Over the course of the next fourteen days, I immersed myself in the paperwork Duvall hatefully assigned, the kendo class, and the dry, dry chicken that Jo always brought from Silpha's. I somehow managed to ignore all one-hundred and sixty three pages that Dr. Morgan had sent me.
"Crap!" Jo yelled as she dropped the chicken, having been startled by the sound of my pager buzzing loudly. "Could you turn off your pager?"
"That's not possible," I sang from the bathroom, where I was washing my face after kendo class. "Besides, it's probably just Henry again."
"No, it's your classmate," Jo called. "They need your help!" I groaned loudly.
"No chicken for me!" I warbled, gathering my things and sprinting outside. "I'm off!"
"See you later, Lights!"
It was only as I had walked a block that I realised that something was very, very wrong. Past an intersection, the air was filled by silence. The thrum of cars remained, but darkness coated the night like oil. The faint silhouettes of buildings and cars lined the road, and as I got nearer and nearer to the hospital, I realised how dire the situation really was. I broke into an icy sweat and sprinted towards the hospital, praying that the emergency generator was working.
But of course, it, by some impossible margin, was not functioning.
Through the shadows, emergency lights and portable ECG monitors glowed. When I arrived, ambulances and paramedics rushed about, transporting patients to other hospitals. I shoved through the lobby and down the hall.
"LaVaughn!" Duvall's distressed shout came from somewhere in the ER. I jogged further down the hall, and into the room, where Duvall was standing by a patient as the loud, shrill beeping of the ECG filled the air. The glowing monitor displayed a rapidly dropping blood pressure.
"What happened?" I demanded.
"Some idiot put him on warfarin and ibuprofen!" he exclaimed frustratedly, pulling a lamp down lower to the patient. "He's bleeding out through an ulcer in his stomach, I think. All of the others are busy. Get a crash cart and help me!"
"I'll be right back!" I ran away, stumbling blindly through the faintly illuminated darkness of the hallway. Past the nurses' station, beyond Duvall's office. Yes, yes, they were all in the same room. My hands closed around the cool metal and I yanked it out of the room, towing it behind me as I leapt back. There was a snap of elastic as we pulled on gloves and masks. He lifted up a disposable scalpel and placed pale blue gauze around the patient's belly. Incise, open. The ulcer stared at us, and we stared at it. Blood pooled around it, and Duvall repaired it quietly.
And just like that, the beeping stopped.
I closed the patient up, and we wheeled him down to the lobby, where the chaos was receding. Most of the ambulances had already headed off for the other hospitals, the rest were being packed up with patients. We would have to wait. We sat on the steps of the central staircase, the hospital bed laying in front of us.
"So," I muttered.
"Do you need something, LaVaughn?" Duvall answered.
"No, sir," I replied. "Nothing at all."
A long time later, the sirens of an ambulance could be heard. Duvall and I got up, and we began to move the hospital bed out of the lobby and out into-
That was when the faint click of the safety of a gun being pulled back could be heard.
"Hello, Lights," a quiet voice sneered from behind me. Chills fell down my back, and my grip on the edge of the hospital bed tightened until my knuckles turned white. Duvall glanced at the person behind me, and he paled at the sight of the gun. I could feel the icy barrel of the gun being pressed against the back of my head.
"Adam," I whispered.
YOU ARE READING
Shadows | A Forever Fan-Fiction - Sequel to Lights
FanfictionIt's been a decade since Lights woke up in the hospital. A decade since Adam escaped the factory, fleeing into the night. A decade since Dr. Henry Morgan left everything he could have ever cared about behind. But now, he's back in town, as clever, c...
