Brownstone

by Dean Kutzler

  Once again, recalling the rude ER nurse, Jack began to find validation in the reasoning of that rudeness. He looked about the hallway and realized she was by herself. He thought about asking her if she was okay or needed help, but remembered the last patient he ran into.

  Sensing his presence in the hallway as if being wired to a hidden sensor beam, the elderly woman slowly came to life.

  “So you have come.” The elderly woman deadpanned in a deep voice. Jack raised an eyebrow. Her voice was misleading from her tiny feminine stature. It was stoic and deep, like a female version of James Earl Jones.

  She remained against the wall as she spoke slowly, turning her head towards Jack and sniffing the air as she opened her eyes at the same time, locking with his. Jack expected her eyes to be as magnificently beautiful and glowing as the rest of her form, but this wasn’t the case. They were entirely black as obsidian, like an event horizon with no boundaries—black holes drawing in all matter, allowing nothing to escape.

  The sight of the elderly woman's eyes stopped Jack cold. He was transfixed by her blackened stare, wondering if this was another condition that the oxen orderly could explain away. This place should have been labeled a mental institution instead of a hospital.

  “Excuse me ma'am? Is everything okay? Do you need me to get someone for you?” Jack asked, thinking that she got off on the wrong floor or maybe she got exasperated on her way back to the psych ward and a nurse or orderly left her propped up against the wall while they fetched a wheelchair. She clearly had an issue with her eyes and probably couldn’t see to get about on her own.

  “You’ve come to stop what should have been?” she asked, tilting her head, raising her brow and intensifying her deadening stare. Stop what? The old man in the elevator had said something like that. Didn’t he? Were they all on the same medication?

  “Aaaaah, I’m sorry ma’am. I don’t exactly—ah, follow you. Were you waiting for the nurse to return? Do you need me to get someone to—“ She cut him short, slapping the wall, like the crack of a whip.

  “Silence!” Her voice boomed like thunder. It was surreal like an amphitheater inside of Jack’s head. “You have come and you will not stop that which has begun! Centuries of old have held meaning to the cause, which has stricken this world long enough. It will not be stopped!”

  “Excuse—, ah me. I—think,” Jack said, struggling to shake the bone-chilling feeling the presence of this woman was creating in him. She was just a harmless, crazy old lady lost in the hospital. She’d probably been administered one too many crazy pills.

  Getting a grip on his building terror, he said, “I think this whole place has lost its mind. I’m sure the nurse will be along any minute now.” He forced himself to look away from the lunatic’s darkened stare. She was mental, blind and had clearly mistaken Jack for someone else.

  “It can’t be stopped! It will not!” she warned.

  “Ah, yeah. Can’t stop, won’t stop. Got it! I’m going now” Jack said, nodding his head as he resumed walking past the woman.

  The old woman’s eyes followed Jack with that dark stare until he was nearly past her. In an instant, like a surge of electricity hit her, she spun about-face toward his direction, landing a stinging blow with the zap of lightning on the back of his neck with her palm opened wide. CRACK!

  “Heed my vow! It shall come full circle!” She yelled, pointing the finger at him from the hand that delivered the stinging blow. And with that, the plug had been pulled, the light had been snuffed and she dropped listlessly to the floor. Her hair billowed up around her as she fell like a parachute on its final float to ground.

  In the wake of her blow, Jack stumbled and landed up against the opposite wall. His neck felt like it had been struck by someone with twice the width, height and strength of the little old woman. His neck was on fire and started to swell. He could feel the impression from her hand on his neck.

  A skinny young nurse of twenty-something in Sponge Bob scrubs came running down the hall. “Ms. Fredrickson!” Looking at Jack she said, “What happened? What did you do?”

  “What did I do?” Jack asked, raising his voice and rubbing at his neck. “I—I was—I was just trying to get past her and she slapped me on the neck!”

