Time passed and nothing opened the door to the hall. Claire’s body was tense and unsure. Her mind raced for any plans or ideas. Her eyes darted around the surroundings as she waited. Her ears perked at the signs of any noise. A single trickle of sweat escaped from her hairline as she loosened herself up and stood up straight.

Reagan’s appearance at the end of the hall startled her and she turned to face him, ready to scream and lecture. As he came closer, she could see him quickly wipe away tears from around his nose. Pity still wasn’t beyond her as her stomach plummeted at the thought of how scared he must’ve been. Trying to keep herself reasonably calm, she evaluated what to say to him without scaring him. Reagan stepped up to her trying to look at the floor and avoid her eyes while he waited for her to say something, then he looked up at her, and then up and down the hall.

“Where’s Denny?” he asked.

Claire couldn’t contain herself. Shouting, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “He was grabbed by a fucking ghost! A ghost doctor! It was chasing me, and I thought he could get away, but I don’t know if he did. He was on the first floor and I was running and-!”

“What?!” Reagan ran to the door of the stairs. Putting his hand out, he touched the knob, then withdrew it and looked at Claire who was approaching him slowly, afraid the door was about to burst open at any second.

A ping resounded behind them and together they slammed against the wall. Sneaking toward the corner, they both peered around to see absolutely nothing. Claire stepped bravely around the edge of the wall and into the sunlight of the first window. Red light swept over her, alerting her to the start of sunset. She thought there had been more time. She thought she’d had hours left. But then again, she also had thought this would be an easy assignment.

“We got to get out of this crazy place,” she said aloud.

“Look, the elevator is down,” Reagan said pointing over her shoulder.

Both of them moved forward with curiosity to look into the open elevator. The dark blue floor tiles were cracked. The shields over the lights were missing showing the exposed bulbs and wires. One of the tiles from the ceiling had fallen and broken on the floor. It generally looked unsafe and a slight creak escaped it as Reagan put one foot inside.

“I’m not taking that down,” Claire said with a raised eyebrow. “It looks way too unstable.”

“Do you really want to take the stairs? We have to save Denny!”

Her brain debated itself as to what to do. The stairs were totally off limits as far as she was concerned. Even saving Denny seemed impossible. The elevator was likely to kill them both. They needed to leave, but there didn’t seem to be a single safe way to do it. “What about….” She trailed off unable to think of a single thing they could do.

Reagan moved his hand into the doors as they began to close. They bounced off of him and opened back up. “Elevator?”

Claire tenderly placed one foot into the pile of broken tiles. The elevator car quivered slightly. Trying to move as slowly as possible, she moved her other foot inside. As soon as she cleared the doors, they slid shut without a sound. The car swayed slightly knocking them both off balance. Stumbling, they each attempted to grab the walls and each other for something to hold onto. Before they could right themselves, the entire thing dropped. The whole car lurched, and then simply free fell downward. Claire screamed while Reagan silently turned white. Together they were lifted into the air by the G-Force. For a second time seemed to stop completely, Claire watched as her camera floated off from around her neck, Reagan’s mouth opened wide sucking in air for a good long shriek, she could see her shoes going up higher than her head, her ponytail was floating up around her head and into her eyes, and the ceiling was growing ever closer. She felt like they would fall in slow motion forever.

Suddenly, the ride to Hell stopped. With a bone-shattering thud, the two of them slammed onto the floor. Claire’s face scraped across the dark blue concrete rubble. Her stomach and chest pounded down onto the floor with intense force knocking the wind out of her. Her legs followed, although she wasn’t sure how she managed to flip over in the first place, and beat against the back wall tearing one of the shoes from her feet. The world was blurry before her and she knew she was breaking, or had already broken, her ribs on her cameras, which were pressed, beneath her, cutting into her. She could feel a tiny stream of either sweat or blood running down her face. She knew her nose was bleeding and possibly broken as well as she felt it running into her mouth, although she had no taste, but only the pain of her jaw.

Across from her on the floor, Reagan lay on his back. She couldn’t see him, but was sure he was bad off. Reagan himself knew he had broken his left leg since it had been the first thing to crunch and visibly snap under him. His spine was contorted oddly sending shooting pain through his nerves. He wanted to whimper, to cry, even to speak and ask Claire if she was able to move, but he couldn’t control anything, but his thoughts and his eyes. Out of the corner of his field of vision, he saw her bloodied face with her unfocused eyes looking at the floor. She was hardly recognizable through all the damage and floating dust. Her eyes moved back and forth for a second and Reagan happily thought she was going to get up and be somewhat okay, but instead they closed as she passed out. The elevator doors above his head were badly bent out of shape, but somehow one side of them ground their way open a little bit. The telltale ping of the floor sounded and if Reagan hadn’t been through the accident, he would have found it ironically funny.

Time passed some more in the Blake Fulton Hospital, though he had no idea how much, and out of nowhere a head poked itself into the tiny elevator car. It was a tan skinned man with curly brown, but thinning hair. He was young, perhaps only about twenty-something, and had the most wicked grin on his face.

“Nasty fall you’ve all had,” he said gleefully.

Reagan could do nothing, but look up at the stranger.

“I wouldn’t really suggest laying like that. It’s probably very bad for you,” he said with a toothy, white smile.

Reagan wondered what the man was thinking.

The man pushed the door open even further with a grunt. Popping in gleefully, he knelt down beside Reagan’s twisted body. He wore a patient’s gown over his slim form and had thick, grey, wool hospital socks on his feet. Reagan’s eyes opened in fear as the man put his hands around each of his ankles and moved them so that Reagan lay flat. Surprisingly, a lot of the pain vanished, although he still couldn’t move.

“Oh, who is this lovely lady?” The man turned and picking up Claire’s unconscious form, he turned her over. Reagan hardly thought that her bloody battered face was lovely right then, but couldn’t say anything even as a joke. He held her in his arms and lowered his head to rest on her chest lovingly. “Why! This is Jennifer! Oh, Jennifer, I’ve searched for you all day, you silly woman. I’ve been wondering where you’d gone off to. I’m so happy to have found you, but you know the doctor said not to take the elevator. I suppose you’ll be into some trouble now.” Standing up, he put his arms around her chest from behind and dragged her out of the doors over the broken tiles.

Reagan waited for the man to come back and get him, and then he realized very sadly that he was being left behind. The man just didn’t want him, only Claire, whom he’d strangely called Jennifer. Reagan internally sighed and wondered if someone would be coming for him. He morbidly thought he was going to die there, but at the same time, he held high hopes. Panic gripped him as he wondered just what was coming to get him though. There was nothing to do, but wait, and that’s exactly what he did.