Deliver me from the evil man,
Preserve me from the violent—
Those who devise mischief in their hearts,
They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent—
Viper’s poison is under those lips.
-Psalm 140:1-3

&

I checked to make sure no one was looking before jumping into the swivel chair and letting it twirl.

“Wheeeee—!” I whispered, trying to be as quiet as I could. Didn’t work. As the chair spun, I caught sight of Hannah staring at me from behind the plastic counter. She looked frightened for my sanity.

“Hi,” I squealed, halting the chair’s revolution with my foot. “What’s up?”

“Mil,” she blinked, the penciled-on eyebrows raised high, “Casadorma can’t get here. Storm’s in her area. Which means ICU. Front desk. Now, babe.” Hannah has this terrible habit of speaking in quick, short blurbs. Most people would be baffled, or at least slightly confused by her talk, but I knew what she said. I had to fill in at the ICU desk. Again.

I sucked air in through my teeth, then glanced around the lobby. ‘Tuonela Charity Hospital,’ was imprinted on the blue, plush wall behind me. I sighed, deeply.

“Up,” Hannah barked, motioning for me to get out of her seat. I complied, taking my sweet time.

I ambled to the front of the main desk, leaning over it lazily. “I hate the ICU,” I said. She wasn’t paying attention, though; she sat in her seat, warmed by my bum, and began her scattered work as head receptionist. In addition to whatever her main receptionist duties were, she was in charge of interns, volunteers, and the like.

Oh, and the substitute receptionists, like me.

“Life sucks,” I sighed.

“Mil,” she kept her eyes on the phone buttons she was dialing about a mile a minute. “Your ass. ICU. Get there. Now.”

“Aye-aye,” I slinked away, unnoticed and uncared for. I’m so hopeless, I swear.

The ICU was buzzing in a swarm of Tuesday morning rush. The swarm being absolutely no one. Tuonela is a decently small, dejected town in the middle of Virginia. The population is pretty average for a small city, especially compared to our even smaller neighbor towns, but the problem was with safety.

Safe. Tuonela was safe, like a piggy bank at Fort-Knox. Probably even safer than that. Like a piggy bank in the middle of nowhere, where no one would ever venture or seek it out. The piggy bank would just sort of sit there, gathering dust and field-work hours for college.

I briefly wonder how I got to the topic of piggy banks. Doesn’t matter, I guessed.

I twiddled my thumbs in the solitude, the gentle hum of the television—the weather channel—kept me company. There was a storm coming, practically here already. We had bad storms that summer, almost hurricanes really. I don’t know anything about the weather, though, so I wouldn’t advise anyone to take my word on that. I was going to school to be a nurse, not a weather-meteorologist-science person. Anyway, it was a dark and stormy early-morning.

“Bleh,” I watched—nay, guarded—the empty office like a hound dog. An extremely bored, wound-up hound dog. “Bleh, bleh, bleh.”

I could hear the rain begin, beating hard against the shutters. It was enough to put me to sleep, but the three cups of coffee I had consumed, prior coming to the hospital at four in the morning, kept me light and alert. I leaned back, dangerously, in my chair.

The rain continued, and an hour passed. There was filing to be done, but I was like, “Nah,” and didn’t do it. Save it for when the island madness crept it, I told myself.

About a half hour past six—still in the morning—something happened. There were people running around the front rooms—the E.R. “Glorious day!” I wanted to scream. I was in the ICU reception office. That’s where people, who are already in the hospital and in really bad shape, are kept. I was the substitute ring master of the ICU, on that day at least. But not really… I just sat around and waited for Dolly, the real ICU ring master to order me around.

The E.R., the emergency room and a nifty television show, is where people go immediately after an accident. Split your left hand open, or break a toe—you sit and wait to be seen at the E.R. Jump out of a five-story window and live—but just barely—you go to the E.R. immediately and in front of all the broken toed people. The E.R. was just beside the ICU reception office, on the first floor. That’s how small charity hospitals are—at least the ones in a safe place like Tuonela. The majority, if not all of the people in the ICU, were dying from old age or cancer. Sad place.

In review, E.R. is the action, and the place for people with minor gashes. The ICU is where people either recover after an accident or…die, I guess. None too pleasant, really, I swear.

Apparently, something really cool was happening at the E.R.

I hopped around in my chair for a few minutes, hearing a phone ring and a brief siren. Eight or ten minutes later, the sirens came back. Action! I jumped out the desk—sliding off the counter, the improper way—and raced to the doorway, looking into the white-washed hall.

The E.R. was in full swing. A body was being rolled on a cart, towards the emergency surgery wing. I blinked. Dolly, the ICU ring master who also liked to double as co-E.R. ring master, despite the fact that she didn’t work there, was speed walking with a horde of four or five nurse-people, flocking to the scene. I could hear the violent rain crashing against the building.

“S’up?” I asked Dolls.

Her head rolled my way, scratchy curls of gray hair bobbing. “There was an accident.” She stopped, although I could see she was dying to get in the way of all the E.R. people. I figured I should save them from her meddling.

“Really?” I made sure to look surprised. Of course, I already knew there had been an accident, hence all the ruckus and the body. “What happened?”

