14th Day of February, 2068.
Jegatha woke up with a start. It was way past sunset and the temperature outside was hovering around -15 dec C. There was heavy wind and snow that night. She had fallen asleep within minutes of putting her head on her folded arms in one corner of the nursing station No. 2. She was on the 11th Floor of the Marsha General Hospital and Research Centre that was located at the south west corner of Markham Road and Sheppard Avenue. She was allowed two breaks of 20 minutes each or one break of 35 minutes during her shift. She had chosen the 35 minutes break today. There was no one else in nursing station. It was usually the constantly ringing phone in the nursing station that woke her up, but today she blinked at the phone and it seemed silent.
Hmmm, that is strange, I thought I heard something.
She lifted her heard higher to see if there was any sound out of the ordinary that might have woken her up. She couldn't hear anything. She decided to try falling asleep again. Another minute went by without any auditory incident and then she heard it again. The sound was surely coming from far. The 11th floor primarily housed wards with patients under postoperative care, and because of that most of the patients were either heavily sedated or under high dosages of pain medication which caused drowsiness. So it was unusual for anyone to be screaming with pain on the 11th floor.
She got up from the chair and stretched her 5 foot 7 inch medium build frame. She then smoothed out her light blue coloured scrubs that was standard issue for all nurses in the hospital, except the nurses in the maternity wards, they wore pink scrubs. Jegatha then walked out of the nursing station to locate the source of the sound, her thin soled white Keds occasionally made squeaks on the polished marble floors of the hospital. She could not hear anything out of the ordinary once she was out of the nursing station. There were sounds of various machines that were running in the many wards on the floors. Respirators, mechanical ventilators, heart rate monitors and a myriad other machines that were used on the floor all made their own sounds, but Jegatha's ears had got accustomed to them and automatically filtered out any sound that belonged to any of these machines.
She checked in on all the patients on north half of the floor which was the responsibility of the nursing station No. 2 and then she made her way over to the nursing station No. 1 that was responsible for the south half of the 11th floor. She saw Jenean Hampton at the computer writing up a report. Jenean was a few years senior to Jegatha who was 27 years old and in her third year as a nurse at the hospital. She was writing on a large tablet computer using white coloured stylus and Jegatha could see that as Jenean was writing on the tablet, the large monitor in front of Jenean was converting her hand writing to typed text in appropriate boxes on a form.
Jenean Hampton had heard the squeaks that Jegatha's shoes had made and before she could speak, said, "Jegatha girl, don't ask me anything right now, I need to finish this report within the next 20 minutes or else the Sup is going be on my case".
"I am not here to ask you a question", said Jegatha trying to sound innocent.
"Uh huh".
"Sorry, I lied, I am here to ask you a question", blurted out Jegatha, "did you hear anyone screaming?"
"I told you not to ask me any questions", said Jenean still not turning away from her report, "especially crazy ones like this."
"Oh", said Jegatha with a question mark on her face, "I must be hearing things. Thanks Jenean, good luck with the report."
Jenean waved her good bye with the hand holding the stylus and still not taking her eyes off her report.
Jegatha went back to her nursing station and she could hear that the screams were getting louder. She wondered where the sound was coming from, then she remembered that sometimes she could hear sounds from the floor above her through the centralized AC ducts.
Jegatha dialled the number of the nursing station on the 12th floor, but got no response. She had sometime left on her break so she decided to go up and investigate. She climbed up the stairs to the floor above and looked on either side on the stairs straining to hear any sounds. For a few seconds there was no sound, not even that of the many machines that she could hear on her floor because this floor did not house any patients that week. The management had asked that all patients be moved to other floors to make way for a special batch of patients that were expected to be brought in from the joint military exercises that Canada was participating in along with a few other European nations.
Jegatha stood at the top of the stairs and having heard nothing she turned around to go back to her floor, then she heard a loud wail from the south side of the floor. She hurried towards the sound and followed the sound to Ward No. 36. She tried the door and went into the room to find a bed on the very end of the room curtained off. She peeped into find a man who looked to be in his fifties, with long hair struggling on the bed. He was shirt less and wore shorts issued by the hospital. His hands and legs were cuffed to the bed and there was no way he could get up. He had a brownish read shimmering strip of what looked like paint on his stomach that went diagonally from top left to bottom right right across his stomach. There was perspiration all over his body.
Jegatha ran to his bed side and touched his forehead found it burning hot. she checked if there were any charts at his bedside to give her more information about his condition. She also wanted to know who was the doctor treating this person so she could call the doctor over. There was a chart near the bed, but what was written on it did not help Jegatha in anyway.
Test Subject: 398. Test Procedure: A12 Start Time: 02/14/2068 1600 End Time: 02/14/2068 1800
She quickly ran to the nearest nursing station to call Jenean to come up. Jenean did not respond as she had left the floor a minute ago to down to the lab on the 4th floor to collect a blood report.
Jegatha ran back to the ward No. 36 and in an attempt to find out what she could from the person she said, "Hey mister, are you in pain, where is the pain? Who cuffed you to the bed? Do you know the name of your doctor?"
"Help.... pain..... dunno doctor..... help.... pain....", as soon as he could see Jegatha's face clearly his eyes went wide and he said, "is that you Maani?"
