Our Wrong Choice

Jonathan

                                                          Jonathan started his residency at Mercy Children's Hospital at the same time as Riley. From the moment he met her, Jonathan was head-over-heels for her. To put it lightly, Jonathan hadn't felt like this for a woman in a long while. Jonathan Smithford is from Langston, Wyoming. Langston is just a little bitty spot in the road for most people. If you're not from there, you could very easily miss it. There are two traffic signals in Langston, one coming into town and one going out of town. There's only a population of fifteen hundred and seventy five people. Most of the people who live there were born, raised and, most likely, will die there. Most of the homes in Langston are spread out over a twenty-mile stretch of country land. Most of the people who were born in Langston live on farms and ranches in the rural outskirts of town. There is a Penicostal Holiness Church and a First Baptist Church in town. Most of the residents of Langston attend one or the other. The town also consists of a Walmart, an IGA supermarket, a Dollar General, an elementary school, middle school and a high school. The elementary and middle schools are combined. A previous mayor decided some years back that since there was a maximum of about two hundred and tentyfive students at any given time, the decision to combine the two schools only made sense. It's about the size of a town that you would see somewhere on the plains of Oklahoma. Right after Jonathan graduated from high school, he decided to go to school to be a nurse. He had researched colleges and decided to put his application in for enrollment at the Westport College of Nursing in Indiana. Little did he know at the time but it is a decision that will change the rest of  his life forever.

                                                      Only a few months after starting his residency at the new Mercy Children's Hospital, Jonathan gets a phone call from the head nurse asking him to return to the hospital  to help tend to the patients who have been coming in since the multi car pile up happened on the interstate. Upon entering the hospital, he is informed by the head nurse that there have been numerous fatalities who have arrived at the hospital and there are some children among them. Although he is informed about the number of fatalities on the scene of the crash, he is not informed of the fact that some of the fatalities that were pronounced dead on-scene have since been seen walking around the scene. Jonathan has no idea about what has been unfolding on live TV since the pile up happened. Hell, he didn't even have enough time to switch on his television in his living room after returning home from the hospital, which is his norm, before his cellphone started ringing with news that he was needed back at the hospital. Lidia, the head nurse, asks him to come back in to assist with the onslaught of patients that have been arriving at the hospital since the mess on the interstate occurred. As she soon as she starts talking he can hear the fear in her voice. As Jonathan ends the call, the most horrible thoughts imaginable start racing through his mind.

                                                     Jonathan calmly answers the nurse's plea for him to come back and help. As soon as Jonathan pulls into the parking lot at Mercy Children's, he knows automatically knows that it is going to be a very long and exhausting night. Just as he makes it to the emergency room, he sees three hospital gurneys with white sheets pulled up to the top of them. The sheets are all stained crimson with some poor kid's blood. He sees Lidia and asks her why everyone is so on edge. She looks at him with sympathy in her crystal blue eyes. With shock in her voice, she asks, "Jonathan, haven't you seen the news? It's been all over the place since shortly after first responders started showing up at that accident on the interstate. Some of the patients who who had been pronounced dead on the scene had been seen up and walking around the scene of the accident by onlookers. The people who saw them said that they weren't normal and they could tell that they had all been dead. Nonetheless, they were all still up and walking around like nothing had happened to them. Like they hadn't been dead at all."