This Darkness Light

by Michaelbrent Collings

  THE BODY ON THE FLOOR

  From: POTUS

  To: 'X'

  Sent: Friday, May 31 12:10 AM

  Subject: Operation Falling Stars

  I hear we got one.

  From: X

  To: Dicky

  Sent: Friday, May 31 12:10 AM

  Subject: RE: Operation Falling Stars

  How is it you heard that before I did?

  From: POTUS

  To: 'X'

  Sent: Friday, May 31 12:31 AM

  Subject: RE: RE: Operation Falling Stars

  They ARE my men, after all.

  From: X

  To: Dicky

  Sent: Friday, May 31 12:31 AM

  Subject: RE: RE: RE: Operation Falling Stars

  They need to report to me first unless you want to see this all go to shit. And you need to answer my emails faster.

  ***

  This is how you become a good nurse: you love your patients, you put othersʹ well-being above your own, you work hard, and you get used to low pay and no sleep with a generous side-helping of being looked down on by doctors who work half as much for five times the money.

  And yet Serafina Cruz wouldnʹt have changed it for the world–not even if offered a winning lottery ticket, a vacation home on the Riviera, and a chance to punch Doctor Hershel in the face.

  Hershel was the worst of the doctors who made life hell for the nursing staff. He demanded respect, which meant he got as little as they could mete out without getting in trouble for obvious insubordination. He wasnʹt even a staff doctor, just a private practice guy who came around twice a week to check on his patients in between playing golf at the club and counting his money at the bank.

  But those two days he was there, Hershel–aka Hershey The Squirt, a fitting nickname for someone so small, so irritating, and so very like a productive fart in quality and character–seemed to revel not in healing, but in causing as much disruption to everyoneʹs schedules as possible. Especially Serafinaʹs.

  She knew why. She was petite, and pretty, and it had only taken The Squirt a week before he decided sheʹd be just the gal to polish his clubs for a while. Fortunately for her, it had only taken about an hour for her to decide heʹd be just the kind of guy to make her life miserable, so she politely declined.

  The Squirt had been making her pay ever since. She didnʹt know how he dug up so many patients with impacted bowels, but every single one was a ʺspecial caseʺ that he ʺonly trusted her to handle.ʺ Code for ʺdig out the poop with your bare hands, and think about your dating choices.ʺ

  She dug, and thought. And considered herself luckier with every cubic foot of crap she got from the patients…and thus avoided from The Squirt.

  Just as she considered herself lucky to be a nurse. In spite of all the blood, and tears, and–yes, it had to be said–the gallons of pee and cubic yards of poop, she loved the job. As she had always known she would, since the day she decided to change from looking after herself to looking after others. Since the day her mother died.

  Had been murdered.

  For a moment Serafina went to a different place. A place where she did not walk on cheap tile that smelled of astringent cleaning solutions with a faint undercurrent of blood and death, but instead on cheaper wood flooring that rotted away like the bodies strewn across it. She did not hear the breathy sighs of men and women clinging tenaciously to life–some doomed to failure–but the breathy sighs of men and women who had already given up and died and simply waited for their bodies to catch up to that fact.

  ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ

  Serafina stopped walking. Motionless as she had been that day as words spoke through time.

  ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ

  Where is my daughter?

  Then: the struggle. The arms around her.

  The blood.

  Serafina forced herself to take a step. As though by moving her feet she might step out of the nightmare, step off the filthy flooring of her dream and into the squeaky tile of her reality. Passing from then to now, she went from a place ever cloaked in twilight to one where the lights burned always bright.

  That was part of why she loved her work, she was astute enough to know that: the lights never went off in a hospital. They dimmed in a few places, out of respect for the sickest, the closest to deathʹs door. But never did they completely extinguish.

  Serafina could not stand the dark.

  She kept stepping forward. And eventually she stepped out of the nightmare. Walked her way out of the past, out of the house where she had lost so much in muddled dreams.

  ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ

  A last call, a final ghostly wail light as a last snowflake after a long winter.

  Then she was alone in the hall.

  Sound returned. The sighs of sleeping patients, barely heard through half-open doors. A few moaned in their sleep. The gentle beep of a few monitors, the shhh-shhh-shhh of oxygen being pumped into tents or directly into lungs too weak to do the job themselves.

  Serafina was back to full speed. Walking a urine sample from the lab back up to the ICU. The sample had a STAT sticker on it, so it had to be hustled from the lab back up here, even though she knew perfectly well that the sample had nothing of import to it.

  Hershelʹs doing, of course. In addition to making her deal with crap–literally–The Squirt delighted in making her travel up and down the seven floors between the ICU and the lab. If possible he would insist that she run the stairs, stating the results were ʺtoo time-critical to wait on the fickle nature of the elevators–which, when you think of it, are much like a woman in that way, donʹt you think?ʺ

  He was not simply a Squirt. He was a full-fledged jerk. The only thing that kept him from being an out-and-out dickhead was the fact that Serafina knew her mother would not approve of such language. Even mentally.

