"There's no choice; I've got to turn on the light," Joanna said. The click sounded loud in the silence. She rapidly ran the beam around the small, windowless room. It was the freight elevator vestibule with a wide double door.
"They'll quickly figure out the elevator is here on the third floor," Deborah said. "So they'll be here soon. Let's find a stairwell and get up to the top floor. That's where we should find a place to hide until we figure out what we're going to do."
"Agreed!"
Deborah pulled open one of the doors to the corridor, and Joanna stepped through. Quickly Joanna beamed the light up and down the hall. Even though she was now forewarned about all the medical paraphernalia cluttering the old hospital, she was still taken aback by the scene. She hadn't expected to see framed prints still on the walls, nor a laundry cart with folded sheets still on its shelves. "It's like there was a fire drill and everybody ran out and then never came back," she said.
"There's an exit sign," Deborah said, pointing toward the south. "That must be a stairwell. Let's go!"
Joanna kept her hand over the flashlight lens. She wanted to limit the light to just what she and Deborah needed to avoid the gurneys, supply carts, and old wheel chairs. They moved quickly. Arriving at the stairwell, Deborah cracked open the door. For a second they listened. All was quiet.
"Come on!" Deborah urged pushing into the stairwell.
They started up the stairs at a run but slowed immediately because of the noise they were making. The stairs were metal and reverberated like kettle drums in the confined space.
They got only as far as the intermediate landing before both women froze in place. They'd heard a door somewhere below burst open and slam against the wall. Joanna recovered enough to switch off her flashlight.
In the next instant, booming footfalls resounded against the metal treads, accompanied by a flickering glow that filtered up the stairwell. One of the men was running up the stairs clutching a flashlight.
Joanna and Deborah edged to the rear of the landing and pressed themselves up against the bare brick as the sounds and 1 light rising from below rapidly reached a crescendo. Simultaneously one of the men in black appeared on the third-floor landing more than twenty feet away. He was so close to the women that 1 labored breathing was clearly audible. Luckily, he did not look up, but rather concentrated on getting into the third-floor corridor and down to the freight elevator as quickly as possible.
The instant the stairwell door closed behind the man, Joanna and Deborah restarted their climb to the fourth floor. Too scared:: switch on the light, they had to move slowly by feel while the struggled against succumbing to their renewed panic. The fourth floor landing was particularly difficult to navigate in the darkness due to stacks of empty cardboard cartons.
Once they were in the fourth-floor corridor, Joanna again switched on the light. Keeping her hand over the lens, they started out, heading north and moving as fast as the cluttered hall allowed. Both instinctively felt that the farther they were from the part of the building occupied by the Wingate Clinic, the safer they would be. They also tried to be as quiet as possible on the aged wooden flooring in deference to the man searching for them on the floor directly below.
They reached the fire door leading to the tower. Without discussion they traversed the tower and passed through the opposite fire door into the north wing. Except for an occasional creak of a floorboard, they were silent, each consumed by her own fears.
The wards in the north wing were a mirror image of those in the south wing, arranged lengthwise along either side of a central corridor. Each ward was separated from its immediate neighbor by side rooms, and each ward had twenty to thirty beds. Most of the beds were covered with bare mattresses although a few also had moth-eaten blankets.
"Any ideas about where we should hide?" Joanna whispered nervously.
"Not yet," Deborah said. "I suppose we could climb into cabinets in one of the many storage rooms, but that might be too easy."
"We don't have a lot of time."
"Unfortunately I think you're right," Deborah said. She directed Joanna to shine the light into the room between the last two wards on the northwest corner of the building. Instead of being a storage room like most of the others, it had been set up as a minor procedure room with an iron examining table and a sink. The opposite wall had a large, glass-fronted instrument cabinet. Pushing through a connecting door they found a small storage room for linens and dressings along with a large, old-fashioned sterilizer.
Deborah quickly went over to the sterilizer, and while Joanna held the light on it, she pulled its door. It resisted at first, but then slowly creaked open.
"What about this?" Deborah asked.
The sterilizer was about three feet in diameter and about five feet deep. Joanna shined the light inside. There were a number of stainless steel boxes sitting on a metal grate. "Only one of us would fit even if we took the stuff out," Joanna said. "And even that would be a squeeze."
"I guess you're right," Deborah said. She let go of the sterilizer and hurried over to the connecting door leading to the end ward. Joanna followed her with the light, continuing to keep the lens mostly covered. When Deborah pushed open the door, Joanna turned out the flashlight. A meager amount of moonlight filtered in through the windows, enough to illuminate the larger objects in the room.
The ward was the same size and decor as the others but differed by having in it a six-foot-long, horizontal cylinder mounted on legs. It stood about waist height in place of one of the beds lining the interior wall of the room.
"Now there's a possibility,' Deborah exclaimed.
"What?"
"That cylinder," Deborah said, pointing at the large object. " remember reading about them. They were called iron lungs and were used for people who couldn't breathe, like patients in the nineteen-fifties with infantile paralysis."
The women walked as quickly as they could through the dark ward and approached the old-fashioned ventilator. It had appeared light gray, but as they got closer they could tell it was yellow. Along its sides were small, round, glass viewports. The end facing out into the ward was hinged and contained a central, black rubber collar to fit around a patient's head to make a seal. Just above the collar was a small mirror oriented at a forty-five-degree angle. Below the collar was a platform for the patient's head.
While Deborah unlatched the front cover, Joanna nervously glanced around. She was concerned about too much time passing. They needed a hiding place, and they needed it sooner rather than later.
As Deborah pushed the iron lung's door open, it squeaked but not as loudly as the sterilizer.
"Shine the light in," Deborah said.
"Deborah, we can't be fooling around here," Joanna complained.
"Shine the light in!" Deborah repeated.
The moment Joanna did as Deborah suggested, a distant fire door banged against a wall followed by the flickering of a flashlight beam out in the main corridor.
"Oh God!" Joanna voiced. She turned off the light.
"Well, this has got to do," Deborah said. "We're hiding in here." She grabbed a side chair from between the beds and shoved it under the front lip of the iron lung. She gripped Joanna's arm. "Quick! You first, and feet first!"
The play of flickering light increased in intensity through the open doorway to the main corridor.
"Quick!" Deborah repeated.
With some reluctance but feeling she had little choice, Joanna climbed up on the chair. Holding on to the upper edge of the cylinder's rim, she got one foot inside. With Deborah supporting her backside, she got the other one in as well. She then slid her body in.