OR14 was creepy at best and completely inappropriate for medical use at worst. It saved itself for dire emergencies, criminals from the local penitentiary, and most detestable of all—poor people.
The room was an absolute relic that should have been converted to storage decades ago, having never received an aesthetic upgrade since 1932. Nurses shared ghost tales of Japanese internment camp inmates. Stories of strange deaths and procedures gone horribly wrong circulated the hospital, all centered on OR14, and mostly started by Kiara. Meredith never believed a single such rumor. That is, until she believed all of them at once.
Amelia Herald wasn't your typical OR14 patient. At six years old, spooky places terrified her, and she despised the dark. Unfortunately, she would get used to it, having gone blind from bilateral retinoblastoma and bilateral enucleation was recommended. Another morbid moment for OR14: the last time anyone would see Amelia's beautiful green eyes.
This was one of the few cases Meredith pitied. Amelia hadn't asked for it; she did nothing idiotic, she never increased her risk of disease with cigarettes or other vices. Amelia came into this world meant to have cancer in both eyes. That was all.
However, kids were resilient, far more so than anyone gave them credit for. Amelia would find wonder in her disability, unlike adults who abandon joy with partial loss. The sounds and smells and sensations of her surroundings may fascinate Amelia in a way only the blind understand. Hell, she might hardly remember losing anything. Meredith even had envy for her sense of smell. Not today, though. Meredith didn't care to know what OR14 smelled like.
Amelia lay on the table, quivering and still maintaining the habit of glancing at every sound. Meredith wondered what the girl's ears told her. Was the fluorescent lighting conjuring a swarm of insects to her imagination? Were the clinking metal instruments a medieval torture device?
Meredith ran through the proceedings with the kid, comforting her as well as she could. She warned Amelia there might be a little burning and that she would catch a funny whiff of something.
Meredith almost changed her plan upon seeing her patient. There was no need to use propofol and sevoflurane without premedication and changing protocol could be dangerous. She shook away the thought. This needed to happen.
Under normal circumstances, she prepped patients efficiently, yet she never had a procedure with so much depending on it. Everything had to be perfect. A faint creaking caught her ear, and she whirled around to discover that Amelia was humming Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, distorted by her trembling. Meredith sighed, reassured the girl that the surgery would be over soon, and pushed the propofol. Amelia sank into unconsciousness and Meredith stopped the injection then placed the sevoflurane mask over the girl's nose. Suddenly, Meredith spotted something.
A single drop of blood splattered on the floor. It clotted and dried there. Meredith shot to her feet and checked the IV catheter. No hemorrhage. Thank god for that. Another droplet struck her shoe. Meredith's gaze darted downward and traced the source. Crimson congealed and dropped from the tip of Amelia's fingernail—chewed raw
"Sweetie, you're far too young for that," Meredith said as she set up the monitoring equipment. She shrugged away her disappointment at an uneventful induction. Why was she even disappointed? Why would Kyle be in such a place? And why wish for that?
One final drop crashed into the small pool of now maroon liquid as the girl's clotting coupled with a minor decrease in arterial pressure to stem the flow.
"Shit," Meredith muttered through her mask.
She glanced around for cleaning supplies—nothing. After ensuring that vitals were within normal limits, she darted to the OR14 supply room, hobbling on her right foot which kept trying to roll outward.
She burst through the bent metal door frame and flicked the switch. The yellow glow of a single 60-watt bulb banished darkness to the corners. A second lamp toward the back had been spotty for years—likely electrical and assuredly not a safety issue—leaving the far half of the room in shadow. Twisted aluminum shelves were crammed with papers, retractors, scalpels, and every other variety of tool; pulling anything out reminded Meredith of Jenga. She couldn't smell the closet but always assumed it circulated the musk of wet cardboard and iron. After clawing through the instrument packs and shoving everything aside, Meredith tracked down a roll of paper towels.
She turned to the door when a buzz caught her ear. The fluorescent light flickered twice and a brief chill—like a wet, cold breath—struck her. Meredith stood still, observing Amelia from the doorway, terrified to glance back into the storage closet. There came another flash.
Meredith took a deep breath and forced her feet to turn. The far end of the room was a bottomless pool of ink, rippled only by occasional surges of the yellow bulb, illuminating deeper and deeper into the abyss. Then, the rear lamp snapped on, allowing Meredith a glimpse at what hid in the darkest recesses.
Chrome bars, a clear plastic tank, hoses, and black metal illuminated in the harsh fluorescence. The anesthesia machine's polished steel reflected light over the cracked cement walls in bursts growing brighter and brighter. Each pulse skipped a beat in Meredith's heart as the bulb blazed and the humming amplified, tightening to a squeal.
Then, with a loud pop and a fizzle, the back of the room disappeared again, the rear lamp no longer daring to show any more.
Meredith gawked for several moments then lunged at the machine. She wheeled it from the stockroom, the heavy contraption skidding over the slick floors. Meredith unplugged the previous setup and attached every hose, tube, and cord to the new one. Her hand stopped by the sevoflurane knob. Fine maroon drops spattered its canister. Her memory slipped to Jacob's lips spraying red mist with his breath. For a few seconds, Meredith reconsidered everything that brought her to this point. She clutched her anchor pendant. Her gaze darted to the machine, then to Amelia, then back. Meredith closed her eyes and recalled the astonishment on Kyle's face whenever she flicked his nose.
Then, she cranked up the sevoflurane.
After three minutes, the EKG flickered and returned to the same arrhythmia she saw with Jacob Dedham: ventricular trigeminy. Meredith took a deep breath.
Upon finishing her exhalation, Meredith heard Amelia humming Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Any excuse not to look seemed a good one, so she kept her wide eyes forward. The humming ceased and Meredith couldn't withstand it any longer. She turned back to the table.
It was empty as the rest of the room.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
HorrorA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
