The Beginning of the End

The Aftermath

When we finally reached the hospital, Woods ran around to the side and helped Quinn rush a still unconscious Matt inside. I grabbed a notepad and a camera out of habit and went to follow them. And stopped in my tracks. This place looked nasty. It was a small brick building in the middle of a rundown shopping center. The only sign on this side of the building was the faded, old ER sign sitting over two double doors. Next to it was a sign that said 13:27, which was even stranger. It didn't look great. But then again, this whole neighborhood was kind of shady, since we were in the bad side of LA. And it was getting dark. Not a good combination.

"A little help here?" Yelled Woods. I hadn't even noticed that it had started to drizzle! I rushed across the dilapidated parking lot and held the doors open for the trio as they went inside.

The inside was even more cramped than the outside. Sitting at a small desk with an old-looking computer was a middle-aged young lady wearing scrubs and a hat. Woods went up to her to check Matt in, and Quinn and I got him into a chair, Quinn on one side of him and me on the other. There were only five chairs in the small room, and two were already taken by two exhausted and scruffy looking guys. One of them looked so much like Woods I had to do a double take to make sure Woods was still at the front desk- he was. I was a little weirded out, but I decided to just focus on Matt. Somehow it was even scarier now that he wasn't responding. At least before when something hurt, he would grunt or at least his face would move. Now it was just... nothing. Nothing but an eerie stillness that looked too close to something I couldn't let myself think. One look at Quinn showed that he was as exhausted and worried as me.

Woods finished telling her what had happened and came over. I stood up to let him sit down. "What did you tell her?" I whispered. "Please tell me you didn't tell her everything." I imagined what she would look like if Woods told her we were stuck inside a room with a radioactive gas bomb and a VHS tape of a mad scientist.

"No, of course I didn't!"

"Shhh. We don't want those guys to know what we're saying."

"Sorry. I told her that Matt just passed out while we were hanging out and we ran him over here ASAP."

"Ok, good. That was quick thinking on your part."

"Are you still sitting there?"

"No. I'm going to look around."

"Ok, well, be careful. I don't like the looks of this place."

"Me either. I'll be careful." I walked back over near the front desk. Woods had seemed suspiciously... almost soft right then. What was up with him? I mulled over it for a minute. He had gone from his normal chill to panicked to depressed, and then there was that scary few minutes when he zeroed in so much no one could get through to him. Now he seemed... sentimental? That wasn't a look I had ever seen on Woods. But then again, between the stress, exhaustion, and the serum-antidote mix undoubtedly running through our veins right now, everyone was feeling it.

I shrugged the ominous feeling off with some effort and walked over to the front desk, wanting to make myself useful. The woman sitting there was typing something furiously into her computer and didn't look up, so I just started looking around me. Behind her was a whiteboard with the words 'wear a mask' scrawled in blue marker. Above that was a sign that said 'no cell phones in the waiting area' and had a picture of a flip phone on it. I guessed they hadn't updated that in a while. Above the whiteboard was a clock that read '6:30'. That was weird. I looked at my phone. It was 8:23, not 6:30. I silenced my phone and put it away.

The lady finished typing, looked up at me as if she had just realized I was there, fixed her bun and said "Ok, I can come get Matthias now."

"Thank you so much", I replied. "How long will it be until we know what's wrong with him?"