The Latino girl understood the request, and in a trance followed Sophie to the morgue. Her back stiffened and she readied herself to see her beautiful baby girl dead.
The drape pulled back to reveal her baby. Sophie squeezed her hand sympathetically when the girl laughed. “What is this? You make one joke?”
“I, I don’t understand…?”
“This is not my baby.”
“I assure you it’s the baby you brought in with you. We don’t make that sort of mistake, besides she's the only baby left in the entire hospital.”
“I’m telling you this is not mine,” she folded her arms defiantly, glowering at Sophie. “How dare you. What sort of girl do you think I am that I could produce this— this thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at it — it’s black.”
23:15 PM
Sophie sat alone in the empty hospital canteen, gazing absently into her Styrofoam cup at the liquid that was loosely described as coffee and hesitated before taking a sip, as she went over the earlier event that had left her stunned. Bereavement struck people in different ways, she knew that, but she had never experienced a mother denying her own baby before. The whole incident left her feeling uneasy, but that was for the coroner to sort out during the post mortem.
She finally took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “Vile isn’t it?” said her friend Doctor Juliet Miller, joining her at the table. “You’re not due in tonight. I thought you were meant to be convalescing?”
“I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself, it was only an auto-accident.”
“Only an auto-accident? You nearly died. Three blood transfusions I heard?”
Sophie shrugged it off. “I thought I would be more use here, helping to close down the hospital. What about you?”
“I haven’t left since yesterday. I've been flat out for twenty-four hours.” She glanced at her watch. “Boy, they run us ragged. You know, I wouldn’t let a grease-monkey touch my Benz if he hadn’t slept for two days, yet this is what the board expects us to do with human lives.”
“Ah, but this is the poor hospital, we can’t be, or are unlikely to be sued,” Sophie said. “I thought they’d be easing up on the pressure as we close tonight.”
“It’s only a skeleton staff, although we were inundated earlier, everyone sneezing all over the damn place with summer flu. The nurses ran out of medicine at one point.”
“I noticed a lot of sneezing tonight.”
A janitor passed them. “It’s going nuts out there. It’s this damn heat. It’s still over one hundred degrees, fourth night in a row. And the humidity, don’t get me started on the humidity, it’s freaking unbearable. The heat brings out the loony-tunes. The heat, that or the full-moon, and tonight we got both.”
Miller scoffed at him.
“Actually, it has some merit,” Sophie said. “Many a study has shown an increase in the mentally ill and a propensity towards violence during the different phases of the lunar cycle.”
“Yeah, I know,” agreed Doctor Miller, “lunar cycle equals lunatic. But it’s just not medical enough for my taste.”
“I tell you,” said the janitor, “Full moon and heat; it’s gonna be a hum-dinger tonight. We had a coupla cracker-heads in earlier; both been bitten by rats.”
Sophie scrunched her face horrified. “What is the world coming to?” She rubbed her injured shoulder.
Juliet Miller noticed. “Go take a nap; I’ll come wake you, if I can’t cope.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. We wound down the surgical ward. We ship the last few patients out in the morning. A news reporter hit by shrapnel is the only new in-take and only because the paramedics said he was losing too much blood. He’s quiet as a lamb under heavy sedation and we’re re-directing the walk-ins to other hospitals.”
“If you’re sure?”
“We’re only taking in life or death cases.”
“You might get the overspill from the riots,” said the Janitor.
Sophie sighed. “Not riots again.”
“It’s the heat, I’m telling you,” the Janitor chuckled and meandered away.
“The rioters will be re-directed,” Juliet told Sophie. “Off you go. Besides, I don’t think you’re fully recovered. So go have a good night’s sleep.”
Sophie yawned and dropped onto the cot in the bedroom reserved for the doctors’ on duty to use when they got a chance to nap. She thought about the baby again, and thought she might take a look at the coroner’s report. There was something not entirely right about the incident. She massaged her aching neck still stiff from the neck-brace she’d had to endure for several weeks after the crash. She lay down on top of the bedding and was asleep in seconds.
CHAPTER 4
DAY ONE
FRIDAY JULY 1st
8:00 AM
Sophie awoke slowly and stretched. She glanced at the bedside clock and sat bolt upright, surprised to find that it was eight in the morning already. Why had no one woken her as per her instructions? She should be on duty. Perhaps, under the circumstances, no one noticed her absence.
She jumped from the bed, still clothed from the night before and hurried from the room. Her heels clicked down the cavernous corridor, which made her notice the exceptional quiet, none of the usual hustle and bustle of hospital life. She stopped and looked around. There should be noise. There should be lots of noise in the hospital. Too much noise usually, in fact, close to bedlam. Yet this morning not even a whisper. Not even the incessant messages bing-bonging over the tannoy system.
Nothing.
She marched briskly toward ER and with a sense of foreboding; she pushed the double doors open. Immediately she spotted small bodies on two separate gurneys. Judging by their size, she assumed they were children. She pulled back the cloth covering the first body and stood back in surprise to see the top half of a man, cut cleanly though the middle. She pulled back the next cover to see his lower torso and legs.
She went to the outpatients department and found the receptionist fallen behind the counter. She knew before she got to her that she was dead. She checked her neck as a procedure, noting the dried blood around her ears, nose and eyes.
08.10 AM
Luke Spencer stirred in his hospital bed. He took in the surroundings of the hospital ward and sat up fast, which he instantly regretted as his head pounded worse than any hangover he could remember. He noticed his arm in a sling. His other arm had a catheter and a blood bag hanging on a metal stand next to his bed. Slowly the events of the night before came back to him, then quietly. “Maaan…”
He turned to the patient on the next bed. “Pst! Hey!” He waited for a reply for a moment. “Hey, buddy?”
He sat up cautiously and rummaged in the locker next to his bed, found his Hawaiian shorts, and slipped them on along with his flip-flops. He moved towards the neighboring bed dragging the squeaky metal stand with him.
The man was asleep on his side. Luke shook him gently. “Hey, man, where is everyone?” He rolled him over, and reeled, as he stared into the dead man’s blood-shot eyes and bloodied nostrils. “Nurse!”
He looked around the ward in disbelief. All the other patients were dead. They all appeared to have died during the night of the same disease, he took in dark ringed pustules, and oozing boils. Then the stench hit him, his knees buckled and he gagged at the overpowering smell. “Nurse!” He shouted, wandering from bed to bed touching the ice-cold flesh of each body just to be sure. “Where the hell is everyone? Nurse!”