Somewhere In The Middle

by Lucas Coon

  "Hi everyone, I'm Kayla and I'll be taking care of you tonight." She placed napkins and silverware on the table in front of the guests.

  "That's mommy's name!" Lilly looked at the waitress in protest.

  "Oh really?" She looked at the lady in the booth. "I'm going to guess that you're mommy." She smiled and Kayla smiled back.

  "I'm Lilly-Anne. My birthday is next week and I'm going to go live with the polar bears." This statement was drastically different than wanting to be a zoo worker that groomed the polar bears.

  "Well that sounds like fun!" She bent down to get down to Lilly's level. "Can I call you Lilly, or is it just Lilly-Anne? That's a really pretty name!" Lilly stared at the woman for a moment. She had never, in her four years alive, considered that she didn't have to be called Lilly-Anne and that Lilly was an option.

  "Lilly-Anne, are you going to answer the nice lady?" Darren tried to push her to talk.

  "Um, Lilly." She shyly responded to the question.

  "Awesome! Alright! What can I get you folks to drink?" She stood back up and smiled brightly.

  "We'll both have iced tea and..." He looked at the little girl, still enamored with the waitress. "What do you want to drink Lilly-Anne?"

  "Lilly!" She responded sharply at Darren's question.

  "Excuse me Lilly-Anne?" He was taken aback by her snappiness.

  "Call me Lilly!" She smiled at the waitress as she said this.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that!" She covered her mouth and looked up at the parents.

  "It's fine. She does this sometimes. I'm sure tomorrow morning she won't even remember. Anyways, what do you want to drink, Lilly?" Darren gave in to her request.

  "Lemonade!" She jumped as she responded. The waitress, Kayla, smiled and stated that she would be right back with the glasses of requested beverages. Darren placed his napkin on his lap and moved the silverware to his right side. Kayla kept hers on the table and Lilly picked up her fork and was staring intently at the reflection in the metal.

  "So, how was your day, Lilly?" Darren looked at the little girl sitting next to him.

  "It was fun. Miss Nielson is really funny. She read a book about a purple dog today, it was really cute and I really like it!" She laughed at her own statement. Darren thought it was adorable.

  "You really liked it huh?" He looked at Kayla. "Birthday gift idea!" The waitress came back with their drinks and took their order for dinner. As always they ordered a large pepperoni and onion for themselves, an order of Robin's "famous" cheese-sticks and a kids sized chicken strip meal for Lilly. It was always the same and they both liked it that way. They both assumed that some people would call them boring, but the path they'd chosen in life was comfortable and easy. They'd gotten to the point where any break in the pattern might drive them crazy, but neither expected anything like that to happen.

  "Kyle! You're late! What took you so long on that delivery?!" A larger man was standing in the door way near the register and was shouting at a young man walking in the back door.

  "Uh-oh, someone's in trouble!" Darren snickered to Kayla and took a bite of his pizza. She rolled her eyes at him and continued eating.

  "I know. It was Mr. Swartz, he doesn't stop talking." Kyle threw the delivery bag down and started wiping down the back counter.

  "Who?" The larger man inquired into what he had said.

  "My history teacher. He lives at the farthest house that we deliver to and he just keeps talking and talking." Kyle didn't look away from what he was doing.

  "Man, I hate people like that." Darren looked up at Kayla. She looked at him confused. "People that don't shut up. Apparently that kid delivered to his history teacher and the jerk wouldn't stop talking." He went back to eating the crust of the pie.

  "Will you stop listening to the employee conversations please? That's so rude!" Kayla scolded him

  "Yes ma'am." He ducked his head down in shame. They continued their night as they had planned it. They finished their dinner and Lilly ate only half of hers before she decided she was done. They boxed up her remainders and packed it in. The couple locked Lilly into her seat and got in the car. Within a moment, Lilly had fallen asleep.

  "Holy cow! She actually fell asleep." Darren looked back in the rear view. "She never sleeps in the car."

