“Samuel? Are you alright?”
Looking up and processing who was talking to him, Samuel laid eyes on Austin and smiled a mournful smile. “I’m fine,” he replied quietly. “It’s not my blood.”
“What – what happened?” Austin asked cautiously, still not having taken another step closer to Samuel. “I heard gunshots…”
“Yeah,” Samuel nodded. “There were gunshots. We were trying to save the patients, but we couldn’t get to them all.”
Looking around the ward, Austin took in the number of patients lying in hospital beds around them. None of them were conscious and he feared it may be worse than that for most. Everyone lay so still and silent it was almost like a morgue, the scent of blood in the air from the dead woman in front of him making it even more realistic. She had been shot – that much was obvious – but Austin still didn’t understand what had transpired to lead to that event. Everyone that he had been around downstairs had simply hidden, no perpetrator or villain ever showed their face.
“Come on pal,” Austin finally took a step closer to his friend, holding out his hand for Samuel to take. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” The way Austin saw it, it didn’t matter too much what had happened. He was sure Samuel would give him the details later on. The important thing now was to get the man cleaned up. Who knew how long he had been holding that woman’s dead body or the relationship the two of them had shared before she died; Samuel had met someone from Trident who he knew downstairs, what was to say he hadn’t known this woman as well? The look on his face told Austin one thing at least: he was definitely affected by her death.
With Austin reaching out to him, Samuel glanced down at Doctor Miller’s face once more. He had long ago closed her eyes, but still supported her head. It felt wrong in some way to leave her on the hospital floor and so, without asking for any help from Austin, he shuffled around on the floor and picked the woman’s body up in his arms.
Carrying her like a small child, he walked over to the only empty bed in the ward, and laid her down. Blood still coated her clothing and there was no disguising the hole in her chest, but at least with the white sheet pulled up over her torso, it was hidden.
With one last look, Samuel smiled at the woman and whispered a small thank you, grateful for the time he had spent with her and the lessons he had learned. Doctor Lucie Miller had been committed to her work to the very end and she had died an admirable and respectable death. If Samuel could carry out his responsibilities with half the poise and decorum she had, then he would be a very proud man.
“I’ll find you some clothes to change into,” Austin remarked as his friend finally walked over to him. “There are showers down the hall. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
A little under twenty minutes later, as Samuel emerged from the hospital bathroom dressed in pale blue scrubs and a gray sweater, he looked like a new man. He tried to feel like one too, but it was impossible to forget what had just happened. Samuel had realized while he was cleaning the blood from under his fingernails that while he may have witnessed secondhand several deaths since Trident had collapsed, this was the first time he’d ever really seen it so personally. R Hauser jumping from the Trident window was perhaps the only exception, but even then, Samuel hadn’t encountered his dead body up close. Doctor Miller had literally been inches away from him when she was shot. It was a strange feeling to have been so intimate with something so awful.
“Are you okay? Here, have some water.”
Accepting the flask from his friend, Samuel drank thirstily, suddenly realizing how dry his mouth was. Once he was refreshed the two of them sat on a couple of chairs and Samuel briefly explained what had happened to Austin.
Austin couldn’t help but be impressed by the tale, seeing how much Samuel was affected by it. The rolling blackouts which had caused the hospital to go into meltdown had stopped for the time being, the familiar beeping of machinery once again filling the hospital wards and putting those who worked and resided there at ease for the time being. But everyone knew it wasn’t the end. With no funding, there was no way the electrical grid of the city would be sustained for much longer. Austin estimated a week until the blackout was permanent, hardly enough time to make provisions or prepare for such an event. The horrible truth was that those in the hospital who relied on life support – and the many others across not only New York City, but the entire country – would not outlast this disaster. The collapse of Trident was going to affect humanity in many ways, this revelation simply being the latest on a very long list. The hospital wasn’t going to survive and there was no point in Austin and Samuel sticking around to see it crumble and suffer.
“We should get a move on,” Austin eventually suggested. He knew there was little the pair of them could do any longer in the hospital. Neither wanted to abandon the patients, but both knew they were fighting a losing battle. “It’ll be dark soon and we should get somewhere safe before night falls.”
“I know,” Samuel agreed, lifting his head and looking out onto the ward where he and Doctor Miller had been no less than an hour earlier and remembering his other friend who lay in a bed downstairs. “Let me just say goodbye to Cassie first.”
“Of course,” Austin nodded to his
