by Lynn Red
And then, they were all gone.
“The hell was that?” Skinny Kiddy, who had apparently been watching the exodus from behind me, spoke and made me jump. “What happened?”
I shrugged. “I was taking that giant back to exam six and he saw some guy in one of the other rooms. He kinda flattened against the wall like some secret agent hunting a mark and started asking questions about who it was.”
“Wait, what? Which room?”
“Exam four, only the door was open and there wasn’t a clipboard, so...”
“Show me,” Kiddy said with short impatience. “That’s not supposed to happen. What’d he look like?”
I closed one of my eyes and looked up with the other, the way I always do when I’m trying to search the memory banks for something that isn’t quickly forthcoming. “Black hair, kinda slicked back. So black it almost kinda had a blue sheen, you know what I mean?”
As I talked, Kiddy took off, stalking back to the exam area. I followed her, continuing to rattle off what I could remember of the guy as we went—pale blue eyes, just sitting there staring straight out the door. I kept coming back to the way the giant who was with me spun on his heel and flattened against the wall. “This isn’t right,” she finally said. “Come here.”
Once again, I followed, and once again, my boss was visibly irritated. She took me to the bank of admission computers, and started scanning. “There’s nothing here,” she said. “You’re not fucking with me, are you?”
“Would I ever—okay I mean I would, but no, this was really strange. He was in exam four and it freaked the big guy out, and then the big dude ran away, taking all the others with him.”
Kiddy just kept saying ‘this isn’t right’ over and over again, as she stared in disbelief at the computer in front of her. “There hasn’t been anyone in that room for days,” she whispered. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a doctor or someone taking a break they weren’t supposed to take? Because I’ll tell you, I’m not really sure what to make of all this, only that it isn’t good.”
She started going pale, and before I knew exactly what was going on, Kiddy, who was normally too mean to ever be intimidated, afraid, or anything else aside from ‘slightly put out’ was completely gray. I’ve heard plenty of people say they saw someone go ashen, or turn pale, but never in my life did I think it would be quite this dramatic and quite this...well, ugly.
“This is bad,” Kiddy said, and though it was the second time she’d announced the same thing, I still didn’t quite understand.
“I don’t get it,” I confessed. “Why does it matter if someone was in the room who wasn’t supposed to be, and a whole bunch of muscled up doofuses came in, and then ran away? I mean, this isn’t the strangest thing that’s ever happened here.”
She stared at me like I’d just called her mom an asshole. “Okay maybe it is the weirdest thing that’s happened. But why are you so worked up about all this?”
Without responding, Kiddy kind of screwed up her face, stuck the mechanical pencil she’d been scribbling with back into the bun of hair that sat on the back of her head, never moving, and blinked heavily. “You don’t...none of this bothers you? None of it at all? None of this business is alarming or confusing or upsetting to you?”
“Well I mean I’m a little taken aback,” I said. “I don’t really understand why you’re getting all pissy, except that you’re you and something has you worked up. Look, I know something weird is going on, but—”
Before I could finish, something loud and brutal erupted outside the front of the ER. We’re perfectly accustomed to loud bangs, ambulances hitting curbs and gurneys slamming into doors before people can manage to get the things open. It all happened so fast I can hardly remember the order, but I’ll give it a shot.
First, there was that banging noise, nothing too crazy, just a sound. Next, there was a flash of light and a plume of fire that shot straight up from the street, apparently, into heaven. The third thing that happened was something I can’t even really fathom, but right in front of my eyes, I saw it play out.
One car hit the back of another, then a third and a fourth piled up straight out front of the front doors of our building. The guy—the black haired one—had climbed out of a pickup truck and reach into another of the cars, dragging a guy out of it and beating the living shit out of him before stomping his head, kicking him in the face, and turning to another car.
“Kiddy?” I asked, “what the hell is—” but she was gone. Everyone was gone. They were all outside, and a half-second later, so was I.
2
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I really, really don’t.
I ran out the front doors and without the smell of transmission fluid and gasoline flooding my senses, I probably would’ve gotten a lot closer, a lot quicker. The whole thing was so fast, so crazy and so unbelievably stupid, that I had to see if anyone was alive. I made myself believe it wasn’t really the guy I’d seen a few moments before, sitting in that exam room and looking very glum.
Me, being me, I had to run out and see if everyone was okay. Well, that’s what I’ll tell myself anyway, to avoid looking like a turkey-necking asshole, but in my defense, I did actually call the police for them. No one was hurt, but the cars and the SUV were just mangled messes of twisted up metal, plastic and fiberglass. The pickup that the mysterious black-haired man was driving before he got out and started punching faces, hardly looked scratched except for a telling smell that came out from the bottom of the car, followed by a plume of green-black smoke.
I ran up to the cars as soon as I realized there wasn’t any fire going on, and so they weren’t just going to explode and kill everyone in a thirty-foot radius. Now, look, I’m not going on about this to make myself look like some kind of hero. Far from it, I swear. I’m getting to the point, and the point is weird, so I’m sorta hyping myself up for it, I guess.
