by G. Benson
Taren narrowed her eyes. “Why are we waiting? We can move Xin. We needed to leave, like, ten minutes ago.”
“It’s in the morgue.”
Taren closed her eyes.
Of course it was.
“The morgue.” Joy stared at Scott as if she wished he were joking. “The morgue that is two floors below us? The morgue that has elevator and stair access on the other side of A&E?”
Scott nodded.
Xin struggled to sit up, Natalie jumping to support her from behind, while Raj tried to gingerly slide an arm around her shoulders to help her.
“Off we go, then,” Xin breathed out, wavering in places and leaning heavily on both Natalie and Raj, eyes mostly closed.
“She’s right,” Natalie said. “Off we go.”
Joy turned to stare at her instead. “Are you serious?”
“You want to get blown up? Do you know how much oxygen is in a hospital?”
“A lot.” Raj piped up.
Joy shook her head. “I—we can’t just, what, run through A&E with our arms waving and get down to the morgue and escape through the tunnel.”
Taren felt a wave of sympathy for Joy. A memory of Joy telling her she ‘liked to be on top of things’ ran through her mind. It had been an endearing statement, then. Taren had smirked and raised an eyebrow over her wine after they’d left the bathrooms.
Taren slipped her wrist away from Joy’s vice-like grip and looked at her. “We’ll run smoothly, like cool kids.”
Xin was mostly out of it, face buried in Natalie’s neck.
Raj smiled, a weak thing. “Yeah, we’ll be ninjas.”
“But we really have to move,” Scott said. “Now.”
Scott
About an hour to get out of here
Scott didn’t like being the bearer of this news. He wanted to get out of here. Far away from where explosives were being stacked all around.
“So, the window in the room I was hiding in is tiny, but it was cracked open.” He regarded them all. Xin was struggling to swing her legs around to hang off the side, biting her lip at the pain. He wanted to help, but Raj stepped in, and Xin took his arm gratefully. Her eyes were glassy, gaze unfocused. Probably better for her, really, easier to be detached from everything happening. Natalie stepped around too, both Raj and her taking Xin’s weight as she leaned into them. “I heard one of them through the window. She was saying 2100 was strike time. It sounded like there would be a plane attack involved.”
Everyone ignored that last part, though, their eyes desperately seeking their watches. Scott stayed where he was at the end of that long metal table that was smeared with blood. The metal table they’d used to force the doors open downstairs had been the same.
He didn’t want to remember that, so instead he watched Xin, who was taking deep breaths.
The first time he’d touched her, and it had been to hold her still while they cut off her arm. His heart ached for her. So many times, chatting and getting to know her, and they’d never touched. Or anything. They were all smiles and side glances and jokes that weren’t that funny but that the other laughed too loudly at.
They were the beginning of something.
And now look at them.
But she was alive. Which was more than he could say for most people that had started their day in this block of the hospital.
If he closed his eyes, he heard the shooting.
Those hours alone in the cupboard had been hell.
But he had a group now. And they were all still alive.
And poor Xin had lost her arm. Which was still on the floor.
He couldn’t look at it.
Also, they were all about to get blown up. They needed to move.
“Scott?” Raj asked. “Why did you come up here if the way out was downstairs?”
Everyone eyed him. He shifted uncomfortably. “I wanted to see if I could find anyone.”
“But the place could have been crawling with those things,” Natalie said.
He shrugged, wishing they’d all put their attention elsewhere. “It felt wrong, leaving without checking.”
If part of him had been hoping Xin would be somewhere, he wasn’t admitting that out loud. It had been a massive wild guess. Some part of him couldn’t leave without at least trying.
“Well—” Raj gave him a smile. “Thanks.”
Xin, finally, looked up, hand gripping the edge of the table she was sitting on, knuckles white, she was holding on to it so hard. Her clothes were a mess. She was a mess. Yet still she was beautiful, that cutting gaze of her eyes on him. She gave him a half-hearted grin, before her eyes closed and she leaned even more heavily into Natalie.
