Two paramedics came through the door of the ambulance bay pulling a trolley. The whole group fell silent as an orderly pushed Kate’s body past into a single room. A sheet had been pulled over her body up to the chin, covering the violent means of her death. Her face was the colour of curdled milk, marred only by a fine network of dark red lines emanating from the bite wound across her face. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, as if surprised at her own death. The orderly pulled the door closed behind him, breaking the spell on the group.
As the police organised how they would approach the restraint, the remaining patients that hadn’t bolted on their own volition were moved to a different area. Harry hung back; his help wasn’t required, and he was quietly glad of it.
The police team opened the door and rushed into the small room. Screams from the dead woman escalated as they pinned the body down, cut the restraints to the trolley and lifted it away. When called for, the paramedics pushed their transport trolley into the room and collapsed it to the ground. The team lifted the flailing body onto the stretcher, and fastened each limb with multiple zip ties to prevent any movement. Harry handed over a copy of the paperwork from the arrest, and the dual police/paramedic team filed out of the department.
* * *
The treatment of the injured nurse and security guard was now complete; wounds washed and dressed. Harry wrote them scripts for antibiotics and analgesia to see them through the next few days. The manager took pity, ushering them out the door with an early mark. Harry joined the remaining clinicians on the staff base where they’d gathered. The police had stretched a blue and white tape cordon across the entrance to the resuscitation area, restricting access to the crime scene. There was still a bunch of junk food lying on one of the desks, but no one was interested in eating. A junior doctor broke the silence by asking the question each was thinking, but reluctant to voice.
‘How do we explain what just happened?’
‘Maybe the equipment failed, and we got the diagnosis wrong,’ offered one of the nurses. ‘What did Public Health have to say, Harry?’
‘They mostly wanted to know about the wound.’ Harry paused as a new thought hit him. ‘There’s been a murmur on the grapevine about a new disease in the bat population up north that’s suspected in some recent human deaths. I wonder if that’s why they were so interested in the bite mark. Do you reckon that’s what she had?’
The other Registrar cut in. ‘We’d have to be unlucky. I think we just stuffed up. She probably had a faint pulse the whole time that was missed.’
‘So how do you explain her attack on Kate?’ asked a nurse.
‘Maybe she was delirious from the infection? Look, I don’t know for sure either,’ he said, giving up.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ Harry sighed; he knew the hospital executives were going to haul him over the coals about Kate’s death. Still, he’d rather deal with that than be staring at the ceiling with a chunk missing from his neck—
A flat smack echoed from the room where Kate lay. Everyone’s head turned. On cue, another thump from the inside of the door caused it to shudder in its frame.
‘What the fuck?’ stammered the Registrar.
Harry lurched to his feet, ‘It’s happening again. Someone call the cops!’ He ran towards the door. ‘We need to keep her in there – she’s fucking dead. She bled out on me...’
He grabbed the handle and placed his weight onto it, his foot braced against the doorframe. One of the nurses joined him and leant their strength. Whatever was left of Kate, heard their efforts. A shriek of anger battered their eardrums as the door bounced from the force of her blows. The minutes dragged on as the unrelenting assault continued.
A police siren escalated in volume as a squad car neared the department, before skidding to a halt in the ambulance bay. Two constables ran in and were directed to the barricaded door. Harry and the nurse were ordered out of the way. One officer stepped forward and turned the handle, pulled open the door and stood back.
Out from the darkness shambled Kate’s body. The limbs moved in an uncoordinated lurching motion. Clot-soaked tendrils of hair matted one side of her face, covering the left eye. The right eye snapped its focus to the first police officer. Her lips peeled back into a snarl as she started towards him. The officer moved backwards slowly. ‘Stop! Get down on the ground!’
Nothing.
The cop pulled out his Taser, and aimed it at her chest. ‘Stop where you are!’
What had once been Kate, lurched forward.
‘Taser! Taser! Taser!’ shouted the police officer in a last warning to the corpse, then fired the pins into her chest to deliver a debilitating shock. Instead of dropping to the floor in an agony of electric charge, her body was unaffected. Her forward motion continued, now accompanied by a maddening groan.
Shaking hands dropped the Taser in preference of a Glock. The officer’s face drained of colour as he provided his last warnings to surrender without effect.
Three shots in rapid succession punched through the corpse’s chest, smashing it off its feet. The clot of hair had flung away from the left eye in the fall, freeing both unblinking eyes to bore a hole through the constable’s head as it pushed itself back to standing and started forward again.
The constable’s hand started to waver as he backed away, firing two more rounds. The first hit her left shoulder; the second entered the right side of her forehead, blowing out a section of her skull to coat the wall behind. The corpse smacked to the ground, lifeless once more. The police officer re-holstered his weapon, took a slow breath and turned around, his eyes searching the people behind until he found his colleague. He maintained a fixed glare at his partner, a “where the fuck were you during that?” expression clearly conveyed while he addressed the rest of the room in a rasping voice.
‘Start transferring any remaining patients to other departments or hospitals. This entire Emergency Department is now a crime scene.’
* * *
Harry grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. It had taken them another two hours to move the remaining patients elsewhere. He’d never seen patients accepted by inpatient medical teams so willingly before. A further two hours followed of interviews with police and the hospital’s General Manager who was desperate to understand what had happened before it was leaked to the media. Harry was beyond tired, scraped to a husk inside after the night’s happenings. He needed to find unconsciousness in sleep without any more dissection of events. There was a half full bottle of scotch at home that he hoped could deliver a dreamless sleep.
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A Spring of Sorrow Page 34