  The nurse pulled a scrunchy off her wrist and gathered her chestnut brown hair into a ponytail as she bent down and started to check for a pulse. “That’s impossible! Ms. Fredrickson has been comatose and bed ridden for months. ICU is always locked! How did she get out? She was scheduled to be disconnected from life support today.” She continued checking for a pulse. “It was the strangest thing—I checked on her earlier this morning and she was in the same condition as usual. She’s never shown any signs of even the slightest recovery. I went back to say goodbye before they disconnected her and she was gone! The intubation tube was just lying there on the bed. That’s when I went looking for her. I don’t understand how this could have happened. Ms. Fredrickson! Ms. Fredrickson!” the nurse said, looking for any signs of life left in the little old lady.

  Jack looked down at the lifeless Ms. Fredrickson and noticed that she didn’t possess the same commanding aura that she’d had moments before. Did someone slip him something on his way in to the hospital? Dying does have a funny way of playing on one’s looks, but this was absurd. Her hair was no longer pin-straight and brilliant. When did that change? Had he been imagining it? It now looked more suited for an old woman that had been lying in a bed, comatose for months. The length wasn’t even the same. Her dead eyes were closed, rightly so, but he was betting that they were no longer black holes.

  Rubbing at his neck, he bent down next to the nurse over the dead woman’s body. He needed to see for himself if her eyes were normal.

  The nurse shifted over, startled by his actions and said, “What are you doing? How did you know this woman and what did you do to her?”

  “Like I said! I didn’t do anything to her!” He said, carefully lifting one of her eyelids like he was tempting fate and peeking into a snake charmer’s basket. Nothing but the cloudy cataract-stricken eye of a normal woman her age. “Like I told you, I didn’t do anything. I was on my way to see my uncle in ICU and I tried to get past her and she slapped me on the neck! Inhumanly hard I might add! So hard that she knocked me up against the wall! And she—she looked different.” The nurse eyed the huge hand-sized welt on his neck. “Ever since I entered this hospital, strange things have been happening. It’s more like a mental ward!”

  The nurse seemed to relax a little at his comment. “I must admit, things haven’t been the same here the last few days. But this woman wasn’t capable of conscious thought let alone extubating herself, walking away from her bed and slapping someone. Her muscles alone would be atrophied to the point where she could barely sit up in bed.” She raised her eyebrow at Jack as he gently let go of the old woman’s eyelid. “Don’t worry. She can’t hurt you anymore. I haven’t seen it myself, but some of the veteran nurses say they’ve seen patients on their death beds display a surge of energy before they pass on. My fiancé says it’s like a star shining brighter before it burns out. Or is it a light bulb?”

  “Both. He may have something there.” Jack said, seeing her relax a little.

  “It’s very sad, ya know? Ms. Fredrickson’s been here in a vegetative state for months. In all that time, she’d only had one visitor and that was just last week. It was funny, at first I thought it was man. But when I asked if I could be of any help, there was no disguising the voice. It took me off guard. She pulled her hat down and tried to deepen it, but I could tell. My fiancé’s Mom’s a lesbian now and she does the same thing. We laugh about it,” the young nurse said, shaking her head.

  They watched as the orderlies wheeled the deceased Ms. Fredrickson away on a gurney to the annals of the morgue, where she would be bagged, toe—tagged and catalogued away. Jack took the opportunity to question the nurse about his uncle while they were on their way to ICU. She didn’t know much about him, only that he�
��d been in their ICU for a few days, had suffered a traumatizing unrecoverable event and was scheduled to be extubated soon. She remembered the night that he was admitted. She’d just started her shift.

  “I remember thinking to myself how young he was and what a tragedy. We found his meds on him, carbamazepine. It’s mainly to treat seizures, so he may have been epileptic. Not sure there. This has nothing to do with epilepsy, but I keep telling my fiancé that it doesn’t matter how thin or young you are. If you don’t start eating right, your body will revolt. I’ve never been more health conscious than when I started nursing. The reality never hits until you see what happens to people when they let themselves go. Combating old age is enough of a battle. Why help it along? Have you ever been to a nursing home? Visit one. You’ll be on the health band-wagon soon enough.” She adjusted her stethoscope and secured it beneath her Smiley Face name badge, which read Julie Carlson.

