate all of a sudden, and of markedly better health. Heidi was so ... beautiful, Troy could barely believe she was a nurse. But then, believable was not exactly an adjective that could be used in describing the hospital. From what Troy could see, there were no computers, no papers, no doctors, and no patients - just two eccentric German caricatures, a desk and door after door after door. The hospital didn't seem all that big on the outside, but on the inside, it was enormous Troy's mini-adventure lasted six corridors in total. Klaus left them after two. When their destination was finally reached, Troy was almost dozing, until Heidi called out, "Ve are here! Avake Troy! Velcome in your new home!" Troy didn't take in much else that day, other than drugs, sleep and the gladness of finally settling down for a good rest. * * * * * Troy awoke with a yawn. And another. He began to wonder why everything was black. Groggily, he opened his eyes and discovered why. A vision of white then exploded in front of Troy, and he thought maybe he was dead, until Heidi flung open the curtain surrounding his bed and heartily greeted him with an introduction to the new-dawning day. "You are a real sleep-head!" Heidi proclaimed. "Three entire days! Ah, but de sick, alvays resting. Some forever even." Troy began questioning Heidi's nursing qualifications again, ever so slightly. "I slept for
three days?" Troy croaked gradually.
Troy surveyed his surroundings. Not surprisingly, under the circumstances, his room was big. More precisely, it was long. A virtual plethora of beds lined each of the longer walls, and the standard door adorned each of the shorter ones. It reminded him of an old-fashioned orphanage. But two things stood out. Troy was alone, with only beds to accompany him. All but his bed stood in vain, no sickness to nurse, no ill to cure. Troy almost felt he should walk around and lie on every one of them, just to ease their loneliness. Also, although this was more a comfort than a worry, the door to his left lead to the outside. It was a tall, glass-fitted door, which stood between two tall windows. Through it, Troy could just see a quaint, wrought iron park bench and, fittingly, a big, tall hedge. Klaus' chair rambled unsteadily into the room. "Troy! Vat a delight!" He scooted over to Troy's bedside. "Now, you have de, de, pneumonia?" Troy nodded to the best of his ability. "Good, good. But enough of the hospital rubbish! I must say thank you to you Troy, for staying vith us. Ve don't often haf a new patient, it is a treasure to haf you. It is exciting for us, ve get bored vith the others. If they get to us, eh, ve leave them. Bye bye ve say, and hallo to you, Troy! Hallo, hallo, hallo, hallo..." Klaus drifted
off chanting, happy and animated. Troy was not so happy. He lay in his
bed wide-eyed and confused. Besides from his bad breath, Klaus' words were
not reassuring, his complete nonchalance towards
The next entrant
to the room did not dispel that air. She was an old lady, a hunchback,
with a squeaking, rusted walking-frame. She seemed to have no purpose but
to walk from one end of the room to the other, travelling slowly and cautiously.
As she approached the foot of Troy's bed, he thought about being friendly
and greeting her, but as her gnarled face and dirty appearance came into
clearer focus, he thought the better of it. Once she
This new face, regardless of its twisted look, came as quite a shock to Troy, only having seen the same German faces for a number of days. He did realise the old lady could have been a German also, but he chose to assume she wasn't, for the sake of a strange companionship he felt must exist. * * * * * "Are there
other patients at this hospital Heidi?" Troy asked.
Troy had been at the hospital for almost two weeks now, and although still quite ill, he was improving, and was feeling curious. Every one of his waking days had been exactly the same. Heidi would come in every hour, Klaus once a day, and a rotting old person for their walk. Sometimes though, the old person would venture no further than the bench outside the door, sit for while, and return by the same path. Troy would tend to feign sleep as they passed, in order to avoid a menacing glare, or frightening glance. Troy had also noticed something else. There was a door on the opposite wall to Troy, the third door of the room. He had seen Heidi go through it a number of times, always entering with nothing and leaving with nothing, but never doing so quietly. She carried the key to the door on her belt, and would always methodically unlock, lock and double check the door as she used it. The mystery of this door and its noises sent more strange ideas through Troy's imagination, and fuelled more of his speculative thought. * * * * * A month had elapsed, and Troy was feeling fit as a fiddle missing a string - not perfect, but operable. The stream of geriatrics was beginning to aggravate him just slightly, and he would often grow restless simply lying in his bed for hours on end. He asked Heidi whether he was healthy enough to go for a walk, and she granted him permission. He would only take a few steps at first, to the end of the bed and back, just to stretch his legs. Gradually though, he found he could walk up and down the room without any real troubles. Not requiring oxygen made the going considerably easier, but readjusting to walking after a long lapse was not simple. After a few days of short potters, something interesting finally occurred to break Troy's daily pattern. Heidi was making a regular visit to the mystery room, when she suddenly burst out through the door, leaving it unlocked, and sped out of the room. To Troy, opportunity presented itself on platter. He hopped out of his bed and crossed the room. Troy slowly pushed the door open and peeked inside. At first, he thought the room was painted red, but then he realised. The walls were covered with blood. Human blood or animal blood? Troy did not know. In a state of shock, Troy wandered over to a sink on the left wall of the small room. It too was splattered with blood. Above it was a broken mirror, still hanging for some unknown reason. An object
in the middle of the room explained the blood - sort of. It was an old
operating table, all painted white, and on it lay an enormous carving knife.
