Chapter 71 (Patreon)

Chapter 71

The scene was chaotic, and it looked like it would be a mad scramble without any order at all at any waking moment.  The only things really holding people together was the occasional armed guard patrolling the halls and the hope that the medical staff was giving people as they treated hurt or sick loved ones.

“This is absolutely crazy…” Riven mumbled, taking the brunt of the elf’s weight on one leg when he pivoted around a kid who ran past.

Jerald motioned them to follow him further through the hospital hallway, limping heavily to relieve pressure on his wounded side and using the crutch as support.  “Come on, Dr. Brass is a good man and he’ll see you as long as he isn’t busy.”

Normally in a hospital setting Jerald’s bloodied leg and Linda’s cut would draw immediate attention.  As would the two injured elves that Riven and Allie were carrying in.  But here, in this madhouse, it was just a free for all.  It also probably didn’t help that the medical staff kept a wary distance from Riven and Athela, as if they could smell danger on their very being.

They went down a less-crowded hall to the left and then took another turn around a corner.  Wood paneling along the walls with pictures of the hospital’s founders decorated the interior, and the lights that’d once illuminated the hospital had all been replaced with lamps.

“How many lamps do they have?” Riven asked curiously, a little impressed with just how many were present.

Linda laughed, lightly clutching her injured side.  “This hospital was really, really old, and they kept a lot of supplies from the colonial days in the basement believe it or not.”

Riven couldn’t help but think about how ridiculous that sounded, but it’d certainly come in handy.  “Wow.”

The couple led them to a glass door where two old men with gray hair and wearing white coats were talking inside at a desk.  They both looked tired, haggard, and were pouring each other cups of whisky while speaking in low, hushed tones.

Linda knocked on the door, and the man with glasses facing them from behind the desk motioned for them to come in.  The door swung open, and the other old man – who was beginning to bald in the back, gave her a smile of recognition.  “Oh Linda!  Good to see you!  Did you get the medication for Sara?”

Linda smiled widely and pulled out the two bottles of pills.  “Dr. Telsky, I did!  Hello to you too, Dr. Brass!”

The man with glasses chuckled, downed his mug of alcohol with one go, and slowly exhaled.  “I’m glad you found it.  You should start your daughter back on her regular regimen immediately, her leukemia treatment was almost done but she’s still immunocompromised.  Go ahead and see her upstairs, give her the starting dose tonight.  Two pills.  And… you both look terrible.  Jerald, were you shot?”

Dr. Brass, the one with glasses, got up from his desk and came around to look at the leg wound – but startled himself half to death when he saw the state of the two elves slung over shoulders in the hallway.  Completely forgetting about Jerald and eyes going wide at the state of the bite wounds and obvious infection rapidly spreading, his jaw dropped.  “By sweet baby Jesus, these poor girls… what the hell happened to them!?”

He didn’t seem to notice or care about their ears at all, nor did he mention the state of the less-than-human features Athela and Riven had, and quickly gestured for them to follow him.  “Come with me.  Are you two able to carry them down a flight of stairs?  We only have room left in the basement now.”

Riven and Athela both confirmed that they could, waving goodbye to Jerald and Linda as they continued to talk with the other doctor before following him to wherever their daughter was located.

“By god I did not sign up for this kind of shit… the world’s gone mad.” Dr. Brass muttered, shaking his head as they passed by the crowds and through another hallway towards a stairwell behind a door.  Opening the door and ushering them down – Dr. Brass closed it behind.  “It’s just down one level and to the left.  There’ll be a sign that says ‘operating room waiting area,’ we’re going past that and into operating room 5.  Watch your step!  It’s dark in here.”

The light of the candle-lit lanterns didn’t penetrate the stairway almost at all.  Dr. Brass had to use the handles along the side of the stairs to make sure they didn't fall, but Riven and Athela navigated them in the front without any issues.

Coming to a door and pushing it open with his free hand, Riven found himself in the waiting area.  It had only a couple people lounging in chairs, some of them asleep and others whispering to one another in the dim candle light.  They all looked over as Riven walked in, but many of them paid him no attention after that.  All of them were too scared, worried, or hungry to care about more newcomers.

“Is that an additional limb coming out of your back!?” Dr. Brass asked incredulously, pointing to Athela’s arachnid appendage that’d come out to casually scratch her neck.  “Actually, you know what?  I don’t care.  I really don’t, not after all the other baffling stuff I’ve seen.  Follow me, operating room 5 is straight ahead.”

They pushed through a set of double-doors and continued on, passing the screams of someone on their right as they were held down to a table for surgery.

Dr. Brass sighed and adjusted his glasses.  “We ran out of propofol, other anesthetic agents, and most pain meds two days ago when the world split apart and was rearranged.  Anyone needing surgery has to be bound, and it’s causing complications…  God what I would give to have a coffee right now.”

He pushed open the operating room door that had a big number 5 hanging above it.  Coming in and pointing to a rolling bed, he coughed once and turned to the others.  “Put both of them on the bed. We don’t have enough to go around for individuals, but you can stay here for now after I’m done.  I’ll hook up some IV antibiotics and do an I&D on them each myself, it’ll probably take an hour.”

“I&D?” asked Riven curiously.

Dr. Brass adjusted his glasses again.  “Incision and drainage.  They’re going to need surgical debridement to clean out their wounds, some lactated ringers for fluids so they don’t go into shock after their already obvious blood loss, and then we’ll just hope the antibiotics will be enough.  I have no idea what the hell kind of infection they have and our micro and pathology labs are down, so I’m just going to hit them with the big guns and give them broad spectrum antibiotics.  Probably Vancomycin and Zosyn…”

The old man muttered to himself with medical lingo and dismissed Riven with a wave and headed over to a drawer where he began fishing for supplies, and Riven walked ahead to the rolling bed – making sure the wheels were locked in place before gingerly setting the unconscious girl down.

