The Crescent

Chapter 4

Camilla Flores. Beatrice Wright. Clyde - Clyde...damn, I didn't get his last name, did I? Will mentally recited Dr. Baker's victims as he climbed a back staircase. It was in the opposite direction of the foyer, carpeted in an emerald green, cobwebbed and dimly lit. Searching for patients to interview on the third floor seemed like the most reasonable plan. The nurses would soon be back to collect Clyde's belongings, and he'd avoid Dr. Baker's floor altogether.

Luckily for him, the hospital was gravely understaffed, and his footsteps went unnoticed. The further Will went into the hospital, the fleshier his surroundings became, as if a beast had swallowed him whole. The depressive atmosphere was beginning to leach into Will's being, but he forced himself onward up the dead staircase. Passing the second floor, he loosened his sweaty bowtie.

The third story was nearly identical to the first floor, except there was no foyer to interrupt the labyrinth of bright colored doors. He strained his ears for any sounds of life. Conversations, blankets shifting, even weeping - but no. Each door he passed met him with ineffable silence. He came upon one painted in a whisper of pink, like dogwoods in late April. His mother's favorite color.

He carefully opened the door and stepped inside. On the hospital bed lay a woman, her curls spread around her face like a crushed dandelion, arms thin enough to be whisked away by a summer breeze. His heart stopped short of its uniform beating, hitched momentarily behind his ribs at the sound of her ragged breathing. She was alive.

He came closer to her. Through her brown skin there was the sickly yellow flush to which Will was becoming accustomed. The woman's cheeks were carved away and her eyes were hollow and heavy-lidded, but as he came closer, Will saw she was watching him.

"No shots," she whispered. 

Will nearly jumped back. "Of course not." His voice was choked.

He pulled up a spare wooden stool from the corner of the room and sat at the woman's bedside. She strongly resembled the corpse in the basement, but somehow the fading animation of her body was a worse horror. At least when Will encountered Mrs. Wright he was able to suspend the situation from himself and observe it like a tumor in a glass jar. The slight rise and fall of the woman's bony chest forced an intimacy upon Will for which he hadn't prepared. Say something, he thought.

"What's your name?"

The woman seemed to take a moment to ponder the question. She closed her eyes and her breathing ceased for too long a beat. A lump formed in Will's throat.

"Gloria." She opened her eyes.

"Hello, Gloria. I'm Will Drachman. I'm a journalist. I think something bad is happening at this hospital."

"Shots," Gloria nodded.

"What are they?"

"They...bad."

"What do they do?"

"Make you sick," she rasped. Will began to ask more, but her eyes rolled in the back of her head and her spine arched suddenly. She looked wildly at him, like an animal caught in a trap. "No shots, please!"

"It's okay, it's okay," he said hurriedly, taking her hand. Her nails were black, and dark splotches etched up her arms like ink starting from the track marks inside her elbows. "No more shots, I promise."

Will remained motionless as Gloria rollercoastered in and out of consciousness. Her irregular breath crashed through the silence like a waterlogged boat. Will was no doctor, but he guessed there was fluid in her lungs. A daring part of Will thought about taking Gloria to a certified doctor, but it was pointless. Death was already splintered into her veins.

If I can't save her, maybe I can save others, he thought. Gloria was the perfect evidence. He let go of her hand and gently placed it on her abdomen. Will rose and flipped on the light. Gloria winced ever so slightly. Her hospital gown was dirty, stained with vomit and freckled with blood.

"It's okay," he said softly. He held his camera steady, but there was a hitch in his gut. One ragged breath in, on ragged breath out. It's for the best, he argued, I've gotten this far. I can't go back now. Besides, he'd taken pictures of the lady in the freezer, albeit just a toe tag. What difference was this? Will didn't know Gloria, but he thought it was safe to assume she'd give this up to expose Dr. Baker. She's practically a corpse anyway. For the story. He steadied his camera.

"No shots," she murmured again.

Will froze.

"No shots," he agreed, and lowered the camera.

Will sat and held Gloria's hand until the end.