  Sorry, mamãe.

  She resisted the urge to cross herself. She went to church, but it made some of the other nurses uncomfortable to see her faith right there in the open. She didnʹt understand their discomfort, but respected it as best she could by keeping her faith as quiet as possible when she walked among them.

  Serafina abruptly became aware that her steps had slowed.

  That was unusual. She loved being a nurse, and even when she was doing a stupid job for The Squirt, she moved. She got things done. A tribute to her mother–always trying to make her proud of her daughter–and a way of making up for lost time. The only time she slowed down was when memory–the memory–occasionally intruded.

  That wasnʹt happening now. Only her normal thoughts accompanied her, so what was wrong?

  Thatʹs it, Serafina. Itʹs just you and your thoughts.

  She looked around and realized that was exactly it.

  She was alone.

  There were no nurses moving from room to room or gabbing with each other at the nurses station that stood nearby. The few doctors on rotation at this time of night were nowhere to be seen.

  The hospital was a busy place. Contained chaos, hustle just barely under control. Especially recently, when so many sick and injured had been admitted it seemed like the whole city needed assistance. The doctors and nurses were all abuzz with it: a record, they all said. Serafina agreed.

  So where were those gossiping, bitching, chatting, working, infuriating, wonderful members of the staff?

  They could all be in patientsʹ rooms at once, she supposed. This was the ICU. It was within the realm of possibility that several patients had required assistance at the same time, eating up everyoneʹs attention.

  But no. Someone would have stayed. Someone would be here at the–

  Serafina had been moving slowly. Now she froze.

  The nurses station was a high desk that ran a complete circle around the inside area
of the ICU. There was a gate-like entrance at the back, but other than that it was a featureless expanse of white, broken only by file holders, pens, and a few other typical features of hospitals everywhere.

  And this time, something more.

  This time: a red handprint.

  Blood.

  Serafina felt something cold writhe through her stomach. A snake, frozen but somehow still alive and hungry that had long slumbered but was now awake and ready to feed on her courage and the sense of self she had nurtured over the last decade and more.

  Blood.

  She was no stranger to blood, of course. You couldnʹt be a nurse–especially not one assigned to the ICU–and not get used to the sight of blood.

  But this wasnʹt blood on a patient. Not blood on a bed or even spurting from gunshot wounds as with the John Doe in room 753. No, this was blood that spoke of violence now and here. Violence not brought as a shadow of the past, but as a direct presence.

  The fingers of the handprint reached forward. Fingers toward her, or at least toward the walkway that led to the patientsʹ rooms beyond. Palm dropping off the back of the desktop. As though….

  As though whoever bled had tried to pull herself up.

  Serafina realized she had thought of the victim as a ʺherʺ–had automatically concluded that the injured person was one of her friends.

  No. Not that.

  But the handprint was small.

  Hanging off the back of the desk.

  There were other signs of violence as well, now that she was paying attention: a vertical file holder laying on its side, a cup of pencils spilled, a stapler upside down. Not much, though.

  Whatever happened had been violent. Fast.

  Serafina had to look. Didnʹt want to. Had to.

  She leaned over the desk. She was short, and even on her tiptoes she could barely see over the stainless steel top of the desk and into the area beyond, the place that everyone jokingly called ʺthe pit.ʺ

  Still, see she could see enough. Enough and too much.

  She saw Nancy first. Laying on her back with a neat hole between her eyes and a tiny dribble of blood that had run over the crest of her eyebrow and pooled in her right eye socket so it looked like she now wore a strange ruby monocle. So rich, so gauche.

  Nancy, that doesnʹt go with your outfit at all!

  Her thoughts spun. She turned away from her friend. But couldnʹt turn away from all of them.

  Beside Nancy, half over her legs, lay Cristina. Facedown, but Serafina recognized the young woman from the Dominican Republic. Mostly from her clothing, since the back of her head was a tangled mass of blood and hair and bone and gray stuff.

  Her brains. She was so smart, but now her brains are gone.

  Doctor Gregson was there. The side of his face was missing. He had never been handsome, even though he smiled and the smile made him strangely beautiful. Now he was ugly in every way, because the side of his head was gone.

  Doctor Marcus. She had been pregnant.

  That was when Serafina turned away. She felt gorge rising up, felt herself on the verge of vomiting.

  Choked it down.

  She had seen violence like this before. Had seen–

  (men killing men hunting men willing to murder and men who did murder)

  –death like this and knew that whoever did this would kill her as well, if he–or she or they–was still around.

  She grabbed the closest phone. It was behind the top of the desk, a cordless model with a range that would let her run to the elevators while she dialed 911 and then security.

  She took two steps as she hit the ʺonʺ button.

  It was dead.

  She looked at the phone. The battery bar lit up, but the phone had no signal.

  She resisted the urge to look at the phoneʹs base. Knew what she would find: a cut cord.

