As he got dressed, he couldn’t help but wonder why things like this had actually started to become natural to him. Normal even, he thought. Just a few weeks ago, attempting something like this would have caused me more embarrassment than I would have ever wanted to remember, but would anyway. Why, now, would the Black Womb decide that it didn’t want to come in tonight?
The answer to his question was ready in his mind. Too ready, as if it wasn’t even his.
It’s thinking.
Dr. Dennis Marx stopped just shy of room 1013, glancing down at the clipboard he had cradled in his arms. His eyes darted over the ink-smudged photocopy for a moment before he licked his fingers and turned the page, then kept reading. The second page was scrawled in handwriting that was legible only to him, along with a few crude diagrams of wound tracks with arrows going from them to equally crude stick figures to indicate their placement on his patient’s body.
He ran a hand over his bald head, then through the greasy remains of his black hair that exploded from his neck like wild grass. Finally he stuck his pinky finger into his ear, subconsciously rooting around as he read down through the file before him until he found an obstruction to pry out by the nails.
He glanced to one side and saw Nurse Riley staring at him, one of her eyebrows raised upwards suspiciously. Frowning, his cheeks turning red, he wiped his hand in the waist of his otherwise white lab coat and then turned around the corner, entering the room.
Mike lay silently in his bed, his eyelids fluttering wildly as the eyes inside them darted back and forth. His breathing was slow and constant, his toned chest rising and falling every few seconds as he lay on his back. His mouth was open, but he did not snore.
Cathy entered the room from the bathroom just to Marx’s right, in the middle of bringing her hair back into a ponytail. There was a bobby pin clasped between her pink lips for a moment as she gave the Doctor a look that said ‘just a minute’. After a moment she removed the black strip of metal and slid it gracefully into her hair to keep it in place, then smiled at him. “Sorry, hospital-head bugs me.”
“Hospital-head?” Marx asked, raising one of his bushy eyebrows. His voice was very small and weak, a smokers wheeze of the end of every word.
“It’s like bed-head only worse,” she explained, cocking her head in the direction of the paper sheets.
“Ah,” he smiled, nodding as he chuckled loudly. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”
Cathy winced at the surprising level of the man’s laughter, walking past him to close the privacy curtain around Mike’s bed. “He didn’t get much sleep last night, you mind?” she huffed impatiently, though not without her usual air of kindness.
He nodded in apology. “Sorry.”
“S’okay. What can I do to help you?” she asked, her face returning to her normal, soft demeanor.
“I just need someone to sign the both of your release forms. You’re both making great progress. Usually we’d keep you an extra day or two to watch you, but the hospital’s all booked up and we have new patients that need the rooms.”
“Patients?” Cathy asked, her eyes growing wide. “More victims?”
“No... no,” the doctor mumbled, ruffling through his paperwork to find the forms. “Nothing like that. A lot of children have been getting ill lately. Haven’t really been able to put my finger on the cause.”
“Oh. Good,” Cathy sighed in relief.
He shot her a glance from above his clipboard.
“Well, not good... you know what I mean.”
“Mm-Hmm,” he hummed dismissively.
“So, um, do you need to be a relative to sign those?” Cathy asked, making a big and fake smile as she tried to segway from the topic.
“Um...” he mumbled, thumbing through a few of the pages looking for a document labeled parent/guardian, finding none. “No. We’ve already contacted both of your parents, so you can sign your consent forms yourselves on your own. It only says that you checked out of your own accord.”
Cathy sucked on her teeth a second, getting the last bit of milt-flavoured toothpaste off of them. “I’ll sign,” she said, then took the forms out of the doctor’s hands. He gave her a black ballpoint pen with golden stripes to sign with. She did so hastily, scribbling her name where the ‘x’ indicated.
“Thank you,” he said curtly, folding his arm back over the clipboard.
“You too. And good luck with that kid... thing.”
He did not respond, simply turned away from her and left the rom.
“Tool,” she uttered to herself, frowning as she turned back toward the room. She smiled then, tip-toeing until she reached the yellow curtain he had pulled across. “Mike?” she cooed softly as she stepped forward in an exaggerated manner she had only ever seen used on Saturday morning cartoon shows.
There was no response from beyond the curtain.
“Miiikey,” she sung musically, her arm out in front of her and ready to pull the yellow plastic aside at a moments notice. She waited for a beat, then yanked the curtain aside, the rings that held it up scraping sharply along the pole they rode on.
Mike looked up at her as he finished buttoning up his shirt, his face devoid of almost all expression.
“Oh,” she said, pouting a little. “Thought maybe you’d still be asleep.”
“Dr. Mumbles woke me,” he said simply, fastening the clasps on either sleeve.
She looked him up and down suspiciously. His shirt was red with white stripes and fit him very well. It somehow made him look older than he was, or at the very least nicer. His jeans
