From Dawn (published)

Nine

Saturday

9:05pm

The waiting room of the ER was packed. The last thing Dawn wanted was to be back there, but Kay had insisted, so she was sitting in the hard plastic seats for the second time that day. The room was markedly more chaotic than it had been earlier. Dawn noticed a pretty teen girl with her hair dyed pink, and a bunch of tissues held under her nose. A woman who must have been her mother, other than the hair color, they looked exactly alike, was at the reception counter giving the man in scrubs behind the desk a piece of her mind. The pink haired teen looked like she wanted nothing so much as to sink into the unforgiving chair to escape her mother's tirade.

Dawn pinched her own nose in an attempt to stop the blood. The flow had slowed to a stubborn trickle that just didn't want to quit. Who had ever heard of going to the ER for a bloody nose? She felt stupid.

"Mrs. Stevens, a nose bleed is not an emergency. Your daughter will have to wait her turn, please have a seat," the guy behind the desk had had enough. His raised voice carried clearly through the room.

A door nearby opened with a bang, making Dawn jump.

"Let's hope it's nothing." The voice was hushed, but it somehow carried over the noisy room to Dawn's ears.

Dawn turned in her seat to see two women in scrubs coming through the door and into the waiting room. She watched the woman on the right indicate the man behind the desk as she used a wet towel to dab at a rusty stain on the front of her scrub shirt.

"It is weird, a bunch of people with bad nose bleeds all in the same day. Let's hope they don't all have whatever the guy from earlier has. We don't have enough beds in this hospital to deal with some sort of epidemic."

"Yeah, I heard he's in a coma now. Too bad. The guy was a real pain in the ass, but no one-"

The women moved out of earshot. Dawn had to restrain herself from chasing after them and asking more about the coma patient. A sinking feeling settled in her gut. A sort of premonition washed over her. Something bad was happening here, and it felt like she should be able to piece the puzzle together, if she just thought about it hard enough.

"Alright, you're all signed in," Kay dropped into the seat next to her. "I wish that woman would quit her screeching, she's making my headache worse." She rubbed at her temples with a grimace.

"Kay, maybe you should get checked out too. Just in case," Dawn was suddenly afraid for her friend. Something was terribly wrong with the situation, she could feel it.

"I'm fine. It's just a headache. It's you we need to be worried about. How's the nose?"

"Still bleeding."

Sitting in a waiting room was never fun, and neither of them was feeling their best. They lapsed into silence as the time passed, watching the news channel that had been muted on the waiting room tv.

The news was long since over, and some late night show had come on, when another commotion in the waiting room caught Dawn's attention.

A harried looking nurse burst through a swinging door. The woman looked around the room, before zeroing in on the pink haired girl. "Are you Macy?" The nurse skidded to a stop in front of the girl and her mother. "Do you know Brian?"

The girl sat up straighter, "He's my boyfriend. Wait, is he here? What's wrong with him?"

"Come with me, please."

"What's wrong with Brian? Is he ok?" The girl let the tissues in her hand drop as she stared at the nurse and a trickle of blood immediately ran down to her lip.

The nurse was already hurrying back across the room. "We are running a few tests. I really need you to come with me." She didn't give anything away, and her actions said it all as she tried to hurry the teen out of the waiting room.

The girl had to rush to catch up to the nurse. Dawn barely noticed when the door slapped shut behind them. She was seeing the disgusted look on a teen boy's face, after she sneezed all over him, as he wiped his hand off. The crappy grocery store florescent lighting had glinted off of his name tag, highlighting his name.

"I have to tell them," Dawn was out of her seat and in front of the reception desk before she really registered that she had even moved. She didn't know what was going on, but she was sure that it was no coincidence. Her gut screamed that things were only going to get worse.