WARNING: This is a really emo sounding story. Read at your own depression.
Mercy Hospital was always a place of life. Everyday, surgeons in green gowns and masks would work restlessly over the crimson-stained operating tables to save the lives of patients who would have otherwise been lost. Everyday, nurses in white coats would bring food and liquid life to patients who were bedridden, recovering from their various injuries and illnesses. Everyday, a newly signed-out patient would be taken in a wheelchair across the street to the old park to take a deep breath of fresh air, watching happily as little children played on the half-century old swing set. It was a perfect, happy little place, with a good record and good reputation; it was a place where one could truly see the happiness of life.
But where there is light, there is always bound to be darkness too.
It was a cold, dark, and damp Monday morning on an early spring day. The world outside the frosted hospital windows was mostly concealed within a thin, rolling fog. The once vibrant park across the street was utterly barren; its rusty old swing set half hidden within the mist. Steam rose up off of the warm street pavement and merged into the chilling cloud looming closely above it.
The hospital staff had closed all of the hospital windows in an attempt to keep the chill from coming in. Throughout the hospital, every window was tightly shut and locked. That is, every window except for one. In a small, out-of-the-way bathroom on the third floor, a single, small, dirty window was held open with a wooden wedge. The bathroom had been long since out of use due to the fact that all of the toilets were out of order and nobody had bothered to repair them. A single light bulb dangled from the ceiling, casting the room in an eerie glow. The window had been left there unattended for so long that the wooden wedge had even begun to slowly rot away.
A faint wind blew in through the window, and the light bulb suddenly burnt out with a loud “Zzzt”. The wedge gave a shudder and crumbled into millions of moldy pieces, leaving the window to slam shut in its absence. But not before it came in.
It was shapeless being that was almost completely invisible to the naked eye. It was like the watery illusion one could see rising over an open fire, or the whispering waves one could see in the middle of a hot desert at noon. It was a ghost-like vapor that chilled everything that it touched, and gave a feeling of utter sorrow to any unfortunate soul who accidentally passed through it. This creature was called Death, and it had only one goal in mind for that day.
Without delay, it slipped underneath the bathroom door and crawled onto the open hallway floor. It was not a particularly busy day nor was it a particularly busy floor, so there was no one about. The third floor was for bedridden patients recovering from surgeries or various diseases. It was the perfect place for doing what it had come to do. Death flowed about restlessly, excited with anticipation.
It crept along the floor slowly, stopping at every door it came to in order to take a look inside. The first three rooms were completely empty, with all of the equipment turned off and the beds nicely made, ready for the next occupant to use. The fourth room that it checked had a young boy inside who appeared to be sleeping off some anesthesia from some operation he had. But there was also a nurse in there, fiddling with some medication on a nearby table. Although Death was confident that it could do its work around her, it didn’t want to be bothered with such unnecessary handicaps.
The fifth room, however, held a promising looking victim. Sleeping in the bed with his mouth wide open was an old man of about 60, with balding gray hair and a wide forehead that had just started to grow wrinkles. He wore a patient’s blue dressing gown and had a large IV needle stuck into his arm, which was connected to a bag of yellow liquid that hung over his bed. A loud machine next to him made loud “ping” sounds and displayed his heart rate, proving that the patient was still amongst the living. And best of all, he was alone. Death secretly smiled to itself as it crept under the door and into the room.
It quickly slid along the floor and up to the bedpost where it stared at its victim’s sleeping form like a vulture waiting on its perch for its food to die. For a moment, it just stood there, watching as the old man breathed in and out. Whatever the old man was hospitalized for, it must not have been anything serious, because he was only connected to a minimal amount of equipment. There weren’t any oxygen tanks helping to breathe, nor were there any tubes running across his body like some old-fashioned telephone operator station. But to Death, it didn’t matter what the he was in for, because it didn’t change the fact that he would not be leaving.
Death slowly glided over the sleeping patient and hovered softly above his head. The man snored loudly, but showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. Death then slowly lowered itself down on the old man until it was only a centimeter above his face and, without warning, plunged down into the old man’s open mouth.
It traveled as quickly as it could down into the man’s lungs and soon entered into his bloodstream, sailing through the flowing river of blood that coursed in those fragile veins. Taking its time, Death went along and shut down every nerve and muscle that it passed like a person going through an old house to flip off every light-switch and turn out all the lights. Little by little, the unconscious patient’s entire body became numb as Death navigated through his being like the chill that runs up one’s spine, until finally only the man’s heart, lungs, and brain still functioned properly. Excited that its work was nearly done, Death quickly made its way to his heart and entered inside of the beating organ.
At first, nothing happened. But soon the heart monitor’s “ping” sounds started to slow down, and his breathing started to rattle as inhaled. His lips slowly turned a pale shade of gray, and the warmth slowly drained from his hands and feet. His breathing became sparse, often pausing for fifteen seconds or more in-between each breath. His pupils, hidden behind their lazy eyelids of sleep, grew larger and glassy. And then, everything stopped.
His chest stopped moving, no longer able to pull in any air. His heart stopped beating, no longer able to push blood through his body. Right on cue, the loyal heart monitor promptly sounded a dull tone that announced a sad message to everyone in the hospital who could hear it: the patient was gone.
Mercy Hospital was always a place of life. Everyday, surgeons in green gowns and masks would work restlessly over the crimson-stained operating tables to save the lives of patients who would have otherwise been lost. Everyday, nurses in white coats would bring food and liquid life to patients who were bedridden, recovering from their various injuries and illnesses. Everyday, a newly signed-out patient would be taken in a wheelchair across the street to the old park to take a deep breath of fresh air, watching happily as little children played on the half-century old swing set. It was a perfect, happy little place, with a good record and good reputation; it was a place where one could truly see the happiness of life.
But where there is light, there is always bound to be darkness too.
Discord
Light Style