A chill ran through Troy's body. His suspicions regarding Heidi had been
confirmed, although not in a way he could ever have expected. Suddenly,
Troy heard a key turn in the room's second door. He dashed out into his
bedroom, and saw the door slam shut just as he reached his bed.
After a while,
Heidi emerged, her white uniform surprisingly clean. She walked briskly
towards the room's exit, until Troy called out.
Through fear of a woman with a carving knife, Troy did not argue any more. Heidi had left anyway, but Troy was still mad. Sitting on the side of his bed, Troy looked at the door to outside, and realised he never had used. Figuring now was as good a time as any, Troy pulled on a robe over his gown and headed for the hedge. It was a lot colder outside than Troy had anticipated. He could see now that the hedge grew at the bottom of a small grassed slope, which followed a footpath along the side of the building. Troy began to walk down the footpath. He looked around him as he went, to see what he could spot, if anything. As he walked, Troy noticed how quiet his surroundings were. There was not a bird's voice in the sky, not a car's rolling tyres. He stopped, and walked over to the hedge. He tried to pull it apart a little, to see if he could see through it, but pull and peer as he might, all he saw was more hedge. Troy went back to walking along the footpath. He walked for a good few minutes after that, trying to appreciate the 'fresh' air. However, this was made considerably more difficult by the fact that the air was actually rather stale, and did nothing for Troy's nose other than making it cold. Still, he kept walking, hoping he would come to the end of the building soon. Then it struck Troy, right between the eyes. He looked behind him, in front of him and behind again. He hadn't moved at all. He had moved away from the bench and the door, he just wasn?t moving along the building at all. Travelling without moving didn't make sense, but Troy had done it. In desperation, Troy broke out into a sprint. A fast sprint, pumped with adrenaline. He sprinted until his sides hurt, at which point he stopped, and looked to see how far he had moved. Not an inch. Bending over to catch his breath, he caught a glimpse of the window he had stopped in front of. What he saw made him reel back towards the hedge in complete horror. Behind the window was a face, the face of another old person. It was grotesque, hideous beyond belief, with long, thick scars running from ear to ear, and everywhere in between. As Troy watched, the body the face belonged to rose slowly, and began beating on the glass, screaming desperately, "Help me! Help Me!" The window became covered in mist, as the old person groped at the glass, and their cries grew louder and louder, sadder and sadder. Troy ran for his life. He ran back towards the bench, where he had come from. Concentrating wasn't easy though. Every old person behind every window he'd never noticed before had joined the moaning chorus, screaming and wailing. Troy ran and ran, and eventually saw the bench in the distance. He wondered if he could even reach it, considering the laws of physics didn?t seem to apply to his situation. Almost to his surprise, Troy reached the bench, and was filled with futile joy. He went through the tall door, then stopped dead in his tracks. Heidi stood by his bed, holding the carving knife in her right hand. "Troy! Vat
vere you doing" she cried, striding towards him.
Troy was panicking. At a loss for ideas, he turned to go back through the tall doors, only to find they had disappeared. Somehow, a wall had materialised in their place, and Troy found himself with nowhere to go, other than at Heidi. "De doors,
ja. Now vere did I put dose?" Heidi mused, turning her back on Troy.
Stupidly, Troy turned while still running, and promptly ran into Heidi. With a thump, he fell to the ground. Heidi bent over the out-of-breath Troy, dangling the knife dangerously close to his face. "You run, but you haff novere to go. Not nice for you." She picked up Troy like a pillow and carried him to the blood room. Troy kicked and squirmed as much as he could, but Heidi's grip was strong. They entered the room and Troy was flung onto the operating table. Klaus, waiting beside it, tied him down with duct tape, covering his mouth at the same time. Heidi stood
at Troy's feet and looked at her knife. "You haff made a big mistake Troy.
You could haff been so happy here, vith me and Klaus. Am I not beautiful
enough for you? Am I fat? Klaus?"
* * * * * Troy sat in his room, wheezing. Why was he so stupid? Why wasn't he nicer to Heidi? Why did he get stuck with a sadistic nurse? He beat his head against the wall in frustration. "Stop dat noise!" screeched Heidi. An agile young man walked past his window. Fingering his scars, Troy turned away in pain. Another young man feels the hurt, and Troy feels it too.
|
