DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

made even bigger by her uncomfortable surroundings.

Once upon a time, Jenny had worked in this facility, in this emergency room. She’d loved the job, and since Blessed Crucifixion was the only hospital within sixty miles, it had been her sole option for being a fulltime caregiver.

But last year she’d gotten into a disagreement with one of the holier-than-thou physicians on staff, and his lies and bullshit had led to her dismissal.

God, she hoped that prick Dr. Lanz wasn’t working tonight.

“Dr. Lanz! Code blue!” the intercom blared.

Shit.

Jenny kept her head down as the six-foot, broad-shouldered Kurt Lanz, M.D. paraded past, looking every bit as self-important as the day he’d gotten her fired. She knew he would have her escorted out of the hospital if he spotted her.

While Lanz barked orders at his cringing staff, Jenny slunk over to a nearby house phone.

She reached for the handset, then paused.

Should I call him?

Her ex-husband, Randall, had left no fewer than thirty-eight messages on her cell phone since being admitted two days ago for a job-related injury. Her brain-deficient, former significant other—a lumberjack—had somehow managed to cut the back of his own leg with a chainsaw. She wondered if he’d been drinking on the job. He’d fallen into drinking far too much off the job. Drunk on the job seemed the natural next step. He’d sworn time and again that he was off the sauce, but he’d made many such promises during their marriage, only to relapse.

Aside from the occasional glimpse of his bright red Dodge Ram Hemi driving through town, she hadn’t seen Randall since their divorce was made final two years ago. Jenny hadn’t been responding to his messages, even though they were increasing in frequency and urgency. But now, stuck in the hospital with Randall only two floors above, she might as well bite the bullet.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the automatic doors opened and a clown entered the ER. At first, Jenny assumed it was a candy striper come to entertain the ill. But then she saw he had a child attached—by the mouth —to his left hand. The girl was screaming through clenched teeth, blood dribbling down her chin.

A distressed woman followed the clown and the child, patting the girl’s back, and when she locked eyes on Jenny she said, “There’s a nurse!”

Jenny glanced down at her white uniform. She was about to correct the woman’s assumption with an, “I don’t work here,” but noticed the entire ER staff had surrounded Mortimer, who was coding.

“You have to help my daughter,” the mother demanded.

Jenny looked at the little girl, whose teeth were embedded in the skin of the clown’s left hand.

“Oasis’s braces are stuck,” the woman said.

“Oasis?”

“Oasis. My precious little girl. This horrible clown ruined her eighth birthday party, and now he’s going to ruin five thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontia.”

Jenny appraised the clown. A very sad clown, despite his painted-on red smile and matching rubber nose. He stood six feet tall, six-six with the green fright wig. His green and red polka dot clown suit bulged at the middle—a pot belly, not a pillow—and his size twenty-eight shoes squeaked like a chew toy when he walked. A large, metal button, opposite the fake flower on his lapel, read “Benny the Clown Says ‘Let’s Have Fun!’ “

In a low, shaky voice barely above a whisper, Benny the Clown said, “Please help me.”

Jenny fought to conceal her smirk. “What happened?”

“This terrible clown squirted my little girl and she defended herself. Now she’s stuck on his filthy clown hand.”

The little girl said something that came out like, “Mmmmhhhggggggggg.”

“I was making the birthday princess a balloon poodle,” Benny the Clown said, “and she reached up and squeezed my nose. That activated the flower.” Benny the Clown pressed his rubber proboscis and turned his head. A stream of water shot out of the center of the flower, sprinkling onto the tiled floor. “When the birthday princess got squirted, she locked her precious little birthday chompers onto my hand.” Benny the Clown leaned closer to Jenny. “You can’t tell because I have a smile on my face, but I can feel the wire digging into my bone.”

Jenny nodded, trying to appear sympathetic. “I wish I could help, but I don’t work at this hospital. I’m just here with one of my hospice patients.” She pointed toward the gurney where doctors and nurses swarmed around Mortimer. “You’ll have to check in at the front desk.”

Even with the painted-on grin, Benny the Clown looked suicidal.

Jenny hated to turn away any patient in need, but she could be sued for administering care in a facility she’d been fired from. She watched them trudge off, then turned her attention back to the phone.

Just do it. Get it over with.

Jenny picked up the receiver and dialed Room 318. She knew it was 318, because every one of the thirty- eight messages she’d received from Randall had begun with, “Hi, Jen, it’s Randall, I’m in Room Three-One- Eight.”

Before the first ring ended, Randall was on the line. “Jen, is that you?”

The last thing she expected—or wanted—to feel was comfort at the sound of his voice, especially with all the chaos going on around her. But it was so familiar, like they’d just spoken yesterday. The comfort died in a surge of anger at the memory of all the heartache his drinking had put her through.

“Hello, Randall. How are—?”

“You coming to visit?” Randall interrupted. “I’m in room Three-One-Eight.”

Jenny sighed. She watched Dr. Lanz charge the defib paddles. “Yeah, I know. You said it on every message you left for me.”

“You listened to them? All of them?”

“All thirty-eight, Randall.”

“Thirty-eight? It couldn’t have been anywhere near that many. But I wasn’t sure you were getting them. You been having a problem with your phone?”

Yeah, you keep calling me. “I’ve just been busy. So how are you doing?”

“Dry ninety-seven days now. I don’t even want to drink anymore, I swear. I’m a changed man, Jenny.”

So he’d said in all thirty-eight messages. She was impressed if it was true, but he’d done a lot of lying in his drinking days. And even if it were true—too little, too late.

“I meant your injury, Randall.”

“Oh.” His voice suddenly lost the excited, almost child-like tone. “I got seventy-seven stitches. Everyone thinks it’s real ironical that I cut the back of my leg.”

“You mean ironic, Randall,” Jenny corrected. She’d been the one to teach him the meaning of the word, but he had yet to get the pronunciation right.

Winslow—a wisp of a woman who became head nurse when Jenny was fired—squirted conductive gel onto Mortimer’s bare, hairless chest. Jenny’s patient was convulsing—v-fib or v-tach. Even from across the room, she could see that Mort’s eyes had rolled up into his skull, the whites protruding like two eggs. Flecks of foam and blood still sprayed from her patient’s mouth, dotting Dr. Lanz’s face and his pristine, white lab coat. Lanz’s expression twisted in disgust as he wiped his sleeve across his lips, and the fastidious, meticulous doctor actually spat over his shoulder.

Should have put on your face mask, Dr. Jack Ass.

Jenny spotted Shanna, looking a little green, scurrying through the doors into the main hospital. Everyone in the ER looked on as Lanz applied the paddles, even Benny the Clown, Oasis, and her mother.

“Jenny? You there? Hello?”

Jenny only turned her eyes away for a second, trying to gather herself, not ready to see Mortimer die. Rude and self-important as he was, she’d found things about the old man to admire, and even like. She also wondered when she would work again. This was a small town, and hospice nurses weren’t in constant demand.

Full of shame at the selfish thought, she forced herself to look back, to say a final, silent goodbye.