  "Right? We had to be blessed with the one child that doesn’t fall asleep on car rides." Kayla grinned at Darren. She flicked on the switch for the wiper blades as the mist started to pile onto the windshield. "Looks like we're going to get some rain tonight." They both sat silent for a few moments. The trip home wasn't a long one, but it was long enough to make anyone drowsy.

  "This is nice, isn't it?" Darren leaned is head back against the head rest.

  "What, getting pizza or the rain?" Kayla wasn't sure what he was getting at.

  "Just going out in general. Now that I got this promotion, we should actually have the money to do these things more often." He nodded over to her. “Being comfortable like this is what I wanted you know? With everything we've been through, it's just nice to not worry.”

  "I know and I'm glad you got the job. I'm sure Lilly's going to miss spending all that time with you now that you can't work from home. It's probably best that we got her in preschool, she needs it. She needs to socialize with other kids more." Kayla stared off at the road. The conversation had come to a halt and they finished their night calmly and lazily. To them it was perfect. Others might have said they were boring, but they had grown to love their routine. They had become comfortable in their lives and that's all they really wanted.

  -----

  "Lilly, I want you to meet these people. This is Madison and the little girl's name is Brynn." Darren sat her down for her to introduce herself.

  "Hi." She didn't say anything other than her informal greeting. Darren looked at her. It was incredibly unusual for her to not be outgoing.

  "Lilly, don't do that now. Introduce yourself. I bet Brynn would like to be your friend." Darren patted her on the back to get her to be a little more polite than what she was. She slowly scooted herself over to where Madison and Brynn were standing. She looked at Brynn and opened her arms to give her a hug. Brynn smiled at her and returned the embrace. The girls hugged tightly for a second and then pulled away from each other. She turned towards Darren and looked, waiting for his approval.

  "Is that better, daddy?" She smiled at Darren.

  "Wow, yeah, that's perfect. Thank you." He scratched the back of his head in awe. He was hoping that Lilly could befriend this poor child, but he didn't expect her to jump into it that hard. "OK then.'

  "I have a book about a purple dog that I think you would like!" Lilly shot right into wanting to read her book.

  "OK!" Brynn lit up at this statement, the two girls went back into the room where Kayla was sitting by herself.

  "Leave that door open Lilly!" Darren directed Lilly to not shut the door. Mitchell found this odd. The room they entered was closed off, there was no possibility that an infected could get in there. The only other person in there was Kayla, what was he afraid was going to happen? It was none of his concern; it was Darren's child after all.

  "So, Madison, you said the military was here?" Mitchell looked over at her and sat down in the chair that Darren was enjoying a short time prior. He looked at her with an incredible intensity, all he wanted was answers at this point. She wasn't where he had hoped, which made their adventure feel fruitless. He needed something to make up for that, something to make him feel like the time was worth it.

  "They were here, yes." She looked at the floor. This was never a good sign.

  "Why are they not here now? Why are you still here?" Mitchell knew what she had said earlier, but he wanted thorough details. He noticed that his tone was a bit angered, he hadn't intended for this to happen.

  "They left, obviously without me." She was continuing to avert her gaze. Mitchell wasn't in a position where he was going to accept passive answers. He may not have intended to so
und angry, but he was starting to get there.

  "Madison, listen, we need to know what happened. Start at the beginning and talk to us." Darren stepped in to push her in the direction they needed. Mitchell appreciated this, mostly because he was getting to the point where idle conversation was getting frustrating. Madison took a deep breath and looked at the two men.

  "Fine." She sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. "I was here last Wednesday on my regular shift. We'd had an influx of people coming in with odd symptoms. There was an abnormal number of people coming in saying they felt dizzy, or like their blood pressure was spiking and saying that they were having trouble eating, like food wasn't satisfying, or like eating at all was making them feel like they were going to throw it all up." A section of her hair had fallen in front of her face as she was speaking. She paused to brush it over to the side. "We had actually had a few cases of it coming in on Tuesday. We had a few elderly patients checked in and a couple of children, but for the most part we were getting people on anti-biotics and sending them home. Sure there were a lot of them, but it sounded like a weird flu." She coughed and sat staring at the wall.

