The Second Stage

Do Not Resuscitate

Machinery wheezed as a chain ground along its motor, opening the battered sheet metal door to one of the hospital's long forgotten orifices. Two caged lights hummed on either side, their bulbs neglected yet still forcing what luminous vigor they mustered into the brittle November night. The door clanged to a stop.

Within the darkness clinging to the interior, four chains dangled from an archaic ceiling conveyor. Meredith brushed her hand against the inside wall. Metal scratched against her palm, its rust crumbling from her fingertips. The steel box met her touch like the handshake of an old friend and she grazed its surface to hit the switch.

Six light bulbs sent the shadows reeling to the recesses of the corrugations in the aluminum siding, and the shadow of one green metal box: Meredith's treasure chest. The furthest bulb popped and sizzled, allowing the blackness to creep forward into the room and peer at its master.

"Home sweet home," Meredith muttered.

Long ago, when Kyle's problems first dug at Meredith, and their end tore her apart, she spent many a lunch break here. She felt at ease. The dim lights and dilapidated skeletal interior was chosen to match Meredith's psyche as a more conventional woman matches a dress color to her eyes.

Solitude here was guaranteed. The storage room, appropriately sized for an industrial closet, held nothing since the 1970s, and the maintenance of the door was ensured only to preserve fire code requirements. It took a daunting elevator stop at the subbasement, two doors so rusted that they may have been welded shut, an enormous padlock Meredith had lost the key for, and a lightless passage to reach this place from the hospital's underbelly. From the exterior, it required only a four-numeral code, its secret decoded by a crack team of common sense and the observation of wear on only one button: 8888.

Behind her, the Subaru Outback's engine whirred then settled into its usual comfortable purring. Meredith scurried back to gurney her patient into the operating suite. Upon opening the rear passenger side door, she changed her mind. She had done her job keeping the patient's neck straight. From there, positioning became less orthodox. One arm twisted behind his back, the other draped over the center console ending with his hand in a fountain soda. One leg stretched over the rear seats and the other folded under his hips to rest atop a half-eaten pizza. To say Meredith intentionally placed her patient in this manner would be as slanderous as saying she intentionally saved half her pizza and fountain drink for this exact purpose.

She decided against removing her patient first, finding satisfaction in his cola marinated slumber. Instead, she pushed the anesthetic machine up the ramp. Its wheels squeaked and rumbled along the concrete, uneven with debris that seemingly has no origin but time itself. She halted its shaking frame at the edge of the blackness where the broken lightbulb had made its final stand. After a second trip to gather the oxygen tank, and the third to grab the hoses, only a single tool remained. She allowed herself the dissatisfaction of correcting the contortionist's nightmare and sliding her patient onto the dolly. From there, she wheeled him up the loading ramp, dumped him onto the floor like a wet sack of laundry, and dragged him across the cement field sown with grime and rat feces.

Initially, she decided on positioning her patient in an equally humorous pose, however, her desire to see Kyle pushed past any further delay. She assembled the anesthetic circuit without thought.

With preparations completed, Meredith strode to her car and cut the engine. She sighed, staring at the open room, forcing herself to slam the car door and amble inside. Behind her, above the dull luster of the light switch, was a red button. She stared at it, first considering her actions, then morality in general, then watching it pulse, its ruby glow wrenching all thoughts from her. Her finger floated upward and pressed it.