“Motorcycle. On the highway.” Maybe working at the hospital gave everyone the quick-blurb syndrome. Just like Hannah…

I sighed. “Who is it?” The chances I’d know the person were very slim—Tuonela was small, just not that small—but working in the hospital definitely gave people the paranoid-for-my-family-and-loved-ones syndrome.

“Don’t know,” Dolly seemed all choked up and emotional. Foolish lady. “They didn’t get an identification.”

My eyes widened. I could feel them bulging in their sockets. “No wallet?”

“No,” she said, gloomy.

“No ID?”

“None.”

“No license plate?” Surely they could identify the patient by the motorcycle.

Her eyebrows dug deep into her face, “Nup.” She bit her lip. “I should go help—”

“No!” I cried, grabbing her elbow, “There’s just so much paper work to be done in the ICU, and I’m sure they can handle it.”

She seemed almost frantic. “But it’s a real wreck. A real massacre.”

This caught my attention, “How many people, exactly, got hurt?”

“Just one.” Her clear, blue eyes showed her remorse. It was very characteristic of her to be upset, but this seemed almost overkill.

“It’s that bad?”

She nodded.

“Any limbs gone?”

“No,” Dolly pulled away from me, appalled.

“So what’s the big deal?” Dumb question. Really dumb question, considering I was talking to Dolly, the humanitarian of the year.

Her features darkened, appraising my messy scrub-uniform and unapproved sneakers. “It’s just bad, Mildred. And he’s so young. He’s your age, I bet.”

I gulped. Well, not really, but I felt a chill go down my spine. Well—not really either. I just felt very cold when she said that. It was a boy and he was my age. There was something personal about it now, and I could see why Dolly was so strung out. She had a son my age, too. I felt guilty, all of a sudden.

A little nurse raced to the side of us, to the E.R. reception. Dolly and I watched her very carefully.

She muttered something, very softly—maybe so we wouldn’t hear—to the receptionist, Ellie. She and I had lunch break together. Poor Ellie—her face paled dramatically.

She handed her a blue form, an anonymous patient form. A John Doe form.

Dolly snorted a little, probably from her over-synthesized allergies, and walked to the nurse-lady. “How is it?” So nosy, that woman.

The nurse—couldn’t remember her name for the life of me—must have been very soft spoken. I couldn’t hear a thing.

Crestfallen, I waved at the glum Ellie, who half-heartedly returned the gesture, and I spun back to my desk.

I hate the ICU, I hate the ICU. I chanted my sanity mentally, alphabetizing a pile of charts.

“Mildred,” Dolly had snuck into the office, to lean against the desk, “Dr. Caleb wants you.”

My heart stopped. What had I done? “Um—why?”

She bit her lip and narrowed her prissy face, “Well, I think she wanted to see whether you knew the motorcycle boy or not.”

“Why would I know him?” If I thought my heart had stopped before, I knew it was dead by now.

“There was a college tag attached to his keys.” She sighed a little, ready to go home.

“The keys from the motorcycle? He goes to my college? Wait! If I ‘knew’ him?” My brain went haywire. I clutched the edge of the desk with the strength of a cobra. Um…cobra, right.

“From the vehicle: yes. Sandra didn’t know; she wanted you to see if you could identify him. And…” She left off, vacantly, imagining the face of her son on the motorcycle kid’s torn up body. I knew she had to be imagining that. Silly woman.

“And?” I prompted.

“John Doe is dead, unfortunately.”

I bit my lip, a habit I must have picked up from her. “Oh.”

“Go see.”

Dr. Sandra Caleb was a stout, middle aged lady from New York. She had this funny, nasal way of talking. I liked her immensely for her sarcasm, but she was a bit cold.

“Now,” she begun, “This is completely illegal. We are supposed to have so many papers filed before we let anyone see the body,” she led me to the room. She reminded me of a grown up, bitter picture of myself, sometimes.

“Do you know any boys who ride a motorcycle?” she asked.

“Ummm,” I rambled in my head a short list of absolutely no one. “No?”

“Mm,” she pushed the door and led me into the sad, green room. Two nurses, one male and one female, were working on finalizing the body. There were a lot of bloody bandages being disposed of.

And then there was him—John Doe. He did look my age, maybe older or younger but not by much. A little less than half of his face was a bloody scab, and there was a gash running on the left side of his head. Under a sheet they were dressing him in, I could see more carnage. I chose to ignore that.

“You are okay with this, aren’t you?” Sandra asked me. I noticed I had stopped moving; instinctively, I didn’t want to be anywhere near that body.

“Yeah,” I said, pushing forward. His face, what I concentrated on, was still intact—a little. His head was shaved in a buzz-cut, which was good. They would have only needed to shave his hair off anyway, with that gash at least.

I think the absolute worse thing about looking at him like that was his eyes. The lids were open, in death, while the glassy eyes assessed the ceiling. I might have shuddered—I don’t remember. They were undistinguishable in color, but they frightened me all the same. Their effect led me to believe he might jump up and scare me.

“Do you recognize him?” Dr. Sandra’s voice softened quite a bit as she touched my shoulder. I was thoroughly aware that she had used gloves while operating on him, but the thought of her hands—the same ones that tried to save John Doe—were on my shoulder…I wanted to vomit, all of a sudden.

“I don’t think so,” I said, turning to her. I chose my next words very carefully, “May I get back to the effing ICU now?”

&

Author’s Note: Thanks for reading. Spooky beginning quote, eh? Well, I thought it was cool.