She had no idea it was for her he’d managed to gather his courage and climb the stairs up to these wards. Probably, she would never know. Of course he was glad the others were here too. Of course he was so thankful more people had survived.
But it was for her that he’d done it. And here she was. Alive, still.
Taren walked up next to Xin, who seemed to be asleep, and held her hand to her forehead. “She’s not burning up yet. All the others had been way overheated.” Taren swallowed, and Xin opened her eyes.
“Your eyes are like honey,” she murmured.
Taren gave a startled chuckle. “You’re high.”
“Yup.” She closed her eyes again. “Scott’s eyes are like leaves, all green.”
Heat burst up Scott’s neck as everyone looked from Xin to him, some with smirks.
Taren gently cupped Xin’s shoulder, chuckling. “Maybe we got it. She’s not got any symptoms.”
“Let’s get out of here, while we can,” Raj said. “How are we moving Xin?”
“Hm?” She lifted her head again. “I can walk. See?”
Her legs twitched about, one swinging off the edge, and she giggled.
Raj raised his eyebrows at the others.
“Oh! I know,” Natalie exclaimed. “I’ll be right back.”
She slipped out of the room, down the corridor.
They started moving, gathering the bags of medications, food, and supplies.
“Wait, if we’re leaving, do we need the bags?” Raj asked.
“It’ll slow us down,” Scott added.
Everyone paused, considering.
He’d gone through A&E. He hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t dawdled. Plus, he’d been alone, easy to move, fast. Terror had been pumping through his veins, which had helped with the whole moving fast thing. Even then, some of the zombies had rushed him from the other side where they’d been eating.
“Well,” said the kid that was with them. “Ro, by the way, they/them pronouns.” Scott’s heart leapt at hearing someone introduce themselves with their pronouns, something warm sitting in his gut. His lips quirked up, and he hoped Ro saw that it was solidarity, one recognising another. “We brought some food and drinks for you all, you could eat some of it now, that would decrease the weight a bit.”
Scott nodded, making eye contact with Ro. “I’m Scott—he/him.”
Raj made a confused sound and Taren leaned in, whispering something. His eyes lit up with understanding.
“That’ll help. I’d love something to eat. But I think we need to eat and move. We really don’t have much time and I don’t want to be anywhere near the hospital full of O2 when it goes boom.”
Worried faces around the room agreed with him.
“I think we should take what we have, regardless,” Doctor Ayton said.
“Doctor Ayton—”
“Joy.”
“Joy,” Scott said. “It’s heavy.”
There was a sound in the corridor, and they all froze. Natalie appeared in the doorway, pushing a wheelchair. “Taxi for Xin.”
Raj, Taren, and Natalie all helped Xin get into the wheelchair, who was not very with it, and Scott turned back to Joy. “We don’t want to be weighed down.”
“But we need supplies, we
don’t know what we’re leaving to. What if we get stuck down in the morgue?”
He didn’t really want to point out to her that food and bandages wouldn’t do them much good if they all exploded.
“Or when we leave,” Joy continued. “Maybe we’ll have to hide once we’re out? They don’t want anyone leaving, that’s clear. We might need all this stuff.”
She had a point. What happened when they got out? They’d exit at the old generator block, but maybe the barrier went that far? Or they’d be caught, clearly all having escaped the hospital in their scrubs with a patient and someone missing a limb.
Joy must have seen him considering it, because she shrugged. “We need supplies for Xin and Ro, definitely. I need insulin. What do you think?”
“You’re right.” He crossed his arms, brow furrowed in thought. “We’ll take what we can, as long as we can move easily. If it’s not all over out there, we’ll have some stuff on us.”
It had to be over, though. They couldn’t do something as drastic as blow up an entire hospital to contain a threat that had already spread. Especially a hospital they knew still held alive people.