There was an awful, acrid smell coming from the cars that I assumed to be radiator fluid, or perhaps some other gooey chemical that is of vital importance to keeping cars from exploding. It didn’t matter though, not really. There was an old, frightened looking woman in the front seat of the SUV, which was a little ironic because the only part of the SUV that had any real damage was the back. Although from the trunk to about halfway through the third row of seats was a giant, mangled mess, she wasn’t in any actual danger.
The only person in any danger, if you haven’t guessed by now, was me.
What I thought was just an acrid, nasty smell, turns out, is what transmission fluid smells like when it’s burning. And that, as it also turns out, can blow up pretty damn big.
REAL damn big.
In the seconds before the explosion that would change my life, and me, forever, I managed to yank open the driver’s side door and unhook a very unconscious man’s seat belt. He was big. Not fat or muscular, particularly, he was just enormous. At first it struck me how funny it was that the tiny woman was in an SUV and the gigantic monster man was stuffed into a four door coupe, but the only thing on my mind was pulling him out of the mess before anything bad happened. Okay, anything worse I guess is a better way to put it.
I hooked my arms underneath the big dude’s armpits, and yanking him out of the car with a loud grunt. His feet hit the ground, and as soon as all his weight was on me, there wasn’t a damn thing else I could do. I fell underneath him as my feet scrabbled almost unconsciously against the blacktop as I tried to push away.
Looking across at the other cars, I was very surprised to see that of the three others involved in the pileup, only one of them had anyone inside. The others had somehow been abandoned, although I’ll be damned if I know how anyone could survive that wreck, much less run away.
I couldn’t force the thought from my mind, though, that the black haired guy was the one in the SUV, even if he was already gone, disappeared behind a giant wall of awful smelling engine smoke.
“Get away from there!” a voice came from behind me. I rem
ember that part very clearly, because the next second, a cop, or a fireman, or something, grabbed the man out of my arms and pulled him away. “Get back!” It took three of them to heft the guy off the ground and take him backwards away from the wreckage. Odd thing—they were all black haired, just like the guy in the hospital room, and all had the same almost transparent blue eyes. I passed it off as a completely ridiculous coincidence, but I had—and still have—a hard time believing in coincidence. You see enough and you start seeing lines that connect everything together.
I turned, confused by what he was saying, since I mean there wasn’t anything going to explode, right? Why would he be so insistent that I get back?
“I’m a nurse! I’m trying to help these people!”
Of course, then I learned.
The car’s front end exploded like a damn volcano. A fireball sprayed straight up into the air, and sparks from the blast caught me straight in the face. I reeled back, trying to get away, and wondering vaguely why I hadn’t listened to the man yelling at me. I finally managed to get some distance between myself and the death trap Volvo, and I was blinking viciously.
A green and brown haze covered my vision, which I immediately realized was probably a concussion, or maybe a result of being sprayed in the face with a jet of heated-up horror. It’s hard to say. The only thing I really know is that without that little shred of pointless courage I showed, I’d probably still be sitting in the same bar, having the same drink, but without the significant growth of wiry fur on my legs. And look, I’m not saying I keep on top of shaving all the time, but this is something else entirely. Way something else.
The hell that enveloped me is something I’d never seen before. Someone on the other side of the road, opposite the wreck, started shouting something I couldn’t understand. I turned back and walked toward the flaming mess, half numb and confused. So, maybe it was a concussion after all. Either way, I took three steps forward, shouted ‘what?’ at the person who was yelling. Less than a second later, I saw three things, almost at the same time.
First came a spark. It wasn’t like any normal spark though; it was like a blue arc that connected two posts somewhere deep in the car’s engine bay.
Second, the spark turned into a shower of them. I honestly can’t say how long it took for all this to happen, but it reminded me of one of those fireworks where different colored sparks spray out the top of a tower shaped paper tube. All sorts of colors blasted out of the torn up hood, and spilled out around it, like water falling out of a collapsed kiddie pool. Yellow came first, then blue and then green and then...
Third, the sparks turned to a horrific gout of flame. It sprayed straight up in the air, and as I’d wandered a few steps nearer, straight into my face. All at once, I lurched backwards, clutched my eyes and fell flat on my ass. I don’t know what happened, really, but I expected it to hurt.
It didn’t.
I understand, intellectually, that I’d gotten a concussion and gone into shock, but emotionally? Whole different ballgame. My head hit the ground next, but it was more a realization than a panic. I didn’t feel any of this happening, I was just aware it was happening.
My head fell backwards until I was looking backward at the cops, the firemen, and the gigantic man-beast I’d somehow managed to pull out of the now-exploded Volvo. My head rang, echoes sounded so deep in my chest that it felt like my entire body was vibrating from the blast. I tried to push myself up on my feet, but as soon as I got up on my elbows, the screaming inside my head was too much. I fell straight back to the ground, my forehead taking a deep bite from the asphalt.
I honestly don’t know how I didn’t notice before, but when I heard his voice, I knew it was the same guy from the hospital that had seen the black-haired dude and took off. What I couldn’t fathom was why or how. But like I said, of course, I didn’t have very much time for thinking just then, as I was completely surrounded by heat, sickening smoke, and needed to think about getting the hell out instead of sitting around in it.
