The Sole Survivors' Club

Chapter 18

The next few hours blurred while Monica answered questions for the police. Long after they’d finished, her mind insisted on attempting to replay events up to the elevator car plunging. She stubbornly pushed the memories away each time they surfaced.

The Audi was parked back at the motel, so Carl called a cab to take them back to Waxahachie. He led Monica outside using the stairs and helped her into the cab, holding her protectively against his side the whole time.

Despite the length of the trip, Monica barely noticed anything of the ride out of Dallas and back to the motel. She looked up when Carl opened the door of the cab, and surprise registered on her face briefly before her dark thoughts overwhelmed her again.

For as much as she wanted to cry, she couldn’t. She was too emotionally spent for the tears to come. In the place of real emotions, she instead felt hollow and unreal. The world around her had become a nightmare she couldn’t escape by opening her eyes. She could not close them and find respite or escape. Now, more than ever before, she felt trapped.

Carl sat on the bed with her, unable to speak once he knew it was okay to fall apart. Tremors passed though his body, and after many long minutes, Monica realized she could hear his heart beating with a rapid and erratic pace. He was afraid and near the point of slipping into shock.

Fatigue caused Monica to close her eyes, and her memory nagged at her to view the elevator failure again. Unable to keep her eyes open, she finally relented.

The image in her mind became shaper while she recalled minor details. The clock in the corridor above Bernice read two twenty-eight. Bernice was dressed in a nurse’s uniform instead of her own clothing. She’d held the same clipboard the nurse did when Monica glanced back again.

Then Greg walked onto the elevator, and Bernice was wearing a doctor’s coat. The elevator car fell, and Monica’s attention wandered to Rachel’s gaping wound. Yet in the periphery of her vision, she still saw Bernice floating in the elevator shaft.

The image stirred Monica to open her eyes and sit up to dig her phone out of her pocket. She used the call history to look up the hospital. Speaking in a whisper, she needed several attempts for the nurse to understand her.

The nurse put her on hold, and several minutes passed before a man picked up the line. He would only say that Monica needed to come to the hospital right away, which confirmed her worst fears.

Monica was more aware of the cars around her while Carl drove to the hospital. He was speeding, and his constant lane changing got her back in touch with her fear of cars.

Her eyes flicked around while she waited for someone to crash or stall. Even after the car was parked in the hospital garage, she remained on edge, waiting for an attack that never came.

The elderly doctor who greeted them could have almost passed for a jinn with his ashen coloring. But his spots were all a brownish color instead of black, and they didn’t move. If he weren’t so traumatized, the doctor’s skin tone might have matched the spots more closely.

His eyes and his face were full of apprehension as he offered his hand to Carl. “I’m Dr. Balata.” His voice was soft and disquieted. He extended his hand to Monica, and then waved for them to follow him. “I’ll need you to come with me please.”

Monica grabbed his fore arm to stop him. Her face melted into an imploring expression. “Please, before we go anywhere, just tell me if Bernice is okay.”

Dr. Balata looked away from her before he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there’s been an...equipment malfunction.”

Monica stared at the doctor, waiting for him to go on. He pulled his arm away, silently urging her to come with him. “What does that mean? You killed her?”