An agreement made, they all started picking things up, slinging bags onto shoulders, grabbing the ends of IV poles that Natalie and Raj had collected that would make excellent weapons.
“Good thinking with these,” Joy said to Natalie, swinging an IV pole and doing an impressive twirl with it. “They have reach. Perfect.”
By the end of it, they hung some bags off the handles on Xin’s wheelchair, especially the liquids, being so heavy.
When Scott had raised his eyebrows at Ro at the sheer quantity of bottles the three of them had brought back, they’d grimaced. “We thought we’d be holing up in the stairwell for days, not fleeing from a government trying to blow us to hell.”
Scott liked Ro.
Raj, Natalie, and Scott were all shoving the remnants of some badly heated burgers into their mouths as they, as a group, started to leave the room behind, dressing trolley still holding blood-covered sutures, scalpels, and clamps. Blood pooling on the table.
Taren started to pack up some of it and Joy laid a soft hand on her arm.
“What’s the point?” she whispered.
Taren stopped, as if realising what she was doing and the sheer pointlessness of it. “Habits, I guess.”
The smile Joy gave her was soft. Not one he’d imagined on the surgeon who always walked around the hospital so focused.
Scott checked his watch. “We have just over fifty minutes to be far away from here.”
Next to Xin in the chair, who was going from blinking heavily at all of them to dozing in the seat, Scott squatted down. “Ready to go?”
Xin’s gaze met his, and she gave a sloppy smile. It was, to be honest, adorable. “You’ll push me?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I mind the leastest. The less.” She scrunched her face up. “The not at all?”
“I’ll get on that, then.”
“Could have got on me by now,” she muttered.
He froze as he’d started to stand up, half-crouched next to her. “What?” His damn face was hot again.
“What?” she asked, eyes closing.
Cheeks blazing, he went behind her and took a hold of the push handles. No one else had seemed to hear that, thankfully. Joy and Taren were too caught up in each other still, and the others were adjusting bags and weapons.
“Everyone clear on the plan?” Natalie asked.
“Wait—” Ro said. “Someone take the axe. It’s a great weapon.”
Scott turned in time to see Joy’s face blanch. There was no way she’d be stepping forward to take it. “It really is a great weapon,” he said.
Everyone hesitated, looking down at the metal, gleaming with still-fresh blood over it.
“Natalie,” Xin murmured. “It’d suit you.”
“Not sure what that means,” Natalie said. She perked up. “But I’ll happily take it.” She grabbed it, passing off her IV pole for Xin to hold weakly on her lap. Natalie picked up the axe, swinging it to get the weight of it. “Good call.” She smiled at Xin, whose eyes were closed again.
“Ready?” Joy asked, turning away from Natalie with the axe, seemingly unable to even look at it now.
She was a weird kind of surgeon.
Everyone started to walk out, steps even and steady.
“Oh no, wait!” Xin called, voice stronger than it had yet to be, and Scott froze, Joy running into him from behind, Taren hitting her with an ‘ooph’. “I forgot something.”
They all looked down at her and Xin quirked a weak grin up at them. “I think I left my arm behind.”
“Seriously?” Joy spat. Taren snorted a laugh and Joy span around, eyes narrowed. “That’s not funny.”
Raj hacked a chuckle, choking it back when Joy turned around to glare at him.
“I mean, it kind of was,” Raj said.
Natalie full on snorted, setting Raj off laughing. Taren threw a hand over her mouth. Scott bit his cheek to stop himself from cackling. Ro giggled.
Joy’s lips curved up. “We’re fucked.”
Joy
2013
Joy had removed a co-worker’s arm. A co-worker whom she was rather fond of, thank you very much. Not only had she removed a co-worker’s arm, but said co-worker had, for the most part, been awake. Now said co-worker was being pushed behind them by Raj, who had taken over for Scott so he could lead the way through A&E, which was zombie infested.