  They were getting closer to ICU. Jack was still stalling. “Was my uncle conscious when he was admitted? Did he say anything?”

  “I don’t mean to make this any harder for you, but when he first came in he was lucid and we had to restrain him. He kept saying he needed to tell someone something. After Dr. Alderson examined him, he mentioned that it was unusual for him to display such vigor after the immediate trauma he’d been through. I think by that point the damage to his brain was making him react erratically, causing his condition to worsen, but I’m not a doctor. A stroke victim has to be calmed as much as possible. Whenever you see an ambulance flying down the street with no siren blaring, just the lights on, nine times out of ten they’re transporting a heart attack or stroke victim to the hospital. The noise of the siren would create more adrenaline in the victim, possibly causing another attack or stroke. I’m really sorry about your uncle. Were you close?”

  “He was like a father to me. Not that I don’t have a father. I do.” His face reddened at the thought of her thinking him an orphan and it surprised and shamed him. “It’s just that, my uncle has always been special to me.” Jack’s eyes began to well up a little as he continued. “Yes. My uncle, Uncle Terry and I were very close. You mentioned that things weren’t the same around here? What did you mean?”

  “It’s like a full moon or something around here these last few days. All the machines in ICU went haywire the other day. Never saw that happen before! It was like walking into the game room at Harrah’s in Atlantic City. My fiancé took me there for our anniversary.” A warm smile spread across her face at the memory. “All the machines where ringing and flashing together making that strange continuous uplifting noise, almost like they were doing it on purpose. And the patients have been unusually difficult too. As you just experienced,” she said with a little laugh, coming to a halt.

  The time had come and all the distractions were now beyond Jack. He and the nurse were standing before the doors to the Intensive Care Unit. No more chance to prepare for what he was about to see or what he would say. He’d spent his lifetime taking for granted the things that he held dear. If ever a school lesson was learned, the old adages ‘Live life to the fullest!’ and ‘Cherish each day as if it were the last!’ should have been the number one lesson on the agenda for the principal. Principal spelled with a P A L. Only these lessons are learned by experience, not in the textbooks. Try as any might, until faced with losing a loved one, no lesson taught in any class will school a soul harder than life itself.

  The nurse pressed the button next to the locked doors of the ICU. They waited in silence as the security camera rotated in their direction. After an annoying buzzing and clicking sound, the tumblers in the mechanism released the lock and the doors slowly swung open. It was surprisingly quiet and better kept inside the ICU than the rest of the hospital. The individual room units consisted of glass walls with curtains that were kept open to better aid the staff in keeping a close watch on their patients. They remained open unless there was an emergency in which they were shut for privacy or respect to the visitors and not to upset the other patients during times of crisis. Next to each room number there was a red light like the one on top of old Car 54.

  Each critical care patient was fitted into the center of the room like a part of machinery that was intricately placed inside its component, surrounded by other parts consisting of monitors, tubes and hoses and strange lighted panels that blinked and monitored and measured. Ample room was left around the patient, in between the wires and tubes that integrated them with the machinery, for easy access for the doctors and nurses.

  Room number one was empty, except for a tube laying down the middle of the bed. A pair of yellow hospital-issued socks were on the floor next to the bed. Room two had the curtains drawn and the red light was whirling in hot pursuit. There was a lot of bustling going on behind the curtain and the desk nurse just ran into the room, leaving the station empty.

  “Ah—I’m very sorry about your uncle Mr—ahh,”

  “Jack, Jack Elliot and thank you—”

  “Julie,” she said, rushing toward room number two. “I’m truly sorry, Jack. Your uncle’s room is on the other side of the nurse’s station just around the corner. I have to assist the team. There’s an emergency going on in two. I’m sorry. I will check in on the both of you as soon as I can.” She rushed off to room number two.