"I am not Maani, my name is Jegatha, OK? Hold on, I have to call in more help", said Jegatha turning to head towards the door.
"Maani, Maani.... don't leave me, don't leave me, please don't leave me, ohhh the pain...."
"I have to get help, I can't help you alone, please hold on, I will be back", she said to the man started running towards the door. I wonder why he was calling me Maani, may be I look like someone he knows. Anyway no time for that now, got find a doctor.
As soon as Jegatha stepped out the door she saw some movement to her left and saw a main in white overalls. He was walking towards her pushing a cart with various supplies on it. White overalls usually meant staff from the High-Risk Bio-Cleanup unit. He had big head phones covering his ears and his head was bobbing to some music that Jegatha couldn't hear.
"Hey, you mister, come here I need your help", yelled Jegatha trying to get the man's attention, at that moment he was not looking ahead and he couldn't hear Jegatha and so continued at his leisurely pace in her direction. Jegatha started waving frantically. Eventually he saw her and mouthed, "Who? Me?", and moved the earphone away from his right ear.
"Yes, you. I need your help. Come faster, run man!"
The man came running towards her and when he reached her she saw that he had KIRUBAKARAN embroidered on the left side of his overalls.
"Mr. Kirubakaran, what is your first name?", she asked him firmly reading his name tag.
"Kajun", said the man panting.
"Kajun, I need your help, in this room on the last bed on the right there is a man, he is in pain, and he is in a panic", said Jegatha, while tugging on his arm so he could see where she was pointing to, "I am going down to get more help, I need you to be with him while I am gone."
"Hey, I am not a doctor or a nurse you know," said Kajun unsure if he really wanted to get involved.
"Just stay with him ok?"
"But...." by the time Kajun turned back towards Jegatha she was gone, all he heard were her footsteps and occasional squeaks from her shoes fading away. Reluctantly he went towards the man whose screams kept getting louder.
Jegatha ran down to her floor and dialled the emergency room number. It took a minute before the phone was answered, "I have a Code Blue in Ward No. 36, 12th Floor, I need an emergency team here stat, I repeat Code Blue, Ward No. 36, 12th floor, need a team here stat".
She hung up as soon as she heard an acknowledgement from the other side. She then grabbed an emergency dressing kit and ran towards the stairs. By the time Jegatha read the bed in Ward No. 36 on the 12th Floor, she could see that Kajun was trying to awaken the man and there was blood oozing from the edges of the dark paint on the man's stomach.
"He became unconscious a minute ago, I think the pain was too much. I checked, he still has a pulse", said Kajun rapidly to Jegatha as soon as he saw her.
She quickly tore open the packet containing the sterile gauze and cotton and started dabbing his blood in an attempt to clean and find the source of the blood. When she wiped away the blood along the edges of the paint, some of the paint too came with the cotton. It now seemed that the substance on him was not paint, but some kind of a paste or ointment that was applied on the man. The region under the paste must have been very tender and main screamed louder when the cotton touched the shimmering paste. The cotton had cleared a small portion of the paste.
Jegatha could not see a small portion of the area that was previously covered by the paste. The area under did not have any skin on it. It was raw and bloody. It looked like flesh without the skin on it. Jegatha looked at Kajun and he could see a surprise on her face.
"Kajun, come here and look, does that look like there is no skin on there to you?"
Kajun came over and leaned to get a better look. He took a tiny torch light from his pocket and turned it on. And the device produced a bright intense light did not seem like it could possibly come from such a small device. The light helped them both to get a better look.
"Yes, that does look like there is not skin under this substance. What is the by the way? I have never seen anything like it", said Kajun.
"You know, to be honest, I have never seen something like this in my life either", said Jegatha.
Both of them leaned in a bit further to look at the open wound on the mans stomach as well as the paste like substance. A moment later a team of people burst into the room. They were not wearing the regular hospital staff uniforms that the nurses usually wore. All of then were wearing black clothing that looked more like those worn by security or military. There was a doctor with them who was running ahead of the team.
He came to bed side quickly and asked Jegatha and Kajun to stand aside. Jegatha had never seen him in the hospital earlier, but that was not entirely surprising because there were so many departments in the hospital that Jegatha couldn't possibly know all the doctors.
The team had a stretcher with them, and they also seemed to have the keys to unlock the cuffs that were used on the old man. Within 30 seconds the man was un-cuffed, moved to the stretcher and wheeled out by the men in the black clothing. The doctor then thanked them for bringing this to his notice and asked them to return to their regular work. The doctor walked out of Ward No. 36 briskly and turned right outside the door.
Jegatha and Kajun were both left speechless and their brains rattled with all the questions that wanted to ask but couldn't. Still unsure of what had just happened, Jegatha then thanked Kajun for coming to her help and asked him what he doing on this floor, since the whole floor seems to be empty except for Ward No. 36.
"I was asked to come here for a cleanup. And you are right, which whole floor seems deserted. Let me check which room I was supposed to clean", said Kajun pulling up is mobile device. His finger swiped left and right on the screen and his jaw fell open when he saw that the room that he was asked to come and clean was Ward No. 36.