Then to the bloody morgue of all places.
All to escape bombs.
That were going to blow up her place of employment.
With them in it.
Joy gave a hysterical giggle, and Taren side-eyed her as they walked as quietly as they could down the corridor. Scott, Natalie, and Ro were at the A&E entrance ahead of them. Natalie had voiced her frustration at her inability to carry much, the axe in her good hand, which she swung every now and again. On the other hand, Joy couldn’t look at it without feeling slightly sick. Raj and Xin were making their way behind them, the door to the stairwell swishing shut as Raj let it go gently.
It had taken four of them to carry Xin down the stairs in the wheelchair, and she’d been half out of it the entire time. Taren had checked her temperature again with a thermometer from the ward.
So far so good.
That thought nearly made her laugh again. Good. Ha.
“You okay there?”
Joy deflated, that feeling of mirth that had bubbled up in her chest so quickly fading as fast as it had appeared. “No.” She glanced at Taren. “You?”
“No.”
Taren reached across and squeezed her hand, and Joy, figuring that if there were ever a moment for public displays of affection, this was it, let her. A quick brush of her thumb over Joy’s knuckles, and they dropped their hands back to their sides, stepping up behind the three in front.
Xin and Raj stopped behind them. Xin’s brow was covered in beads of sweat, and she was breathing shallowly, a little more alert now than she had been since she’d woken up, but not by much.
“Blood loss is a bitch,” she muttered.
Taren turned with a bottle of water, then must have realised Xin wasn’t going to have the easiest time taking it. She opened it and held it out to Xin, who took weak, small sips.
“Thanks,” she murmured, handing the bottle back.
The concern on Taren’s face made Joy’s heart thump in her chest. Hard.
This was all very inconvenient. Talk about time and place. She had been steadfastly happy in her blocking off any relationship with Taren because of her own vulnerability issues, and then they were stuck together for a few hours in a life and death situation and Joy just…couldn’t stop trying to touch her? She’d reached out and clutched her scrubs like a child.
Very inconvenient.
Hand on the door, Scott turned his head. “R
eady?”
Taren drew in a shaky breath next to her.
Behind Joy, she heard Xin do the same.
The two of them had been stuck in A&E for hours. How would going back even feel? The moment that Xin and Taren had burst from these doors and blown Joy’s day to pieces, covered in blood, felt like years ago.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Taren hold her hand out, and Xin, right behind her in the wheelchair, grabbed it.
They were all going to come out of this co-dependent on each other.
But they would be coming out of this, and that was the most important thing to focus on.
Through A&E, to the back door, down the stairwell, to the morgue, through the morgue, to the boiler room, through some underground tunnels like some kind of spy film, and away.
They would be away.
From all of this.
It would be completely contained to the hospital, and this nightmare would be over, and they could get back to life and pretend this had never happened. Or go to therapy. But it would be over.
Maybe they’d have to hide for a while since they weren’t supposed to leave, then after a few days all would be well.
Xin would be a bit worse for wear, and Joy would probably never sleep again, but they’d have made it out. Joy would get over herself, or already was, and she would take Taren out again. Or they could stay at Joy’s, and she would cook.
All of this would be behind them.
She took a deep breath.
She felt Raj, behind her with Xin, put a hand on her shoulder and squeeze. He was going to be an incredible surgeon. Taren grabbed her hand again. Joy squeezed it too hard. All of them connected through each other.
“Three.” Scott put a hand to the door, flat palmed above where it said ‘Push’. Natalie cracked her neck, bringing up the axe like a baseball bat, ready to lash out.
“Two.”
Ro straightened their shoulders. They were a kid, really. They adjusted the bag filled with heavy drinks in their hands, ready to swing. Shouldn’t they be behind the rest of them all? Not ready to lead the charge. Joy went to say something, grip tightening around the IV pole she carried in her left hand. But then there wasn’t time anymore.