  Jack wasn’t ready to face this alone. He was hoping that the young nurse would have gone in with him. It would have helped. He was kicking himself in the head for not letting Calvin come to New York.

  As he started to pass room number two, he caught a glimpse before the door shut behind Nurse Julie. A small person, possibly a young boy of no more than ten or twelve, bandaged from head to toe, was violently convulsing and thrashing about on the bed. The bed tray stand was rattling from the boy’s knees knocking against it and the monitors were going haywire. The nurses and doctors were all around the small patient trying to keep him steady and safe while he rode out the seizure. The tubes and wires were writhing like snakes from his assault as they fought to keep him connected. He was choking on the ventilation tube and his bandaged head was starting to seep through with fresh bloodstains. Julie looked back at Jack with a forlorn smile just before the door clicked shut.

  Stifled with shock from the scene, he stood there a moment. He didn’t want to see anymore. He didn’t want to do this. He longed to be anywhere else. What happened to that poor child? He didn’t want to know. He had enough to deal with and he didn’t need to witness that right before seeing his uncle.

  How do these young nurses and doctors cope with such tragedy and heartache? Where would this world be without saints as such to aid the sick and dying? Elderly and mortally wounded animals crawl off into the woods to dye alone. Animal experts say they do this so they don’t become a burden on the living. How do humans differ? The elderly are left in nursing homes to rot the rest of their existence out. Voluntarily crawling off alone into the woods to quicken the fate seems a far lesser evil than being forgotten and left alone to rot a slow, solitary death.

  The entire staff was assisting in room number two. The nurse's station was an empty beacon. Jack was all alone. Thump—thump—thump. His heart started pounding. Was it a hundred degrees in here?

  Thumpa—thumpa—thumpa.

  He could feel the pooled sweat underneath his goatee start to run down his hidden chin as he let go of it to steady himself on the nurse's station desk.

  Thumpa—thumpa—Thumpa.

  The file bins on the desk began to rattle, he looked down and saw his hand. It was shaking. He couldn’t bare this place any longer.

  Thumpa—Thumpa.

  Racing faster, pounding harder. The room was spinning. He felt like vomiting. The rattling sound was overcome by the building rush of white noise in his ears. His peripheral vision began to fade like vignetting on an old photograph and a black shadow passed before his eyes.

  Thumpa—Thumpa.

  He had to calm down before the shadow fell like a curtain and he completely blacked o
ut and became a patient in this insane asylum of a hospital. The thought of being a patient in this place made his heart pound even harder.

  THUMP—THUMP—THUMP…

  Jack stood still with his eyes squeezed shut. The roar of white noise was overwhelming. He was in the grip of a panic attack. What do people do when this happens? Calm down. That’s what he needed to do, he needed to calm down.

  Breathe.

  He needed to concentrate on breathing.

  Breathe. In with the good. Exhale. Out with the bad. His nostrils flared. In with the good. Shoulders down. Out with the bad. He tried to think of good thoughts. Thoughts of when Uncle Terry was healthy, vital, full of life.

  This was his first experience with death and he had to suck it up. His head was dizzy. He’d been given a chance that most people never get. Breathe in. If it still existed. Nausea. Breathe out. Now wasn’t the time to lose it. He’s never even considered his own mortality before, until now. Not good. In with the—good. He wasn’t ready. Out with the—bad. He didn’t have a choice. In with the—good—out with the—bad.

  Breathe…

  Breathe…

  The rattling file bins slowly hushed their shake. The roaring tide of white noise started to ebb and his vision was gently washing back to the shore of sight.

  In—with—the—good.

  Jack was finding that calm inner core within himself.

  Out—with—the—bad.

  As peace was slowly finding its way back into his mind, the last few sounds of white noise were replaced by a soft sound of chanting.