  Whoever had done this had been violent. Fast.

  And careful.

  Serafina didnʹt have a cell phone with her. There was nowhere to hold one effectively in her scrub pants. Even if there had been, the use of cells by nurses was viewed as unprofessional or rude, and ICU nurses in particular could not use them, since they might distract at critical moments.

  She was cut off. Alone.

  She felt her gorge rise again. And with it, her panic.

  She turned around. The closest stairs were not by the elevators, but a few feet past the nurses station. She had no idea where the killer might be, but and even less confidence in her ability to deal with him.

  She just wanted to get away.

  She turned toward the stairs.

  And saw the body on the floor.

  It was Hershel. And suddenly Serafina knew she would never be able to think of him as The Squirt again. You could not malign the dead like that.

  Even at this distance, and with the hall lights at half-power, even with the body stretched out so the feet were the only thing really visible to her, there could be no doubt. Hershel always wore those FiveFinger shoes favored by some runners, the ones that separated each toe into its own separate mini-sheath at the end of the shoe. He told everyone how comfortable they were, how great they were for running (even though Serafina doubted he had ever run in his life). Mostly he told everyone how expensive they were.

  Serafina thought they looked ridiculous. Like he was in training to be some weird yuppie ninja.

  They also made him easy to spot, splayed out in a pool of blood fifty feet away.

  There was no doubt where he had been headed when hit, either: the John Doe. The entry of a strange man, unknown and shot three times, had raised the specter of media attention. Hershel jumped on that kind of thing. Maybe that was what the FiveFinger shoes were for.

  Serafina realized she was running now.

  But not toward the stairs. She had already passed them.

  She was running toward Hershel.

  No, not toward Hershel.

  Toward John Doeʹs room.

  A stranger showed up at the hospital. A man who had been visited by incredible violence. A man who should have died, by all accounts.

  And violence had then come to call upon the hospital. They were connected. They had to be.

  So why was she running toward his room?

  The answer came with the question. Came almost before the question.

  To see her friends dead had been horrible. Terrifying. But in a way they had been soldiers. They had been on the front lines of a battle against disease and death. And it was a battle that every nurse and doctor–every good one, at least–knew in their heart that they must lose. Serafinaʹs friends had not just died, they had been killed in action, protecting those they had sworn to save though they knew such an oath could never be kept.

  Soldiers died.

  But the people in the rooms…they were innocent bystanders. Worse, they were people who came here for sanctuary.

  Whoever had done this, whoever had killed the hospital staff, could have only one goal.

  And Serafina, as the only soldier left, could not let him accomplish it.

  This wasnʹt a conscious decision. If it had been, if sheʹd let herself think on any rational level, she probably would have turned and run. She knew instinctively where the assassin was. She knew what he was after. She knew she could likely escape if she just ran away from that place.

  Her thoughts would require her to run away.

  So she pushed thought away. She moved on instinct.

  Because sometimes thought, rationality, were the enemy of what was right. Sometimes fools rush in where only angels tread.

  She leaped over Hershelʹs body. She crossed herself, because no one would mind anymore. And because she would need whatever divine power she could glean from the action.

  Words from her childhood came to her. Whispered by her mother when she was sick, when she was afraid.

  She needed them now. They came to her in the language of her parents. Her father, dead before she could remember. Her mother, whose death she remem
bered all too well.

  Pai Nosso, que estás no céu….

  The Lordʹs Prayer was so beautiful in Portuguese.

  She looked down at Hershel. He always wore a white lab coat. So proud of that. He was a doctor, and he never let anyone forget it. The lab coat was no longer white.

  Santificado seja o Teu Nome….

  Then over him. She landed in a puddle of blood. Almost slipped and wished madly that she had some FiveFinger shoes–good traction!

  Venha o Teu Reino….

  She was past him. Room 752 was at her right. Room 753 coming up on her left. John Doeʹs room.

  Seja feita a Tua Vontade….

  That was where the prayer stopped in her mind. Thy Will be done.

  The ultimate in faith. Turning it over to God.

  But of course, Serafina also believed that meant you did your part as well. You worked, and worked, and then left what was left to Heaven.

  She hoped God planned on her living.

  Room 753.

  The door was open.

  She ran into the room.

  There was a man inside. Of course there was. John Doe was in there. He would be for a good long time, based on his wounds.

  Only….

  Only John was sitting up.

  Impossible. He canʹt be.

  But he was. He should have been out cold, still deep in a quasi-coma and then incapable of movement for days if not weeks.

  But he was sitting up.

  And there was another man, too. Dressed in a brown jacket and jeans and a ball cap and standing near the door, so near that Serafina almost bumped into him when she entered and he noticed her immediately of course because you notice when people run into a room while youʹre trying to kill someone and he definitely was.

  The man with the jacket swung around and he was holding a gun that looked like the one James Bond used.

  ʺHow many goddam people do I have to kill today?ʺ snarled the man.