“Help her!” I heard someone shout. The echoes were so strong, so loud, that I could hardly stand it, but when he repeated himself in a huge, booming, almost violent voice, I couldn’t help but hear. It seemed like my eyes were open, but everything was just a mess of mossy green and dull brown, like a muddy lake I couldn’t see through far enough to see the bottom.
Every time I pulled a breath through my nose, my lungs rattled, full of some kind of bitter, metallic tasting fluid. I knew it was blood, but I couldn’t bring myself to think of it just then. When my lungs filled, sharp pain shot through me. I knew my lungs were punctured, my ribs almost certainly broken.
For once, I was really starting to regret my decision to quit art school and get a nursing degree. Oh, I guess that’s important. Ami Martel, RN, nice to meet you. Oh right, I was dying.
As I lay there trying my best to refuse myself the indulgence of counting up all the ways I was about to meet my maker, that booming voice kept coming again and again. Shouting for someone to help me, although for some reason, no one seemed to be listening. It was a very strange feeling to have so many people around that weren’t helping the girl who’d just blown up in a car explosion, but there must’ve been some reason.
The old woman was wandering around the sidewalk ringing her hands and complaining about something. My ears were still ringing, and my lungs burned deeply and horribly. Every rattling breath stung and ached and I wished, beyond wishing, that someone would listen to the bellowing giant.
Instead of listening though, the cops were trying to hold him down. I heard one of them tell him to stay still, that he was hurt and they were waiting on EMTs. I could have done with seeing one of those blue shirts just then, but it wasn’t to be.
“Stay the hell down!” a cop yelled, still trying to keep the big guy on the ground. “Let me up, damn it!” he shouted, pushing back against the small pile of humanity weighing him down. “There’s a girl over there and she’s hurt! Why aren’t you helping her? If you won’t, let me!”
The argument between them continued. The guy in the uniform had too much backup from the other officers for the big guy to do much, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Every so often it looked like he’d manage to get away from them before his strength gave out. There was blood running down the side of his face from a dent-like wound in his temple. It didn’t look too bad, but then again, I could hardly see through the murky haze that covered my vision. I lifted up again, but as usual, hardly pushed myself up on my palms before collapsing again.
That time when I hit the ground, another shock of pain jolted me all the way through. I screamed out, and when I did, my ragged lungs blasted even deeper. It felt like the inside of a melting drill trying to push its way through concrete that was far too thick and heavy to pierce.
My head ground so heavily into the dirt and blacktop that I felt rocks punching the front of my skull.
“If you don’t help her, right now, then let. Me. Go!”
The roaring and posturing, it would seem, was over. Instead of just pushing against the pile of cops, the giant had finally had enough. He exploded out of the pile, sending everyone trying to hold him down to the ground around him. As I lifted my head, and tried to concentrate enough to see what was going on, he threw back his arms and let out a roar that shook me to the core. His eyes, that I swear had been either blue or green before, started flaring and shifting between gold and fiery yellow. I could hardly see, but somehow the color of his eyes pierced the fog surrounding and penetrating my brain.
The next thing I knew, massive arms plucked me off the ground. Now, I’m not going to pretend it didn’t hurt. There’s no point in that. Being wrenched up off the ground sent another jolt of pain coursing through me, but it felt good to know that at least someone was helping. I still couldn’t figure out why no one else had, and why the guy I’d pulled out of his mashed-up car was the only one who bothered, but at that moment all I cared about was getting away from the burning wreckage b
efore something else happened.
“Come back here!” someone shouted behind us. The man looked down at me, those bizarre eyes shifting colors as I watched.
“Like hell I am,” he said under his breath. “This place is a damn death trap. I won’t let that happen to someone who saved me, no way in hell.”
“What’s happening?” I managed to wheeze. Before I could say anything else, the hissing sound in my lung reminded me I’d better keep quiet and conserve air as much as I possibly could. “Hospital,” I squawked. “I work...at...lung is...”
“I know,” he said, gruffly as he crossed the road with some pretty impressive speed. “Saving me might’ve been the dumbest thing you ever did, but I’m not going to let you die. Not now.”
My eyes crossed, but I gave him a quizzical look. “What...?” I meant to say a lot more, but it didn’t work out. I was getting so light headed from lack of oxygen that it was becoming hard to keep my eyes open. It didn’t help that he was almost bouncing me against his chest as he stepped further and further from the wreck. Suddenly, a whole bunch of nerves hit me right in the guts. “We’re gonna...arrested...leaving scene?”
He let out a grunting laugh. “That’s the last thing you need to worry about right now. Like I said, you’re in more trouble than you could possibly know. Just keep your head down and I’ll take care of you.”
I can’t say it made any sense. Hell, I can’t even say I wasn’t terrified out of my mind, but when you’re in shock and half-dead from being blown up by an exploding engine, that sort of thing isn’t really first in your mind. All I wanted to do was get to a doctor, or a hospital, or hell, a half-competent medical school student. I wanted to breathe, to be able to open my eyes without getting nauseated and feeling seasick.