  "OK. So it sounds like you guys were getting people that were infected on Tuesday. What happened afterwards?" Darren had a sound of genuine interest in his voice. Mitchell just wanted her to get to the point.

  "On Wednesday, about halfway through the day there was a code that went over the intercom system. They called for a code grey in the children's ward. This was a bit alarming, but it wasn't the first time that I'd heard it happen. I kept going and doing my job over on the west wing. I noticed that less than twenty minutes later there were a number of police cars sitting out front. I thought, wow that's weird, it must have been a really violent kid. The next thing I know, they're calling for a code black with severity three." She looked around and took in another breath. "A code black is a bomb threat and a severity three is visually confirmed. This is right about the time where I started to freak out. They locked everyone in the rooms they were in and told us not to leave unless they said so. It made no sense at the time, the proper procedure for a bomb is to evacuate. I was in with a patient and I was hearing what I thought was gun fire, so I decided to do the stupidest thing possible and walked out into the hall. When I stepped out I saw one of my patients in the hallway. I called out to her and told her that she should be in her room. That's right about where she ran at me and decided that she wanted to kill me." She paused again. "Do you guys have any water?" She looked up at Darren with incredibly sad eyes. Mitchell could tell that it wasn't easy for her to tell this story. She seemed to be emotional about the situation.

  Darren pulled a bottle out of the bag that he had sitting by the desk.

  "It's not cold, sorry." He tossed it over to her. She caught it, unscrewed the cap and took a drink. When she pulled the bottle away from her mouth, it appeared to be only half full. Mitchell assumed that she was probably quite thirsty. He wasn't sure what they were surviving on, but they were definitely doing something right. She looked down at the water then back up at Mitchell.

  "That patient was one of Cynthia's friends. She ran at me and I didn't know what to do. Thankfully, at around the same time that she was running up, there was a man that was coming up the stairs, he tackled me out of the way and pretty much saved my life. I think he was a friend of yours or something; he was pretty friendly with Aria when she was here." She paused to give Mitchell a chance to respond. When he didn't, she continued. "Anyways, he ended up wrestling her into a room and shutting the door. She stared at us through the window and was screaming as loud as she could. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was like this woman had never even had a heart attack, she was running and attempting to attack him. It was just crazy."

  "All of this is incredibly interesting, Madison, but I'm more so looking for when Aria got here. I care, trust me, I'm just...I'm running out of ideas on where my wife is. What happened when she got here?" He impatiently tried to rush the story.

  "Right. So, Aria got here not too long after that. The gentleman and I went back to the room where I was treating my patients, you know, the room I wasn't supposed to leave." She laughed under her breath. It wasn't funny, but it was probably helping her cope. "I called down to the front desk and asked what the hell was going on. She told me that it was a code black and all that stupid protocol based B.S. I told her that it was a load, mainly because we weren't evacuating. She sheepishly responded that the military had entered the building and were telling her to keep her mouth shut. At that time a soldier heard her and snatched the phone away. I told him who I was and that I wanted answers. He told me to sit tight, and they had the situation under control. That was the biggest lie ever." She sighed. "Anyways, he then asked if I was Doctor Madison. He said I had a guest. They escorted her up and then it was me, her, the man, Alex and my patient, all locked in the exam room. I felt bad for Mrs. Sodaro, she barely spoke English and was probably going crazy not knowing what was going on. Anyways, I had to explain to Aria that Cynthia's friend was locked in a room down the hall and that she had gone crazy and that something was going on." She stopped for a moment.

  "And...?" Mitchell pressed for more.

  "I really don't know how much more you want on this Mitchell! She was here. Her mother's friend went crazy. She was in the room until the military came back and told us they were evacuating. I took her phone to call my husband and wasn't able to give it back to her before they forced her out of the hospital at gun point, OK? Is that good enough for you? I messed up because I didn't give it back and now you have no way of getting ahold of her and it's my fault." Her calm demeanor went to an incredibly upset one. Mitchell wasn't sure how to take this, but felt that he needed to ask.