She groaned, sweating from her illness and was still obviously feverish as he pressed a hand to her forehead.  The blue tribal elf paint was beginning to come off due to the perspiration, and her breathing was labored.

“What about their fractures?  This woman’s clavicle is broken, and-”

“I’ll do what I can to reset them properly.” Dr. Brass interrupted with another dismissive backwards wave.  “I’m no orthopedic surgeon though.  All I can do is my best since the others are busy with more urgent emergencies.”

The room was square, with pristine white walls and overhead lights that could be rotated to get a better view of things while operating – but there was no electricity to power them and Dr. Brass had to use a lantern.  He had Athela hold it up for him to see while occasionally adjusting his or her position for a better look while using a scalpel to cut away small pieces of necrosed tissue, drain a couple abscesses that’d quickly formed over the last day, and then wash out the wounds with a good amount of saline before starting an IV.

During that time, Riven absentmindedly looked around.  There were supplies stacked in one corner, some of which were obviously not native to an operating room under normal circumstances.  There were a couple boxes of crackers, juice boxes, water bottles, and granola bars.  There were stacks of scrubs in different sizes, masks, gloves, syringes, and various medications.

It was all pretty barren aside from that, with only a long metal table on the right side next to a shelf with a dead computer.  But it was comfortably warm: and by the time Dr. Brass had packed the girls’ wounds and bandaged them up, washed his hands, and dried them off – Riven was comfortably dozing off in the corner with his head slumped to one side.

“Now all we can do is wait.” Dr. Brass stated with a grunt.  “I’m surprised neither of them woke up.  They squirmed a little, but nothing that I couldn’t handle.  You’ll likely know over the next couple of days whether or not they’ll make it.  That’s if any of us make it… with all the gangs and monsters roaming around since the apocalypse set in.”

The old man solemnly shook his head a final time, wiping away the last remnants of blood and washing his hands for a second time with a bag of saline and some hand sanitizer.  He’d used gloves, but his forearms had still got a little bit of the wound’s fluids on them while operating.  “What’s your name?  Your friend Athela has already introduced herself, but I left you alone because you were half asleep.”

Riven blinked twice, yawned, and stood up as the words struck home.  He noticed how the two elves were tucked under blankets on the wheeled hospital beds, and he extended a hand.  “Riven.  Nice to meet you Dr. Brass, and thank you for all you’ve done.”

“Don’t mention it.” Dr. Brass replied, smiling back under tired eyes and taking Riven’s hand to shake.  “I’m not even going to ask about your situation and what’s going on because I have too much to worry about, but eventually if things all calm down… Well I’ll have questions for you then.  Good luck to you, and feel free to help yourself to some of the supplies – but please ration it.  It’s for the entire hospital and we don’t have anywhere else to hide it at the moment.”

Riven’s eyebrows raised as he glanced over the stacked boxes.  “This is all you have left?”

Dr. Brass shrugged.  “Not all, but still…”

The old man waved as he exited the room through the door, leaving Riven and Athela to themselves.

Athela smirked, picking up a couple water bottles and flinging them across the room into the waiting hands of Riven.  “Well this is certainly a situation…  You should eat and drink some normal human sustenance too.  Blood alone isn’t going to do it.”

“Indeed.” Riven acknowledged with a lightly growling stomach, still blinking to wake himself up with another yawn.  He was about to say something else, when there was a sudden boom from up above – and the hospital shook.  Screams, abrupt gunfire, and the sounds of mayhem followed immediately after that – with yet another shudder as the very foundation of the building rocked.

Riven’s eyes widened and his teeth clenched.  “What the hell…”

Athela’s smirk faded to be replaced by worried furrows.  “Well that doesn’t sound good.”

Without another word, Riven and his demonic servant exited the room.  Immediately the screams grew louder as they opened the door of OR 5, and the sounds of more gunshots rapidly echoed across the building’s upper floors.

“Fuck me…” Riven muttered as people downstairs began to scream and scramble back.  A handful of terrified nurses sprinted down the stairwell and found places to hide, running from something, as Dr. Brass tried to calm them.

The old man threw up his arms and rushed to place himself in front of the last nurse – a skinny young man in his early twenties – as the others blatantly ignored the doctor in their mad rush to find cover.  “What the HELL is going on Jim?”

The nurse was pale, breathing heavily, and he shakily pointed back up the stairwell as others in the area watched with wide eyes.  “We’re being attacked!”

“By who!?” Dr. Brass roared, beginning to surge past the nurse to reach for the door handle.

“DON’T!” Jim yelled, grabbing Dr. Brass by the shoulder and whirling the old man around forcefully.  “It isn’t who, it’s WHAT!  I… I can’t describe it completely… It's enormous.  It looks almost like a person, but is rotten… has gray flesh, and is unbelievably strong!  At first it was just a weird looking guy with a sick smile in a bloody clown suit, and then his body erupted and he became something else!  It was like he shapeshifted and blew up to three times his size!  He began eating people and ripping them apart with claws and a multitude of mouths!  The officers were shooting it with bullets and they had no effect- they just kept shooting and people kept dying- body parts were everywhere and-“

Another boom rocked the basement as the screaming upstairs continued – but the gunshots and stopped.  The nurse looked frantic as everyone listening paled, and Dr. Brass was certainly one of them.

The old doctor took off his glasses, wiped them along his white coat, and slowly placed them back on his face.  “You’re saying that this is another one of those monsters?”

The nurse frantically nodded, his chest heaving fast due to his obvious horror at what he’d just seen.  “I… I wouldn’t go up there.  They’re all gonners if they don’t run, and there’s nothing we can do except hide and hope it doesn’t come down.”