Story #136 - Beginning To Ends

Beginning To Ends

Hospitals were familiar territory for him, though he hadn’t been in this one for years. The higher-ups did what they could to avoid overlap and to make sure that he didn’t do too much work in his own territory, but he knew his way around. There was a familiar feel to the sterile, white places, a rhythm that made him at once feel secure and profoundly disturbed.

“Can I help you, sir?” The nurse’s voice broke his concentration. They were part of it, of course; nurses were responsible for some of the best care in a hospital, but could make those under its heavy hand feel as though they were drowning – just a number on a page or a name on a chart. If they sensed you didn’t belong, they’d single you out in a heartbeat.

He smiled to himself. Without his uniform, it was no surprise they questioned him. “I’m fine, thank you. I just appear to have taken a wrong turn.”

That was the easiest way to describe it. He’d been sent for coffee and snacks, but had let his concentration lapse as he moved toward the cafeteria. Of course, he’d ended up in the terminal care ward, and it was no wonder the nurse had questions for him.

He waited until she was called away to another emergency and slipped in behind the security doors. “Security” was a misnomer for the doors, of course – they had key-card access but closed so slowly that he had plenty of time to slip in behind a distracted doctor as he made his rounds.

It was a strange thing to find comfort in such a place, but he always felt better among the nearly departed. They had serenity about them that others in his life lacked, clarity of purpose that gave them a very different mindset. Those around him hustled as bustled as they completed the tasks of daily life, never sure what would make them happy or how best to overcome what they believed were the problems in their lives, but the patients here had as the focus of their existence a single imperative: die.

Wandering slowly down the tiled corridor, he took the time to look at each bed and each patient in turn. Some were hooked up yards of cables and machinery, while others breathed uncomfortably on their own. Their common denominator was that they would all die “soon”, though that meant different things for each of them.

He stopped in front of a room with a young man inside, who was covered in sweat and gasping for breath. Two weeks at best, he thought to himself, but they’ve probably given him six months. Modern medicine tended to overestimate what it could do, and give patients false hope when what they wanted was an assurance their pain would end. He was no doctor, but he knew the end of life when he saw it, and the young man beyond the door would reach it very soon.

“Hey!” It was the nurse again, and this time she wasn’t even bothering to try and look friendly. “How did you get back here?”

He shrugged. She’d escort him out, but calling attention to his breach of their security would be more damaging for them than for him, so she would keep her mouth shut.

Back at the main elevator hub, he made sure he was on board and headed for the cafeteria level before letting his mind wander. The clothes made the man, or so they said, and that was certainly true in his profession. He and the others like him around the world were instantly recognizable in uniform and given way wherever they might go. Out of that uniform, they were regarded as oddities, perverts and sometimes criminals.

The bustling crowd in the food service section of the hospital milled with muted grunts and a hushed tramp of feet; there was an odd attempt to be respectful of others within the walls of the building, one that was in opposition to typical human sensibilities.

Ten minutes of uncomfortable semi-silence later, and he had what he sought: four coffees, three donuts and a muffin. Her parents had made it in for the big event, but no one expected his to make an appearance – a good thing, since most of what he said about them was pure fiction. They would not…fit…with his family.

By the time he returned to the fifth floor she had been wheeled into the delivery room, and there was nothing for him to do but sit and wait. She’d been clear that she didn’t want him there when the big event happened, but that he was to be nearby, and he was more than happy to comply. As far as she knew, he had an aversion to blood and most human biological functions as part of a package of neuroses, but it was a far simpler matter than that – he had no interest in brining his work home with him.

Hours went by with little in the way of updates, but finally a screeching cry could be heard down the hallway and he was called into the room. His wife, beaming with pride and limp from exhaustion, was cradling a small, pink-wrapped bundle in her arms. A daughter!

“Mr. Muerta,” a voice near him said – he couldn’t be sure if it was a man or a woman, doctor or nurse. He had a baby girl! “Go and see her, sir.”

She was perfect; she was beautiful. He took her gently in his arms and whispered her name, careful not to drop her. His wife would never forgive him.

The cell phone at his hip vibrated; he’d forgotten to turn it off when he finished his last case the week before. Whatever it was could wait.

His uniform was out in the car, tucked where the spare tire should go, and it would stay there for the next month. Its blackened chest piece, skull head and bony hands would be fine on their own; for once, the business of life demanded his attention.


- D