  "And what happened to Cynthia?" His voice was raspy and deep.

  "That's what I was trying to avoid." She started to feel the tears pulling out of her eyes. "They shot her. When they came through for evacuations, they went room to room and checked everyone's mouths. Anyone that they determined was infected got shot. They got to her room and decided that she was infected too. They did this after they had escorted Aria out, so I don't think she knows..."

  "What happened to Alex?" Mitchell prodded for this last bit of information.

  "They left him with me for a while. They were doing a staggered evacuation. Essentially the elderly, the pregnant women and the children all got to leave. I had to stay because I was a nurse and had to care for the patients. Alex had a daughter here so he stuck around for a little while, but he eventually left too."

  "And Brynn?" Darren was curious as to why she was still here. If they were removing children first he didn't get why she ended up staying.

  "That's an even harder story to tell." She shook her head.

  "Hey everyone." Kayla walked out of the room she was in, Lilly and Brynn followed closely behind her. "What's going on?" Mitchell looked over at Darren, expecting him to introduce Kayla to Madison. There was a moment of confusing silence between the group. Darren didn't turn his head from facing forward and Kayla had a confused and seemingly upset glare focused at him.

  "Uh, hey Kayla. This is Madison. She was a doctor here." Mitchell awkwardly took the leap into the introductions.

  "Hi." Madison looked up at Kayla and waved.

  "Hey." She returned the favor. "So, are you the person that Brynn was talking about?"

  "Yeah, I'm the one that's been protecting her over the past couple of days. Her parents are..." She paused. "… well, I'm sure you can put the rest of that sentence together in your head." She was right; they all knew, in a general sense, what happened. There was really only one reason as to why a child would be with someone that wasn't her parents in a situation like this.

  "I'm guessing you guys didn't find Aria, huh?" Kayla put her hand on Mitchell's shoulder. He looked up at her with a deadpan look on his face and shook his head lightly.

  "Did we get any information?"

  "She was here, but she left
. It's assumed they went to the evacuation zone." Mitchell turned his head back to straight.

  "Ah, that would be our luck." She chuckled. "Did we find anything else?"

  "Just a protective nurse and child with no parents." Darren finally spoke up. This was an incredibly harsh thing for him to say and was wholly unexpected. Mitchell glanced at him. 'What is wrong with him?'

  "What happened to them?" Kayla grabbed one of the chairs off to the side and pulled it next to Darren. This statement took Kayla down the same rabbit hole as Darren.

  "Please don't ask me that, I really don't want to talk about it." Madison tried to avoid the subject. It was obvious that she was going to have to tell the story. The people that were standing in front of her were her interrogators and it was clear that they wanted information, even if it wasn't relevant to what they were doing. "Really? You want me to go through that again?" The silence that echoed past this question was a solid response. They wanted more information and Madison was the only one that could give it to them. "Fine. Here's what happened..."

  -----

  "Daddy, I'm scared." Brynn looked up at her father. He was a tall man and clean-shaved. There was no trace of any facial hair, nor any hair growing on the top of his head. This wouldn't normally be an incredible feat, anyone was capable of shaving daily to maintain this look. What made it incredible was the fact that he was able to keep the cleanly cut look while being essentially trapped in a hospital for three days. Madison didn't know how he did it, she assumed that he was one of those men that never really had developed facial hair. She wished her husband was capable of doing this. His face always looked quite grizzly after a day or two and the hair would seem to have no beginning or end. She wondered how he was doing at this point. She hadn't heard from him and she wasn't able to get ahold of him since they spoke during the evacuation. Now that the evacuation wasn't happening, she wanted to hear his voice more than anything. She had hope for the best, but she was suspecting the worst had occurred. If they weren't even able to evacuate the hospital then they had probably failed to evacuate their neighborhood as well. She tried to stop this thought, but she knew that it was going to haunt her. She looked back at the family that had stuck around, remaining as isolated from everything else as she had. They weren't happy, that was clear, but they at least had each other.